Tollak.com

My journey on this planet started in a small town in a state known to some as the last frontier, Alaska. The town is Seward, named after William Seward the secretary of state under Lincoln whose purchase of the state of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7,200,000 was coined “Seward’s folly”, which of course later turned out to be one of the most savvy investments of all time.
My name comes from my paternal grandfather Tollak Ollestad who was born in another small town, Egersund, Norway. He left on a sailing ship as a young man seeking adventure and a new life and eventually landed in Alaska, along the way working as a sailor, brick layer,fox farmer and even mayor of Seldovia, the town both of my Parents Gilbert and Anna were born in, while raising a family of ten children with his wife Lucille who was of Native american and mixed European descent.

Around the time I was three, on my mother’s insistence, the family, myself and my three older brothers and sister, came to Seattle on an extended trip to see the World’s fair and what life was like in the big city. Fate, in the form of the Alaska earthquake and the tidal wave that washed our house off of it’s foundation, cast the deciding vote on whether the stay would be permanent.
We ultimately settled in a quiet suburb of Seattle called Richmond beach. There I grew up a very shy and quiet kid with a great fascination for catching and observing various insects, reptiles and amphibious life, and spending long hours drawing pictures. Early on it seemed apparent that I was headed for a life as an artist. I even bought my first car with money I made selling soapstone sculptures in the Alaskan Native tradition to gift shops.
But by the time high school came along a profound change was beginning to take place. It started before I could even play an instrument with a burgeoning fascination with Soul and R&B music and my first musical idol-Stevie Wonder.
I was something of an anomaly in the almost entirely white suburb that I grew up in, where I was no doubt virtually the only kid in that zip code who watched Soul Train regularly.
By the summer before my sophomore year I made a couple of very fateful discoveries, the harmonicas that my older brother Burt, himself a very accomplished guitarist and a decent harmonica player, had laying around, and the blues records featuring many great harmonica players that my older brother Gilbert had laying around. At this point the die was cast and my path was irrevocably changed forever. I was now a bonafide Blues fanatic and a genuine pain in the ass to my new budding musician friends who shared only a small fraction of the enthusiasm for this artform that I was now completely swept up in exploring.

True to my mercurial nature, after about a year and a half of devouring and assimilating every Blues harp players repertoire that I could get my hands on, I was starting to hunger for some new sounds and started exploring some new playing techniques. Around this time I also began the next chapter of my musical education with a headlong leap into the world of Jazz piano. I was completely mesmerized by this mysterious new world of sounds. Once again fate intervened in two parts again. When applying for Stage band in my senior year as a harmonica player I had the very good fortune of there being an incredibly progressive young woman teacher who liked the idea of trying something as unconventional as having a harmonica player in the ensemble. Also that year as it turned out there was no piano player, so I had the temerity to ask for a shot at it. I had been playing for less than a year, but once again she took another chance on me and let me assume the role which of course altered my path irrevocably once again. I became the piano player that occasionally took harmonica solos, I couldn’t have been happier.
Around this same time I also took up guitar and most importantly, discovered my singing voice. Guess I was something of a late bloomer.

In the years that followed I expanded my musical explorations to include classical, world music, alternative rock, trip hop and beyond, all the while always having a keen appreciation for Pop music in the best sense of the word.
I can find myself listening to the Beatles one moment and Weather report the next, Stevie Wonder and then the Pixies, Muddy Waters then Radiohead, Ella Fitzgerald then Bjork …etc. etc.

I worked in Seattle, mostly in Top 40 cover bands, for my first years in music but ultimately felt the inexorable pull of Los Angeles and the need to see how far my gifts could take me.
After many years and many unforgettable experiences in Los angeles and traveling around the world with different artists I had the opportunity to move to Europe (a dream of mine) and am currently living in Holland, writing, recording, teaching and performing all over Europe and occasionally in America.

I’ve traveled a lot of roads in my career thus far and yet in so many ways it feels like I’m just beginning. So it seems there are always an incalculable array of creative challenges awaiting just beyond the horizon and this is what has always fired my imagination and kept me pushing forward and seeking new experiences.
So the adventure continues, to parts unknown…