We were lucky to catch up with Oakland Rain (maren & Charlotte) recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Oakland Rain thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project we have worked on, is our full length English debut album “Twin Flames”. Part 1 (“Twin Flames Part I: The Evergreen”) is out this January. Especially one of the leading music videos “Sister Hymn” means a lot to us, and is a pillar of Part 1 of the double album.
The backstory of this album is 10 years of being a music duo, working really hard to find our most authentic and honest sound. We really want to convey the human’s inner turmoil and conflict. We find that we all carry fear and freedom inside, and those feelings are both linked and in conflict – like twin flames. We also like the double meaning of the title as we are actually twin sisters :)
We have found that the folk music that goes way back, really is where all of this new music comes from. Therefore, we really feel like honoring (in music, lyrics and film) what others, especially women, have done for us to have the opportunities we have today. “Sister Hymn” speaks to this, and we include our grandmothers (and their mothers) who have faced inequality in their lives, and how we are inspired by them.
The double album is about humans’ inner conflict between fear and freedom, as well as realism and escapism. But it starts off with “Sister Hymn” to honor those who had less opportunities to express themselves artistically (and elsewhere), and fought for our chance to be free and have rights. In other words, a common theme is bravery. Those before us were brave for our rights, which inspires us to be brave for those coming after us.
The first half (“The Evergreen”) is about realism, and covers themes of fear in different ways. The song “I’m Scared Of Everything” is a focus track and it’s very special to us. When touring with folk legend Judy Collins, she complemented it which was a pinch-me moment! We also have a song called “Snow Globe” covering mental health struggles in the aftermath of the pandemic – especially for young people.
Oakland Rain , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Oakland Rain is a music duo consisting of twin sisters Maren and Charlotte in our twenties, playing folk music. We both started writing songs as a response to grief and life’s brutality around age 10-11. We discovered playing together through a happenstance, where Maren joined on piano during Charlotte’s guitar lesson with “Imagine” (John Lennon). We started writing music together around age 12, and became a “band” age 15, right before starting music school. Right after high school we went on the road touring, building a team from the ground.
Our third sister Kathrine has been with us as manager from the very start, and we now have a bigger team but she is always part of it. It has given us the strength to be ourselves and dare to be brave in tough situations in the industry. Sisterhood is the antidote to patriarchy and inequality! It really is the foundation of our band and our music.
Releases have been 6 EPs in the first five years (2015-2020), a Norwegian record (2021), a pop “alter ego” mixtape (2021), and interpretations of Ibsen’s poems (2023). In other words we have done very different projects, which we are very happy about. Stretching the “creative muscle” is really important to us, and lets us know what we are really meant to say – and how we want it to sound. Working on diversity projects like our “alter ego” mixtape and documentaries, feels like an important duty as we benefit from certain privileges being “straight white girls”. It has also been a joy to find “hidden treasures” in Ibsen’s poem archive, and shine a light on them by composing music. It is a cultural heritage of his, that not many people know about – and reading the poems in Norwegian, we felt like doing something about it. We also want this to become accessible in English at some point. He really was a pioneer in writing multifaceted characters, and giving women a voice (both in plays and in poems).
One of the artistic parts we are most proud of is our upcoming album. We did’t know how to blend our existential (and at times very heavy) questions with country music, and felt brave in trying to do just that. Of course, the songs can be interpreted however you’d like – but we are proud of really trying to vocalize how we experience life as young sensitive people. An a-ha moment was paying tribute to our grandfather and how he influenced us with American folk and country music. We wrote a country song without thinking. It came from pure love and grief – and isn’t that what folk and country music does best? Cover lives of people. It felt very real when the sound of him was a fiddle, and it was almost “out of body” to make the sound of him come to life. We left all our preconceived notions at the door, and sang from the “soil of the soul” as Charlotte puts it.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
We found that we “discovered” the invisible ‘rules’ of the music industry by ourselves. After telling our mom different experiences each time we came home from touring, recording or having meetings, we eventually found a red thread.
Invisible rules:
1) The younger you are the more “market value” you have, but…
2) The younger you are as a girl, the less likely you are to write good music
In other words, when really seeing it, we realized that you can’t win.
It was ageism both ways, and bottom line is to have to prove you can write music. But it makes us sad, because artists should be allowed to just make art.
Ageism (both ways) is pretty cruel for any female, and can really affect mental health. Either you strive to not be expired to get your start, or you strive to still be considered when you’ve been here a while. Both versions are based on having to depend on others to be heard at all – which is obviously changing with new platforms and knowledge. We wish someone would call it out for us early so we could attack it head on from the beginning. We now obviously know that it all stems from the patriarchy and a previous model of power play. And we now know that we won’t subscribe to that mentality- but of course it needs the whole industry to be aware and not make choices based on those invisible rules.
End message: you are worthy and your art matters no matter who you are <3
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Our goal/mission that really drives our creative journey, is making people feel less alone. We always felt, in different ways, like we didn’t quite work in the box that we were “supposed” to fit in. And the more we wrote our way through our experiences, the more we understood that it is a universal feeling – and part of the human condition.
Whether it is being a sensitive human in a brutal and unfair world, being told to “toughen up”, fitting into the stereotypical gender roles, or battling mental illness which still comes with stigma. We really want our music and films to be a safe space for people to feel seen and heard. We all need to feel represented and valued as human beings. That is our heart cause.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.oaklandrain.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oaklandrain/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oakl.rain
- Twitter: https://x.com/oaklandrain_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oaklandrain
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/oakland-rain
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5KfRoJYMy6yuBdJfDXU1wR?si=WjfwpjQSRwqcj3_QWq0Lfg
Image Credits
Photo 1 cover (press photo): Tobias Hole Aasgaarden / South Coast Creative
Photo 2 (press photo): Tobias Hole Aasgaarden / South Coast Creative
Photo 3 (from music video): Ingvild Lyngsnes/ South Coast Creative
Photo 4 (press photo): Tobias Hole Aasgaarden / South Coast Creative
Photo 5 (on tour): Kathrine Wallevik Hansen
Photo 6 (on tour): Kathrine Wallevik Hansen
Photo 7 (on tour): Kathrine Wallevik Hansen
Photo 8 (on tour): Kathrine Wallevik Hansen
Photo 9 (album cover): Photo by Tobias Hole Aasgaarden, Artwork by Jane Long