There was a discussion on the Norwegian radio station P3 about a singer/songwriter wave. There are many Scandinavian singer/songwriters, Ane Brun, Anna Ternheim, Minor Majority and you are also one of them. These artists have a lot of exposure the last years. Do you think there is a singer/songwriter explosion and is it hard to stand out?

I don’t really care. If people talk about a wave, that’s the thing created by the media, because they choose whenever they want to give exposure to someone. Then you get more singer/songerwriters exposed, but that doesn’t mean that did didn’t exists before.  I get frustrated with the media and tired of the whole mechanism because it’s so predictable. It's like you should pose a question how many records do you have to sell before you loose your credibility and loose your underdog stamp, which of course everyone loves. Then your music doesn’t necessarily have to change in order for the media’s opinion about you to change. Then you can do whatever you want to do and your perception can change. It seems that the media is so transparent. That’s why in Norway it’s easy to get commercial success without being a commercial artist.

You have a hobby band, the National Bank can you tell something about that?

Yeah, I love it! My role in the band is vocalist. I played some guitar on the record but the focus was on the singing. There are lots of great people in the band with different backgrounds and it’s a bit bigger. In one way I just feel honoured among all those great musicians. We are working on our next album, which will be a little different then the first. It will also be interesting to see what will happen, because it started as a project, but now we are becoming more a band. We don’t know yet if the album will come out in Holland. But you will like it when it’s out!



You just finished your new CD Science can you tell something about that?

It's called Science I think maybe a little bit detached from the singer/songwriter thing. I made it in a different way then before, because you get tired of doing the same thing all the time. The new album is more of an arranged album. Some of the songs can’t be played alone on an acoustic guitar. The new album was made from a different angle. Start with the details and arrangements and then fill it in and making a song around it. We also used lots of strings, double bass and horns. I’m very interested what people think of it.

Is it true that Phillips Stark, a famous French designer, designed the cover of the new album?

Yeah, that’s true. We just came from Paris now, where he arranged this gig for us.  We played in an old theatre because he wanted to present me to other people who would love my music. It was really great and different, very decadent and lavish.

So how did you get in contact with him?

Actually he got in contact with me after he visited some concerts in France. He has used my music for inspiration and then he asked if he could make an album cover for me.

Are you also playing songs from the new album Sceince live?

Yes we will do that. We have this policy where there is always an latency when an album is coming out in different countries. But we don’t care about this. I’m an unknown artist in Holland, so I don’t need to play only music from the latest album. There are not much people who know the songs on the album. So what we do is just do a show and play what we wanted to play and do it really good, so that at the end of the show people walk out happy and maybe buy a CD. It’s like a freedom you have when there are no expectations to play from the latest album.

The full version of the interview will soon be available as a Podcast. Click here for the first part of the interview.