America’s 250th birthday was a low key affair for me, although my updated Spotify Independence Day playlist – ‘USA 250’ – received some airtime. Joining the usual suspects on this quintessential semiquincentennial version were some new additions, including Erik Koskinen, whose 4th of July captures the economic reality for many of America’s blue collar workers. His 2025 song is reminiscent of a runaway from Jim White’s purple patch, somewhere between No Such Place and Wrong-Eyed Jesus! The only consolation for Koskinen’s broken hearted blue collar narrator is homegrown weed. Behind on utility, alimony and propane bills, he works another public holiday “just to keep the bastards and the blood suckers away”. As a recent Gallup poll put it, “Affordability Still Dominates Americans’ Financial Worries”, a view which might not be shared by the United States’ Commander in Chief.
Koskinen’s blend of American roots music is a Midwest melting pot of folk, country, rock, blues, jazz, rockabilly and even polka. Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, he was raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and attended high school in Upstate New York. He has lived in Minnesota since 2005, first in Minneapolis, then moving 70 miles southwest to Saint Peter in 2014, with his Real-Phonic recording studio in nearby Cleveland. For those not familiar with Koskinen’s output, here’s a brief curriculum vitae. His early recordings are out of print, but the four studio albums that he has recorded since 2010 should be available from your usual supplier – Keep It To Yourself (2010), America Theatre (2014), Burning The Deal (2019) and Down Street/Love Avenue (2024). Also available are his Cruising Paradise EP (2018) and Live At The Real-Phonic Radio Hour 2011/2015, an album of live recordings of his band from a monthly show held at the James J. Hill Library in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 2016 Koskinen joined masters of slow core and fellow Minnesotans Low for their UK and Ireland Christmas tour; I was lucky enough to see them perform at Bristol’s magnificent St. George’s venue. Koskinen was also a member of the tour band for Jeffrey Foucault’s The Universal Fire album, and co-wrote one of its songs with Foucault, Nightshift, a working man blues-come-travelling troubadour job description. For me, endorsement of Koskinen’s candidacy for the “More People Really Should Know About” feature was finalised when my search of the AUK database unearthed only mentions of his instrumental contributions to Kris Delmhorst’s Ghost in the Garden (2025) and The Lowest Pair’s Fern Girl & Ice Man (2016 – which he also produced.
My first encounter with Koskinen’s music was the gritty Boom Town, from his album America Theatre (2014). Around that time, I saw Jesse Moss’s ‘The Overnighters’ documentary, shot on location in North Dakota in 2012/13. The film’s focus was the impact of an influx of workers pursuing a petrochemical paycheck in the Great Plains city of Williston, which lies 60 miles south of the Canadian border and above the vast shale deposit of the Bakken Formation. The city’s population doubled between 2010 and 2020 as a result of the fracking boom. Guessing that this city may have been the inspiration for Boom Town, I recently put that question to Koskinen. He replied “Williston is precisely the town that brought on the writing of this song and also, I have a twin brother who has worked in the oil industry as a pipe welder. I worked briefly as a pipe fitter and basically understand the subculture around oil booms, shutdowns and that construction world.” As he says in the song, “you better hit the road before the bottom drops out”.
Had I been an AUK reviewer back in 2024 and Koskinen’s Down Street/Love Avenue dropped through my letter box there would have been at least a 9/10 rating awaiting. Jeffrey Foucault’s liner notes are equally enthusiastic – “People know him in Minnesota, where most bar bands seem to cover at least one of his songs, but otherwise he’s still one of the best kept secrets in the country. He sings about an America that doesn’t get much play anymore, the one where the people at the bottom can’t quite get ahead, and where working people aren’t cartoon props in a culture war, but shrewd human beings living hard lives, and hard loves. His songs have the diamond-hard clarity and simplicity of Tom Petty, and like Petty, Koskinen can sing a literal statement without metaphor or ornament, and make it move like poetry”. Down Street/Love Avenue was recorded in Minnesota and released on his Real-Phonic Records label. The songs evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Koskinen recording and distributing demos to invited musicians, who then contributed remotely. The resulting album is a genre-fluid post-to-wire listen, with every track demanding attention; I’ve chosen to highlight three. First up is Keep My Baby With Me. Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer Sean Carey, who is also Bon Iver’s drummer and backing vocalist, provided harmony vocal, keyboard and drum programming for the track. I was particularly drawn to the song’s official video, having previously cycled the Marvin Braude Bike Trail from Santa Monica to Redondo Beach with my baby.
I’m a sucker for a story song and my second pick, Bonner County, is a Gem State gem from the same Idaho panhandle county that features in such great literary works as Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Koskinen described the song on Instagram as “A sort of murder/love ballad featuring the powerful eerie, from The Red Cliff Nation”. Lance Lindhal’s music video makes an essential listen also a compelling watch. In this video, Anishinaabe Bear Clan member Sandy Gokee plays ex-marine Vera Jane, from the Coeur d’Alene Reservation, who has resorted to “running dope from the Canadian line” in order to make ends meet. She finally delivers comeuppance to Sheriff Joe Henry. JBO’S Bowling Bar and Grill in Iron River, Wisconsin stands in for a Bonner County location. The video’s bar band is none other than Koskinen accompanied by Josh Gravelin and Richard Medek.
Fear and foreboding permeate the powerful 45th Parallel, my third selection from Down Street/Love Avenue. Koskinen told me: “As a young teenager, I moved to Northern New York from Northern Michigan. I rode with my mother’s boyfriend who is an amazing Ojibway man. We were in a large old and crappy moving U-Haul truck. When we got to the Canadian Border, immigration saw that man and me and pulled us aside. We were there a while. It was my first time of many, being searched crossing the docile American/ Canadian border. When we got to New York, we crossed into Akwesasne. We drove all night and were brutally tired and the first thing I remember seeing was a large billboard with a machine gun on it that read “This is Mohawk Territory. I was 13 and it had a rather large impact on me. It still does and I still cross that border on a regular basis. That’s when I started writing that song. I didn’t know it though, until almost 40 years later when George Floyd’s murder happened 60 miles from where I live, and 5 miles from where I lived for 10 years prior”. Koskinen’s song, triggered by Floyd’s murder in May 2020, highlights some of the harrowing historical events to have taken place halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. This chilling list has lengthened since he wrote 45th Parallel. In January 2026 the citizens of Minneapolis, the largest United States city on the line of latitude in question, bore witness to Operation Metro Surge. Renée Goode and Alex Pretti were killed by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deployed as part of the second Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign. In a Guardian newspaper interview (here), Mayor Jacob Frey described the targeting of the city as political retribution: “It is going after a Democratically run city and a Democratically run state, trying to paint Minneapolis as a place of chaos, when in fact, it’s these ICE agents that have caused it.” As Koskinen frames it, “And you thought nothing bad happens/ On the 45th parallel”.
Rounding off this Koskinen sampler is a full throttle flashback to his Michigan roots, Detroit Detroit, a live recording from Mule Resophonic Guitars’ official YouTube channel. One from the Keep It To Yourself album, it was written for his grandfather Bill who ran bars for car workers in “Vehicle City” – Flint, Michigan. Koskinen and his crew of red hot rods rambunctiously extol the virtues of GM Cadillacs, Coneys with Detroit chilli and brews at the Zoo, in a top dollar blue collar purring muffler of a Motor City musical momento that surely merits a Chuck Berry duck walk or two. Introducing the band: Eric Heywood on steel (Ray Lamontagne, The Pretenders, Ani DiFranco); John Convertino on snare drum (Calexico); Jeremy Moses Curtis on extra guitar (bass player with Foucault and previously with Booker T); Josh Gravelin on bass (Alejandro Escovedo, Ian Moore); Richard Medek on drums (Hacienda Brothers, John Doe); and Jeffrey Foucault on guitar, lurking under a Stetson.
If Koskinen has, to date, flown under your American roots radar, I hope that these selected tracks will persuade you to take a closer listen to one of the North Star State’s brightest stars. A thorough exploration of his catalogue is highly recommended. Trust me, I used to be a doctor. Kick off with Down Street/Love Avenue and work your way back. By the time you get to Keep It To Yourself, you may, like me, be unable to.
