Before I get too far into this, I just want to say if this is the first episode you've ever heard of this show, you might want to try another one. This is a little bit on the outer edges of what we typically do around here, but I have faith that the folks who have listened to this show for quite a while will take this journey with me.

Quite a few years ago, I played my very first gig in Bergen, Norway, and I landed at the airport, and the promoter came and picked me up.

It was a very nice man named Pitten.

I didn't know anything about him at all, but I had just seen a documentary in Nashville

at our little art theater called Until the Light Takes Us.

And it was about the birth of the black metal scene in Norway. And it was on my mind.

I really enjoyed the documentary. It's one of my favorite music documentaries to this day, just a

strange, strange doc that you ought to look up. As Pitton was driving me to my hotel, we had

about a half hour drive. And asked him I said you know anything

about the black metal scene around here the very quiet calm peaceful man he

was very nice to be around we talked a little bit but he wasn't opening up but

after a while he finally opened up and started talking and I figured out that

he had produced some of the albums that helped define

what black metal is. Most people think of folk music as being regional and there's arguments that

there's no such thing as folk music anymore because music isn't regional anymore. I have a very

unpopular view of that that not a lot of my friends agree with,

but I like to think of folk music as something a little more broad, something that isn't just a person playing acoustic guitar somewhere.

I think of the earliest forms of hip-hop in neighborhoods in New York City as being a form of folk music. And he was indigenous to that area.

And I also think of black metal as being some form of folk music. Something that happened in a

circle of friends and grew across the world. I explained that to Pitton when we were in the car and I asked him,

do you see where I'm coming from with that? And he said, he was nice enough to at least pretend

that he thought there was some validity to it. So as you're listening to this, I just want

...