To write this about how Cats & Dogs came about is to go back to some very dark moments of my life.

2002 had finally seen the release of the band Humanimal’s self titled debut CD. This album was conceived and written by me and Pontus Norgren. It wasn’t exactly happy days recording that, Pontus was going through divorce, I was having some relationship problems as well, to cap it off it was a constant nervewracking struggle to get the label Z records to fulfil their end of the deal. But the Cd was finally released, and in May we were doing a couple of shows to support it.

In the meantime, throughout the spring I was having financial problems, nobody was paying me according to contracts, and I had to deal with some legal issues as well. I was still having difficulties with the ex. But the worst thing was that my father had become terminally ill with cancer, and had seen fit to inform us early spring. All of this was taking it’s emotional toll.

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Unfortunately one of the costs of not being all there was that Pontus and I had a falling out over some really childish issues in a discussion opened during a less than sober moment; we were doing a joint Humanimal/Talisman show in Stockholm (both Jamie Borger and Tomas Broman in one night, wow! Jake Samuels was sitting in too), everybody was partying, and suddenly there was an unnecessary argument. I was constantly in fight or flight mode with very little resources of reflective capacity, so I did nothing to resolve the fight, quite the contrary I suppose, Pontus pride was apparently hurting, so there was no overture to amend things there either. Which of course meant that he was out of both Humanimal and Talisman.

Enter Christer Wedin, who has always been in charge of Talisman label affairs. Me and JSS had a meeting with him where he explained to us that we were basically free to go into business without him. Since JSS had already landed a deal with Italian label Frontiers Records for his solo effort, he instantly suggested he talk to them about doing a new album.

Said and done. Frontiers showed us open arms. Now we only had to sort the guitarplayer issue. JSS had always been lobbying to have an American in the band, he had been using a Howie Simon on his solo album, and was now pushing for me to agree on using this guy. Jamie was at the same time lobbying to get Fredrik back in the band. I made the decision based on the old principle “better the devil you know” , thinking that I would have an easier time with Freddie in the studio than with an unknown. But I also knew that I was going to ask Howie to join in for later live performances. Interesting coincidence, Christer Wedin had received some suggestions from an Italian studio that they were willing to let Talisman use the studio for free. This contact was reopened, with the result that a timeperiod of two weeks was booked for September.

So, I had to write an albums worth of material until then. I was bitter, angry, frustrated, poor, unable to go visit my dad in Germany, wondering if I would get to see him again before he died (I didn’t, and when my mother told me of his death I was totally unable to react in a way normally recognized as healthy). Interesting state of mind to have when working on a project like this . In the end, having JSS do his bit, having Jamie do one of his songs, and having the constraints of the Talisman formula, you can’t really tell how desperate I was from listening to the album. But I don’t think it could have been done at all unless I had been driven by the need of some sort of outlet.

JSS had been in charge of everything in terms of logistics and dealing with the label. Come September all I had to do was go to Acqui Terme, the Music Planet recording studio, and meet Luca . Very nice guy, also very Italian . We played some tricks on him of course, he was always a bit wary ! But he got us the studio for free, bless his heart.

We were working with engineer and friend John Ellis for the second time (Truth). It didn’t take long before him and Fredrik were nicknamed “Frick & Frack”, because they really had a good time together at the dinner table. Overeaters anonymous would have been terrified J! In general we had a loopy time recording, which spawned the idea that next time we should have a film crew with us, shooting a docu-soap. The idea was to record drums in Boston and the move by car to LA to do overdubs, then going back to Boston for mixing, naming the show “Coast to coast” - I swear it would be a comedic hit!

Normally 2 weeks would have been ample time to record, with everybody recording ultra fast (except maybe Fredrik, but that’s the usual program J ) and JSS doing voices in the next room at the same time bass and guitars were done. Unfortunately there was some problems with the computers which ate some time, we were a little stressed at the end, but I don’t think you can really tell from the result. I do remember having some timing problems due to lack of sleep- we were constantly working late, but I was woken up early every day by the circling cars on the square outside the hotel where some political speaker was yelling through megaphones, apparently there was an upcoming election of sorts!

When we were finished at the studio, we passed by a Europe fan convention in Parma to make an appearance of sorts. Great fun, we had Ian Haugland doing drums for us on I’ll be waiting and some other songs.

I didn’t get to be home for long before doing the trek to Boston, where John Ellis has his Prism studio. We were supposed to be mixing, but had to do some editing, and the mixes we ultimately did with me and JSS hovering over John’s shoulder were scrapped. He did a much better job without us , so the only benefit I got out of the trip was beating JSS in basketball .

What about the title of the CD ? Well, we were discussing titles as always, and while in Acqui Terme JSS said something about him wanting the title to reflect a return or comeback. This struck a nerve and I immediately said “Here comes the dog”. This was very funny to us at the time, because I had been absolutely terrified by a giant German Shepherd when walking down to the studio from the hotel and had been talking about nothing else the entire day. There was only one route to take, and along the way was a narrow street with no pavement for street walkers. Inside the gate of one of the villas lining this street there was this dog hidden from view, and I was only a foot away when it jumped out of hiding and was snarling and spitting in my face. Also the connotations of dog in American slang has a little to do with the funny!

Later, when we were in mixing mode, we were discussing the sequencing of songs. Originally I had the idea that the album could be in two parts, like the 70’s albums of for instance Rod Stewart where one side was rock and the other was ballads. In our case the heavy songs like Hell in paradise and Outta my way contra the pop of Sorry and the funk of In make believe. This ultimately didn’t work at all, but during the discussion it led to JSS thinking one part could be labelled Dogs and the other Cats, since there was some tension between these two modes of music. So the title stuck but the original sequence didn’t. That’s evolution in full swing !

If anyone is worried about what happened to Pontus, we are friends again, and he’s been very involved in the making of the DVD.

Also you can find an unreleased track called All Wound Up on the Various Artists recopilation Melodic Rock: Revealed & Revisited. vol n° 1. This flat out rocker was recorded for the current Cats & Dogs album, but not included as the band felt they already had a song like it on the album.