“I have five more songs, well ‘five and a half’ ready for the band when we start recording again at the end of the month,” said Benny when icethesite caught up with him recently at Mono Music.

When asked if the idea is to release an album from these and the earlier recordings, Benny confirmed that is indeed the intention. If all goes well, the album release will most likely be sometime in the autumn.

Benny paid tribute to Göran Arnberg who has again been transcribing for him so that the musicians all have their individual parts for the BAO songs. “I send him over the MIDI files and he works very diligently on producing the parts…bass, strings etc in order that the band have what they need to play the material.”

Benny told us that the band were having a lot of fun back together and mentioned that being on the Swedish TV programme På spåret (On the Track) in January as house band had also been a really great experience. “The programme producers asked us along and I thought, why not? We spent a week all together in Gothenburg and it was really good to be back playing live together again. The reception we received was incredibly enthusiastic and it felt really good.”

Benny then told us that more tours were not part of the future plans for the band. “There comes a time when travelling four or five hours, following a four hour concert, in order to reach the next venue is no longer quite as much fun as it used to be, so we have decided not to do tours again. However, we do still plan to play live…so future concerts, if not tours, are not out of the question. We still all really enjoy the connection with a live audience.”

Thanks Benny for chatting with us once again and see you on 27 May for the ABBA Voyage 1-year anniversary in London!