The Blue Van was raised in the northern region of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, as sons of carpenters, truck drivers and farmers. In 6th grade, they started playing music, jamming in the basement of a grandmother, who – luckily – suffered from bad hearing.

At the early age of 12, they started playing cover songs, before they started writing their own material, inspired by The Small Faces, Cream and The Pretty Things.

Taking the name The Blue Van from the Danish name of the van that transports patients to mental institutions, the band moved to Copenhagen and financed their debut EP A Session With The Blue Van themselves. The release was backed up by fantastic shows at the SPOT Festival and the Roskilde Festival. The debut album The Art Of Rolling was recorded in Hamburg, Germany in the Fall of 2003.

Recording all instruments simultaneously in the same room, left only the vocals to be dubbed, but was the best way to capture the live energy of the band on tape. The album showed a sweaty, hard working, jamming rock band, and was the culmination of years of hard work and persistence. Lead singer Steffen Westmark remembers: “We wanted to capture our energy and feel that we had live, and I think we pulled it off”. The Art of Rolling landed the band a deal with TVT Records – at the time, the largest indie label in the US – and the band was now able to tour the world.

Splitting their time between Denmark and the Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn, The Blue Van created their sophomore album Dear Independence with Lenny Kravitz’s sound technician Henry Hirsh as producer. The album was recorded the old fashion way: on tape, with no possibility of post-editing. The band went for a natural, organic sound.

Still, times were changing, and while waiting for TVT to respond regarding their option to release the 3rd album, they started writing the demos for the songs that now make up Man Up. TVT did not use their option, but the band had worked on a ‘plan b’ with Iceberg Records and was pleased to not be involved with the label they had become increasingly dissatisfied by. One month later TVT went bankrupt.

The band went back to Hamburg with the co-producer of their debut album, Mark Wills, and Dan Hougesen (Dúné), to record their 3rd album Man Up. Unlike their previous recordings, the band wanted to create a symphonic piece and not be restrained by any dogmas. It was all about creating the best sound possible and experimenting more.

The end result is Man Up, which – by all means – sounds like a more mature band, and the first single Silly Boy has already been well received – even being named Track of the Week by Danish National Radio (DR-P3) straight after the release.