AMY TURNER / E.J. WILSON
The gardens outside a Nordic Lutheran church built in the 1850s do not typically host a gospel group from Nashville, Tennessee on tour. But that is where HighRoad found itself this week, walking the grounds of a 19th century sanctuary before an evening that would end with a sold out crowd in a converted barn.
The band is deep into a run of Norwegian dates, and the following they have built overseas is starting to look less like a novelty and more like a genuine relationship between a North American act and an audience thousands of miles from home. Vocalist Sarah Davidson has been chronicling the trip in real time, and her updates read like postcards from a tour that has wandered well outside the usual circuit.
Davidson described a day that started with the old church gardens and turned into an impromptu border crossing. “As we walked downtown we also walked over to Sweden,” she said, describing a bridge she stopped to admire before ducking into a small Swedish cafe for coffee and crepes. It is the kind of afternoon that does not usually make it into a tour itinerary, but for a band playing towns close enough to another country to walk there, it became part of the day’s rhythm.
By evening the group had made its way to Sarpsborg, where the venue was a barn with a history of its own. Davidson called it a beautiful, historic space that locals had converted into a music venue, complete with an old pump organ tucked into the corner. The hosts fed the band American style, with hamburgers and hot dogs on the menu, a small gesture that Davidson said made the night feel like a genuine welcome rather than just another stop on the schedule.
The show itself delivered. Davidson described the crowd as sold out and packed, an audience that showed up ready for HighRoad and made no secret of it. For a Texas gospel band a continent away from home, that kind of reception speaks to how far the group’s reputation has traveled.
The night closed the way a lot of the best tour stories do, with a view nobody planned for. Davidson described the drive home under a sunset around 10 o’clock, still bright at an hour that would be full dark back in Texas, calling it a stunning end to what she summed up simply as a wonderful day.
For a band whose name has occasionally landed sideways in write ups and transcripts, from High Road to Highroad, there was nothing lost in translation on this leg of the trip. Norway heard HighRoad loud and clear.
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