The Music Scene in Norway, thoughts.

When I first moved here I was happily surprised at how active the music scene was, and still is!
Not only do you find great musicians that are known through out the country, as well as in some cases, the world, but you see and hear them on the local level too. In my small area there are plenty of musicians that are working hard on their own concept of music, Some are in background bands on different t.v. shows, some have been on Idol, some enter Euro Vision and so on.
Coming from the States and more specifically, Queens N.Y. I was lucky enough to have exposure to so many different kinds of music, bands and music scenes. I stayed close to the Blues scene but I could enter a punk rock club here or a western bar there. On any given night of the week, there has to be literally hundreds of concerts going on through out Manhattan. The difference was, you would see them perform and never hear of them again, most of the time anyway. Here in Norway, it seems that the bands that are working hard at their craft do eventually rise to the top of the heap.Like I said before, in my small area, there is a great amount of musicians. I can only imagine how many small towns have their own musicians as well as music scenes available, time will tell.


PBF performing at Hard Rock, Oslo, Norway

Performing with Åge Sten Nilsen.

Torgeir and I.

Project BrundleFly on Facebook

Lars and I having at band meeting

Back stage, Moss, Norway

Some links to Project BrundleFly

           "Johnny Choo" a twisted love song.



I try to keep us "in the loop", music has come a long way since I was playing at Manny`s Car Wash, one of my favorie Blues pubs in Manhattan. Manny`s has long since closed down and now the internet has taken on a vital role in music. Everyone knows anyone can put out what they want, from indie to pop. The band has to keep up with the Jones`s. So late nights on the net sending out our music and making contacts all over the world is a lot easier than it used to be. From a band in Canada to a record label in Australia it`s pretty awesome!

So of course I put together some links to share, listen and read about.
and oh man we could use some help sharing links as we struggle throught the mud of the music business!  We`re just a drop in a sea of online musicians!
The recordings on soundcloud are not mastered yet but will be soon and not long after that the EP will be done and out on Spotify and itunes or what ever else I can release it on.

Here are some of our links. Rock on folks!

https://www.facebook.com/ProjectBrundlefly

https://www.instagram.com/projectbrundlefly/

https://soundcloud.com/projectbrundlefly

https://twitter.com/projectbf

E-mail  Bluesharpinnorway@mail.com

Harmonica ramblings..

We normally have band practice on Sunday at around 5 or 6 pm. This hasn`t happened for the month and a half or so because everyone had personal things going on their own lives. No problem, last Sunday we came together and had an excellent practice. We really do click in like the last few pieces of a puzzle. Kenneth sold 2 of his guitars and an amp to finally get his dream guitar, a custom Fender Stratocaster  and it is of pure awesomeness. Me being the harmonica player usually does not have to spend so much cash on equipment, though I do have my eye on a Fender Vaporizer amp and a couple of pedals by Lonewolf. I do break plenty of harmonicas when we perform though and it costs! When you play harp with serious conviction and you bend those brass reeds to get the notes you need, the harmonica goes flat, well after a couple of gigs. It´s usually the D harp that breaks first and always that number 7 hole!

I´ve tried almost every harp on the market and it´s always the same shit. I stick with Hohner overall. The special 20 or the Marineband, they are both excellent. A lot of harp players end up having their harps customized for different tunings and I do consider myself to a modern player meaning I do like the old standards on harp but I would rather play with the sound of..well if Jimi Hendrix played harmonica, thats the sound I would want ha! Anyway, customized harps are very good but in the 1950`s when Little Walter played with Muddy Waters there was no custom harps and he was still the best player in the world as far as Blues harp goes. Point is, I´ll stick with my harmonics right out of the box and bend the shit out of it to get my filthy sound. I usually label my harps too, in the back of them so if anyone ever noticed, they would get a laugh. Free Will or Fuck Kanye West are a few of the labels.

My gear

Chris, Lars and Kenneth at the studio

The Next steps.

Usually I am the one who is sending out most of the emails, making phone calls, sending out info to blogs to try to get some exposure and setting up the gigs.
I actually like doing this. But when sending out e mails I usually write in English. I mean I could write in Norwegian but for some reason I don't and sometimes I feel that our email ends up right in the trash because of it. I don't stress about it too much because the whole basis of this band is to do things the way we want to do them.
Now there is one local Festival here in the town of Fredrikstad that I have been trying to get for the last three years. I've written letters, made phone calls and even talked to the person who started the festival.. No luck! It doesn't mean I will stop trying. I mean, I do have a habit of becoming annoying though that's not always the best tactic but it is my personality. There's also another Festival I wanted in the same town where our studio is located. It seems to me, this Festival is competition for the one in Fredrikstad. anyway, the town is celebrating its 1000 year anniversary this summer so there will be plenty of concerts. Naturally we want a piece of the pie but this festival seems to have only one local band performing. I found that to be extremely strange. Though the local band is a good friend of mine so I'm happy for them. Getting gigs is not easy! Now we are almost finished with our EP, that will make things a lot easier to get jobs.
When I said before, "we like to do things the way we want to do them", that wasn't meant to be negative. All of us in the band have come from different musical backgrounds and of course different bands over the years. Kenneth was in a metal band in his younger days, not that he's old or anything. Lars was also in a metal band. Fredrik did covers and was also in a cover among other bands, Chris played music all over the place, the last gig I think was at a hotel in Dubai. And I played around Manhattan in blues clubs. We've all seen our share of band life. I'm really glad we all have the same mentality now about how things should be. We usually make decisions together, we almost never have an argument, actually we've never had an argument. And we get along great together. We're self-sufficient as well, Kenneth does all the recording and mixing, Lars also mixes his own drums and send the files to Kenneth. Lars designs the posters, Frederick uses a lot of his own equipment for the band, which were all grateful for. And Chris hauls around his refrigerator-sized bass amp to all the gigs we play at and of  I do all the promoting and  gig hunting.
The question that I've been asking myself lately is, do we need management. The Hunt is on though in a skeptical kind of way.. that's enough rambling from me for now. My break is over again thank God it's Friday!

Intro to the Band and me part 2

So I work with Karolina in the same place as Lars.
She`s from Poland and as her sister, a natural musician, so when I told her about the project I was working she was in..though she is a classical pianist she wanted to play bass. No problem bring it in and go for it! Lars was in too, an big thinker and well connected to a variety of music! Next, Guitar and a vocalist, me for a little while but I´m not the greatest so we brought in Steffen and Kenneth.
Steffen had a gritty yet smooth seasoned voice and Kenneth, well he is a life long master of the guitar as well as mixing in the studio and writing songs.
So we were all in, first practice was in the music room of where the three of us work. We plugged into my old 70`s era peavey pa system, turned on amps and went off. Pretty damn good! I knew we klicked.  So within our first few practices "The Crow" was born. I had it in my book of songs and with the band, it became a dirty gritty Blues-Rock song. A tribute in a way to Blues Folklore.
Steffen sang it great as well as " Lumberjack Joe" but as he was a pro musician and his schedule was tight! We became good friends but ultimately and unfortunately the band was in need of another vocalist. I was back to singing and playing harp.
I received a phone call not long after asking If I could do a gig at a pub with a guy on acoustic guitar that I never met before, "sure thing" I said. We met up about an hour before the gig, introduced ourselves, went over the set list and pulled off a lot of covers that night. We were right in sync the whole night! Fredrik was his name and cover songs were his game. I told the rest of the band about him and we all agreed that I should ask him if he wanted a shot as our new vocalist. He did and he studied our songs, came in ready to go and kicked ass! Now we were a band! No, some time later when we decided to get more serious Karolina was having second thoughts. It made her nervous that we wanted to get serious. She was excellent to have on stage and she was shy! She did insist on standing in the corner of the stage even at Hard Rock Cafe in Oslo but we never gave her a hard time about it. she grooved while on bass. She left us and then we were fucked for a little while..until Fredrik gave his old bass player a call. Chris from the Philippines, another expat came in to our new/old studio to give it a shot. "Holy shit" we thought, this guy is good! But he was in a few other bands already. We had to get him and he wanted to play in Project BrundleFly, and he does to this day. Now we were complete!!

So now I´m up to date.

We recently moved from a studio in an abandoned boat yard to a barn and its for the better. At the old place we had a dick head neighbor who complained and told Lars he wanted to skin him alive. And over all, the place was a shit hole. the barn is luxury, lower rent and actually relaxing.

So from now on the blog will be of current events with Project BrundleFly or me personally for the good or bad.
Rock on folks!!

The early days of the band

Intro to the band and me..

So, it`s time to start a blog on the adventures of Project BrundleFly the band out of a barn in Østfold county, Norway.
We are about 3 years into this music project, I`ll catch you up the quickest way I can.
Me being an expat from New York who moved to Norway about 12 years ago has always been playing music, well since I was about 17, I` m 44 now. Harmonica has been my main instrument ever since I heard "Shake your hips" by Slim harpo since I was a kid on a local A.M. radio station in Queens N.Y.. I ended up lucky enough to get a few lessons from the great Adam Gussow of Satan and Adam and that really sent me on my way, well, to the subway to perform and lose my stage fright. It worked and before you knew it I was playing harp (as us harmonica players so lovingly refer to the harmonica as) all over queens and Manhattan. The Mo Green Experience was one of my first bands, I was the youngest in the band and it was a blast, those guys were nuts and I was actually the green one.
Anyway, years later and in a small corner of  Norway now, I knew it was time to play again. After playing at a jam night at another Americans house I met a guy on keys that suggested we start a band, we did, siXtip was born. We played 52 concerts the first year that we were out. Fun times, radio play on a local level, beer, pubs and hillarious situations. But after about 3 years all of us were ready to do our own thing, and so we did.

Part 2 coming up soon, my break is over at work..