the BallPark goes to Iceland

Fleur is excited

One of my BallParkees, Fleur Ball is a country and western superstar, as she is want to tell anyone who will listen. Within a short time, she realises that this town is HER SORT OF TOWN and she can feel a song coming on.
Skagastrond is the home to a very famous bar: the KantryBaer. http://www.kantry.is/  It was founded by the self proclaimed “Cowboy of the North” Hallbjörn Hjartarson in 1983 when Skagaströnd was an unlabeled dot on the map with a then-population of 400. The original building, which once served as the town’s general store, burned down in 1997 and was rebuilt the following year in its present iteration, as a log cabin made from 180 tons of pine imported from Loja, Finland.

Though no official figures exist, it is estimated that 12,000 people visited Iceland’s Capital of Country in 2000, the biggest year for the not-exactly-annual Country Festival. (2002 was the last year it was held.) Gunnar Halldórsson, Hallbjörn’s son-in-law, who also serves as Kántrýbaer’s chef and manager, and in this case, translator, estimates that he serves, on average, 150 guests on a Friday or a Saturday night during the height of summer.

Hallbjörn fell in love with country music without even knowing what it was. He grew up in a house not far from where Kántrýbaer stands, an abode near the sea where he was the youngest of 16. In 1939, the year he was born, the town’s population was 200; his family accounted for nearly 15 percent of it. One of his older brothers, Hjörtur, played Johnny Cash and Jim Reeves records ad infinitum.

The music turned something in me,” Hallbjörn says. “There was something in me that related to it. Then I moved to Keflavík and my passion just kept developing.”

In 1957, Hallbjörn packed a suitcase and moved to Keflavík Naval Air Station, which after 55 years under American operation, closed this September. He spent three years at Keflavík, two of which he lived on the base, where he worked various odd jobs, including cooking, cleaning, and manual labor. As he worked, he listened to the music that had migrated via ships, planes, and word of mouth from America, the lingering drawls of America’s then country western stars, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens, among others.

He moved from Keflavík to Reykjavík in 1960, where he worked in the reception of Hótel Vík by day and sang with bands off and on by night while he looked after his brother who “was always so drunk.” Hallbjörn migrated back to Skagaströnd in 1963, where he assumed the town’s unofficial title of social chairman. For the next three years he put together bands with which he toured – and entertained – most of North Iceland. By age 40, he produced his first album, Hallbjörn Sings His Own Songs (translated), the first of 10, and in 1983, Hallbjörn Hjartarson’s Kántrýbaer was born.

Also on the second floor of Kántrýbaer is Hallbjörn’s studio, where he can be found nearly 60 hours a week sitting in a leather office chair surrounded by more than 1,600 CDs and 500 records. His radio station, which he started 14 years ago and plays on frequencies 96.7, 102.1, and 107.0, can be heard from Blönduós to Akureyri and even across the sound to some coastal areas of the Westfjords. Almost every track on every disc is labeled with one, two or three dots. The tracks labeled with three dots are “very good,” those with one are “not so good.” Dwight Yoakum gets three dots consistently.

thanks to Iceland Review Online 22.01.2007 | 14:48 Feature of the Week: The Cowboy for the info