One Weary Traveler - a tribute to Egotrippi
Kohta paukkuu ja rytisee!
Content warning: depression, suicidal ideation
If you have suicidal thoughts or plans, email me and let’s talk. No judgement. I’ve been there. You can also anonymously call or text 988 in the United States. Shortly before I started ketamine treatments, I had several text and phone chats with 988. Remarkable people work there who are ready, able, and willing to help you. I am living proof that recovery is possible.
When I was three years old, Nick-At-Nite aired a marathon of 20-year-old episodes of The Monkees. This event was called Monkee Jam ’87. I sat there mesmerized at the TV. My parents put a blank tape in the new VHS recorder and we got the first two hours of this marathon on tape. I watched those four episodes over and over for the next several years of my life. I still remember the names of those four episodes: Son Of A Gypsy, The Spy Who Came In From The Cool, Monkee Mayor, and Monkees Get Out More Dirt. The last episode featured Julie Newmar, my first crush. All four Monkees fell in love with her and did everything they could to become the kind of man she would like. Davy was a painter, Micky was a ballet dancer, Mike rode a motorcycle, and Peter played chamber music. In the end it turned out that she really just wanted to date a singer - the one thing they wouldn’t have had to pretend to be.
I wanted to live the life that these guys lived. They got to joke around, play guitar, sing songs, and fight the bad guys. There were only a few episodes where they dressed up as the actual Monkeemen, but they were always the good guys in each episode. They certainly were are my heroes.
I started messing around on an old acoustic guitar when I was about five years old. I still don’t know where it came from. Neither of my parents played music. Around this time I got a music book of The Monkees’ third album Headquarters at an antique show/flea market at the old Lake County fairgrounds in Grayslake, Illinois. This book also had other hits from their previous two albums. One of those hits was “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.” I learned to read at a pretty young age. Supposedly my preschool teacher said something to my mom like “Look at how cute it is when he acts like he can read!” My mom replied, “He can read. Ask him what it says.” And so she asked. And then I told her what it said.
There were little diagrams in this songbook that showed how the guitar chords were played. It made enough sense to me I guess. I tried the E chord on my guitar. And then the G chord. The way those chords sounded back to back made me feel something big. Those are the first two chords of “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.” This was the moment when it hit me. I think this was the moment I became a musician. I felt an electrical shock. I was giddy with giggles. I played those chords over and over. It overwhelmed me. I wasn’t searching for any meaning. I was experiencing something inexplicable. Something wondrous. When I started teaching guitar a couple decades later, I got to see that moment happen with so many of my students. And that’s when I was finally able to see what happened to me all of those years ago. Magic.
There are so many incredible stories that span nearly 40 years thanks to this experience early in my life. I never thought that I’d be able to relive anything close to it again.
Fast forward to 2013. I had this little red and black mp3 player. It was some off-brand thing I got at a flea market. They were already going out of style at this point. It seemed like most people had iPhones or an iPod touch at least. I can’t remember how many songs it held but it wasn’t many.
After attending Heikinpäivä in January, shortly after turning 29, I got bitten by a bug to learn more about my Finnish roots. I heard some wonderful traditional Finnish American dance music in the Copper Country that winter, but I wanted to find something more contemporary, some rock music of some sort. It was incredibly hard to find Finnish music online at this point. The most common thing that I would find was “Ievan Polkka” by Loituma. Unbeknownst to me then, a lot of Finnish music was simply not available in the American market. I didn’t know what a VPN was yet.
Hidden somewhere on some obscure and illegal torrent tracker was this collection of Finnish pop/rock tunes. It wasn’t a specific release, just something someone compiled themselves. There were 100 songs give or take. I downloaded this and loaded it into my mp3 player. I recognized a couple words here and there in the titles but didn’t know any of the artists.
I had this playlist on shuffle for a few days. I enjoyed it a lot. I didn’t know what the lyrics meant, but that was ok with me.
One day a certain song caught my ear and I remembered hearing it on previous days in my playlist shuffling. The melody in the chorus worked itself into my brain. It hooked me in. There was something about the way it soars up high and floats gently back down in the chorus. It sounds silly to put it into words like that. It elevated me and hit me somewhere that I hadn’t been hit since The Monkees did it to me when I was just a kid. The song was called “Matkustaja.”
Let’s face it, did I have any clue what the words “I’m not your steppin’ stone” meant when I was five? No way. Did I know what “yksi väsynyt matkustaja” meant when I was 29? Nope. It didn’t matter. The music mattered. And it spoke to me just like The Monkees did when I was a kid.
Since the meaning of the words were not a factor in my listening experience, I think that my brain was able to concentrate more on the music. The advantage I had this time around was my knowledge of music. I could tell that most of this song was in 6/4 time. Kinda strange. Not a lot of pop/rock songs do that. Thanks to LyricsTranslate.com, I was able to learn was this song was about. The title translates to “Passenger” or “Traveler.” I looked up Egotrippi on YouTube. I found out that “Matkustaja” was quite a popular tune. In fact, it won song of the year (Vuoden Biisi) in 2004 at the Emma Gaala, the Finnish equivalent of the American Grammys. I binged every Egotrippi video I could find online. One of my favorite videos was from an episode of Kosketkuksessa, a television concert series. Someone uploaded a few episodes including the one with Egotrippi. I watched it over and over, just like it was my Monkee Jam ’87 VHS tape. I was a little kid again. Ego Jam ‘13?
I started learning their songs thanks to some chord charts online. I also started learning how to pronounce things in Finnish. I got the Pimsleur Finnish course and did that in my car on the way to and from guitar lessons. I was also using the Memrise app every day for building my vocabulary. Finnish wasn’t available on Duolingo yet. I learned that the guys in Egotrippi wrote a lot of songs for other artists and so I started listening to people like Anna Puu, Jenni Vartiainen, and Jonna Tervomaa. Thanks to YouTube’s suggested videos, I branched out to others like Matti Johannes Koivu, Suvi Isotalo, Samuli Putro, Ultra Bra, Scandinavian Music Group, and so many more.
During this time, I was active in a Facebook group called Theme Music. Every week, our fearless leader Matt Brown would post a new theme that we all could use as a prompt for recording our own songs. We all usually posted videos of covers, but eventually a lot of folks started writing new songs each week based on the theme. I already shared a few dozen videos in the group at this point. But all of a sudden I was feeling bolder and wanted to try something different. I found a tune by Juha Tapio that fit one of the weekly themes. "Raikas Tuuli" means “Fresh Wind” in English. It seemed like a safe place to test this out. I was pretty sure that none of my friends in there knew Finnish. So I didn’t have to worry about anyone pointing out mispronunciations. The response was mixed. Some people thought it was neat that I learned how to do that. Others really didn’t care to hear a language other than English. That type of criticism really hurt. I wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction. One person even said that I should “start singing in American again.” It’s hard to maintain much respect for someone who says things like that.
This experience actually encouraged me to pursue Finnish harder. I felt like I was onto something pretty cool, despite what others were expecting from me. It made me feel good to do this, so why not? I posted a few more videos on YouTube. I got brave enough to share a cover of Egotrippi’s “Nopeimmat junat” on Facebook and I even tagged them.
THEY SHARED THE VIDEO ON THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE! I’m still friends with several people who connected with me from that Facebook post. Talk about a confidence boost! Finns have always been so kind to me from the beginning of my Finnish language learning. I had a few comments where people were surprised that some random American dude was learning a language like Finnish. And since my name isn’t Finnish, it isn’t obvious that I have Finnish roots.
Last year when I was on stage at FinnFest, I said something like “I should start an Egotrippi cover band.” As soon as I said it, I thought of what I might like to do at the next FinnFest if I were to be asked back. Well, I have been asked back. And not only am I performing again but I’m also the music coordinator this year. I will take the stage on Saturday August 2, 2025 at 3pm. This year I will perform an hour of Egotrippi songs as a tribute to my favorite Finnish band. I’ve already talked about “Matkustaja,” so you can bet that will be a part of the tribute. Let me talk about a few more that I’m going to be doing and why they’re important to me. I’ll leave the rest as a surprise. (The links in each song title will bring you to English translations.)
Mestaripiirros - This was the first song I sang for my grandma when I started learning Finnish. She always enjoyed it when I sang “nice and soft,” and so that’s why I picked this one. I actually didn’t know about Anna Puu’s original version at first. She released hers in 2009. Egotrippi released their version in 2013, right as I started getting into them. My version is a bit more like Anna’s. I really enjoy playing the fingerstyle guitar arrangement that I made for my version. My grandma was a native Finnish speaker but she stopped speaking it in the 1970s when her grandma died. This song brought several words back to her and she even corrected my pronunciation on a few of them.
Varovasti nyt - This is another one that my grandma loved. It’s one of Knipi’s most sensitive songs. The delicate sound of the highly capoed guitar matches well with the delicate lyrics. The final chorus sings: “careful now, this moment is fragile / one wrong word can destroy it.”
Asfaltin pinta - This song played plays a huge role in my depression recovery. It has a similar sensitivity as “Varovasti nyt,” but with more introspection. The lyrics sing about feeling lost and finding someone else along the journey who might be equally lost. But that connection brings hope. And with hope, anything is possible. “You were there, I closed my eyes / for a little fleeting moment I saw you with white wings / ‘take me,’ I prayed silently / take me, take me or I’ll wilt and drift away.” One of the most powerful lines in any song I know is “Ajatella, minä melkein luovutin,” which ends the final verse. It means “imagine, I almost gave up.” And as someone who struggled with severe depression and suicidal ideation for most of my 41 years, I’m so grateful I never gave in and gave up. When I sing this song, there are times I get so emotional I can’t even deliver that line without feeling that lump in my throat. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough: I’m incredibly grateful I’m still here to be able to enjoy and share things like this. If you need someone to talk to, let’s talk.
Nämä ajat eivät ole meitä varten - This was one that I heard very early on. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I heard something that sounded like my cat’s name, Delila. The line that says “joku yhtälailla lohduton” is where I heard her name. So when I sing along to this, in my mind I’m singing “yh-Delila” which makes absolutely no sense but it’s fun! The title and actual lyrics were relatable when I was in the depths of my depression. The full sentence from what I quoted means “Because every one of us has somebody somewhere equally inconsolable.” The song is trying to comfort the listener. The title translates to “These times are not made for us” and goes on to talk about how a new day will come where you (the listener) will be noticed finally. You can’t lose your faith. If you have hope, anything is possible. That got a lot deeper than I ever expected after mis-hearing my beloved cat’s name in the lyrics.
Uusi aamu - This was the first new Egotrippi song they released after I became a fan. I remember when the video debuted on YouTube. I was glued just like it was a new Monkees episode on Monkee Jam ’87 when I was three years old. The song has a horn section similar to one of my favorite American bands Chicago. And the lyrics are so full of hope and optimism after going through a rough time. They sing about feeling full of despair, being ready to give up, and wondering if they can continue at all. And then they have this symbolic moment of a new morning (uusi aamu) where things really start to turn around. It’s one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever known that sums up depression recovery.
Tällaisena iltana - This is a great post-breakup song. But it’s not negative like the theme might suggest. It talks about how positive things are since the breakup. “On a night like this, you could almost fall in love with yourself, screw everyone else and let it all out, on a night like this…” They played this on the TV concert show I mentioned called Kosketuksessa. I downloaded the video (the 21st century version of recording something on a blank tape?) and then continued watching it over and over and over. This song is a perfect piece of power pop a la Matthew Sweet or Teenage Fanclub.
Kaunis päivä - This was first recorded by Anna Puu and written by Knipi & Heimo Hatakka. Egotrippi later recorded it on an album of songs that they wrote for other artists originally. I think my version resembles Egotrippi’s version more. But I first heard Anna’s original when YouTube played it automatically after an Egotrippi video. I was hooked. Anna’s voice was amazing, she looked gorgeous, and the melody got me the same way “Matkustaja” did. I recognized the words in the title but couldn’t place what it meant. The way the sound of Anna’s voice delivered the melody was absolutely captivating. When I went to see Egotrippi live in 2015, I got to hang out backstage with them. To my surprise and delight, Anna was there too!
I sat next to Knipi on a couch backstage, he got me a cider from the fridge and asked me, “So Kyle, what’s your story?” and we both chuckled. I told him about “Matkustaja” and how I got hooked on “Kaunis päivä” too. I told him about my grandma and how she told me what the title of this song meant, beautiful day. We had a nice chat. It’s a moment I think about a lot.
Later that night, the Egotrippi entourage brought me to a bar for salmari shots and then to Fried Studios. I got to meet Jukka Immonen, who has been awarded Producer Of The Year a few times in Finland. It took me a few minutes to realize it but I was sitting in the same exact studio where the “Kaunis päivä” video was shot. Jukka had music cranked up, everyone was drinking and dancing, and I was having the time of my life. I met so many other folks in the music industry that night. Mikki was going to stay at Risto’s place that night before their gig in Kokkola. My hotel was on the way to Risto’s, so we split a cab and had a nice conversation on the way back. They didn’t let me pay for the taxi. That week in Helsinki will be a story for another time.
Here’s a playlist of my 50 favorite Egotrippi songs. I hope you enjoy!
This essay was made possible with the support of a grant from Finlandia Foundation National. Kiitos paljon, FFN!
Closing thoughts
You can probably tell by now how much this music means to me. I have so many aspects of my life that have been positively impacted by digging into my Finnish roots. I was awarded a grant from Finlandia Foundation National to write a memoir based on how connecting with my Finnish heritage gave me a brighter future. One of the biggest transformations in my life was how I overcame a lifetime of severe depression, which you only heard a little about in this essay. I also have a really cool story about how I quit smoking cigarettes with Finnish. I’ve been smoke free for 11 years and counting. Additionally, I’ve started a couple new careers within the Finnish American world and I’m so grateful to be a part of it! I’ll also share some more stories about my grandma and the connection we developed. I wonder what she’d say if she knew what I was up to now. She’d be proud of me I’m sure. And she’d probably ask to hear a song or two. “Play me of those where you sing nice and soft.”
Thank you to Jim Kurtti and Tiina Watts! Both of you wrote beautiful letters of recommendation for me for this Finlandia grant and I can’t thank you enough! You’ve both played a big role in all of this Finnishness that I’ve been up to. I’m eternally grateful for your inspiration, friendship, and support.
Thank you Egotrippi for your music, inspiration, encouragement, and friendship over the years. It was a pleasure to meet you guys and I always enjoy our social media interactions. I can’t wait to visit Finland again and hopefully see you guys perform again. Mikki, Knipi, Niklas, Maasalo, ja Risto: paljon kiitoksia sydämeni pohjasta!
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I hope you’ll come see my Egotrippi tribute this August at FinnFest USA! Nähdään siellä!
~Kyle
June 2025
Egotrippi over everything!!!