Description
Oinas is already the fourth crash course on the local history of the village that gave Kehro its name. Several of the
album’s instrumental titles also pay tribute to landmarks in the surrounding villages.
”Honkolan lava is a tribute to the legendary dance pavilion in Kehro´s neighboring village. Kehrointynneri takes you on a backcountry trek to an ancient boundary stone, now over on the Savikoski side in Akaa. As a kid, Halkivaha was just a stone’s throw away as the crow flies, but in reality and by road, it was long and winding journey,” sums up Vesa Kaartinen, the band’s only semi-local from Kehro.
“Semi-local”, because even he has lived elsewhere since his school days. The band’s other key musicians have only dropped by Kehro
a handful of times.
” When Ville Toikka, who comes from Nuutajärvi, one day suggested Kehro as the band’s name, the rest of us just froze mid-chew,” recalls Markku Kyyhkynen, a born-and-bred Helsinki native. “It was hard to imagine a more obscure name.”
For a long time, the working title for the band’s fourth album was Kehrobeat. But just before hitting the studio, Kaartinen remembered
an even groovier option from his childhood.
“The Ram (Oinas) was a hydraulic pump that the Laurila estate used to lift drinking water for the hundreds of cattle in their mega-barn. Over the decades, its drum-machine-like thumping became familiar to anyone passing the small rapids of the Kikurinoja stream. The villagers even named the rapids after the pump,” Kaartinen says.
“A ram pump – 230-year-old invention – running on renewable waterpower is a perfect match as a rhythm machine for the opening track – and for the title of the whole album,” Toikka sums up.
