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Album
Brynildsen, Hege
When My Man Comes To Town
(Rootsy.nu)

Price: 89 SEK

Singer/ songwriter Hege Brynildsen was born into music. Her father, Tor Brynildsen, was one of the first who sang rock´n´roll in Norway in the mid fifties. In fact, Tor was so early at it, that there was no one who could back him up when he did his first concerts, the problem was solved with Tor just singing on top of records. Thus, initially Elvis Presley was actually Tor´s back up singer!

Later in his career Tor brought in Hege to do duets with him, she herself did her first singing in church school, where so called «movement songs» made a profound impression on her. Echoes of these practices to be seen in Hege´s very special stage performances today.

Hege Brynildsen was born and raised in the town of Halden, right on the border to Sweden. Beside being a city with a long and dramatic history (The only town mentioned in Norway´s national anthem, for citizens bravery in the early seventeenth hundreds), Halden has a fertile music scene with four professional recording studios and a number of top shelf musicians.

One of the studios, Athletic Sound, is considered the best in Scandinavia and is also used by American artists like singer/ songwriters Chip Taylor and Tom Russell, as well as Scandinavian cutting edge jazz musicians.

In 2011 Hege Brynildsen recorded her debut album, Hege, in Athletic Sound under the production supervision of American multiinstrumentalist Fats Kaplin, currently a member of Jack White´s Nashville based band. Kaplin also played pedal steel guitar, fiddle and other guitars on the album. Hege garnered great reviews in leading Norwegian newspapers, comparing Hege to Gillian Welch, Iris Dement and Dolly Parton and also underlining that the music came with unique, slightly mysterious quality to it.

Eight of the album´s songs were written by Hege, «Bad bad Whiskey» by Amos Milburn and «Only a Rose» på Nick Lowe/ Paul McCartney piano player Geraint Watkins.

Then the mystery thickened when Hege two years later put out her follow up album, Till Harry. To the big surprise of Hege´s Swedish record company, and everybody else listening, the Norwegian singer sang in Swedish. Although she had never ever sung a Swedish song in her life, or for that matter, spoken Swedish!

Hege explained the sharp lingual turn by saying that she was told by the songs to perform them in the fellow Scandinavian tongue..

Nine of the songs were Hege originals, the tenth song featured on the album was the most heartbreaking version of one of Sweden´s most enduring folk songs, «Flickan i Havanna», written by Evert Taube (1890-1976) back in 1922. Hege delivers the song accentuating the theme, occasionally lost, about the sad fate of a cuban prostitute.
Till Harry was dedicated to Heges´s grandfather, Harry Brynildsen, a larger than life character in Halden who prided himself in driving the most spectacular American cars at a time when most Halden people did not even own a car.

Fats Kaplin was stil contributing master musicianship to Till Harry, but left production to keyboards player Gøran Grini.

Grini is also producer/ piano player for legendary American singer/ songwriter Chip Taylor and now he is once again master of sounds on Hege´s third album, When my Man comes to town.

Hege´s Swedish detour now behind her, this time all ten songs are also Hege originals. And as songs go, they are truly original, every one of them contributing to When my Man comes to town´s dark and still melodic soundscape. Songs where hearts are more often broken than not. Songs to be moved by.

1. When My Man Comes To Town
2. If You have To Cry
3. Oh Loneliness
4. Please Remember Me
5. Lay Your Burden Down
6. Lovely Charming Ways
7. I Told You (Not to Drink)
8. You’re Supposed To Care
9. If A Rose Could Bring You Back
10. A Song I’ve Never Sung

Other albums by Brynildsen, Hege: