Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns - Bitches Blues

Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen – guitar. Ståle Storløkken – organ and synth. Ole Mofjell – drums. “Weejuns is all about interplay, ” explains Mollestad, a former Young Jazz Talent of the Year and Artist in Residence in her native Norway. “Bitches Blues consists of six instrumental tracks, or stretches of music, with an extreme range of dynamics. Some are based around hefty beats, while other tracks are far more lyrical and rubato. It ranges from riff-based rock-ish stuff, to loud chaos, to melancholy ballads and even totally free improvisations. ” Taking a cultured yet refreshingly instinctive approach to intertwining instruments and influences, Bitches Blues (a wry play on Miles Davis album Bitches Brew) veers unpredictably from slow and soft, distinctly sectioned songs with disciplined chord progressions to explosive eruptions of cathartic and complex structures. Weejuns (a slang abbreviation of “Norwegians”) introduced themselves in 2023 with a self-titled double live album. Originally assembled by Mollestad for the Kongsberg Jazz Festival, where she’d been awarded the prestigious Musicians Prize, Weejuns’ collective chemistry has proven enduring and alluring, in part as a foil to the Hedvig Mollestad Trio’s heaviest album to date, 2025’s Bees in the Bonnet. A graduate of the Norwegian Academy of Music, Mollestad has released eight acclaimed albums with her eponymous Trio, toured across Europe and North America, and performed with the likes of Nels Cline, Colin Stetson, Ingrid Laubrock, Trevor Dunn, and Shahzad Ismaily. The signature of her 15-year career has been fusing serious chops with an overt focus on finding fun in sound. For years, Mollestad obsessed over music and little else. The daughter of a jazz musician, she lost herself in his record collection, studying classic works by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass and Jim Hall before discovering riff-raging titans like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Mahavishnu Orchestra in her 20s. This led to the formation of Hedvig Mollestad Trio, whose relentless recording and touring schedule since the early ’10s have earned the guitarist a stream of accolades, including two Norwegian Grammys (Spellemannprisen) and DownBeat magazine naming her one of the 25 artists who “could shape jazz for decades” in November of 2020. Ståle Storløkken is a founder and long serving member of Supersilent and Elephant9, has served as Terje Rypdal´s “right hand” since the mid 90s, and collaborated with Motorpsycho on record and on stage... as well as countless others. Ole Mofjell is the youngest member, active with Krokofant, Signe Emmeluth’s Amoeba and his own free jazz trio 3 Days Of Maceration.