Imagine if Miles Davis had grown up in the middle of Kentucky, where the high school marching band was a bluegrass band! Or picture that the movie O Brother Where Art Thou wasn’t directed by the Coen brothers, but by Ornette Coleman. What if the Dixie Chicks were in Joe Zawinul’s band, influenced by his famous philosophy, “We always solo and we never solo”? The music in these highly unlikely scenarios would probably resemble Open String Department’s debut album! The title is a play on the term “fringe science”, which is defined as cutting-edge research using very unconventional methods. Fringe Music refers to the group’s meandering between jazz and bluegrass, ultimately creating their own borderline improvisational genre.
Open String Department was conceived on a road trip through the Appalachian mountains. After finishing their jazz studies at the renowned jazz conservatory in Trondheim, Espen, Magnus, and Aksel went straight to the oversize baggage belt at Værnes Airport to check in banjos, a mandolin, guitars, a bass, and a dobro. Countless late-night campfire and parking lot picking parties on the south side of the Mason Dixon line in the heart of West Virginia laid the foundation for this original acoustic trio.
Fringe Music is the result of many years of playing together as the backbone of the bluegrass band Julie & The New Favorites at festivals in Europe and USA, at obscure 10-hour party gigs in Gudbrandsdalen (the Norwegian outback), in jazz clubs throughout Europe, and in elementary school concerts throughout the north of Norway. Armed with a tenfold of string instruments, as well as a (un)healthy portion of fearlessness and insanity, OSD stares the conservative traditionalist straight in the eye as they mercilessly reconstruct American folk music and transform it into something of their own. Joining in on the reconstruction is Norwegian fiddler extraordinaire, Ola Kvernberg, who plays as if the studio was on fire on the tunes ‘Yee-Haw’ and ‘Delayed Response’ and multi-instrumentalist, Stian Carstensen, who is challenged to a trail-blazing banjo duel in ‘A Fiver for a Tenor’, a ‘Dueling Banjos’ for the 21st century!
Fringe Music was released on December 5th on Just for the Records, and features nine original tunes, eight of which were written by Wiik, and one by Jensen.
Magnus Wiik – banjos, mandolin, dobro, guitar
Espen Bjarnar – guitars
Aksel Jensen – bass
Ola Kvernberg – fiddle
Stian Carstensen – accordion and banjo
‘Yee-Haw’. What more is there to say?
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