Helldorado – 18-03-2011

Interview with: Helldorado
By: Nina Mende

I got the chance to do an email interview with the Norwegians of Helldorado. I decided to keep it as a plain question – answer piece since there was no story around it, no gestures, jokes or what ever else we have when doing a face to face interview. Maybe, on their tour in fall, I’ll get to do a face to face one and will write you a nice little story about it. Until then enjoy this interesting interview with Helldorado:

Where does the band name come from and why did you pick it?
Helldorado is the equivalent to Eldorado. Like heaven and hell, good or bad.
In the beginning Helldorado was the working title on a side project we had with our folk-band; The Tramps. This was in 2000. Within this side project we played old spaghetti western like Morricone and old country like Hank Williams. The side project developed to be our main band and the name Helldorado just hung by us.

What are your plans for 2011?
Our goals are to finish a new studio recording during 2011 with release 2012, and do another European tour with focus on Germany in October/November 2011. We have also plan to do a “live” studio recording for release 2012.

Why did you decide to re-release “Sinful Souls” now, almost two years later?
“Sinful Soul” has been followed with accidents from the start, resulting in numerous delays. The recording took, for some peculiar reason two years. During the release in Norway in 2009, I had to surgically fix my shoulder that had bothered me for some time. This resulted in delaying the European release, but the day I was ready to do gigs again and we should be on track, I fell down some stairs (on a gig) and broke my arm wrist. When this healed, we changed record company and distributor in Europe, and we started the planning from scratch. We have also had sic family members to tend to. It has been like a curse hanging over us. Maybe it is something mysterious with the house we recorded the cd in that damned us. “Sinful Soul” was recorded in an old big spooky stone building that used to be a lunatic asylum in the 40’s and 50’s. The house lied isolated, and with quite a distance to drive, so we had to spend several scary nights in that house. You could almost hear the insane screams still hanging in the walls. God knows how many people that was lobotomized and died in there. We may have awoken something. When the asylum closed in the 60’s, one of it’s habitants moved into the forest near by, and still lives there thinks he’s a cat. Several times we saw him sitting outside staring into the window. That really put the fright in us, and none of us dared to go outside to show him off or talk to him. After dark, we stayed indoors watched Romero movies, when we didn’t record.

What are your influences for your music?
-We are influenced by 50’s rockabilly, garage rock from the 60’s and 70’s like The Stooges, Sonics, 13th floor elevator… , but also band from the 80’s and onwards like The Cramps, Gun Club, Nick Cave. We are into outlaw country as well, and has started a sideproject called Flying Shoes where we do the best from Texas in the periode 1968 – 1978. East European folk music is also an important factor. This is the music we like, and it is natural that elements from these are to be found in our music. In my CD-player right now is Dan Sartain. Check it out!
Movies has also always been a source of inspiration. Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Natural Born Killers, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Last Man on Earth, Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn…

What music do you listen to at home?
It varies from day to day, but lately I have been listening a lot to Dan Sertain and Imelda May, but all in all I listen to a lot of outlaw country like The Byrds, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson. Garage and rockabilly inspired artist is also often to be heard at my place. From time to time Morricone, and contemporary and classical like Ligeti and Straninski

What are your personal heroes? (not just music-wise)
David Lynch, Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons, Jack Kerouac…

Do you have any other music projects or (artistic) hobbies?
Together with Dag and Morten, I play in different projects. We have a folk band called “The Tramps” with focus on Irish and American folk rock. In the band “Flying Shoes” we play country outlaw covers from Guy Clark, Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, David Allen Coe to mention some. Dag and me also play in a band called “The Brigade” and in a Norwegian folk group called “Tonereiser”. Writing poetry and drawing is also important to me.

You had quite some TV appearances in Turkey and the Turkish soccer team chose one of your songs as anthem. Why Turkey?
I don’t know. It started with the big radio station, Radio Eksen, playlisted a song from our previous album. It hit a nerve and soon we toured Turkey and participated on TV shows. When the soccer team chose one of our songs as their anthem, the roof really lifted.

Do you have any special relationship to this country?
We didn’t before they started playing us with high rotation on the radio. Now we have many Turkish friends and we tour there regularly.

Is there a new album in the planning?
We plan to start the recording of our next album this summer with release 2012.

Last time you toured Germany in 2005 and never again, why not? Will you come back? When?
We haven’t been on tour in Europe since because the best time to travel is when a new album is released. We have used two years in the studio, and combined with injuries and shit it has been a long time. If all goes as planned we will do a tour in October/ November with focus on Germany.

Will you attend any festivals this year?
We’re working on that. Nothing confirmed yet.