MARK OLSON & INGUNN RINGVOLD

Born and raised in rural Minnesota amongst a family of farmers and schoolteachers, Mark Olson has spent more than four decades creating some of the most influential and enduring music in the Americana and alternative country movement. Predominantly self-taught, Olson developed a distinctive style built around alternate guitar tunings, hypnotic melodies and his trademark two-part vocal arrangements that often begin in unison before blossoming into breathtaking harmony.

In 1985 Olson founded legendary Minneapolis roots-rock pioneers The Jayhawks. As principal songwriter, singer and guitarist, he helped shape a body of work that would become hugely influential on the emerging Americana scene. Albums such as Blue Earth, Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass are now regarded as genre-defining classics, inspiring countless artists who followed. The band's rich blend of country, folk and rock helped lay much of the groundwork for what we now know as Americana music.

Americana UK described Olson as:

"A pathfinder, one of the true leaders of a movement, a genuine seminal artist."

Following his departure from The Jayhawks in the mid-1990s, Olson embarked on a deeply personal and creatively fertile period with The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers. Across seven acclaimed albums, he explored a more intimate and organic musical landscape, producing some of the most heartfelt songwriting of his career. His subsequent solo releases, particularly The Salvation Blues, further cemented his reputation as one of America's most authentic and emotionally resonant songwriters. AllMusic praised that album as "modern desert country music at its very best."

Today Olson performs alongside his wife and musical soulmate, Norwegian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ingunn Ringvold. Hailing from Larvik, Norway, Ringvold has been performing and recording since childhood. A gifted vocalist with an instinctive feel for melody, she is also an accomplished arranger whose emotionally rich string and instrumental textures have become an integral part of the duo's sound. Beyond her collaborations with Olson, she has released a series of highly regarded solo albums and has toured extensively throughout Europe and beyond.

Their partnership has produced a remarkable series of recordings including Good-bye Lizelle, Spokeswoman of the Bright Sun and Magdalen Accepts The Invitation. The recordings have attracted widespread critical acclaim. MOJO named Good-bye Lizelle its Americana Album of the Month, while Americana UK called it "a significant, bold and beautiful album." Record Collector praised its "great warmth and intimacy that reveals ever more treasures with each listen."

Together, Olson and Ringvold have forged something genuinely unique. Their voices intertwine with an almost telepathic understanding developed through years of writing, recording and touring together. Olson himself describes Ringvold's voice as "one of natural beauty" and says that singing close harmonies with his wife is "very much a treasure."

The couple now live and create from their home in California's remote Surprise Valley, where songs are written amongst vast desert landscapes, mountain skies and the company of their two beloved Great Pyrenees dogs. Their music reflects that environment — expansive, spiritual, deeply human and connected to the natural world. Many of their recordings are made using simple analogue techniques, favouring authenticity, atmosphere and performance over studio trickery.

This rare appearance at Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre offers a unique opportunity to experience one of Americana's true pioneers in the most intimate of settings. Mark Olson's songs have soundtracked lives for over forty years, while Ingunn Ringvold brings a voice and musicality that elevate every performance. Together they create music of extraordinary warmth, beauty and honesty — the kind of performance that reminds us why live music matters.

For lovers of The Jayhawks, Americana, folk, country-rock and beautifully crafted songwriting, this promises to be a very special evening indeed.

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MARK OLSON & INGUNN RINGVOLD INVITE LISTENERS TO JOIN THEM FOR A FASCINATING MUSICAL JOURNEY ON

DESERT HEALTH FARM SACRED SONGS – TRUST US!

Out September 2026 on Rock Svirke Records

The husband-and-wife duo's fourth collaboration mines what Mark Olson describes as a "Desert dulcimer circle healing centre vibe" — a deeply atmospheric collection awash with both darkness and light.

A roller coaster standing silent in a long-demolished canyon. Walks through centuries-old Orthodox churches. A winding journey down Topanga Canyon. An isolated pizza parlour beneath the vast desert skies of Twenty-Nine Palms. These vivid fragments of memory, experience and imagination swirl together in the warm afterglow of Desert Health Farm Sacred Songs – Trust Us!, the remarkable new album from Jayhawks founder Mark Olson and his wife, Norwegian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ingunn Ringvold.

Due for release on September 18th via Rock Svirke Records, the album's eleven songs draw inspiration from the couple's recent travels together, the separate roads they travelled before finding one another, and the countless musical influences that continue to shape their creative lives. While the pair remain rooted in the rich Americana landscapes explored on their previous three collaborations, this latest collection ventures confidently into more mysterious and uncharted territory. Not always knowing exactly where the road would lead, Olson and Ringvold simply trusted the journey, encouraged by one another's company and unafraid to follow inspiration wherever it appeared.

The recordings took shape during the intense summer heat of Thermometer Shelter Studios in the remote reaches of Surprise Valley, California. It was a period that Olson recalls as both challenging and deeply rewarding.

"You really begin to miss family and friends, community with one another, and college bookstores. The music begins to ask you something at this point: Am I strong? Can I do this all alone? Where am I going?"

Those questions became part of the album's soul.

"We wanted to go another way," Olson explains. "Finding new ways of floating above the Armenian mountain streams of our memories when we played music. A language we only understood when nature spoke to us. We decidedly put melody first in a modal sense of the distance between notes and harmony. The writing, melodies and lyrics, then the recording and the takes, are very focused and clean. In the past I would get a start and go for the finish line as fast as possible. This time I doubled and tripled back, including on the artwork, to make sure everything was nice."

The sonic palette of Desert Health Farm Sacred Songs – Trust Us! is equally adventurous. Ringvold contributes an extraordinary range of instruments, including the haunting Armenian Qanon and the ever-enigmatic Mellotron, adding colours and textures that drift through the album like brushstrokes on an impressionist canvas.

"The arrangements act like different colours in an impressionistic painting," she explains.

Every song was recorded inside a hundred-year-old house, lending the album an organic warmth and beautifully unvarnished character. The creative partnership between Olson and Ringvold was reflected in the recording process itself. Olson handled the analogue engineering while Ringvold oversaw the digital side, each complementing the other's strengths. Award-winning producer John Schreiner, whose work also graced Spokeswoman of the Bright Sun, returned to mix and master the project. Olson speaks glowingly of the warmth, depth and spaciousness that Schreiner consistently brings to the music.