He has played Bob Dylan at libraries all over Norway. Now he’s out on the winter roads with a new album and critical praise on his trail.
Tom Roger Aadland (50) has survived as a rock poet for ten years, and now he’s getting much acclaim for his new album.
Born in 1964 in Haugesund
Songwriter, lyricist, singer, guitarist
Recorded his debut album Obviously Embraced in Dublin
In 2009 he released a Norwegian version of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks
Has written in Nynorsk on four out of five albums
Has just released the new album Rapport frå eit grensehotell and will tour both the north and the south of Norway
Tom Roger Aadland (50) has every reason to take off his hat – not least for the album he has made. But he doesn’t.
A Monday in the middle of the day the black hat is cautiously protruding in the corner by the windows at the cafe Asylet at Grønland in Oslo. It’s dusk outside and dark inside. Just candles on thick wooden tables light the scene. Outside the rain falls on slippery ice. People swear and slide through the city on shaky legs. The strong melancholy has fastened its grip on this entire grey January day.
Still the black-clad melancholic in the corner has good reason to smile, turn his eyes to the stars and give a tip of his black hat.
“If there ever was a man who should wear a hat, it’s you”, an Irish musician told Aadland years ago. The westerner took the Irishman seriously and dropped by J.J. Hat Center in New York. Since 2007 the small back has been an effective part of Tom Roger Aadland – along with black suit, black tie and white shirt.
Previously he has made four albums, without really taking off, but then the fifth one came. And several of the critics discovered the westerner, who has been singing in Nynorsk on the last albums. And this time the reviews were overwhelming.
“Bordering on genius”, Dagsavisen wrote. “There’s a drive here that’s almost irresistable…Pretty close to a masterpiece”, Fædrelandsvennen reported. “Aadland’s best” Dag og Tid wrote.
Aadland lives in Oslo, but has written most of the new lyrics and melodies to the new album on the west coast.
– I wanted Rapport frå eit grensehotell to be a collection of heavy oil paintings. It is the album I’ve made that’s closest to rock. After I’d performed the new songs at a concert around Christmas, my wife told me she hadn’t heard me this raw since I was nineteen. I believe that was a compliment!
He started out as a professional musician in his mature years, but got neither poor nor rich. One time long ago he played concerts in South Africa because his wife worked there, and he met a music journalist who thought he should go to Ireland. Aadland did, and went over there to play concerts for three-four years. He got in touch with the right people and recorded his first album – in English.
For ten years Aadland has made a living from his music, but it was after the Bob Dylan album Blod på spora in 2009 things started happening, but still he has gone nearly unnoticed by the big media.
– You got to keep moving – whether you have the media’s favour or not, Aadland states. Still, he has discovered that it is possible to live off music.
– It’s fully possible to make a living as a singer/songwriter if you have a certain talent and a passion for it. Young musicians should take notice!
Aadland talks like a Haugesundar, but grew up in tiny Vikebygd, forty kilometers north of the city.
– There wasn’t much to choose from where I grew up. The children were sent to whatever was going on, Sunday school, boy scouts, football, traditional dancing. Had there been something completely different going on, we’d have been sent there too.
Since he left home, he got his education as a classical guitarist at the Conservatory of Music in Oslo.
– But I’ve never really played too much classical guitar at concerts. Today I’m on a raggedy level, but I practise Bach regularly. I guess I’m a musical ecclectic.
Tom Roger wasn’t old when he started strumming the first strings he found. At three he made his first tones on the egg divider at home in the kitchen. A couple of years later he got his first guitar, but the strings broke shortly thereafter. At eight he got his first proper guitar, and he hasn’t had that many since. He’s had his classical guitar since 1984.
– I’ve had the guitars longer than the women, he comments wryly.
Tom Roger grew up with the folk wave and Lillebjørn Nilsen and Finn Kalvik, and had his debut at the Municipality Hall in Ølen. Later he took music at high school, and believes the turning point was when his teacher said “when you apply for the Conservatory, you might have to try several times”.
By then he’d discovered Bob Dylan. At fifteen he bought Highway 61 Revisited on cassette and still remembers how fantastic it was to listen “Like a Rolling Stone” on his cassette deck home in his room in Vikebygd.
– There was something real about Dylan, he says – and admits he wasn’t a typical fifteen year old.
– My friends mostly liked Kiss and Queen. I don’t think anybody else took an interest in Dylan. When Dylan had a bad spell in the 80s, I lost interest, but it all came back when he released Time Out of Mind. I started translating his lyrics – mostly for my own pleasure, until I got the idea of taking an entire Dylan album. I chose Blood on the Tracks, and the record was embraced by many.
Aadland, who recorded his debut album in Ireland, wasn’t prepared for the difference it meant to sing in Norwegian.
– I noticed that the Irish were a far better audience than the Norwegians. If a song is performed at an Irish Pub, you are hushed down – if anybody opens their mouth. Silence is the rule. People of all layers were interested in the lyrics, often commenting afterwards.
But when Aadland statred singing Dylan in Norwegian, he found out that Norwegians behaved just like the Irish.
– Many told me that these lyrics went straight to their hearts, and it was a great time. I got a lot of response, and it all made me start writing in Norwegian.
For two years he travelled all over Norway, touring with his guitar, harmonica and Dylan’s lyrics – from Halden in the south to Hammerfest in the north.
– It was a great, positive surprise to see how these songs went to people’s hearts. I played a lot of libraries. The idea was that Dylan is literary and should be performed in a library. Many libraries hadn’t arranged concerts before. I probably was the first musicians to embark on such a long library tour.
– You never got tired of Dylan and libraries?
No! I’ve played Dylan an awful lot of times, and the material is strong. But when you’re touring up and down the coast, naturally it’s not all sunny days.
– Once I played in the North, and perhaps the PR failed. Anyway there were less than ten persons in the audience, among them the promoter’s children. One of them had a giant teddy bear that he placed right in the middle of the concert hall. It felt strange, standing there singing Dylan’s love songs for a teddy bear. Just then I thought maybe I should have been somewhere else.
In periods Aadland has travelled very much. One October’s day he summed up an almost inhumane tour: I have driven 3800 kilometers and played 21 concerts in 15 days.
The car is a fine writer’s cabin. The thoughts can float there.
– Are there landscapes that are more productive than others?
– Yes, I often drive between Oslo and the west coast. For a while there was a stretch in Eastern Telemark that stood out. It was the same if I was heading west or east, it was between Notodden and Seljord. I don’t have any explanation – and no relation to this area. It’s a nice area, but there’s nothing unusual there. Perhaps it’s something from my childhood? Perhaps it’s a certain turn of the road that sets things flowing. But then I tend to write everywhere.
– You are the typical western melancholic?
– Yes, that’s probably right. But there’s quite a lot of dark humour in my lyrics; which not every catches, but it’s not vaudeville humour.
– Loneliness and love are recurring themes in your lyrics?
– Everybody’s looking for someone to love, but when you’ve found the right one, the story’s not over.
– You went to South Africa?
– Yes, and stayed there for two or three months to write my previous album Fløyel og stål. My wife grew up partly in South Africa, as a restless missionary child. Parts of the year she works as a doctor and scientist in Durban for find out more about the connection between a tropical parasite and HIV. It’s a grave project amongst a people not prone to melancholy. The zulus have a “schwung”, even though one third of the population are infected by the HIV virus in some areas. If this has happened in Norway, it would have darkened people’s minds to a great measure. The South Africans have managed to keep their spirits.
Even if Aadland wrote the music for an entire album in South Africa, he’s not very influenced by the local music.
– The South African music is light and not very melancholic, and I find myself being more moved by music from West Africa, for example Salif Keita of Mali. There is a strong melancholy there – a desert blues. Musically I am the result of everything I’ve done, and that is so many things. Both Bach, blues and the great jazz singers are deep within me, as are the great rock artists, such as Van Morrison and Dylan. There are many currents in music, and I pick up a little here and there. I’ve just gone through a reawakening with Bach. I also spend a lot of time writing and translation, mostly to keep my head and heart in shape. Writing songs and performing them is my calling.
Among other things Aadland has translated Sylvia Plath’s collection of poems Ariel.
– It was mostly because I knew it would be difficult. Those are brilliant poems, but complex. It’s like lifting weights that are too heavy for you. If you’re able to do it, something good is bound to come out of it. I haven’t set music to the poems yet, but I might, the melancholic says.
In early February he gets into his car and heads north on those winter roads, but in the end of February he appears at “Ingensteds” (translation: “Nowhere”) – in the middle of Oslo.
Ottar Fyllingsnes, Dag og tid, Jan. 30 2015