Americana Matinee: Erik Koskinen & Long Mama

Erik Koskinen is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, whose music is not categorized by sub-genres. Stylistically he is on his own. Influenced by roots music of the Americas and the world, the rhythmic integrity and musical tone are as important as the lyrical content and the artistic intent.

Erik Koskinen’s Burning the Deal (released June 28, 2019 on Real Phonic Records/Tone Tree Music) is steeped in American roots traditions. Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, raised in Northern Michigan and upper New York state, then living in urban Minneapolis and now, rural Minnesota, Koskinen grew up with the rhythms of weather, factory towns, and farmlands. Koskinen worked in construction for years as he developed his music career, and he now resides on a farm near where he owns a recording studio in Cleveland, Minnesota, population 717.

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Long Mama’s music blisters with the heart and grit of someone who has lost hard, loved harder, and licked her burns until they stung then silvered. In a drafty attic just west of the Milwaukee River they grew up on, you’ll find songwriter Kat Wodtke (Wood-key) raking through notebooks in search of a salve: words, stories, and sounds to temper the dumpster fires we never mean to light. Flickering behind each song is Wodtke’s lived insight into our human faults and fissures — the moments in life when we can slip and lose our footing or claw our way out, better people on the other side of the blaze.

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Host or Publisher The Cooperage