By David Pendered

May 5 – Sofia Talvik is the Swedish singer-songwriter I selected for a series of stories on how an artist was navigating the Covid pandemic. I caught up with her at her recent show on the Florida Panhandle.

Time has enriched her voice and her lyrics. Talvik’s guitar skills remain top notch, as does her work on the foot drum and ankle bells. She’s a soloist at the moment and her husband, Jonas Westin, manages the soundboard, as he did in the March 29 performance in the 1912 Roberts Hall, in Lynn Haven, Fl.

They’re now on tour across the Midwest in their 1989 Winnebago Warrier, “Lil Chief.” After the planned final show June 28 in Las Cruces, NM, they’re scheduled to take a month off before going back on the road, in Europe, on Aug. 1.

Talvik has a knack for bringing to life important things that go mostly unnoticed. Consider the gallery of missing persons at Walmart stores. The song, “Center of the Universe,” reminds us that those faces represent real people who are lost to their loved ones.

Talvik sings of a girl who disappeared at age 7 years, who now would be 25: “Who would notice if they took her picture down? … Where did she go? To the Center of the Universe … Was she chosen by a higher power to ascend to someplace better than right here? We can only hope.”

In her show, Talvik introduces the song by saying the concept of the Center of the Universe comes from the Hopi, a native nation in the Southwest. She explained in an email that Hopi believed they “went to the center of the universe, which is their sort of nirvana or higher state of being. That’s why my album is called ‘Center of the Universe.’ More of this story is in the documentary I did for my album.”

Time has smoothed the edges of the pandemic for many of us. With Talvik, the heartbreaking loss of her pedal steel guitarist is recognized in a sing-along tribute to her friend and band member, Tim Fleming.

Fleming was on tour with Talvik when the world stopped in 2020, just before their planned performance at the SXSW festival. Fleming decided to go home to Los Angeles, where he died thinking he had contracted Covid. The cause of death was ruled a heart attack. Talvik’s song to her friend begins:

“Last time I saw you, you were sitting on the deck of a surf shack on a Texas beach. With sun in your eyes and sand on your feet. You said, ‘I should get back to California.’ Oh, California.”

COVID Pandemic Performers Sofia Talvik

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