Opening for Jason Mraz, you played a straight acoustic set with no band, no electric. Just a guitar and a voice. How did you like playing the songs like that versus an entire band?
I think it’s really exciting, I must admit. I write the songs just on my guitar first of all for the purposes of just being played and performed that way and then when I go into the studio to record I can’t resist the creative status that it can offer you. I really enjoy arranging the songs properly with other instruments as well, so that’s a really fun process. Just to be working in the studio. But I think it’s really nice to continue the acoustic process when you do live shows solo, every night your being assured songs have a world of their own without the production, without the arrangements and without all that stuff. You can see that you can communicate the songs directly to the listeners with just one instrument and one voice. Doing the Jason Mraz tour was so exciting because it was bigger places than I ever played in America and those fans were really open. I was surprised at how interested they were considering they were all there to see him. So it was much more enjoyable than I could have ever thought and I think it’s really cool these people hear it for the first time solo and when they buy the record it is a totally different animal because there’s all these instruments and all these arrangements that I’ve done. So, I guess the answer is that I love playing solo.
Two Way Monologue is a great song. How did that come about and was that always going to be the center song for the record?
It was. When I wrote it, it was the key song for the whole process of making the record. I thought it out actually with lyrics, something I rarely do. I was really inspired me to write a song about the complications of parent and child relationships and how you sometimes find it hard to communicate properly. I started writing the lyrics and I started playing around with all these melodies and I thought it would be really cool if I made a song that had lots of different parts and still it was catchy and I had energy and it was up tempo. That it wasn’t symphonic or pompous or anything but still it was a wide screen, long song with different parts, like a symphony but not symphonic. So I started playing around with that; with all these different parts. I left some room in there for the band to improvise, the build up part in the middle of the song and it took a lot of time in the studio because there was lots of different things that had to work out and either it works really well or it just falls flat because it’s kinda ambitious in terms of pop music. But I feel in the end that it really deserves being the title track of the album.
It is also a long song, and not your typical 3-minute air-friendly pop song. How are you going to get that song on the airwaves?
Well actually, that’s funny that you should mention that because I hate when record companies make the edit themselves. That happened to me once and I didn’t like it, but it was too late to do anything about it. I think this song has a really catchy refrain and it has all these catchy parts but the format and the structure of the song is totally off Broadway in terms of radio air play. So I wanted to kind of, I wanted to do it myself, because I enjoy short pop songs that you can play on the radio as long as they’re good. So I actually prepared a short version of the song that is half the length of the album version. So there is a short version of this song that actually now runs a lot on Norwegian, Italian and French radio. But it’s my edit and I feel really good about it. It’s something I decided to do immediately when I wrote the long version. I thought it would be too bad to not use it as a radio single because it has all the qualities it only has too much, so I shortened it down and then on the album the long version is more suitable. I hope you hear the short version sometime, it’s really concentrated like in your face and then suddenly it’s over.
I would think shortening that song would really take something away from the mood. Are you happy with the shortened version?
I’m really happy with it, but as you say, it kind of makes it a different song because the song, the original is the long version with all of the parts and obviously what I took away is that long piano verse in the middle of the song; I lost that and I lost the acoustic intro and I made this vibraphone intro. It’s pretty cool. It’s a different song.
I also read that you are being compared to Clay Aiken, from American Idol. Probably the only similarity is the spiky hair.
Not the highlight of my career I’ll tell you that. (Laughing)Who said that? You gotta a name?
I think maybe Teen Vogue, not 100 percent sure.
Well, thank you Teen Vogue. God Bless them.
How did you find yourself over here in America playing live?
I don’t know. I feel as if I were born with this interest and this strong, I don’t know, this really strong urge to do music. I started listening to music really early and I started learning an instrument when I was 8 years old. I wanted to learn the guitar and it was all on my own initiative. I went to my mother and said, “Please, will you buy me a guitar, because I want to play.” And she did. So I just started playing and struggling and working my way trying to switch chords and then you want to try to learn how to write music. You don’t want to just play other people’s songs, you want to learn to play your own songs. You want to learn how to sing and play in a band and all that and I did all that because I love being involved in music. So the natural progression for me was to try to write my own catalog of songs that I can try to find people that I can record with; who could help me progress and help me follow my vision musically. And I’ve been really lucky. I ‘ve met so many great people, my producers and my band and all these people who really sit down and try to understand what I’m really trying to say and that’s really helped.
Any glimpses into what the future may hold?
No, I don’t look ahead too much, I don’t really speculate on that whether it’s good or bad, it’s not something that I think too much about and I’m really glad I don’t. I never thought about that. I’m just really flattered that people seem to like the music and I can continue to expand my audience with this music that I make at home in Norway. I can travel to Ohio and play concerts for people that have my record and my know my lyrics. It’s really cool.
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