BONNIE AND THE JETS – Empower the magic formula

Welcome to Bonnie and the Jets

So Caroline, I want first to welcome you here to Femme Metal Webzine, and thank you already for the time that you are dedicating to me. How are you, and how is the promotion of the new album treating you?

Thank you for having me first. And yeah, I’m doing good. We’ve recently released our album 2, which came out digitally October 17th. So it’s our second chapter in our trilogy.
And if everything is done according to plan, then the third one is going to be out next year, actually. So yeah, we’re not a lazy crowd.

Founding Bonnie and the Jets

So let me ask you foremost how Bonnie and the Jets got together, and how it developed into a band and you guys got together in the end, at the end of the day.

Well, the story starts back in 2019 when me and the producer and guitarist in our group, Dagfin Hjorth Hovind, started working with old demos. Then we found our first drummer, who has also mixed the two albums. After that, it took some months before we found our keyboardist Kristian Wentzel and our also band member Johanna Dahl Bryne, who is a backing vocalist and also does percussion live. Recently we actually found our stable band group, because it’s 2025 and it’s difficult to find the right people to stay for a long time.

Founding Bonnie and the Jets part II

In March 2025 we found our amazing bass player, Haldor Haug Knutsen, who is a super talented young guy and also very nice personality-wise, which is very important when you spend a lot of time together. We also found our drummer of Alf Magne Hillestad around the same time.

The last nine months, I feel like we’ve found the group as it’s going to be for a long time.
Obviously there have been changes in the line-up, but now it feels very good with the combination of people in the group.

From the start until now, it’s been guitarist Dagfin Hjorth Hovind and myself developing the music, but now I honestly don’t think the band has ever sounded better. It’s a very good combination of instrumentalists.

Recording Bonnie and the Jets II

Now let me ask you: you just mentioned that Bonnie and the Jets II has been released.
How was it working on it, producing it, and working on the songs, considering how the band developed and structured? You also have a backing vocalist, so that asks for more space.

Yeah, to be honest it’s been quite a challenging process to wrap up the album. There were changes in the group, so on some tracks the guitarist is actually playing bass, and the previous drummer is playing drums on all tracks.

We ended up recording the drums all over again because we weren’t pleased with the sound, especially the bass drum and some details in the kit. That was stressful, because we had deadlines for vinyl printing and release concerts already booked. But you always learn from those challenging processes [laughs].

Johanna, our backing vocalist, did an amazing job tracking together with me and another vocalist we hired to blend the sound, because one or two voices weren’t saturated enough for us. We also had an amazing vocalist, Leon Victoria Gilbertson, hired to do the high notes on the backing vocals. So yeah, we’ve had some add-ons when it comes to musicians.

The lessons learned

The next question connected to that is: what is the most important lesson you learned from this challenging period considering the unsatisfaction for the recorded material and the pressing deadlines?

There are a lot of lessons for sure. And I guess one of the biggest lessons learned is trust your gut feeling when it comes to choices you do when you’re gonna record, because obviously the result you’re going to end up with will always be coloured by the choices you made. And this referring to, for example, the drum thing, you know, because I remember we were.

We were talking together about, okay, yeah, but that’s not exactly the same. You can’t mix yourself out of a problem. It will always be visible in the soundscape. For example, with the drums—we knew it wasn’t exactly what we planned, but thought it would be fine.
Next time, we know: we need the drums we intended to have.

The trilogy

What also makes it challenging is that this album is part two of a trilogy. On which themes is this trilogy based, and what does Bonnie and the Jets 2 represent?

Reinvention, karma, and change are three important words for this album. The lyrics reflect that—one song is called Reinvent Yourself, about it never being too late to change or develop yourself. You know, you’re not stuck in a box or whatever. So I think the lyrics are also representing the words I told. And I think we’ve developed our sound even more that. We’ve even more kind of made our sound more specific, if that makes sense. We’ve also developed our sound further and made it more specific.

The first part of the trilogy

What did the first part represent when it was released?

At the time, we didn’t even know it would be a trilogy. We developed the sound with Eiliv Sagrusten, which I mentioned before. He was the founding drummer and has doing the mixing. He’s actually a heavy drummer, heavy metal drummer. Then you have Dagfin, which has a lot of those classic rock idols. You know, he said maybe one of the biggest Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin fans you can find and let.

You know, and then you have me as the main songwriter and the vocalist, which I have a gospel and soul background. That was why we felt that the blending sound of the soul rock, which we like to call it, was kind of born in the first album. Maybe that’s an answer that birth and foundation was the basis of the first album.

Rock, soul and gospel: the magic formula of Bonnie and the Jets

Now you mentioned, well, there is a drummer which has a metal background. And then you said another member of the band is an old rock fan. To follow, there is you that you come from a soul and gospel background. It’s curious how you can find all these elements in the album and how they go together hand in hand...

It’s interesting. And I guess that that’s why we decided to call our sound or our genre or whatever. You know, I don’t like to put ourselves in the box, but obviously all of us have a tendency to do it because we need to find the references. We need to compare it to something else.\

“We’ve been calling our sound soul rock”

I hate the boxes. For me, music is music. It doesn’t have to be categorized in a box, you know.

Yeah, for sure. But after all, we’ve been calling our sound soul rock, and I think we can, you know, feel comfortable with that kind of label in a sense. But of course, there are songs that are more rocky. There are more songs that are more gospel or more. Maybe even Americana or pop. But in the end, our sound, more or less, is soul rock.

You know, out of Bonnie and the Jets 2, they were released, three singles, which are Naked, House of Creation, and Diamonds and Gold. What can you tell me about these songs?

Naked is a song that is I think when it comes to those genre boxes we just talked about, that is maybe the song that is a classic soul rock song, you know, because obviously the way I’m singing and the phrasing and everything is very soul.

But you still have this kind of hard, punchy way of expressing the soundscape. And lyric wise, I think the song is quite strong one because it represents the fact that everybody came to this earth naked and nobody, no one is more important than another. You know, it’s like we’re all equals, we’re all human. So in that sense that song stands out with a very strong meaning to it, I think.

The single House of Creation

However, when it comes to House of Creation, that is maybe a bit harder song, you know, it has a very 70s rock vibe to it and the guitarist and I had a very fun time writing it together.

And it’s actually based on one of his many riffs which he has been having, you know, in his archive for many, many years. He actually gave me a challenge, like, try to write something that it’s like a bit more punchy and quick and sharp in the pre chorus.

Then it goes from this kind of very 70s dreamy way of singing in the verses and then to the pre chorus where it’s like very almost rapping without rapping. It’s quite punchy. Definitely it has more classic rock vibe to it.

Indeed, it is about the potential of the human, you know, it’s endless. We’re able to do anything we want when it comes to creating stuff. It’s amazing how much potential we all have, you know.

The single Diamonds and Gold

And the last one you mentioned, Diamonds and Gold, it has more of a film noir vibe. I think it was one journalist at France’s Roadie Magazine simply defined the song like that. For its vibe, given to its big anthem, it could appear in a film noir from the 60s.

Regarding the lyrics, it’s about standing up for yourself and not letting anyone tear you down, you know, because there are a lot of situations in which people let put down by others, you know, especially in relationships. It has a kind of inspirational written lyric in it.

I know that you are here and there in Norway playing some gigs, but are you guys thinking also to open to tour outside Norway?

Yes, actually we’ve been over in the UK several times. Yeah, we were in the London area in August 2025 and played at the Wokingham Festival. Then, we went to France a couple of years ago to play at a blues festival in Britany.

So we’ve been doing some things abroad, and hopefully it’s going to be more gigs abroad because it’s very nice to be able to show our music live to audiences in other countries as well.

Bonnie and the Jets II  is out now, and can be purchased here.

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