The Botanical Garden is dark trees and white big snowflakes today and hardly a human being can be seen. Except for the rock poet, praised for his Norwegian Dylan translations, returning the his roots with his fifth album, “Rapport frå eit grensehotell”.
He knew even before he began writing that the album would be dark, and uses the comparison with a painter choosing his palette for a project.
– The line came when I wrote the poem that became the title song. It contains everything from the album: Vulnerability, transition, longing, Aadland says. Even though he knew where he has heading, he still was surprised when he went through the songs he would take to the studio sessions.
– They were all about loneliness.
Feels a longing
For even though Aadland “balances the personal with the artistic”, he doesn’t try to hide the fact that he knows longing inside out.
– Too well, clearly, he says – in the warmth of a café after the photo session. Aadland grew up with a seafaring father sailing abroad and the first sign of life he remembers from his father was a postcard from Manila.
– When he passes away last autumn, we looked through his records. He didn’t spend many weeks on dry land before sailing away again. His generation really built this country.
As a grown-up he married a doctor who lives in South Africa and is an international expert on a neglected tropical disease. Half of their married life is spent away from each other, he estimates.
– We’re doing something important each on our side, he says of his beloved and seems at harmony. He’s just “good at remembering emotions”, he thinks.
– Perhaps unusually well; I can go back into remembered emotions when I write. As people have stormy lives, they find a resonance. Everybody has missed someone.
Alone with an electric guitar
This results in lines such as “I love you more than myself. I wish you were here tonight. And that I could find the words for all that the heart constantly calls out. I report from a border hotel. Through the rising smoke, through the falling rain”.
– When I write, I know that in six months’ time I will be singing this in front of an audience. It has to be right. Those are the two sides I enjoy the most: Writing the first, rough draft, the one I think is almost too rough to be used. And meeting the audience.
The latter Tom Roger Aadland will be doing a lot in the months ahead: He starts touring in February, solo in the north, driving south, where he’ll be doing four concerts with his band, the outstanding musicians from the album.
– But even where I play solo, it will be a little differently: I perform with an electric guitar instead of an acoustic. Distorted and in another landscape.
Dirty and beautiful
When the tour starts, it will be one year since he went into the studio with producer Lars Voldsdal, whom Aadland got to know when he played support for Hellbillies on their anniversary tour.
– He had a clear vision of what he wanted to bring forth on the album: He wanted things to be dirty and beautiful. It suited me, I don’t like nice things either. When I recently visited Rome, what I liked the most were the old buildings with the peeled-off paint. What’s good about a freshly painted, yellow wall? Almost all artist, also the ones I like, should be more dirty.
That’s why Tom Roger Aadland and the musicians did not use the time in the studio to rehearse together.
– Some of the takes were done almost before we were ready. You know, they say the sketches of the old masters are in some ways better than the finished paintings, when they’ve tried too hard and done too much, he says with a smile. For according to himself, the rock poet is an optimistic melancholic, this arch-west-coast temperament.
– Inside the darkness, humour is important, as is lifting your eyes and looking ahead.
Discography
- «Obviously Embraced» from 2007, recorded in Dublin and mixed in Van Morrison’s private studio.
- «Blod på spora» from 2009, with Norwegian critically praised translations of Bob Dylan.
- «Det du aldri sa» from 2011, where one of the songs got published in an anthology of modern poetry.
- «Fløyel og stål» from 2012, where a documentary was shown on NRK.
- Out now: «Rapport frå eit grensehotell» i 2015, with musicians Erland Dahlen, Tor Egil Kreken, Kjetil Steensnæs and David Wallumrød.
Gitte Johannessen, NTB, 19 Jan. 2015
(©NTB)