Drawing from the same well of history, culture and human experience that informed his previous Hubro release, 2023’s Amerikabåten, Norwegian guitarist and composer Trond Kallevåg delves even deeper into the Norwegian American immigrant experience with Minnesota. I’ve been a big fan of this artist since I first heard 2016’s Bedehus & Hawaii, and his latest only enhances my fandom.
This time out, Trond draws inspiration from an artist residency he spent on the remote northern Norwegian island of Træna, weaving his instrumental story songs from the emigration stories and old photos he found there into his signature “Nordic Americana” tapestry lovingly shaped from traditional music with elements of jazz and ambient folk. He plays all the guitars and pedal steel, joined by a minimal ensemble of Tuva Halse on violin, the ubiquitous Mats Eilertsen on double bass, and Gard Nilssen on drums and occasional vibraphone.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of what is considered the first organized emigration from Norway to the United States, on the sloop Restauration, which sailed from Stavanger on July 4, 1825. The album isn’t a commemoration of the voyage, but is an homage to that population movement and its rippling effects on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just looking at the song titles and catching the mood of each piece, I’m piecing together the story of the album — my version, anyway. We follow the sad yet hopeful saga of twins, a brother and sister from Træna, as one emigrates to America, where he experiences the confusion and violence of American frontier life, but also the “kindness of strangers”; either he encounters Indigenous Americans or the sibling left behind imagines such encounters or perhaps both; and somehow ends up in Hawaii, from which he sends home postcards.
As I listen to Minnesota I find myself saying, “Oh, I like this one best,” until the next track comes on and I update my selection. The opening track “Twins of Træna” is immediately engaging, Trond’s sweetly sad pedal steel melody underscored by busy Halse’s plucked violin triplets, Nilssen’s hissing snare brushes, and Eilertsen’s upbeat bass line. Though recorded live in the studio, it’s filled out with various layers added later, as Trond explains in the notes:
“I love that balance – being fully present with the musicians in the moment, making quick decisions on the spot, then returning to the material later to shape it further. More than ever, I enjoyed producing this record, playing with the mix and adding subtle details after the sessions. It’s the tension between the spontaneous and the dreamlike where I feel most at home.”
Being 50 percent of Scandinavian ancestry myself, one of the reasons Trond Kallevåg’s music stirs me is the way it often evokes the stereotype of the Nordic temperament: deceptively mild but with huge reservoirs of feeling, which creates a tension that may go unnoticed by the casual observer. Much of Minnesota reflects that dichotomy precisely, such that some might find the music soporific without ever cottoning to the underlying emotions. Not so with “Pine Ridge,” named for the Oglala Lakota reservation of South Dakota. This one starts and ends with a quietly strummed atmospheric acoustic guitar, a deep human voice echoing just outside the realm of audibility; but it’s built on a standard rock chord progression which the four musicians follow with ever greater volume and stridency to a cathartic climax and subdued coda.
Both “Pine Ridge” and “Edward Curtis Portraits” were inspired by Curtis’s iconic early 20th century photographs of Indigenous Americans and the landscapes they inhabited; the latter track is brief, atmospheric and evocative of the Great Plains and other dusty settings. Those two are separated by the absolutely delightful “The Boat Song,” with Trond’s Telecaster and Halse’s violin doubling an oscillating melody over Eilertsen’s whimsical bowed bass line. I don’t want to embed two videos, but you can watch that one here.
Halse improvises a beautifully wistful tune in the midst of the melancholy “Houses,” which Trond follows up with a similarly lovely solo on jazz guitar. He plays with some spaghetti western tropes including a dusty, bluesy slide guitar in the loping “Kindness Of Strangers,” goes a bit abstract with both the pedal steel-driven “Pretty Polly” and the ominous “Red Stranger,” and returns to the sunny languor of Bedehus & Hawaii on “Postmarked From Honolulu.” There’s a suggestion of tango and Django jazz in the gallumphing “Lighthouse Boogie.” Atmospherics and echoes underpin the final song, the brief, nostalgic “To Mom,” which finds violin, bass and acoustic guitar embroidering a triple helix of melody lines.
It’s all as affecting as anything Trond Kallevåg has ever recorded, and only leaves me wanting more.
(Hubro, 2025)
