Apropos our almost bi-weekly lament over the declining Folk Tradition, it is good tidings I bring from far-flung fjords, in that Irish Traditional music and dance, ...in any case, is undergoing a serious exploration by the Norwegian population. It is nice to be back on the island again, however....
I was quite surprised this time; I had been spending most of my time in Denmark over the last 2 years, and only popping up to Oslo and Trondheim for the odd weekend. I spent 5 weeks there this time. And perhaps most importantly, I spent quite a lot of time outside the main cities, and played a few gigs in places that would never be on the 'Irish Circuit', not in a million years.

Now, I can count the Irish, English and Scottish trad musicians in Norway on the fingers of one hand (maybe a couple on the other hand, too), and Norway is far too extensive a country to bring the music everywhere (although in fairness I've played in every 'county' of it...). There are a few decent enough Norsk musicians that play Irish Trad/Folk Rock, and although they love the music, very deeply in many cases, there can be something of that 'je ne sais quoi' missing when it comes to portraying the excitement within the music.

Mark Gregory has been my friend for over 20 years and my musical partner in Scandinavia for the last 13 of them. Now, Mark knows a thing or two about Irish Trad, given that he moved from the West

Country in England in his late teens to a small cottage outside of Feakle in east County Clare, way back in the early '70's. There he met, and learned most of everything he knows about traditional tunes from, Paddy Canny, P.J. Hayes, Vincent Griffin, Martin Rochford, Martin Hayes, Andrew MacNamara, and all the greats of the East Clare musical style. He even played with the Tulla Ceili Band for a few years.
Mark can play in any key you care to throw at him, and in turn can throw a key at you that will have you re-calculating the capo change with about 2 bars to spare.
Mark is good. He is very good, in fact.
He and I have played Trad music to the Ukranian coal miners in Svalbard, the Sami Parliament in Kautakeino, bemused fishing communities in Norway's Vestland, and every suitable Blues Club up and down the country.
As well as the odd 'Irish Pub'...., yes, even the Great Unwashed need a dose of it from time to time....

The advantage in playing with a guy like Mark is that good instinctual fiddle players are incredibly difficult to find, and if one is in the business of promoting the 'real music' of Ireland to a new public, authenticity is the keyword: Show them the way from an Irish perspective, and let the more musically minded of them take it from there.

I went to Norway on the 13th February, with 2 guitars and 40kgs of assorted necessity items, and came back to Denmark on the 20th March, with that, and more.
I played the first weekend in a pub that I used to have a lot of association with (under the previous owner), and quite a lot of my Oslo mates drink in there still, so that gig was 'one for the lads'.
Mark & I were due to play there on the weekend before Paddy's Day, but the present owners defaulted on the accommodation deal with about a week and a half's notice, and the contract was cancelled. I'll get back to that...

The next weekend was good old Café Dublin, in Trondheim. That is one well-run pub, folks. Fergus, the owner, is from Dublin, and his playlist in pub-opening times is impeccable. This keeps the public subliminally tuned in to the 'real music', so when guys like me go on stage and sing 200 year old songs, they see this as a certain personification of the playlist.
I had, as always, a brilliant weekend in Trondheim. I'll be back in October again; by that stage I'll be back living in Norway...., but I'll get back to that later as well....

From Trondheim, around to Kristiansund on the 'Kystekspressen', a high-speed Katamaran that takes about 3 hours, stopping at various little communities between Trondheimsfjord and Kristiansund. From Kristiansund I took a bus to Molde, 1 1/2 hrs down the coast, and I stayed with my good friends Anita and Asbjørn who live in a small community about 40 mins outside of the main town for a couple of weeks on, and off.
Anita has her own Catering company, and runs functions like Wine Fairs, Whiskey Tastings, and as a Champion Irish Coffee maker, also gives seminars to restaurants and hotels on the proper way to put one together. Anita is a jewel.

She organised my next set of gigs, actually: a place called 'Pillarguri Café' in a small town called Otta, at a natural geographic junction at the top of Gudbrandsdalen, in Oppland.
'Pillarguri' was the name of the girl who kept lookout from a huge outcrop about 2000 metres ASL, at the foot of which Otta lies, during the Swedish-Danish war in the early 1600's. She could see movements from many different approaches to Gudbrandsdalen, from where the main route to Oslo began. Her job was to alert the inhabitants of the valley to any danger by blowing a horn. In August 1612 a Scottish Army General, Sinclair, landed a body of troops at Åndalsnes, with the intention of making his way to Sweden to help the Swedish Army in their war with Denmark, and they marched over the mountains to Dombås, at the very top of Gudbrandsdalen, in order to reach Hamar, from where they could better be able to cross into Sweden. Pillarguri spotted their advance, blew her horn, and at Otta, in a place called Kringen, Sinclair and his men were all but wiped out in a massacre by the locals.
The place is riddled with History; this is Peer Gynt Country, also... The Hall of the Mountain King (Dovregubbens halle) is only up the road...

I was being billed as playing 'Irish Traditional and Contemporary Folk' in the Pillarguri, and the door charge was 150kr (£15 - $30 -ish...).
What can I say...? I played Irish Traditional and Contemporary Folk, and everyone had a cracking evening. I also fell in love that night, with a local girl; a blue-eyed diamond hidden in a landscape of rock, of my own age and wavelength. As soon as this summer's over, I'm high-tailing it back to Norway, and finally do something that resembles 'settling down'....

I went back to Anita's place though, after the gig in Otta, as we had a few things to do, and it was during this time I got word from the St. Patrick's Weekend' venue in Oslo, that they had cancelled, after I insisted they keep to the contract about providing the necessary accommodation. They didn't, so that's one other venue crossed off my list for the future...

Having had a great set of gigs in Otta the previous weekend, I decided that I would follow the maxim of 'A dumb priest never got a parish', and I rang Thomas, the boss of the Pillarguri to see what he had planned for the 15th March, and to try and talk him into the idea of turning his cafe over to 'The Irish' for one night. The plan was to put the green food essence into the beer, have Anita come up and do a Whiskey Tasting and Irish Coffee making demonstration, and then for Mark & I to take the evening 'Home', as it were.

I love 'clean slates'; places that never would have thought of 'doing something Irish' until having the seed planted in the head. Thomas said he would like to try it, and Anita immediately got on to all the Whiskey distributors down in Oslo to get the old 'free samples' on the go.
I, for my part, had to go to Oslo again the week before Paddy's weekend to talk to a few people about this and that.

Because part of what I saw and heard from people in the Norwegian countryside over the previous weeks gave me the distinct impression that once I move back up there again, I'll also be able to organise a few places around the local area to try other forms of music, than from the 'normal' Country & Western, cowboy hats and line-dance brigade you see in just about every rural area in the World.
People don't necessarily want change; they will settle for good quality variety however, and that's what I wanted to look into a bit deeper with people in Oslo who could help with the support mechanism in setting a few small venues up..

I found out, y'see, when I went to the reception at the Irish Embassy in Oslo the Thursday before Paddy's, that there are 3 schools in Oslo that have courses in Irish Dance incorporated into the Curriculum.
Yes...., Irish Dance is now a subject certain kids can learn in Oslo, just as important as Maths, and a helluva lot more interesting than Chemistry. My friend, Hilde Magda is a dance teacher, and it is her that set this up nearly two years ago, now. She could (and would love to) do more, but then she's talking employing people, and finding the right people is important, too.
I talked to Drinks Companies National Reps, told them what I was up to these days, and then about the importance targeting parts of rural Norway; places that will sell their product and who will push the Culture, and to get their local reps in those areas to be nice to all their new customers...
... and I was told that the Cultural Secretary in the British Embassy in Oslo is the person to talk to as regards getting similar projects from an English or Scottish perspective off the ground.

The contribution of the musician to the marketing-think of the English Tradition in Scandinavia should be undertaken by some person or persons with the same committment to the Tradition as I have to mine, let's say. One has to be watchful of over commercialisation, but to someone who would care to take the job on, the spiritual rewards, in any case, would be well worth it.
There are a lot of 'clean slates' in Norway...., and although it is an advantage if one lives there, it is not necessary in this age of communication overload. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Embassies in London can all be very helpful. ... and they are very nice people, the Scandinavian Diplomatic Corps; any one that I've ever met, anyway. They want the Cultural exchange.
This is where the search for appropriate venues should really begin... for anyone that might fancy playing over here, and a well thought out e-mail approaching these people can reap many benefits. I'll be back living there towards the end of the year, anyway, and might have a small circuit running before long.

Anyway.... I left Oslo on Friday after the Reception to go back up to Otta to spend a few days with herself, before during, and after our own, heavily publicised, 'Irish Day' in Otta on the Saturday.
The entire membership of the local Whiskey Club' signed up for the tasting a week beforehand, and people were travelling 70-80 miles to attend the gig.
Consequence:
(a) Bushmills is by far the favourite whiskey among the locals. (Result noted for Diageo's benefit...)
(b) Everybody who attended the Tasting now knows not to accept that spray-whipped cream, and bloody straw version of Irish Coffees that people have regurgitated up to them, in lazily-run places

Now let's all admit it..., Green Beer is never 'Green'. I don't drink, so I don't care if it's turquoise, but it definitely is NOT green. This in itself was not enough to put the locals off quaffing copious quantities of the gear for the vast majority of the day, however..
Mark & I set into 'a few tunes' around 9 in the evening, and for the next 4 hrs we had the wee café rockin' and rollin' to a set ranging from East Clare's most obscure tunes to Anon ... who's really making a name for himself, these days... and (among others) Robert Johnston
By 1.30am (1/2 hr before we were to finish the gig), the pub had ran out of beer, and Thomas was frantically ringing around other pubs to borrow a few barrels. They arrived....

Now, that is what you can do with a week and a half's notice of a St. Patrick's Day gig cancellation..., and all it really takes is a plan and the proper presentation of it...., and of course, the right people.

Speaking of which...., the proper presentation of it, I mean, I had, since Hilde Magda told me about the dance classes in the Oslo schools, been thinking about getting a troupe of dancers up to Mark & my last gig of the tour in a place called Bergset, way out on the West Coast, on the 19th March.
This gig was originally meant to be a belated Paddy's Day bash. Now, St. Patrick's Day doesn't really mean much in Norway's remote west Coast, and although ticket sales were going grand, I got a recommendation of a Dance school outside of Oslo, from Hilde Magda, and I rang yer one up to see if she could bring her troupe to Bergset for the night; a matter of flying 12 children plus the dance instructor and a few parents from Oslo to Molde, and bus them down to Bergset. This was confirmed by the dance troupe on Sat 15, and we booked the tickets Monday morning, 2 days before the gig. Anita wrote a half page article for the local paper, deadline 18th 20.00hrs, for printing and circulation on the 19th (the day of the gig).
The Village Hall that Mark & I were to play in had seating for 300, and we had sold 200 tickets.
With the inclusion of the Irish Dancers in the article, who did a 40 min set and danced the history of Ireland, with a narration by their instructor, the ticket sales went through the roof in one morning. It was absolutely excellent, folks. No doubt about it.
The regional department of the State National Broadcaster, NRK Møre og Romsdal read the article, and sent a reporter and cameraman down to Bergset, ostensibly to interview me about matters Celtic for 2 minutes, but instead I thought that two of the older Irish Dancing girls would be a much better profile to be showing than little old un-photogenic me... They also spoke better Norwegian than me, anyway.... ;-)
All the kids were Norwegian, and allowing for a certain self-consciousness in kids who are not really used to dancing in public, they were top notch. There were even two young lads; one who looked ethnic

Norwegian, one who was definitely Korean.

A Korean 10 year old boy doing Irish Dancing... and meaning it, to boot.

Is that something, or what?
The Irish Music tradition only arrived in Norway in 1994. I know; I was one of the first ones here.
And it will go fine in the future, I think. There were those awful few years at the start when un-imaginative barstaff would constantly pump The Pogues, The Waterboys, and The Dubliners out at you until you made them blue in the face....., and then having the customers asking you to re-create it...., and me replying 'No', and so on....
Not even as much as a Clancy Brother, would they ask for...
Don't get me wrong, though. I think Shane McGowan is one of the top songwriters of our day, and The Pogues were a great band. I always liked Mike Scott, too, and Luke Kelly is a God to me (oddly enough I could never tire of listening to Luke in the playlists...).
But blasting one perspective at people all the time (never mind the same albums day in, day out) was never good for diversity within the music, but thank the lawd that is dying out.

Times are changing a bit again, I think, as the Norsk subconscious accepts the deeper roots to the Irish Tradition, and recognises us, the ex-patriates as the carriers of it, same way as their own musical tradition gets passed down, we are passing it on.
It develops a life of its own after that, but at least the ones who feel the same passion for it as they do their own musical tradition, are more liable to keep the music on the straight and narrow, and to beware of confusing the present-day state of the folk process with the Tradition itself. In other words to not mistake the modern day interpretations of songs and tunes that they hear from CDs, etc., as necessarily the original version.
I know two fluent Irish speakers in Norway, both Norwegian, and both musicians.

We have come a long way.

Lastly (and probably leastly), as you can see from the thread title, I have once again been dipping the bucket of randomness into the swirling waters of the Norwegian highlands, looking for Folk Music.
Why?
The water is good up there; pure and fast flowing, and excellent for brewing coffee with.....
Mark & I recorded the gigs we did in Otta on the 15th March, and in Bergset a few days later on the 19th, and what fell through the percolator basket is available for download at the website: .... now where's that blue-clicky thing, again...? Ahh! Here it is!!!. There's still a bit of my solo stuff there too, as well as a couple from mah wee 'project band', 'Gael Force', so ye're all welcome to have a flick through them...

I like Norway. I like the people. They have a certain honesty in business that I find refreshing, and they lack the same begrudgery so often prevalent in small communities, be they parochial or musical ones.
Last year I promised myself that this year I would stop earning my living soley from playing music (stop being a 'Professional Musician', in other words...); that I would take something else on and concentrate primarily on that. 'The Road' is fine, and I love it, but I was either going to move back to Norway and manage a venue, or something, or move my base of operations back to Ireland, again, and get into a bit of session work in me spare time. I'm still going to play gigs, but it will be more when it suits me, than out of a sometimes necessity.

In the meantime, I have met the woman I've been waiting to meet for years, and where she is, I'm gonna be.

It'll be very nice to move back up again.

Hope you enjoy the wee MP3's ;-)

B.