TONE’S STORY

I was the third of five kids born to Pentecostal parents on the Norwegian island of Frøya, about two hours by boat from Trondheim. We all got a Bible and a guitar as kids, and we sang harmonies and played together. We had no TV, no phone for a long time, no pop music. I didn’t see my first movie until I was 16. (It was Airplane.) 

In church, my dad would speak in tongues, and I prayed to God to do it too, but by the time I was around 13, nothing had happened, and that's when I slowly started questioning the beliefs of my family. I found a high school in Trondheim, and later applied to the Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts; I had never seriously painted before then, but I painted like a madwoman, and got in. During my twenties I became a punk, shaved my head, and backpacked around Europe. I did big art installations, sculptures, and paintings in Norway. Making a living as an artist was really hard. I always lived in the poorest and scariest parts of town. When I was 30 years old, I received a prestigious grant that's given to one Norwegian artist a year for the International Studio Program at MoMA’s PS1. I packed a suitcase and got on a plane to New York.

My first place in New York was a room at the scummiest hotel, near Gramercy Park. (I had never seen a cockroach in my life!) In January of 1997, I found an apartment sublet in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I was used to living in sketchy places—it meant cheap rent—so Red Hook didn’t scare me. The sky was big, and the ocean close, and I felt right at home. The guy that I subleased from said, “There's a bar around the corner—I'll introduce you to the owner.” That's how I first met Sunny Balzano. There was an obvious age difference, but Sunny was the most charming man I had ever met, and it was impossible not to fall in love with him. 

Sunny and I ran the bar for a few years, first as a social club called the Red Hook Yacht and Kayak Club, then as Sunny’s Bar, until Sunny was diagnosed with late-stage cancer in 2007. After that, I ran the business on my own. During this time, I gave birth to our daughter, Oda, and I also met Kate and Lou Giampetruzzi, who asked if they could sit in the front of the bar and sing some bluegrass songs. To my surprise, it was the music from my childhood! Later, some people that had a jam at a different place asked me if I could host a jam. More than twenty years later, I still lead Tone’s Bluegrass Jam every week. It's a welcoming jam that embraces the true spirit of old-fashioned music.

So much has happened in the last few years: Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Sunny passing away in 2016, and a three-year lawsuit when most of the Balzano family tried to force a sale. I just couldn't give the bar up—this is where I belong. I bought the family out on July 25, 2017. I got my American citizenship on May 16, 2023; May 17 is the Norwegian Independence Day, so my national birthdays are together. I feel like I'm 100% percent American, and 100% Norwegian. My job is to provide a big living room, with acceptance of and curiosity for the human experience we all travel through. I think that's why people feel good here, and I think that the people who visit take a piece of it with them wherever they go.