Sleepwellers is a rhythm & blues / blues band from southern Finland. The Sleepwellers founder Pasi Siltakorpi has had several bands playing different kinds of music but he has always dreamed of a band playing straight forward rhythm & blues and rock ’n’ roll. Pasi worked in Zambia during 2002-2003 and when he returned from Africa to Finland he felt that if he wants to make one of his dreams come true it was the time to do something about it.
Sleepwellers was founded in 2005 when Thomas Törnroos (dr), Risto Koskelainen (gtr, harmonica) Ari Siltakorpi (bs) and Pasi Siltakorpi (gtr, voc) had a jam session in Risto’s garage. They played Pasi’s long time favorite British Dr Feelgood songs and other rhythm & blues classics. It sounded so good that they thought maybe others would like to hear it too. They arranged a gig in a local legendary Bar Mary music club. Now they needed a name for the band. Thomas suggested Dr Sleep Well but as Pasi likes to play with the words they came up with the name Sleepwellers.
This first line up played solely cover music by Dr Feelgood and The Pirates including some rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll classics. Risto quit the band 2007 and a new guitarist Markku Räty joinded the group. This was the time when Pasi had decided to add original material to Sleepwellers’ gig set. He has written music all his life and started to write new songs influenced by their long time pub rock favorites.
The Band wanted to make a record and they published their first CD Every Scar Tells a Story in 2008. This low budget album got encouraging reviews and songs were played on national radio. During the following years this line up recorded CDs Mother or a Dodo? and Check What You Get. Now it was drummer Thomas’s turn to leave the band. He is a very busy session drummer and he felt he didn’t have enough time to continue. Pasi’s old band mate Fokke Forsman was a natural addition to the band as Pasi and Fokke had played together in the 90’s in a popular show band called Zetor. Zetor released an album called Lihakenkä and two singles. On three occasions they performed on national TV and had a success in the Helsinki area.
The next Sleepwellers record was titled New Tricks for Old Bricks. It was published in October 2011. This time the band went to a top class Sea Wolf studio and they were lucky to have the legendary Havanna Black vocalist Hannu “Guts” Leiden to produce the album together with the band.
Year 2014 Sleepwellers realeased album ” Extended play”. This record contained eight very straight forwarded rhythm´n ´blues songs . This album is first Sleepweller cd that is streamed trough various services E.g. Spotify
Latest Sleepwellers record is titled ” Lei it happen ” . It was released just before Christmas 2017.This new record contains ten new songs and one remake. ” Maximising blue”. On this album special guest croatian bluesharpist Davor ”Buna ” Buncic appears on songs ” Home.lover and a cat ” and ” Maximising blue”.
New album ”Nothin´But a Number” released 9th March 2022. This album contains thirteen new Sleepwellers songs. Single ”Nomen est Omen” was first released on streaming services. The whole album is available on 1st April 2022.