Duke Erikson

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Douglas Elwin "Duke" Erikson, born January 15, 1951, in Nebraska, is an American musician, scriptwriter, film director, and record producer best known as a co-founder and guitarist in the alternative rock band Garbage.

Garbage has sold more than 17 million albums worldwide.

Early life

Duke Erikson was born in Lyons, Nebraska, in a small rural town. The piano was his first musical instrument, and the guitar was his second. He formed The British, his first band, which was influenced by his enthusiasm for the British beat movement at the age of 16. The British light show was conducted by Erikson, who was made out of a cigar box and door hangers. "I ran that with my left hand while playing Farfisa organ with my right," he said.

When Erikson left high school, he attended Wayne State College, where he studied drawing and painting and eventually became a teaching assistant.

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Musical career

In Madison, Wisconsin, Erikson formed the rock band Spooner in 1974. Erikson performed lead vocals, played keyboards, and guitar, and became the band's principal songwriter, his songs being characterized as "strangely seductive" and "immediately pull[ing] in the listener. Butch Vigil joined them on drums, and Spooner became a quartet. Every Corner Dance and The Wildest Dreams, Spooner's two well-received albums, were released throughout the Midwest. "Erikson's edgy, poetic slice-of-small-town life lyrics give a real, idiosyncratic touch" on their debut album, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

Erikson and Steve Marker started Smart Studio in Madison, where he helped design the studio's interior and performed engineering, production, and remixing for a number of local and international rock artists in 1983.

Erikson formed Fire Town, a garage-rock band in 1986, in which he played guitar and performed vocals. In the Heart of the Heart Country and The Good Life were two albums by the band, the latter on Atlantic Records. Rolling Stone's debut was praised as a "therful album" with "killer harmonies."

Although Fire Town had disbanded by 1989, Spooner's single "Mean Old World" became a hit, causing them to re-form, produce a new album – The Fugitive Dancer – and embark on a tour before disbanding in 1993.

After Marker saw singer Shirley Manson's band Angelfish on MTV's 120 Minutes in 1994, he advised Erikson and Vig that they should audition for their new group, which became Garbage. Erikson co-wrote the band's seven albums, assassinating guitar, keyboards, and bass. The albums have been selling more than 17 million copies around the world.

In a major feature on the band for The Sunday Times in 1998, British journalist Tony Barrell portrayed Erikson's persona in Garbage as "the cool dude with the goatee and the Mr Spockish demeanor." Erikson has been known to bring a dry humour to media interviews, despite being often a taciturn presence in the band. "We have a little room where we go and we cry" during a 1996 discussion about Garbage's interpersonal chemistry.

Erikson's other projects include the creation of other artists. He made the single "If You Go" by the Greenlandic singer Simon Lynge, which gained regular airplay in the United Kingdom after being added to the BBC Radio 2 playlist.

Erikson is on the board of directors of Lo-Max Records, which is home to The Wrens, The Go-Betweens, Kevin Ayers, and Simon Lynge. In 2017, he co-produced and worked on sound restoration for the American Epic series, as well as co-producing the audio for The American Epic Sessions.

Roxy Erickson, Erikson's daughter, is a London photographer based in London, England.

Film career

Erikson co-founded Lo-Max Films in 2006 and was the co-creator, producer, and co-writer of the Emmy Award nominated American Epic documentary film collection. The films featured the first recordings of roots music in the United States during the 1920s and their cultural, socioeconomic, and technological impact on North America and the world. The collection was based on ten years of fieldwork and has been dubbed one of the best music documentaries ever created.

For the first time in 80 years, Erikson co-produced and co-wrote The American Epic Sessions, an award-winning musical film directed by Bernard MacMahon, in which an engineer restores the fabled long-lost first electrical sound recording device from 1925, and twenty contemporary artists pay their respects to the periodical machine by recording songs on it for the first time in 80 years. Steve Martin, Nas, Elton John, Alabama Shakes, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Jack White, Taj Mahal, Ana Gabriel, Rhiannon Giddens, and Beck appeared in the film.

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools' September 2017 summer program, based on Erikson's American Epic films, began on October 6, 2017. Over 2,015 students have enrolled in 15 grades, which was established by American educator John Dewey in 1896.

Erikson is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Writers Guild of America West. He, along with film producer Bernard MacMahon and producer Allison McGourty, are co-founders of Lo-Max Films.

Multiple accolades have been given to Erikson's American Epic Documentary and The American Epic Sessions, including the Foxtel Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Calgary International Film Festival, and a Primetime Emmy nomination. The Focal International Awards were awarded to Erikson for the Best Use of Footage in a History Exhibition and Best Use of Footage in a Music Production on April 23, 2018.

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