Bernhoft: Norway’s Most Soulful Export

13 years ago

Photo by Wave

Every once in a while, I browse YouTube to see what music and videos are popular in other countries. I stumbled upon Norwegian artist Bernhoft a few months ago, and after watching this jaw-dropping performance below, I felt like I had just stumbled upon the Next Big Thing.

After watching every Bernhoft video online, I check out his album Solidarity Breaks. 30 seconds in, I realized I had found something special, but it had been conquering the Norwegian airwaves for quite some time and that Ellen beat me to the punch by about 14 months (damn you, DeGeneres!). The album sounded brand new yet classic; it was catchy modern pop filled with vintage soul; it was pure, raw emotion and everything I loved and missed about the music I grew up with.

Bernhoft was at the very top of my “Must See” list at SXSW, and when I finally saw him live, I was NOT disappointed. The wall of sound this one man created was unforgettable and jaw-dropping. The set-up was simple––two guitars, a keyboard, a pedal board, and two microphones. Yet so much sound and raw emotion was pouring out of the stage that simply took my breath away.

I was thrilled I got to speak with the man himself before he headed back to Norway and am even more excited he’ll be playing Bowery Ballroom, my favorite venue, on Monday, June 10th. Get your tickets here.

Photo by Wave

Welcome to the end of SXSW! How has your week been here?

Frantic. Very good, but extreme amounts of work. I’m a lazy bastard, so 6 shows in 3 days is a bit too much for me.

I know you had a old band, and this is your first time doing SXSW as a solo artist. How was it different?

Yeah, it’s all my material. It’s been good. It’s grown quite a bit since I was last here, but I can still feel the same vibe, you know? 6th Street being [crazy], but it’s the only way to get yourself heard is to play tons of shows. But I chose it for myself.

How have the crowds been different here than back home?

To be honest I think, crowds are crowds and people are people. But I think the difference may be regional. For instance, in Norway, some places are a tad wilder than other places. Generally, I feel the South is a bit more relaxed in any country. Like southern France is very laid back, but northern Spain is [intense] and then southern Spain is very relaxed. But New York was great. In New York, I found that what I put out there, people gave back straight away. I find that cool.

Yeah we are like that.

Toronto was very cool as well. Austin’s been amazing. I’m not sure if I’ve been playing to…Austonians? What are people from Austin called?

Austinites.

Austinites! I’m not sure whether I played to the Austinites, but I had an amazing run of shows-a full house, packed places everywhere. It’s been fun.

What is your set-up for your shows? It looks so complicated!

It’s only one looper/sampler…

Photo by Wave

WHAT? Wow.

It’s got three separate tracks on it so it takes legs to operate, but there’s signal chain––just one jack going from guitar or piano or synthesizer or whatever I plug it into and that goes into a pedal that goes WHSSHK! or a pedal that [goes] WAWAWAWA and a pedal that does this [WEEEEEWEEEW sound] and that goes into the looper, and that’s basically it. I have a microphone for singing and a microphone for backing vocals that also goes into the looper, and to be honest, it’s a simple setup really.

You just make it seem complicated, layered, textured, big, and awesome.

[laughs] Yeah, it’s a nifty little pack. It’s velcroed to carpet so I can just [fold it up motion], put it in a suitcase. And I tape my two guitars together, a 20 kilo unit, so I can travel coach wherever without extra luggage.

Where else have you traveled to? I’m guessing all over Europe?

I put my focus into Norway where I’m from, and Europe north of the Alps, because I have a family––I have a son. Coming to America has been difficult actually because the difference in time zones. For instance, in Los Angeles we only have one hour in common of time awake. Skype saved my life.

So yeah it’s been mostly France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands.

UK?

Not so much actually. I lived in London for three years with my old band and it’s a separate entity. It’s real hard work, and my philosophy has been if you want to do something, do it properly. To do UK [music scene] properly, you have to work it [nonstop] real hard, and [like I said, I’m] a lazy bastard, so…

I’ve listened to your album Solidarity Breaks a lot the last few months. If you don’t mind me asking, who is the album about? Or is it about no one in particular?

It’s a couple of people lurking in the shadows, but first and foremost it’s about solidarity and how the ideas kind of wane from a Norwegian mindset, if you would. It’s not a political album, it’s more like how solidarity interacts in our daily lives and how it could interact more. I think the title Solidarity Breaks is a reflection upon pessimism, upon solidarity’s behalf. At the same time, something could break through––loss––or it could break down, so I think it’s more about that than any one person.

I know you covered a Tears for Fears song at your show that I saw and on your album. Are they an influence, and if not who would you say are your influences?

I think there are many influences before Tears for Fears. Every time I heard the song on the radio, it was just an amazing song. So the idea behind that was I had some time in the studio and was like “How about we take this stadium album and compress it into this tiny quirky ball of sound?” So that was just an idea, and when I started to work with the lyrics, it kind of fit in a strange way, so we made a studio version and put it on the album.

But I think for the album, it’s much more Sly and the Family Stone meets A-Ha. Maybe Tears for Fears.

It’s a great cover. Everyone around me at the show was super into it.

It’s funny. Tons of kids in Norway have never heard it. Radio in Norway can be quite progressive in many ways. Kids listen to radio that’s very up-to-date. In a good and a bad way. They don’t have a sense of their history, in a way. If you come to Germany, people know that song, but they don’t know the words, though. They sing along and go “SHOUT! SHOUT! [mumbles next lines] C’MON!” and go for it. Only on “C’mon” and “Shouts!”

[laughs]

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So do you have any crazy tour stories? Anything particularly memorable happen while on the road?

We were on the way from Bergen in West Norway to Oslo, driving overnight, and because of this thing called teleheave, I don’t know if you have that, when you have water seeping under the tarmac, and it freezes and there are bumps from frost. Gigsy, our dear driver here, is not very well versed in driving under these conditions. So the van just jumped and skidded ‘cause it was slippery as a motherfucker and we drove off the mountain and ended in a ditch.

WHAT?

The most miraculous thing––a stack of beer crates that weren’t broken at all. Everyone was safe, but the car was just stuck. And in the morning, this guy from a ski center was about to prep his slopes, we were like “Do you do tows up here? We’ll give you $50!” And 40 minutes after that, we were on the road again. I thought we were going to die, and suddenly…

So you went off a mountain, got stuck in a ditch, everyone and everything was fine, and you just had to be towed out? That’s amazing and miraculous.

Yeah! Two blades on the front of the van were a bit dented, but that was it. I guess people have had closer shaves on the road than that, but that was my closest shave.

Do you have any dream collaborators you’d love to work with or anyone you’d like to play a show with?

D’Angelo is going on the road soon, isn’t he? His album must be ready one of these days. That would be cool. I’ve been talking to Jill Scott actually about doing some stuff. We have a mutual respect for each other. Janelle Monáe, a tour with her.

Oh yeah. You guys should write songs together. That would be intense.

Prince would be good. There’s this British guy called Lewis Taylor, he’s a nutcase. He sued his own fan club. He doesn’t want to be a part of the music business anymore, so he’s broken up. There’s rumors that he’s working as a plumber in Sheffield, but these are unconfirmed rumors. He’s released some of the best music I’ve ever heard, a soul prodigy type. If I could lure him out of his hiatus, that would be cool.

So you’d love for him to reemerge and make one record with you and that’s it?

Yeah and then he could go back to plumbing! Sly and the Family Stone. If they had a comeback tour, I’d play support. I’d play triangle––

You could play everything! [laughs]

I’ll settle for tambourine. Bill Withers, how about that? We met a guy who was approached to produce the next Bill Withers album, and I told him I would paddle a canoe over the Atlantic via Africa, pick mangos, put them in the canoe, paddle over through the Panama Canal, up to Los Angeles, present Bill Withers with the mangos, and say “Can I play tambourine on a song?” Stuff like that. Small dreams, but still.

Photo by Wave

That’s amazing. Are you working on a new record right now? When is that going to come out?

When it’s done. I have my own label, so I’m the CEO of everything, so I can decide everything, and in many ways it’s bad because I don’t have deadlines to push you forward. But I’m hoping to have it ready for release early next year. But we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll be done before then. This festival has been amazing for me. Tons of new possibilities have opened up, so I need to take that into account as well. Maybe change the game plan a bit.

What do you have coming up the rest of 2013?

Well I’m playing this Bonnaroo festival in June, so we’re going to set some dates around then. It’s an amazing thing. Have you heard about the Bonnaroo Wish List? It’s a thing where over Christmas where people can post videos of themselves on the Bonnaroo website saying who they wanted to play next year and why. This woman’s four-year-old son basically says “If you let [Bernhoft] play at Bonnaroo, I could shave my mom’s head on stage!” It’s very weird, and it caught the festival’s attention, and they checked out my music and just booked me, so that’s fantastic. So that’s one of the very few live things I’ve got lined up because I’ll be recording. I’ll be laying low.