Vibeke Saugestad Band / Attention Rebellion

Vibeke Saugestad Band is led by Vibeke Saugestad a Norwegian-born, power pop chanteuse with a powerful voice, and an energetic stage presence, now taking over the American rock’n’roll scene with her husband Ken Fox, bass player in The Fleshtones, Mark Westin on guitar, Josh Stark on guitar and Adam Napell on drums.

Vibeke grew up in, Moss, a small Norwegian coastal town just south of Oslo. Moss had been a hub for Norwegian garage bands since the sixties, and at an early age Vibeke gravitated towards the town’s rock’n’roll scene. She and four girlfriends started the band Avslørte Bondepiker in 1991, and soon Vibeke was “discovered” by the more established part of Moss’ rock scene, and the band Weld was born, an americana/roots-combo that got a lot of national acclaim, toured extensively, played the Roskilde festival, released two albums and a Christmas EP on EMI Records and won the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy (Spellemannspris) for their debut album.

By the new millennium, Vibeke decided to go solo. She wanted to get back to the simple, catchy melodies and a guitar driven sound she held so close to her heart; she was heavily influenced by bands like Fountains of Wayne, Silver Sun, Cub and Blondie, to mention a few. She wrote a handful of songs, got Sony Music on board, as well as star producer Michael Ilbert and her favorite Swedish band Brainpool to back her. A week at Medley Studio in Copenhagen and several follow-up sessions at Aerosol Grey Machine in the Southern Swedish Countryside resulted in the album “Into The Shimmering” (2001). For the touring version of the band, Brainpool’s David Birde stayed on as a guitar player, joined by Vibeke’s long time friend and Norway’s power pope himself, her Yum Yums band mate Morten Henriksen (Vibeke played keyboards in The Yum Yums for about ten years). Drummer Tomas Dahl (Caddy, Turbonegro) was brought on board, as well as Magnus Börjeson (Beagle, Roxette) on bass. This version of the band clicked so well and had so much fun on the road that Vibeke, David and Magnus decided to write a second album together, met for writing sessions in Oslo, Moss, and Copenhagen, recorded “Overdrive” at Aerosol Grey Machine and released it on Universal Music (2003). After a couple of years, touring with band members who lived in different countries proved to be too logistically difficult and expensive, and Vibeke continued with several versions of a local backing band, recorded her third album, “The World Famous Hat Trick” with Kyrre Fritzner in his recording studio FMU in Fredrikstad, Norway and released it on her own label Sprettball Records (2008). The switch to a smaller, self managed label also enabled her to venture outside of Norway, and “The World Famous Hat Trick” was released on Screaming Apple in Germany and Pop Detective Records in the US. The singles “He's Peculiar” and “Tonight” became US radio favorites, and the latter was featured on Little Steven's Underground Garage's CD compilation “The Coolest Songs In The World, Volume 8”.

Vibeke toured extensively in Norway, Italy, and Spain for a few years, both solo and with hers and Morten Henriksen’s side project The Twistaroos, a gritty garage band created for the love of bands such as The Detroit Cobras and Les Sexareenos, until Vibeke met her future husband Ken Fox, bass player in The Fleshtones, on the road in Europe and eventually moved to the US. Fast forward to 2024: Vibeke now lives in Beacon, NY, and for a closing party of her neighborhood bar in the fall of 2023, she got the idea of bringing her old solo material back to life with a great new band, consisting of her husband Ken Fox on bass, Mark Westin on guitar, Josh Stark on guitar and Adam Napell on drums.

Vibeke also performs with The Wynotte Sisters, and she does ventriloquist work with her little penguin pal, Punguin. (They ALSO have a band, called … you guessed it: The Punguins.) You can also follow Punguin on Instagram as the_punguin.

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