By David O’Neill
Some celebrate a milestone birthday with cake. Erja Lyytinen booked Helsinki’s storied House of Culture — “Kultsa,” where Hendrix, Zeppelin, Queen and Slayer have played — and recorded the occasion. Released by Tuohi Records on October 9, 50th Birthday Live 2026 captures the ninety-minute birthday set on CD/DVD, while a second disc features Smell the Roses Live 2025 from Mikkeli.
Her twin sons, Massimo and Dante, introduce the show before ‘The Road Leading Home’ establishes its nuanced slide motif as a mission statement. ‘Ball and Chain’ erupts from power chords into descending slide riffs, and the newer songs make an immediate impact: the title track from 2025’s Smell the Roses and the grittier ‘Going to Hell’ show that her latest material was made for the stage.
The latest single One Thing I Won’t Change is a brilliant taster of what is to come.
‘Hard as Stone’, from 2019’s Another World, delivers the set’s first major show of force. Feeling the studio version had become “a little too sweet,” Lyytinen strengthened the chords and tore into it on a 1989 Kramer Nightswan – her first Floyd Rose guitar – landing the Whammy Octave solo with the relish of a player half her age. Then comes the surprise: ‘One Thing I Won’t Change’, reworked from 2012’s Forbidden Fruit, with Hanoi Rocks/New York Dolls/Joan Jett bass legend Sami Yaffa adding low-end swagger and backing vocals. Glam-punk grit meets blues-rock machinery, and the combination works beautifully.
‘Another World’ becomes a communal highlight as a thousand voices carry the chorus, before Swedish sister trio Baskery take the vocal spotlight on ‘Torn’. The solo slide piece ‘Lullaby’ provides the quiet emotional centre, while ‘Cherry Overdrive’ surges in as a slide-driven wall of sound. The closing stretch is pure muscle: ‘Don’t Let a Good Woman Down’, an extended ‘You Talk Dirty’, then ‘Stoney Creek’ and, for the encore, the slide-led blizzard of ‘The Ring’.
The Mikkeli disc closes with a thirteen-minute ‘Wedding Day’ – first recorded with Sonny Landreth – that on its own justifies the price. Half a century in, Lyytinen is not resting on her laurels, she is setting them alight.
With the UK legs of the tour starting tonight, this promises to be one hell of a birthday celebration! The tour starts tonight, 8 October, in The Lamp Tavern, Dudley, with 8 dates culminating at The Old Brewery Store, Faversham on 16 October.
Erja Lyytinen ’50th Birthday Live 2026′ is released on 9 October.