Brennen Leigh in Oslo

The small stage of the Herr Nielsen is nearly as crowded as the venue itself. Musicians, instruments, microphones, amps and lights all snuggly pieced together like a puzzle; turning any of them, even a centimeter one way or the other, they wouldn’t quite fit.
 
A thin woman strolls onto the stage, her guitar slung around her back. As she pushes her long blonde tresses out of her eyes, she introduces herself, “Hi, I’m Brennen Leigh. It’s good to be back here in Norway, we’re gonna play some songs for you tonight, I hope you like them.”
The ‘Fargo’ accent that she had mere moments ago, while sipping herbal tea and chatting with her brother Seth and I, has disappeared somewhere south of the Mason/Dixon border, befitting the character of the songs she is about to sing. With a simple nod over her right shoulder, the slide guitarist begins to play and the other band members join in.

Moments later, a snapped guitar string during her first song fails to disrupt the show, Brennen simply hands her guitar to a volunteer tech in the front row who offers to re-string it for her. She then matter-of-factly informs the audience that she doesn’t know any jokes and reaches behind her for an idle mandolin. When she turns back to face the crowd, she says, “ladies, learn two instruments and your hands will never be empty.” 

Brennen’s repertoire is comprised of vintage country and folk love-gone-wrong songs from the 1960’s & 70’s, as well as a few of her own compositions. Despite her youth, she sings them all with the authenticity of an old soul, making the case that hearts break at any age and the sound resonates across even national and cultural boundaries. 
The Norwegian capital seemed an unlikely place to find such a strong following of this genre of country music, and an even more unusual setting for a reunion of Moorhead High School (MHS) alumni. Brennen, her brother Seth, and I all graduated from MHS in the last decade. A fourth alum, a Norwegian exchange student Seth has kept in touch with over the years hasn’t arrived yet. Like many greats vocalists before her, Brennen suffers from nodes on her vocal chords, so while she gives her voice a break and has another honey-sweetened tea, Seth brings me up to speed on where the ‘country’ road has taken them.
Although Brennen began her music career playing gigs in venues much like the Herr Nielson around the greater Fargo-Moorhead area, the Hulberts spent the better part of the last 5 years finding new audiences for her music both in the US and Europe.
Brennen and Seth made their first trip to Norway 4 years ago, while playing the music festivals circuit all over Europe. Seth folds his arms and curls his fingers around his mug of beer, “We feel at home in Oslo, we understand the culture and we’ve made some good friends over there who make it easy to play full band gigs which has opened a lot of doors for us.” The Hulberts are so at home in Oslo, that they return every summer to stay with and play with the four band members for as many gigs as possible.

This trip, Brennen is promoting her third album “Devil’s on My Trail”, which has received rave reviews reaching from Texas to the Netherlands, and given the list of artists who contribute to the album, it’s not surprising. “Devil’s On My Trail was released independently, we did it at two different studios it took us just over a year to get it all down,” Seth says, “but we got a lot of great guests to collaborate with us: Roscoe Beck plays bass on a few tracks and he had just finished touring with the Dixie Chicks, Cindy Cashdollar, one of the most sought after steel players, James Hand and Earl Poole Ball plays the opening bars on the piano, he’s quite a legend, played with Johnny Cash and Elvis, to name a few.”

Closer to home, the pair played a four song set at WE Fest in 2002. Seth beams, “It was a crowd of nearly 35,000, the rush of a lifetime. High Plains Reader, did a cover story on us, it was really exciting.” Taking a small break during September, Seth and Brennen go back on the road in October to begin touring around Texas and southern California.
Seth sums up Brennen’s place in the international country music scene with the feedback she received from the judges of Nashville Star, “no one knows if she’s the past or the future sound of country music.” The question of whether or not this is part of a wider resurgence of this kind of music, isn’t on the minds of the audience in the small Oslo pub. Much like Brennen’s music, the newcomers are indistinguishable from the veteran crowd.
The album “Devil’s on My Trail” is available from Lonestar Records on http://www.lonestarmusic.com.