Last night, July 26th, MUSICinVancouver was invited to Thomas Dybdahl's show at The Media Club. We have some great photos and an interview with Thomas!
Click here for more information on the opener, Matt Goud, at last night's show.
Norwegian musician Thomas Dybdahl is currently embarking on his first North American tour! He has been extremely popular in Norway and the UK, winning multiple awards and given very high praise, and now he aims to share his music across North America. Thomas Dybdahl's tour is based on his newest album, Songs, which is a collection of songs from his previous albums.
For more information about Thomas Dybdahl (and to get a free song!) visit his website!
To listen to and purchase his album Songs click here!
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| On more than one occasion Thomas played his guitar off stage where he taught the crowd how to sing along to Cecilia! |
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| Thomas was dancing so much his hat fell off! And then someone in the crowd started wearing it! |
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| Here Thomas was amused by a dancing member of the audience, although the man later became somewhat of a nuisance. |
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3 of the 4 members of Dybdahl's band, along with Thomas, take centre stage to bow at the end of their set.
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I was really happy that they performed "Party Like It's 1929", one of my favourite Dybdahl songs! Click here to watch a beautiful acoustic version of it!
Dybdahl and his band put on a fantastic show! They encouraged a good vibe through audience participation and by choosing to play fast-paced tracks. It was nice to see Thomas engaging the audience by coming out to play guitar right beside spectators. Watching the show, I can say I was surprised at his vocal range and comfort with his instruments. Everyone in the band was equally as passionate and abso rbed in their music. It wasn't uncommon to notice them closing their eyes and losing themselves in the song. It was an amazing showcase of talent that will quickly get Thomas Dybdahl noticed and praised as highly in North America as in Norway!
Interview:
Q: Have you ever been to Vancouver before? Is there a notable difference between North American crowds and European ones?
A: Well there's a notable difference in how many there are. I mean this is our first time here and we're basically nobodies so we're basically going around playing for everything...I mean, it started out really good. We started out in New York, we had about 300 there, and then I think in Detroit we had like 10, so it's everything, you know, its like a roller coaster. But we knew that coming out. We were kind of prepared for it and, you know, it doesn't really matter because if you get into it and the people that are there get into it, it doesn't really matter. It can still be a great night if you have like 20 people in there and sometimes those are the gigs that you remember. And then if you're really lucky down the line you'll have a thousand people saying that they were at that gig if you do really well. So that's got to be the goal when you play those small gigs, to make that little crowd expand.
Q: So do you enjoy touring?
A: Yeah, we're loving it. We've been looking forward to this because we've never been on a tour across the whole country before so everything here is pretty new to us. We started out on the east coast Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and then we went up to Toronto and Montreal and then around the Lake District, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis.
Q: Have you guys taken any breaks along the way to do some sightseeing?
A: No, we haven't had a break. We had a two day drive going from Minneapolis to here because that's a long drive. So, we stopped in a couple of really small places and both of them were actually in Montana because Montana is a big state and it took a while to cross. Overall, pretty exciting. I mean here you meet new people all the time and you're getting a very honest reaction to the music. Because if you play at home or somewhere that you played before, there's always a preconception of the music. Even if you play new stuff, you relate it to old stuff and what you want this guy to sing or play so its refreshing to just get 100% honesty. If they don't like it, they just leave I guess, and if they love it, they let you know it.
Q: Do you enjoy performing? Any stagefright? Does it depend where you are?
A: No, not really. There's no pressure really. Sometimes I get really nervous if it's the first gig on the tour because we haven't played in a while, or maybe if it's a big gig, or you're playing with an orchestra or something that makes you feel out of place, or you're not on your own solid ground, then that makes me nervous. But these gigs don't really make me nervous because we know what we're gonna do. We kind of have an attitude of just ripping it. It's good, it's good.
Q: Do you have any pre-show rituals?
A: No, not really it all depends on what the feeling is after soundcheck because the soundchecks are very boring in a way that it's very technical. You set up and try to make everything sound good. But you do get a feel for the room and for the stage which is important. So, sometimes if the feeling is bad after soundcheck then I might get a little bit nervous before a gig, and if the feeling is really good, if the room is a great room to play in and it feels good, then it's all smooth sailing. So if I get a little nervous, I drink a little bit, you know, just to calm the nerves a little bit. And I'm not talking about, like, alcoholic drinking, like a bottle of vodka, but a couple of beers to tone it down, usually works. So, its all very dependent on where you play I guess.
Q: Can you describe the process you go through when you write a song?
A: I try to work on the idea for a long time without doing anything, craftmanship, or handiwork, or anything. It's nice if it's there for a long time, and if it sticks it's usually a nice one. And it's a whole other thing working on a song just in your mind because there are no limitations. Once you get to an instrument, you're limited to what you can do on an instrument, so it's nice to kind of just think about it a lot before you actually start doing it. So, I kind of have a grasp of what I want to do and not just what I can do. And then it's all about making a good structure. Lyrics are usually the hardest part, I think. It's just a minefield, just so many ways of doing the wrong thing. I think that's very hard. So, that usually takes me a long time. And that's usually what I finish at the very end of it. Sometimes I have just a phrase that becomes the song. One phrase sticks with you and if you only have one phrase or a couple of words, then you're not very limited. You can go wherever you want to go, but it does give you a vantage point, a starting point, for it, which is nice because if it sticks and you start toying around with that word, and you phrase it in different ways, it's hard to change it. After having toyed with a song for a long time, I seldom go back and change what started it, because it's become part of that song. Sometimes if you don't really know what you're writing about it helps to just have those few words and you can spin off them, but sometimes you have a clear idea obviously if you want to tell a certain story or something like that.
Q: So where do you find your inspiration for songs? Do you let inspiration come to you or do you go looking for things to write about?
A: I don't really go looking for things to write about, but I do go looking for input. Because if I don't listen to new stuff, or I don't see new stuff, or read new stuff, or experience new stuff, then I'm just going to make the same old thing all the time. So I think that's the most important thing that I can do is just to seek new input, new inspiration, new music. Because that's what makes me want to write basically. If I hear something that I go "wow, I wish I wrote that," or I see a movie that had fantastic music in it and I'm thinking "I wish I had gotten the chance to do that,"you know all these things. So, it usually just comes from other people I guess, other artists, for the most part.
Q: People have described your music in many ways, but how would you describe your own music?
A: *laughs* I wouldn't probably. Once I start doing that I put certain limitations on peoples' experience of it, I think. Because you want to go in there fresh. And it's not like you're going to go into it totally fresh anyways because you must have heard about it from somewhere but I don't want to be the guy saying it.
Q: How did you get into music?
A: Honest? *laughs* It was Kirk Hammett, guitar player of Metallica, in the early 90's when they released their Black Album. Like the huge crossover of metal going into serious record-selling territory. That was when I started playing guitar and I wanted to be like those guys. I was a shredder. I spent my youth in a basement trying to play solos and be like slash and Kirk Hammett and all those guys. So that's how I got into music.
Q: How did your style evolve?
A: It just did. I found new music and then I changed maybe schools and got in with a new crowd of people and they were listening to other stuff that they were telling me about, and then I moved and I met some new people there and they started telling me about music. I got another job and there was another crowd of people there. So it's all just basically people telling me about all this good music. And, you know, when it's new to you it's fantastic. It's like the coolest experience ever. And I wish I could do that again. You know, the first time I heard Neil Young's Harvest or something. It's such a cool experience, to hear the coolest music you've ever heard and it's a first time. It's cool.
Q: If you had the opportunity to collaborate with another musician who would it be?
A: Gillian Welch. I like her.
Q: How did the songs on your newest album, Songs, get chosen from your other albums?
A: I asked the guy who signed me to his label, a guy named Larry Klein, a producer, a bass player, and now a record dude. If I was going to choose all the songs, I'd be choosing all the b-sides and alternative versions and hidden tracks and all those things that are the ones that you get into at the very last, when you listen to all the other stuff. Because I listen to this stuff so many times when I'm making it so I always tend to like the weirder stuff more and that isn't necessarily a good approach if you want to go present your music to a new audience. Anyway, I gave him the job of selecting the songs. And then my job was to make it all fit together, try to look at all the pieces and just see where I could sow it all together and cross fade the different songs, and which songs had endings that fit well with the beginnings of other songs, all these things. So that was my job basically. To try to make it feel like it was a cool listening experience and not just these songs, randomly. But there are a lot of things to think about becuase you have to think about are you going to take into consideration chronology or just mood, or key, or nothing at all and just make what sounds cool.
Q: What are your plans after this tour?
A: I'm just hoping to come back really. The realistic thing would be maybe early next year or something to go and do basically a lot of the same stuff that we've done now. Get back to, you know, maybe some places were cooler than others. Let's face it, you're not going to feel at home in every town because it's not a natural thing to think you're going to get a great connection with everybody, because traveling around you see people are so different and there's no reason why I should connect with a redneck in some redneck place because we don't really have much in common. *laughs* So you want to go where you feel that you have a connection with people.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: Any famous last words? Not really. Just for those of you who didn't come: "screw you". *laughs* And next time I'll try to make it a hot ticket. We're looking forward to today. It'll be cool. Seems like a pretty cool vibe in this city. It's so weird once you cross the border from the U.S. to Canada how much more European it gets, in a sense. It's very weird, and not like you're European, but how there's that little bit of Americanism that isn't there. And it's very weird just looking at it from the outside. Fascinating trip.
Then he spent about five minutes helping us figure out how to get out of the tour bus, which was honestly rather embarrassing. Thomas and his band (whom we met briefly) were really nice to us and we want to send a HUGE thank you to Thomas for taking the time to give us this interview! We would also like to thank Catrina from Strut Entertainment for making all of these arrangements! So THANK YOU to everyone who helped us with this and a big thank you to all of you reading it :)
