The first thing you notice about the band is its sense of humor. Between songs, G2 banter amongst themselves about stories of the road. The stories make the show more interesting but serve a purpose as well, according to Tobias, one of the band members.

“Bluegrass music requires the instruments be tuned often. There would be dead time, but we fill in with stories,” Tobias tells me after the show. “It gets easier the longer we are on the road. We have more stories to tell.”

Other band members are Erik, Jens, Christoffer and Jimmy.

Their favorite thing about coming to our town is the connection between their home city of Torsby, Sweden and Thorsby, Ala.

Tobias says he learned of the Alabama request to be sister cities when the band was planning a four-month tour of the United States.

“I said we have to play there,” he adds.

Tobias is involved in Community Youth programs and Exchange and saw a great opportunity for his band to be ambassadors of Torsby. They sent an email to Mayor Dearl Hilyer and heard from Tracia Bussey the next day. Bussey coordinates the Swedish Festival in Thorsby each year.

The band returns home in October. Meanwhile, the children of several band members will be arriving in the U.S. soon to visit for about three weeks. Everyone is looking forward to seeing their families again.

“We stay in touch through Skype,” Erik tells me.

After a week off in Nashville, their home base in the U.S., their tour takes them to California.

When asked while traveling if they ever just break out in song on the road, they all pipe in and say never. Yet during our conversation, Jimmy starts humming some of the music they had just been playing on stage.

During the show, they thanked the Chilton County peach queens for the basket of peaches. True to their word, after the show they washed and ate some of the peaches on their way out of town toward Nashville.

The town of Thorsby thanks them for a wonderful show.