Erik & the Offbeats, Blue Corn (1989): “Blue Corn was like, ‘I’m an instrumentalist, I’m going to make an all instrumental album.’ The material was coming forth, so I had to develop it, nurture the fresh tunes into our repertoire, age them a little with familiarity, but keep them of the moment. I was like a doting dad with my baby who didn’t want anybody else playing on it.”
Mad Cat Trio (recorded 1993/released 1998): “Playing with Danny and Mark was a ball. When they weren’t doing the Bad Livers and I wasn’t doing the Snow Wolves, we had gigs as the Mad Cats. It was basically likethe boys getting together to play ball onthe sandlot.”
The Snow Wolves Orchestra, Earth Swing(1994): “That was the beginning of the orchestra, and the parent album of the She-Wolves to come. That’s one of my personal favorites of me going pretty much nuts by myself. It took me years to finish.”
Erik Hokkanen & Lumisudet, In the Heart of a Waking Dream (recorded 1998, released 2002): “Me and my Snow Wolf brothers is like me and my schizophrenic self. I was back over in Finland, living there for three months being a professor at Sibelius, back with my friends. We came up with this wild music.”
Erik & the She-Wolves (recorded 2001, released 2003): “That album is the miracle of the independent network. It took time to put all the pieces together, like a puzzle. A couple of tunes were live from the John Aielli show, some of it came from a house session. Half of the album was recorded in a nice studio. The Tosca girls were out with David Byrne then, so sometimes it was nine months between times we got back together with our She-Wolves baby.”
This article appears in December 2 • 2005.