About Pelle
Downhill Bluegrass Band have, over the years, released several albums and toured in Europe and the US. Here they merge their traditional, acoustic sound of bluegrass from the Appalachian Mountains, with roots in the mining and steel industries of Bergslagen, with Pelle Lindströms harmonica and deep, rumbling voice. Together they created murderballads and lovesongs with a flavour of a distant past, scents of earth, hard work, steel, alcohol, violence and death.
Pelle Lindström, blues singer and harmonica player, began his career as a musician with the rhythm & blues band Hamlet & The Shakespears in Leksand in 1963.
Continuing in the same style, he was part of winning Sweden’s Radio’s final pop band competition in 1969 with the solo group “Ad-Libs” from Stockholm. Within these circles of acquaintances, a group of musicians emerged, calling themselves “Kebnekaise,” and jammed folk music together for five years.
After ten years in Stockholm, he moved back to Leksand in 1976, realizing that one doesn’t need to live in Stockholm to travel around the country and perform music. Around that time, his pen and paper began to get more and more jobs, and he devoted increasingly more time to his graphic talents.
It is said that Pelle discovered blues music when he was young, exploring his mother Ingrid’s record collection. His somewhat famous father was named Rune and wrote, among other things, “Himlaspelet,” where Pelle brilliantly portrayed the villain Gammel Jerk.
Since his teenage years with his first group, Hamlet and the Shakespears, he formed and participated in numerous constellations: Kebnekajse, Urban Turban, Leksandslåt & Vänner, Steam Machine, Leksands Blue Stars, Wobblers, Pelle Lindström and his Hay-Dukes, Luffarorkestern, Lindströms Omoderna, Down by the River, Rosenorkestret, and various blues formations alongside Peter Carlsson.
There are a million fantastic stories about Pelle, but one of the favorites is still the one about what a hamburger really is.
“You know, a hamburger isn’t really something that comes from America. A hamburger is just a beef patty from Sweden that’s been there and back.”
”Music happens in front of an audience, that’s where you can find the ‘ecstasy of the every-day’ in music”, according to Pelle Lindström. Or, as his favourite poet Dan Andersson said: “I play to forget that I myself exist”
Pelle Lindström passed away in April 2024 at home after a period of illness at the age if 74 years.
