From the cradle to Club 7

I was born late fifties, 58, in Trondheim, Norway. My first 3 years alive I lived in Buvika in Sør-Trøndelag. At the age of 3 me and my 15 months elder brother Dag moved to where my mother had come from, Reinsvoll in Vestre Toten, for the reason that our father was ill and soon passed away. In Toten we lived with my Grandmother`s sister for nine years while our Mum was working in Oslo. In this little red house by the road there was a lot of love and careing and music going on, my Great Auntie played the pumporgan, sang christian songs and many a preacher-man stopped by so neighbours and friends and family gathered and listen to the word and sing. In 67 we got our first recordplayer and the house became befriended with the sounds from The Monkees, Stones, Beatles, Herman`s Hermits, Buck Owens, The Hollis, Sven Ingvars, Creedence Clearwater Revival among many others. At 12 of age, in 1970, we moved to Oslo. Our Mum had bought a flat in the Stovner suburb. An electric Yamaha organ entered the house and we learned to play some tunes with melodi, harmony and stomping bass with the left foot and a rhythmbox attached. On my record player I heard a lot of different music, with my heart deeply into the heavyer and progressive side of music with skilled fellas like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep among coutless others. In a while my brother Dag started to play the guitar in a band with some common football-friends. I asked if I could bring my bongo-drum and join for a rehersal. On that first rehersal I picked up the guitar too, and Dag`n`me did great progress in short time. After another year or so, the man on the bass, Hansa, wanted to play leadguitar instead, so then I thought, hey…. maybe the bass is a cool thing to check out. It really was, on this axe I found both rhythm and melody at the same time. I thought it was very close to playing the guitar in many ways. I always played the guitar a lot, as well as the bass, but I considered myself quite soon as a bassplayer as the main habit in life.
In the years to come I was playing here and there with friends of same interest. I was quite early in searching outside my local area to find other musicians that was more skilled than me. I joined up with different bands around and even worked with the local gospel-group (played mostly lead-guitar here). Playing music with people that was a level beyond me skillswise became my school in music, at least I thought they were better, and I learned a lot by just playing different kind of music, in the range from Stones and Deep Purple to Pink Floyd and “progressiv” originals. My bands never got out of the basement area for more than only a few times now and then. Maybe I`ll make a file about this 70s period one time .....  From the year 1977 I studied classical guitar at the Foss Videregående skole for three years (“studying” electric bass was no issue, and double bass I found too impossible to drag around), and since I always had found both bass and guitar close related to each other and liked to do both, it was a natural thing for me to play classical as well.

Junipher Greene & Flax

In 1978 I ran into Bent Åserud accidently (the guitarplayer of the legendary band Junipher Greene). We had met in a “fritids”club in Lilleborg, Oslo two years earlier, him as a leader and I as the bassist of one of the kidsbands. Bent invited me to come to Junipher Greenes rehearsal-room and play with them just for the fun of it. That band had been known as one of the great progressive bands from the beginning of the 70s, especially with the double album "Friendship" (1971). I listened to them through my radio long before I hit my first chord. I knew they were still alive with quite low activity, and I was thrilled that I could join them and that they wanted me in the band. Besides Bent on guitar Geir Bøhren was still behind the drums and they had a keyboard man, Lars Hesla from the former group Flax whom I had bought a bass-speaker from two years earlier. I was quite proud then to have “Flax” written on the back of my speaker. In 78 Junipher Greene was working occasionally on a new album (with producer Bjørn Nessjøe), and they seemed keen on getting a steady bassplayer in the band. I was the lucky choice ...... Anyway, the band Flax had decided to reform after two years breakup (Flax had existed since 1971, released "Flax One" in 76 and broke up after that). So two days after my happy joining of Junipher Greene, three longhaired heavy Flax-men showed up at my door and were curious about a longhaired heavy-lookin`   bassman too. Well, hey, yeh, I pictured that since Lars also played with both bands, it would work for me as well. Flax was kind of back to the "old" days of digging Purple, Zep and Sabbath, with a touch of symphonic Genesis-Camel passages and complex themes. In my mind (and playing) I had moved a bit "further" and was listening to Weather Report and Return To Forever at that time, with bassplayingimprovers like Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke. But I thought that Flax was a good sounding group with original material and ambitions to get on the road. I was definately ready for that. In this band I also got this brilliant chance of showing my skills as an instrumentalist in quite long ego-bass-solo-spots spreading out my own musical wings with runs and chords, and of course fakin` Donna Lee the Jaco way. The hard-rock-symphonic style was open to this. The three original main Flax-men was singer Hermod Falch and the Hesla brothers John on guitar and Lars on keyboard. The first thing we did after a rehearsalperiod was recording a four-song-demo in Scanax studios in Oslo. The third gig Flax did was at Oslos musicians club number one; Club 7, and that was really a thrilly moment. I threw a bass-solo out that draw some kind of attention that night. The drummer of Flax at that time was Terje Pedersen, but unfortunately for him, Willy Bendiksen was in the audience, a drummer who I`d been a great fan of for years (St. Helena, Høst etc.). He was impressed by the new Flax and he decided that he was the right drummer for this band. He could book gigs too. So Willy ended up in the band as the wild and carismatic drummer he is, he was already a legend in my mind. Willy and I became groovepartners for years to come. Anyway, on that first Club 7 gig the guys in the band critisized me for my footwearing ....my worn out sandals .... I thought they were cool, they could have told me before the gig. They were soon replaced by a pair of homepainted red shoes.

          The single What`Cha Gonna Do/A Pain In The Ass came in the end of 78, and the album "Monster Tapes" was released by EMI /Harvest in 1980. We toured quite a lot in the south part of Norway, claimed that hardrock was not dead at all, despite the writers of Puls magazine and the outburst of punk and new wave. We had a lot fun. After three years I felt that the band did not move anywhere, and the fact that we lost too much money touring, and I also wanted to play some different kinds of music, made me quit the band in 81. Flax kept playing for a while. I joined them in a studio session that led to the release of  the LP  "Flax Tracks" in 1986.

So whatever happended to Junipher Greene in this period ? The band was working every now and then in between the Flax touring. The album "Rewind" (Hammer Records) was released in 1981. It had three songs with my bass playing on it. We played a couple of fun gigs, among other musical explorences; composing theatre-music and also collectively composing the 35 minutes piece of music called "Interference" which was a combination of electronic synthesizer experimenting blend with a rocky funky fusion soup. We had a serious concert at Club 7 with this. Soon we started working on another album that we recorded in the Frysja rehearsal room on an 8-track Teac tape-recorder. I wrote Norwegian lyrics for it and did the lead vocals on 6 songs. It came out on our own label (Musikkselskapet 1982). The title was "Forbudte Formiddagstoner".  A song from that album called "Slaraffenliv" ("The Lazy Life") was very close to become a little hit way underground; a slow reggae-tune I wrote with quite funny lyrics. We had a humorous TV-appearance with it. I`ve played that song in concerts a couple of times in the years after, and the funny thing is that people still remember it. The two original Junipher Greene guys, Bent & Geir developed their studio, and are now among the most outstanding film music composers in Norway.

Raya

Raya is a Russian born Gypsy-singer who had lived in Norway for quite some years, she still does in fact. I played with her every now and then from 1981 to 1983. I found the musical contrast from "hardrocksymphofusion" to this very naked but temperamental expression with accordion, acoustic guitar, tambourine and my electric bass along with an intense vocal and dancing very interesting. We played at a Gypsy-congress in Göttingen, Germany, joined a very serious Gypsy ceremony/festival in St.Marie de la Mer in the south of France (summer of ´81, jamming outside a camping wagon with the fabulous gutarplayer Raphael Fayes), and in 1982 we did a great tour of Sweden playing in old castle ruins and beautiful theaters.

Road

Willy Bendiksen, my groovemate behind the drums in Flax  had run into different things after splitting from the band. One of his things that I joined for a couple of gigs was the band of the old AUNT MARY-guitar "guru", Bjørn Christiansen whom I also was a big fan of; BC`s BACKSTAGE. it didn`t last too many gigs.

A female rockish Norwegian Suzy Quatrolike called herself JANNICKE. She had a big hit in the beginning of the eighties ("Svake Mennesker"). Willy was forming a band to back her up on a long, pretty well payed tour in the fall of ´82, from Honningsvåg way up north, my first time that far north, and all the way downwards we`d go. We played 3 sets of music in addition to Jannickes smoky, flashy show with the popstar. That was when the group ROAD became for real. After the tour we kept working on original material; the guitar-player Eivind Aarset joined the band and I had suddenly become a hard rocker holding the bass like Phil Lynott and sing in my own range too. The other guitarplayer was Jon Berg and with Eivind there was this Lizzie-like twin guitars and Willy had a very permanent and strong idea of how it should sound and look. I wrote some songs, some came out of Willy`s riffy ideas and that lead vocal thing  was quite an interesting instrument actually. Kinda liked that, even though I thought that most of the time I did not sound very good, but I clinged to the spots where I did. We toured a lot in the north and south of Norway; carried and lifted loads of equipment and maybe we had a little money left in our pockets if we didn`t spend too much on booze. Me I never did actually. The album "This Is Just Rock`n`Roll" was recorded in Roxy Studio, Fredrikstad with Svein Rønning and was released in 1983 (Desperado/Slagerfabrikken). Our album title "This Is Just Rock`n`Roll" , a line I picked from some talking on the Little Feat live-album "Waiting For Colombus" was my vision for the band, a rock`n`roll band. Willy`s idea was a more heavy type of band. Eivind quit after a good deal of touring, and he was replaced by Gunnar The Gunner Westlie for some more roadrunning. I felt I was heading down a very narrow path in music, I needed greater freedom and wider limits of expression. I had the choice to countinue acting the heavy-rocker or being a musician. I chose the last one and quit the band around the summer of 1984. ROAD continued for some time with changing line-ups and made some records as well. One of the songs from our album ended up on a double-CD released by Polygram (1993) documenting the heavy-rock-scene in Norway. The compilation was called "Norske Riff og Tordenskrall ´65 - ´92" and the ROAD song was the fast riff-rocker called "Trapped in a Cage", with a fast & short little hell of a guitar-solo from Eivind Aarset. His first recording.

Jahn Teigen / Anita Skorgan

The first thing that happened after ROAD was a summer tour in 1984 with the successful couple TEIGEN/SKORGAN that sold a great deal of records, especially with the album "Cheek to Cheek". It was a great band with a solid regular line-up (Bruce Rasmussen, drums, Kjell Larsen, guitar, Anita, keyboards, Håkon Iversen & Kari Gjærum, backupsingers and a horn section with Ole Edvard & Jens Petter Antonsen and Arild Stav,Bjørn Holbæk Hansen, tour-manager, crowds of people, no lifting heavy speakers and equipment, food and drink, money in the pocket and everything a hungry musician could ask for and maybe deserved after years with the opposite.

The Heavy Gentlemen

One guy in my hometown Oslo that we had heard of since the last part of the seventies playing the blues with a black magic touch was a fellow named Knut Reiersrud. I met this amazing guitar player for the first time while sitting in with his band, "The Four Roosters"; it must have been sometime in ´83. So far in my mind I thought the Blues was only three chords and that`s it. After the invitation by Knut to get a glance into this colourful valley of music, I realized that the blues had a great amount of endless variations. I suddenly felt total freedom in terms how to approach the function of the bass. Everything was allowed, if you`ll allow it of course. After "The Four Roosters" split, Knut formed a 9-piece band with the extraordinary Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia. I was picked as the lucky bass player, the band was first called "The Rhythm`n`Blues All Star Band" which shortly after became "THE HEAVY GENTLEMEN". Performing first at the clubs Hot House and Club 7 in Oslo. The horn section was Bendik Hofseth, Sigurd Køhn and Torbjørn Sunde, the keyboards and vocals were taken care of by the grand old man of soul Geir Wentzel. Carsten Loly was the main lead singer and there was a second guitarplayer, Ivar Vereide, who also had a talent for organizing. This band was touring Norway (and a few Gothenburgh dates) in periods when the members didn`t have anything else going from ´84 and up to ´88. It was a really kick-ass live act. Nine wild guys that spit out energetic soul, swing, blues and rock`n`roll together as a unit, as well as featured long and strong ego-journeys from all the individual members. A presentation of the band could easily last for 45 minutes...

THE HEAVY GENTLEMEN is the best school I´d been to so far. Learning to listen to what was happening musically in the rest of the group, searching for that coolness in order to deal with your own technique when you`re out there to blow someone`s mind, keeping up with the energy and tempo, developing a groove-conciousness by playing with such different and skilled musicians and keeping the music spontanious and alive by not knowing what`s gonna happen next.

"The Heavy Gentlemen" accidently performed with Joe Cocker in Oslo 1986, did several TV-appearances, and also worked in the studio trying to put our different heads together on a concept. It never ended up on a record, not yet anyway.

In January 1985, I joined Knut on a trip to the United States for about 7 weeks. In New York we "met" Jaco Pastorius. He played at the club "Birdland" the same night we arrived the Big Apple and that killed the jetlag completely. He was pretty "out there" in those times and hung around Washington Square Park and the Lone Star Cafe where I met him by the pissoir. Knut and I travelled to many cities in the States, went on tour with the Florida bluesman Rock Bottom to South Carolina and Georgia, jammed out with the real blues inventors in black clubs on the southside of Chicago, spent time in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Key West, San Francisco and Boston and had a great and inspirational time. Music is definetely an international communicative language.

Claudia, Big Hand & Casino

In a time when people`s opinion about Country Music in general was about to change, these three artists coming from different directions of Country Music, got together and presented country with a rougher edge than what people were used to hearing. After I got back from 2 months in the States with Knut, broke as a rat, I was asked to join C B C for the summer of 1985 with a lot of gigs and good money. Musically it was kind of new for me, it was a challenge to play simple and find variations inside narrow limits (and maybe widen them up a little...) . Besides their show, the backup-band also did a couple of sets where I was allowed to open my mouth and do some singing.

For their next album "Oh Yeah" (1986), I co-wrote two songs with Claudia Scott , "Thinking Back To My Younger Days" and "Lonely Days And Nights". Claudia and I also formed a band called Claudia Scott and the Scouts in ´86, but it didn`t last too long.

Country Music was another valley of music to dive into, like the blues had been. I discovered so many directions, traditions and emotions, and became very fond of and inspired by the human elements of Country music.

Gone At Last

I ran into these guys while recording the "Oh Yeah"-album.

GONE AT LAST was an acoustic soup playing bluegrass, swing (and assorted madness) with banjo, mandolins, acoustic guitars, Jeff Wasserman, Kalle Aasland og Terje Kinn. They needed a bass player. I liked their style and joined. First we did gigs on oil platforms and military bases mostly in northern Norway. We brought along a "jug-band" which was a bag full of different flutes, a saw, a washboard and a tub-bass. People from the audience were invited up to the stage to play these things for a few numbers. That was the victory of the evening.

In the summer of ´86 we did a tour in the States around New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We played schools, cultural spots, opened up for Emmylou Harris at the Lone Star Cafe and played a few Bluegrass festivals. At the Waterloo Festival in New Jersey we met the father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe among many others. It seemed that we had a more "punky" attitude to the music compared to the more traditional performers, but they liked our style very much, at least they said so. The maestro of the dobro Cindy Cashdollar from Woodstock N.Y., joined us on this tour (she later became a member of Western Swing masters; "Asleep At The Wheel"). The rest of the pals were Terje Kinn on banjo/acoustic guitar, Jeff Wasserman on mandolin/acoustic guitar and Karl Aasland playing mandolin/acoustic guitar.

These three guys had a very strong 3 part harmony vocals working, which I every now and then did my best to lock into with a bass voice or some other harmony that would fit in. In ´87 we started working on GONE AT LAST`s second album. In the years to come our record company went bankrupt, Terje quit the band (and joined again later), Jeff spent a year in the States etc., so Gone At Last was very off and on in long periods, but we never broke up. We finished the album 8 years later and it came out in 1995 with the title "Still Out There". I did the lead vocals on two songs, one of them developed from my own song ("Voice A-Calling"), the album sold sadly little, very low marketing activity I guess, and the fact that this was not really a "bluegrass"-album. It was crossing over (too) many borders I think, probably because I was heavy involved in producing and mixing it. The album also contains a bluegrasshiphop-version of the classic Deep Purple-song "Smoke On The Water" which I recorded and mixed in my homestudio. We also did sporadic gigs opening up for "The Band" (Trondheim & Oslo 1994), played assorted festivals and clubs and we´ll still meet to have some happy hours in the future I guess.

Oslo All Stars Band

This concept was a Monday night thing in the club "Sardine`s" in Oslo from 1986 to 1988. It had a continously changing lineup. Geir Holmsen or myself on bass, Knut Reiersrud and/or Eivind Aarset on guitars, Paolo Vinaccia or Bjørn Jenssen on drums, Øyvind Elgenes (Dance With A Stranger) and/or Gil Edwards on vocals, Ole H. Giørtz, piano, Atle Bakken, organ and a lot of guest vocalists and instrumentalists sitting in. The nights I remember best were playing with Johnny Thunders and one night with Mr. Mac Rebbenack from New Orleans, better known as Dr.John.

Three Blind Mice

This little combo was formed to tour the military bases in the north of Norway during Christmastimes in 1988 and 89. Jeff Wasserman on acoustic guitar and mandolin, Claudia Scott on guitar and I had just picked up my 6-string bass (The Fender IV) which was an instrument I`d had for years. It`s been staring at me from the corner of my room waiting patiently for the day I would pick it up and explore the unique secrets this instrument was carrying. It was very convenient in a small group like "The Mice" where the music had space and open spots availaible for "more" than a regular bassline. I was able to play chords and fills in the range of a tenor-guitar, and I became very fascinated by the unlimited possibilities that lay there in those 6 strings. THE THREE BLIND MICE had a varied repertoire of Bluegrass, Swing and Gospel as well as some of Claudia and Jeff`s original material. We worked out nice three-part-harmony vocals. We also brought along the "jug-band" that always was successful (as described under the "Gone At Last" column).

Tom and The Tomtoms

These were some good time guys I caught up with in 1988 when The Heavy Gentlemen had broken up and Gone at Last didn`t do much... so I, felt like I didn`t have a band. These guys played blues, soul and rock`n`roll with a wild edge that appealed a lot to me. It was a 5 piece-band and the guitarplayer was Tor Inge Rishaug who I made my own band with a couple of years later. The Tomtoms (or 2 of them) invested in a 24-track studio in Larvik at a time when I was in London working with a-ha. There we recorded an album called "Runabout", released in 1993 by Tylden & Co. On the following tour we had a 4-piece horn-section and we cooked quite a bit. The band broke up after that, caused by different things; not happily treated by the record company, disagreements on the musical direction, and the individual

member´s plans and our will to put effort into it etc.

a-ha (...see the link "a-ha 90-94" from HOME)

Lynni Treekrem

Lynni is a Norwegian singer that had been doing a lot of different things throughout the years. She released her first album "Ut i Vind" in 1993 and I was asked to play with her on her promotional tours. This was a very fresh concept, Geir Sundstøl played several string instruments, Rune Arnesen played drums/percussion and I was able to explore further the different possibilities on my Fender VI . This was a low-key project where the musical ingredients was not covered by tons of sound. The musical presentation was very naked and because of that there was a great challenge to each part. After some time we performed without the drums too, and it worked. Lynni and I even did a couple of appearances, just the two of us. In January 1995 we joined the Norwegian Government´s Foreign Minister and her Gallactic Trade Council to South Africa. We played at a couple of dinner gatherings in both Johannesburg and Cape Town. I admire Lynni´s very personal and extraordinary voice and happy I am that she let me hear her singing on my song "We Have Grown" from my first solo album. We still perform together.

Strength

Terje Kinn, the banjo-man from Gone At Last is a musician

that I always will love to be around. When Morten Harket was opening up this restaurant "Figaro" in Oslo, 1991, he asked me if I could help out with some music. I formed the duo "Strength" with Terje and played there in that ringing hall several nights, and kept the duo alive forever after. We played a lot in the club Rebekka West in Oslo among many other places not too far away. The combination of 6-string bass and banjo was extraordinary sounding. Terje is a serious picker on the guitar too and the music is a blend of whatever we want to play. No limits. Straight bluegrass, hillbilly music, ballads, jazzy, strange versions of old songs and even fooled around with Beethoven´s 5th. Sometimes we had dobro-player Knut Hem with us, one time we built a band around our concept, but mostly it was a duo. "Strength" still plays together sometimes and we have in the back of our minds that it would be nice to make a record one day.

JB`s LOW-KEY CREW / JB Trio ...

This band was formed because the club Rebekka West in Oslo asked if I could put together a band to play at the club for some nights, around 93. I gathered a three piece combo around my 6-string bass and voice, picked some familiar songs that I liked to perform and asked guitar player Tor Inge Rishaug and (on Paolos demand) percussion driver Rune Arnesen along with me. We played every now and then in the cafe of the club and I enjoyed the unprestigious surroundings very much. We often played songs that we´d not rehearsed. Sometimes it came out as a fun failure, but there was always a new chance on the next tune. I liked that the music had a lot of spontanious elements. It was nice to have found a playground where I could explore my own musical ideas and be able to check out my voice a little bit further. The songs I chose were by people like Ry Cooder ("Hey Mama Don`t Treat Your Daughter Mean"/"Go Home Girl"/"That`s The Way Love Turned Out For Me"), Willie Nelson ("Mamas Don`t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys"/"River Boy"/"Shelter Of Your Arms"), Willy deVille ("Spanish Jack"/"Lilly`s Daddy`s Cadillac"), John Hiatt ("Memphis In The Meantime"/"Lipstick Sunset" ), Bob Dylan ("Man Gave Names"/"Country Pie") and even a-ha`s "October" was out there wailin` and weavin`.

The first original song we had fun with was "We Have Grown". I found it hard to get the same "loose" attitude when performing original stuff, as when fooling around with old familiar songs that people have heard before. It would definitely sound different than on a record. Anyway, it`s nice for once to have "my own band"; this is a playground with a wide range of unexplored opportunities, a small group of people with wide minds about music and a great will to get out in the woods, not always knowing the way back, but be aware that somewhere out there it will be something groovy happening. We called this band JB`s Low Key Crew and Tor Inge and Rune was beside me when my first solo-album "Songs From The Pocket" came out in 1996.

Drummers have changed, (I think we counted 13 drummers that have been in the band at some stage, who ? you mean I should mention all of them, I guess I should; Paolo Vinaccia was at the very first gig in Rebekka West (1993) with Tor Inge and me, the next day Paolo was occupied so he himself decided that Rune Arnesen should be the man for us, and Rune became the main man for many years. Other drummers in the years to come would be Egon Olsen, Inge Norum, Bjørn Jenssen, Anders Engen, Per Hillestad, Hamlet Pedersen, Truls Andersen, Terje Gade, Totto Hansen, Rune Pedersen, Eivind Kløverød, .......it`s hard to remember them all .... ... ). Other guitar players that also have been around the JB trio thing would be Svend Berg, Jørn Fodnestøl, Johny Aasgård, Stein Bull Hansen and Knut Hem. For the period of 98/99/2000 Tor Hauge from Sarpsborg was our main drummer, and we happened  to have a 11 days TOUR with 10 gigs in Northern Norway in 99. We had a helluva rock`n`roll time with bloody Tor Inge Marys energetic guitarnotes and a nice freaky beat . By the end of 2002 Trond Augland from Kristiansand have ruled the backbeat beside my bass and hopefully he forever will….. he is a cooking and melodic rhythminventor that`s so tasty that my mind blows everytime we play. Tor Inge Rishaug has been my main guitarmate up until about 7 years ago, he took off to Spain for a while around 2005, I guess he had his reasons for doin` that. After a while the trio became "Jørun Bøgeberg Trio", and the Low Key name re-appeared i 2009 as the Low Key Family (check out the link "Basstardmusic"), Tor Inges 50th birthdaybash. The tasteful guitarplayer from Årdal, Nils Einar Vinjor has been a close stringmate from the 90s. He is a beautiful fellow with his own personal way of treating the notes of the neck, and contributes to my music in a way that I love to hear. I hope to stick with Nils & Trond as the main men and that they will stick with me for a long period of time even though other acts pay more money for their soulful notes & rhythms. They stood by me in 2006 when "Basstard" was released, and we have since then been doing too few gigs. When we play we can just catch the glimpse of how good this band could be, if we`d work it seriously. Give us a gig, man !! We just need someone to book.

 But sometimes I go out giggin all by myself or with just Nils on guitar, and it`s nice to see that my songs can live happily under different circumstances.

  In May of 2010 we spent 3 days in My Town Recording studio in Vestfossen, to put together a song syklus that I found in my pocket some time ago and some more recently. One of the recording days Eivind Aarset joined us as a good friend and a guitarplayer with that certain personal touch. I hope the songs will see daylight sometime in the near future, one way or the other. They got Norwegian lyrics this time. A strange album it will be, children songs for grown ups and grownup songs for children.

Notes from Songs From The Pocket cover: Watch out for JB`s Low Key appearing in your neighbourhood playing some swampy groovy and rockin` rhythm`n`western....

( ... to be continued .....)