“We’re not the only one’s who think we don’t suck.” 
-- Peter Bolland


Namaste San Diego, for our second San Diego Music Award. Our new album California took the prize for Best Americana Album of 2007. Every album we’ve made has been nominated for this prestigious award, (Frame in 2003, Wire in 2005 and California in 2007). Wire and California won. We’re stunned and humbled. There is a lot of amazing music coming out of San Diego, and to be singled out like this leaves us feeling a little strange, but happy.

Our moms are still telling everyone they know that our album Wire took the prize for Best Americana Album at the 2005 San Diego Music Awards. Produced by award winning producer Sven-Erik Seaholm and sporting guest vocals from Gregory Page and Dave Howard, Wire put The Coyote Problem on the west coast alt country map, garnering radio play, television appearances, record sales and fans from around the world. From the hash bars of Amsterdam to the ashrams of Big Sur, from the pubs of Dublin to the karaokes of Kyoto, from the dorms of Harvard to the cells of San Quentin, Wire connected Americana fans everywhere around an eclectic collection of songs drawn deep from the well. Of Wire, the San Diego Troubadour says, “a master’s course in roots rock style…heartfelt songwriting expertise…a perfect soundtrack for a long lonely ride out to the desert.” And Dennis Cook at ebong.org says, “the Bakersfield gods smile when The Coyote Problem plies their wickedly enjoyable brand of beefy Americana.
Judge for yourself.
Click here for samples and free downloads.

We’re the cover story in the May issue of the San Diego Troubadour, and they reviewed our new album California too. Click on the logo to read the article and the review.


The good press is great, the trophies are wonderful, but all that pales in comparison to the joy we feel when a new fan grabs your hand after a show, pulls you close and tells you with tears in their eyes, “your songs really moved me – they gave me back to myself.” That’s when you know that music is bigger than any of us, bigger than any of this. We’re grateful and honored just to have a small place in the process.
 Americana…mainstream country and rock radio could use this kind of rejuvenation.” But what do critics and awards academies know? Judge for yourself. Click here for samples and free downloads.

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Peter Bolland, bassist Billy Fritz and drummer Danny Cress form the core of The Coyote Problem. Born in the era of Beatles and Dylan, they can’t escape the inbred notion that rock and roll is both a serious art form and funner than a sack of cherry bombs. And that real rock and roll honors its roots in country and folk and blues.

Some bands play the clown. Some bands masquerade. Some bands shout for your submission to their political position. Some bands seek the safety of a practiced veneer created by others.

The Coyote Problem stands out in the open and waits. “I’m so tired of the ironic distance, the wink-wink cynicism, the style-chasing desperation and the polemical condescension that characterizes so much rock and roll,” says Bolland. “To us, music is a sacred power that calls up all the beauties of the soul. We’re not in this band for the chicks or the booze or the drugs. We don’t care about the “scene” and we don’t “hang out”. None of that matters. We do this for one reason. We want to get closer to what’s Beautiful and True, that deep river that runs through everything. I don’t care if that’s not hip.

“We could’ve been film makers or poets or chefs or farmers but we picked up guitars and drums instead of spatulas and plows. Rock and roll chose us. No other art form synthesizes body, mind and soul so completely so that you don’t know where one ends and the other begins.”

Dear Radio Programmers,
The music of The Coyote Problem fits neatly into all of the following sixteen genres:
• folk
• rock
• folk-rock
• country
• country rock
• alt-country
• Americana
• Americana rock
• acoustic
• acoustic rock
• singer-songwriter
• roots
• roots rock
• California rock
• California-cana
• west coast

The music of The Coyote Problem does NOT fit into the following sixteen genres or their related sub-genres:
• metal
• goth
• polka
• salsa
• bluegrass
• gospel
• jazz
• spoken word
• rap
• hip hop
• soul
• classical
• celtic
• world
• reggae
• klezmer

 

I have nothing to say
for God has taken his sharp knife
and completely hollowed me

Yet a mysterious wind comes by
and moves the Invisible

I enter your soul,
your beauty, dear pilgrim, startles me,
causes my spirit’s foot to slip
against one of the lute strings on your heart

Then I just translate the cries of your love
as if they were my own words

-- Hafiz