One of the interesting musical happenings of 2019 for Lonesome Highway was discovering Norway’s Hollow Hearts band - special thanks to Somerset musician Jesse Budd (aka Billy Shinbone) for turning us onto them. Plans for a live interview were scuppered when their UK tour booked for June 2020 was, of course, postponed due to Covid19. Undeterred, we conducted a socially (very) distanced interview with Ida Karoline Nordgård - in another instalment of our ongoing exploration of the Nordicana music scene.
In our review of the latest album, PETER, Lonesome Highway waxed lyrical about Hollow Hearts’ ‘distinct signature sound, marked by lushly layered vocals, skilfully wrought catchy melodies and gothic undertones’. Their website describes them as folk/roots/Americana.
We don’t like to think of our music as a specific genre, Ida Karoline explains. Each one of us has quite different influences from jazz, funk, soul, country, blues, rock and folk. Our common influences are bands like Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Bigbang (a Norwegian band), Bon Iver, The Band etc.
Their base is Tromsø, a city of over 70,000 located in the far north of Norway. It’s probably musically best known outside of the country as the home of Royksopp and a thriving techno scene. What is the overall music scene like there?
Tromsø is a very vibrant city, with lots of gigs every week, in many different genres. I guess the most important venue is a club called the Bastard Bar, where we played our debut concert. It’s a very cool place, hosting many both smaller and bigger acts. We also have a lot of nice festivals in town, like Buktafestivalen, Rakettnatt, and Tromsø Jazz Festival, which we are booked to play this August.
Fingers crossed that this will go head as planned.
We wondered how the writing process works in the band?
Sometimes we all start together, writing from scratch. At other times one of us has an idea and we start from there. Ida Helene is the wordsmith in the band, so she writes the lyrics, but we all contribute to the story-making. It often starts off with basic acoustic instruments and vocals, and from there we work on further production, as a collective. Our main band instruments are vocals, guitars, bass and drums - but we like to experiment with other instruments also, depending on what we want to do with a song.
Even on a brief listen to any Hollow Hearts track, it is clear that the standard of musicianship and production is unusually high. The reasons for this become obvious when the origins of the band are discovered.
Myself (bass), Mikael Pedersen Jacobsen (drums, mandolin) and Christoffer Nicolai Mathisen (pedal steel, guitars) were all in the same degree class in Tromsø Music Conservatory, while the other Ida, Ida Helene Løvheim (guitar, accordion) was a few years behind us. We discovered that we liked each other’s way of playing, and enjoyed each other’s company. After a few beers together, the band was formed!
The band’s songs are all written in English. Why did they decide to do this?
I think it’s about 50:50 whether bands in Norway chose to write in either our native tongue, or in English. We just did it because we wanted to - it is never our goal to be commercial, but of course it helps when we reach out to audiences outside of our country.
Lyrically, the influence of the sea and the weather are very evident in the songs on the last album, PETER. Does the Norwegian folk tradition influence their work on a conscious level?
Our lyrics and stories are inspired by our way of living in Northern Norway, both modern living and older folk traditions. And the weather ..... there’s just something about all this weather!
We have a lot of old sagas in our region, and one of them - the Saga of Birte & Benjamin - became a song on our 2019 mini album TRAVELLING SONGS.
So it seems that Nordicana, like Americana, has to have a murder ballad (as mentioned above) thrown in there somewhere!
Like most bands the world over, the members combine day jobs as music teachers and record store employees, to enable them to continue to fund their involvement in Hollow Hearts and other music projects. However, they are also fortunate to have a very supportive government when it comes to the Arts, and Arts Council Norway has helped them (and other artists like them) financially with touring and recording costs.
PETER was a concept album of sorts, the closing chapter of the story of Annabelle and Peter (which started on their 2018 debut album ANNABELLE). So, are there any plans yet for the next album?
We were almost sad when we finished that chapter, but now we’re keeping our minds open while writing a lot of new songs and we’re planning to get into the studio this autumn.
Apart from their native country, have they played anywhere else?
Last year we went on tour to Germany and Switzerland. It was absolutely amazing. The audiences were great and we got so much love from the promoters and everyone we met.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for our first opportunity to catch Hollow Hearts live. We suspect they will live up to their reputation for exciting stage shows. Come to think of it ... who’s up for a trip to Norway once travel restrictions allow?
Interview by Eilís Boland