Nicke Borg (Backyard Babies)

For twenty years the bombast of the Backyard Babies served as the sonic backdrop for the songwriting skills of Nicke Borg. But two decades of hard living and hard touring with one of Sweden’s premier hard rock bands took its toll: by 2010, Borg had reached a personal and professional crossroads. You could even call it a breaking point. His friend and fellow frontman Mike Ness of Social Distortion provided the inspiration he needed to kick drugs and booze. "I believe that everyone has a quota for how much drugs they can do in a lifetime," says Borg. "I managed to reach mine already."

The timing also seemed right to take his songwriting in new directions. Like Ness, outlaw country and traditional American folk music had long intrigued Borg. But he knew that Backyard Babies weren’t the right outlet for his fascination with Americana.

Enter Nicke Borg Homeland. For this, his first solo project, Nicke dialed down the aural assault of Backyard Babies and cultivated his appreciation for the likes of Johnny Cash and Steve Earle, without losing sight or sound of Backyard Babies influences such as Social Distortion and Guns N' Roses.

For the first time in his career Nicke felt he had the confidence and freedom to make music entirely on his own terms. The debut EP, Chapter 1, defied expectations to such a degree that fans had to reassess him from scratch. To compare his new sound to the Backyard Babies was to miss the point of Homeland completely.