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Translated news

Here is a translation of official news that were published by Skambankt on skambankt.com, MySpace, or Facebook, as well as articles published by Norwegian and Danish media. The orginal texts have been published online. If you have an article you don't understand and want a translation up here, please give me a hint.

2009/01/23 Jærbladet: Skambankt's downs

(Original text)

On Monday, the new Skambankt record "Hardt Regn" will be out.

- This is a record that grows with each time you listen to it, they say during a breakfast at Rosseland.

Hans Egil Løe prepared the coffee. Singer Terje Winterstø Røthing and drummer Børge Henriksen brought the bakery goods. Unfortunately, bass player Tollak Friestad had to excuse himself, but during the breakfast at Rosseland we still got a good insight on the process around the new Skambankt record, "Hardt Regn", which will be released Monday.

- It was a difficult record, it was a bit ups and downs to work with it, Terje Winterstø Røthing says.

- It was probably mostly downs, Henriksen chips in.

But it can't have been so bad even though the band lived two and a half weeks in Nærland and worked at Bekk studio some busy days in September. They tried out new things, added some brass, tried out timbals, ran cables into a church, while Tollak Friestad sat at the levers and looked for the right sound.

- Those who had the chance to listen to the record say it is a record that grows each time you listen to it, and this can often be really good, Winterstø Røthing says.

Maybe there are some things that are different with this record.

Bachelor party

Skambankt accidentally started during a rock festival in Klepp in the middle of the 90s.

- There were supposed to be five bands from Oslo and five local bands, but one of the local bands canceled, and so we stepped in. We wrote nine songs in one day, some didn't have a verse but only chorus. The band continued for a year, and recorded a tape that was never released, Winterstø Røthing says.

- Some years ago we were invited to a bachelor party of a friend, and we took out the tape again and listened to it. We played some songs from it at the party, and late that night we concluded that it would be fun to revive the band. Eirik Bekkeheien had just started working in a studio, and he said we could do the recording there. In the end there was a demo that was a success at a record company, Løe says.

Maybe it helped a bit that Winterstø Røthing was known as guitar player of Kaizers Orchestra.

- In the beginning it was probably such that I was regarded as the one from Kaizers. Maybe this was a door opener, but I believe that if we hadn't been good enough, the doors would have been closed again, very fast, he says.

Communists?

Drummer Henriksen is the only one of the four who is not from Klepp. Actually, he couldn't come from further away than he does, as he grew up in Hammerfest.

- When I heard the music for the first time, I thought this was a gang of communists or something, they were really angry. Afterwards I realized that actually, they are nice guys, with wide horizons, he says.

- I must admit that I had some problems understanding the dialect in the beginning, but actually I think that if you sing in Norwegian, dialects from the west coast are very good.

Skambankt have also developed their lyrics with the years, they aren't as angry anymore as they sounded in the beginning.

- First it was a strain to write songs, it was mostly collective work, but with the time it became easier, Winterstø Røthing, who writes the lyrics, says.

- If I can get to say something here, I will say that Terje developed a lot in writing the lyrics over the last years, I think he writes good, Løe says.

The singer thanks and bows, and he seems a bit embarrassed about the praise from his friend.

Development

The hard and intense work that has been done in Nærland seems to have shown some results.

- We are very satisfied with the product. It's always a gut feeling which songs should be on and which not. It can be tiring to work so intensively, but you are always focused on the work, Winterstø Røthing says.

The few reviews that have come in until now have been positive, they got nine out of ten from norsk på norsk on P1, a result they are satisfied with.

- There are only few who are so thorough in their reviews, but of course we are anxious about the reviews that will come in this week.

To promote the tour, they will go on a tour in February and March, where they will play about 30 concerts. The first ones will be in Denmark as support band. In connection with this they asked for financial support from the municipality Klepp, but this was refused.

- The thing is that we don't really get paid to warm up, and we have to pay the people who come along, Løe says.

- But we were not the ones who went out to the press saying that it was refused, Winterstø Røthing underlines.

- Of course it would have been nice with support from the municipality, just like other cultural things get it. We are ambassadors for Klepp and we mention it in all interviews that we are from Klepp, he adds.

For now, there are no plans to play in the three Jær-communities, the closest they will play this time is at Folken in Stavanger.

- Maybe we will come by later in the summer or fall, there are some festivals around here. And we had three concerts before Christmas in Klepp, Time, and Hå a few years ago, they say.

Skambankt are back, but the breakfast is over. They excuse themselves, they have to go to an online question time. On Monday, they release their third full-length record. It seems a bit less "opprylt" (?!?) than the ones before, that is called development.

- We always had the goal to develop further, and we feel that we managed that, Løe concludes.