There's No Hills in This Country

If you're an up-and-coming musician trying to catch a break, here's a trick for the new millennium. Give your songs the same names as ones people might be searching for (they don't even have to be covers, as you'll see in a moment), and get them into iTunes (okay, so maybe I contradict myself...). Indeed, I've lately been downloading versions of songs by artists I've never heard of, often to great musical advantage.

Poking about in this fashion, I came across a song by a singer named Wenche. It's a confusingly poor choice of name: if you're playing it for the hoots you'd spell it right, and if you're not, it seems an unfortunate association.

There was something else about Wenche, too. She was a good singer with solid (if entirely traditional) arrangements, and she'd pass for a country singer in any of the Red States of America...except she was just a little too country, you know? Her accent was just a little too pure, her drawl just a little too acute, her contralto trilled just a little too much. And there was still that Renfest-gone-bad name. Wenche?

Well, wouldn't you know, the too-country-to-be-true Wenche is Wenche Hartmann, and she's Danish. It was like Sue Foley all over again.

For a moment I hoped that Wenche would be playing in Denmark the week after next, but her Web site, despite claiming that “Wenche keeps a close contact with her audience”, doesn't list a tour date until early 2008. And as for her position in the musical pecking order, she's still thrilled that she “had the great honour of being the opening speaker at the Fish Festival in Strandby”.