This week I’ll be talking up the featured guests for Saturday’s Great Northern Radio Show, broadcasting live from the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. MinnesotaBrown readers can still get free tickets by calling 218-327-5780 (seating at 4:30, live on Northern Community Radio at 5).
Today, it’s Actual Wolf. A lot of people ask if Actual Wolf is a guy, a band or a concept. To me it seems the answer is “yes.”
Of course, Actual Wolf is a guy. People around Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where my kids attend school and we buy our groceries, know him as Eric Pollard, a local outlaw who’s always had a thing for music. But sometime in the recent past, he broke away from some bands he was playing with to go solo under the moniker Actual Wolf, a reference to how a lot of guys try for a “wolf” sound in their music, but friends called Eric an “Actual Wolf.” Recently the guy “Actual Wolf” was named the best songwriter of 2013 by City Pages.
Actual Wolf isn’t just a guy, though. He added more musicians and has been touring Minnesota and beyond as the band “Actual Wolf.”
But if you spend any time with the Wolf and his music, you can see that he blends musical interests and influences into a sound that might well qualify as a concept. Is he the new Johnny Cash? The new Roy Orbison? The new Marty Robbins? The new Bob Dylan?
Hell if I know. Maybe all, maybe none. He’s Actual Wolf. And he’ll be on his hometown stage at the Reif Center this Saturday for the Great Northern Radio Show. You should listen. And if you’re in the area, you should come out to see him live at the show, or after when he and some friends play the Locker Room in Coleraine.
Here’s the brand new single “Kerosene and Spark” by Actual Wolf.
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