Southern Backyard Mk I
After Le Cardinal diminished to 60% of its former headcount, me, Janne and Vesa still wanted to keep the music playing. We, however, felt a need to change the name because the premise was now so different, and became Southern Backyard. Regardless of the name, we actually dropped the Southern Rock part of Le Cardinal’s roots and gravitated a little more towards blues – and a bit later also power trio blues rock, writing a few tunes of our own as well as covering ZZ Top and CCR.
A trio was a little on the small side though, so we had Pekka Lipasti, already known from the early Le Cardinal formative days before Wellu, as a kind of an external member coming to rehearsals once in a while in the beginning. However, he did not manage to materialize for the first gig we had with this line-up and had already quit before the second one anyway.

Southern Backyard Mk I
Janne Komi – guitar, harp and vocals
Jari Riitala – bass and vocals
Vesa Koskelainen – drums and vocals
with
Pekka Lipasti –guitar

Southern Backyard Mk II
Towards the end of 1986 we …well… “graduated” from my parents’ cellar to Mäntymäki youth center, where we had to pack the gear to a locked closet after every rehearsal. For that trouble we gained a permanent version of Pekka and a completely new member Mika Herhi banging on the roadworn keys of his Rhodes electric piano. The extended Southern Backyard gained more insight, especially from Mika, towards the soul blues side of things and for the two gigs with this line-up in early 1987 such material was well represented.

Southern Backyard Mk II
Janne Komi – guitar and lead vocals
Pekka Lipasti – guitar
Mika Herhi – Rhodes and vocals
Jari Riitala – bass and vocals
Vesa Koskelainen – drums
Southern Backyard Mk III
During the middle-half of 1987 Vesa was away, playing with airplanes to fulfill his civic duties. We migrated back to the homely cellar and got Kai Kanervavuori to sub for him on the drums meanwhile – and actually (home) recorded nearly an album’s worth of self-written music meanwhile, some of it clearly starting to lean towards the funk influences more visible later. Apparently acquisition of audio and photo material were mutually exclusive though, because we did not get a single picture of this line-up.
Southern Backyard Mk III
Janne Komi – guitar and lead vocals
Pekka Lipasti – guitar
Mika Herhi – Rhodes and vocals
Jari Riitala – bass and vocals
Kai Kanervavuori – drums
(Audio link to be added when I get to uploading…)
Southern Backyard Mk IV
When Vesa came back, Pekka had escaped once more, reducing us to a quartet.
Southern Backyard Mk IV
Janne Komi – guitar and lead vocals
Mika Herhi – Rhodes and DX7
Jari Riitala – bass and vocals
Vesa Koskelainen – drums
It also became obvious that Kai’s and Vesa’s drumming styles were so different that we would need to scrap half of the material from the previous line-up. While searching for new music within, we kind of accidentally stumbled onto the groove that became I Want Ya, and that became a landmark of the new direction we were headed, out of the blues and rock and towards funk and soul.
Towards the end of 1987, a band competition held by a local radio station was announced: Radio Auran Aallot would arrange the Rokkiraati. This was a series of monthly radio shows where a jury of music professionals would grade demo recordings from a handful of different bands, preselected from all tapes sent, and the ones judged best in each semifinal would then participate the final, broadcast live, with a single release a the grand prize.
We took the opportunity and recorded I Want Ya, paired with another tune, with my meager 4-track setup and some other borrowed gear. The recording turned out very well considering the lack of tools and experience and we sent it to the radio. To our surprise we actually did get to a semifinal and even won ours, thus securing a radio gig.
We had written a few other tunes in the same vein and cannibalized one from Mk III, so we had enough material for the mini set required for the competition and ample time to hone it. However, when the final date was closing in, we realized that Vesa had booked a conflicting vacation trip and would be unavailable. Luckily Joni Saira, another drummer from my old school (funny how everything was still revolving around that) and also known to the others, was ready and willing to accept the challenge of learning the songs in a matter of a few days to sub for Vesa. Thanks, Joni!
Our performance in the final in the end of May 1988 was a little hasty and hurried, perhaps even panicked, and the jury ranked (Soulin) Suurlähettiläät to snatch the grand prize (at least in theory – the original single promise was never fulfilled) . However, we were good enough to secure the secondary prize of some 8 hours of professional studio time at Auran Panimo.

At this point, partly from the experiences from the radio shows, we had come to the conclusion that Southern Backyard was a little too difficult to be a good name and after some brainstorming we settled on Lazybonez, snatched (and slightly stylized) from a Hoagy Carmichael tune earlier covered by Le Cardinal. The possible reference to trombones never occurred to us, but suitably indeed, our ‘bones have been so lazy that they never appeared either in rehearsals or on gigs, and even on the album later they appear on two tracks only.

Thus, on paper, Southern Backyard went to the studio, using up the promised studio time and quite a bit more, courtesy of the brilliant Jorma Tikka who recorded and practically also produced the resulting three-track demo by – Lazybonez. Thanks also to Mika Jokinen and Pasi Ketola for delivering the horns. The audio results are linked on the Lazybonez page.
And from that point on, the story continues as Lazybonez…