Hayde defy any notion that bluegrass needs to be confined to Appalachia or any other corner of the American heartland. With a critically acclaimed debut album, a wealth of praise from critics throughout the continent, Hayde has embarked on successful tours and landed bookings with the biggest festivals.

With and an instrumental acumen that defines them as musicians with a determined drive and dynamic, the band — Rebekka Nilsson (vocals),  Ole Enggrav (guitar), Moa Meinich (fiddle), Charles Butler (banjo), Emil Brattested (dobro, mandolin), Sjur Marqvardsen (accordion), and David Buverud (upright bass) — have helped reinvent the idea of roots music in a new and imaginative way.

They were nominated for Band of the Year honors during the 2022 IBMA Momentum Award honors, and then capped that accomplishment by winning the Vocalist of the Year award.

One of the first songs they ever recorded was a take on the classic folk song “Wayfaring Stranger,” which, to their amazement, racked up millions of plays on YouTube, many of them from listeners in the U.S. It has surpassed twenty million plays so far, bringing their YouTube channel over 65,000 subscribers in the process. 

Hayde’s debut album Migrants (2021) was nominated for the Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannprisen) debuting at #4 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums chart and staying on the chart for 11 consecutive weeks. There next studio album is recorded and it will be released in 2026.

Migrants sold out fast  on Amazon, while also garnering an array of critical kudos.

Puls Music Magazine hailed it as “the impossible dream of what Norwegian musicians can achieve without the home-field advantage.”

Dust of Daylight called it “one of the best albums this year/” Meanwhile, Music News Norway proclaimed “Migrants is a good debut album that shows that Hayde has originality. I compare them to Nickel Cree and the stars Alison Krauss + Union Station.”

So too, the review that appeared in The Daily Paper seems to sum up their strengths.  “The album by Hayde is so solid that it is almost unbelievable.”

That’s an apt description given the band’s eclectic — and yes, extraordinary — musical mix. Although their sound is seeped in bluegrass — what some like to term “grassicana” — it also includes a blend of folk rock, and pop, along with other influences that span Irish, Celtic, and Norwegian folk music as well. Still, Norwegian bluegrass might be the easiest way to describe the sound, given the beautiful harmonies, infectious melodies, and the well-maintained mix of driving, uptempo tunes and delicate yet demonstrative ballads.

Hayde are frequently touring the US, and are known for their good relation with their fans, wide marketing reach and big turnouts. 

Bluegrass Beyond Borders: Norway’s Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra

Better known as the land of the midnight sun than as a place where the grass grows blue, Norway has nevertheless managed to spawn a band that stays true to tradition despite the seeming disparity between Scandinavia and Appalachia. Based in Oslo, the Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra found initial inspiration from an Oscar-nominated Belgian film titled Broken Circle Breakdown, and quickly made preparation to put a band together that could emulate the music heard in the movie. They were so enthused about the concept that the band’s founders even managed to persuade one of their friends to actually acquire a double bass by promising a position in a bluegrass band that didn’t even exist… at least not at that point.

Once the group actually coalesced and found their footing, the musicians — Rebekka Nilsson (vocals), Joakim Borgen (mandolin), Ole Enggrav (guitar), Moa Meinich (fiddle), Magnus Eriksrud (banjo), Emil Brattested (dobro), Sjur Marqvardsen (accordion), and the aforementioned recruit Jonas Wøien Olsen (upright bass, later replaced by David Buverud) — made it their mission to first learn songs from the film. Yet they also draw from a number of disparate individual influences as well, among them, Watchhouse (formerly known as Mandolin Orange), Tim O’Brien, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss & Union Station.

Early on, one of the first songs they opted to record was the classic Wayfaring Stranger, and to their delight, it quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of plays on YouTube, and introduced the group to a substantial-size audience. To date, they’ve surpassed seven million plays online, with their channel attracting over 30,000 subscribers.  Read more…