He left all this behind for a solo rap career in the 1980s. The tours for his wildly successful albums "I'm in da house don't ya know" and "Let's get funky den" took across several counties in Northeast North Dakota. As the 90s dawned, he discovered a new musical passion: the blues. He became disillusioned, however, with the commercial flop [of his debut "You Betcha I got the blues." It seemed that the world wasn't real for his band's (the Groaning Norsemen) fusion of stinging Chicago blues, hip hop and Norwegian folk music, featuring Orville Nordletton on accordion, Ole Bjornson on Banjo & Bill on Cabasa. After a failed tour opening for a Wayne Newton cover band, the Groaning Norsemen broke up. The only surviving recording of the band exists on a tape crudely made on a hand held recorder by Tommy Mottle, president of Sony records when he scouted the band during their "Rocking' the fish boat" tour.

Things turned around in 1994 when he joined the Skyblues band after seeing a want ad in a Tel Aviv newspaper. When asked by Barbara Walters in her famous "White Minnesotan Sunday School Teaching Blues Drummers" special on ABC why he wanted to be in a blues band, he responded, "Because I hate the sound of applause." He stayed with the band till 2000 when he found a girl who'd marry him. They went off to the big city & wedded bliss, only to return two years later for marital bliss in a not-so-big town (Frazee, MN).