June 7 - Texas

This past Saturday, June 4, Arve Hjalmars held a one-off reunion concert for most of the band's 25th high school reunion. Live footage from the show does not disappoint, and so today I thought I'd celebrate this country band from Trondheim, Norway - dubbed Substitute-Texas by Arve Hjalmar himself.

I still remember when Arve told me he was going to start a country band with friends from high school. I was scratching my head - country music was some of the furthest music to what I ever had in mind. But they started it up - Arve Hjalmars featured Arve Hjalmar himself on acoustic guitar and occasional vocals, Longhorn Man (Jardar Lohne) on vocals, Big Bad Bill (Truls Ryum) on guitar, Dakota Ragnvald (Karl Isak Skau) on bass, and Drunken Dingo (Jan Are Hansen) on drums.

That fall Arve and I started at the university together, and the first mandatory subject for all students in Norway at that time was a semester of philosophy (history of philosophy and formal logic) and an elective. A lot of time in philosophy lectures was spent trying to write country lyrics, but I don't know if any of them ever really saw light of day - but it was fun. And easy.

Anyway, through the years, Arve Hjalmars did have some live performances, including a memorable one at Knaus, one of the side stages at Studentersamfundet i Trondheim. They hadn't played long before the fire alarm was sounded, and everyone was shipped out. That concert is also legendary as Arve Hjalmar came out wearing nothing but his acoustic guitar for the encore The South (Seems So Far Away).

So today I think it is time to dust off the old cassette (yes, I have digitized it all as well - but Dakota Ragnvald has Youtubed quite a few of the songs from the demos) Honky Tonk Inferno, which was recorded and released in 1993. My personal Arve Hjalmars favorite: Texas (I think an argument can be made that it is more rock than country, but I wouldn't say that to the band's face - after all, they don't just play honky tonk, they live honky tonk...)