Even by the relatively hard-rocking standards that Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen set with her Hedvig Mollestad Trio, ‘Bees in the Bonnet’ is a surprisingly heavy, riff-driven album. Her set at Bridge Guitar Festival proved that it is possible to drive up the energy even further. After the show, I had a brief chat with the Norwegian boundary-pushing fusion guitarist about the album and where the Hedvig Mollestad Trio is at now.

As stated before, ‘Bees in the Bonnet’ is Hedvig’s most riff-focused album except for maybe her solo debut ‘Echidna’ from 2020. “But that was two drum sets and no electric bass”, she emphasizes. “So that was something else from a compositional point of view. For the trio, however, this is definitely our heaviest album. We really cranked it in the studio. After all, when you play in the studio, you can play as loudly as you want, and you get a different sound out of the amp.

At the venues we play, most of the time, I can’t play as loudly to get the sound that I have in the studio, where you can close the doors and just oomph it up. So I think that has greatly affected the sound on ‘Bees in the Bonnet’. We are, and try to be, a versatile band that can play smaller venues as well as big venues, and adjust to that.

If it doesn’t sound exactly as it does on the record, I think that’s a good thing. We want the record to contain good versions of the songs, but not the definitive versions of the songs. And especially not for every situation.”

Speeding Up the Process

‘Bees in the Bonnet’ was recorded somewhat earlier than expected. “We had plans to go into the studio, but not until January”, Hedvig nods. “But then Ivar (Loe Bjørnstad, drummer) decided that he wanted to be the father of twins, haha! So we had to push everything forward for it to be done before that happened, which meant we had to do it in October. So we just had to speed up the process a little bit.

And that is always a very good thing for creativity, I think. The conditions changed, so we had to think differently. It was a very constructive process. I had already started working on the material before the summer, but then came the time to finish stuff, and I had to meet up with Ellen (Brekken, bassist). We were working on the material, and then Ivar came in the last week or so. We had a good plan for what it was going to be before we went into the studio.

I don’t think the process impacted the sound of the album too much. But I do think what we have been doing since the last record (‘Ding Dong. You’re Dead.’, 2021) has impacted the sound. We have been playing live a lot, and the last record was recorded during the pandemic. As a result, we have been playing this material live for four years.”

Taking Care of the Moment

“In the beginning, we played a lot of jazz venues, but since then, we have been playing more and more alternative and rock venues. And you want to connect with your audience; we had so much fun playing more straightforward-ish songs, if that is something that exists within our niche. So I think we just wanted to dig deeper into that.

Beside that, I have this beautiful improv trio (Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns) with Ståle Storløkken (keyboard player) and Ole Mofjell (drummer), where I can go crazy and do psychedelic, out-there stuff. So it’s nice to kind of explore two different directions.

There are still a lot of solos on ‘Bees in the Bonnet’, but it’s nice for me to have the space to just play a really nice melody, and put a lot of energy into that, and to create longer lines that are not improvised. Like the long melody on ‘All Flights Cancelled’. It’s just really fun to play.

And that’s what it’s supposed to be. Because when you kind of have these moments when you forget about stuff, you just focus on playing the music you play, you’re not alone. You’re there with a lot of people that you’re going to give to in the moment. And you are also going to give them the joy of doing exactly that to them as well. After that, they go back to scrolling on their phones and reading all the sad news in the world. So that moment is very important to take care of.”