The Royalties

The Royalties: A five-piece popular-music orchestra located in Bergen, Norway. It all started out when Alf, Tommy and BK formed a punk-band in hometown Kristiansund back in the high-school years. After tiring of relentless giging (four gigs in three years), they decided it was time to move on to where the money was. Thus it was that the band, now soon to graduate, found itself onstage at local pubs doing covers of everything. It was during these hard and troublesome times the band adopted their famous motto: "This just ain't gonna happen." With this as their only form of ideology the band soon went into despair. After a few more disastrous gigs which resulted in the crowd rioting after too many misspelled lyrics and out-of-pitch vocal performances, they decided it was time to call it quits. The band consequently split and the members all went their depressingly separate ways.

Singer/songwriter Tommy got stuck in the moment back in Kristiansund as the years went by, while BK and Alf had the brains enough to move on and left the sleepy old village for the just minutely more vibrant Bergen. Bands came and went while Tommy remained stuck in the moment as well as in his trusty job as a cab driver. One night in the year of 2003 while Tommy was dozing of in his cab, waiting for the drunk oil-rig commuters to finish their bar-brawl and head home with his cab, an incident occurred that would mark a turning-point in Tommys life. In the dark midst of the night an eerie light appeared in front of the car. It soon turned out to be the spirit of Roy Orbison. He spoke to Tommy, and urged him to leave the city and focus on song-writing instead of drinking himself to death or driving the Taxi. The cabbie/singer, by now very tired of helping others choke on their own vomit, decided this was an act of, if not God, then certainly a god of his own liking, and drove home for the night. After a few phone-calls the next day and a timely flat tire, Tommy packed up his Toyota HiAce and had by the end of the day become a resident of Bergen.

The times had been tough for BK and Alf in Bergen as well. By the time Tommy once again joined their ranks they had seen the rise and fall of many a band. They had had encounters with Satan in many a form, and they had learned the hard way that He, more often than not, comes in the shape of a Record Deal. So it was that The Royalties, by now completed by long-time friends and brothers in despair Mattis and Tor Erik, rose from the ashes in late 2005. The debut album was recorded in April/May at Gjøa studios (www.gjoastudio.com) with producer HP Gundersen and engineer Erik Freding, and was mixed/mastered by Yngve Sætre at Duper studios in June. A release date is not yet set, as often is the case with release dates, but you will certainly be the first to know if you stay tuned to this site. The Royalties are here to stay, and now you can check it out, if you like