Every week the band invited other Norwegian performers they respected as special guests: Singers like Trond Granlund, Henning Kvitnes, Jan Dahlen and Pål Andreassen.
Later that summer they played alongside Tom Russell and Backstreet Girls at Down on the Farm: An event that started out as a barbecue for musicians and friends and in a few years become the premier Norwegian roots festival with audiences up to 5,000.
Annoyed that a new generation of Norwegian sports stars were now beating the Swedes, Olsson "worried" that The Contenders' debut album might signal a similar trend in rock music.
The single "Sweet Little Thing" – written and sung by Stein Kulseth – got a fair amount of airplay and the band was invited to perform on both local and national TV.
When guitarist Stein Ramberg left to play with Casino Steel – the Norwegian pianist who had been in the UK punk band The Boys in the 1970s – The Contenders continued as a quartet for almost a year.
In the fall of 1991 the band headed down south to Halden close the Swedish border, to record their next album at the residential studio Athletic Sound with house engineer Kai Andersen.
One song seemed particularly promising: A midtempo tune called "Radioland" which was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on all the late night request shows that had become popular as Norwegian airwaves were opened up for competition during the 1980s.
Much of the summer of 1992 was spent on the road, with highlights being an outdoors show in the port of Malmø during Euro 92 (The 1992 UEFA European Football Championship) in June and The Molde International Jazz Festival in July.
The first single "Folkets Hus" (i.e. "Community Hall") - an allegory on the fall of the post World War II social democratic solidarity - became a minor radio hit.
The second single "Indianere" (i.e. "Red Indians") also received much airplay, but even though the critics lauded the band's new blend of classic Americana music with Norwegian lyrics, the album sales never took off.
Stein Kulseth has also worked with Lønhøiden as a songwriter and studio musician and has since 1999 been a semi-permanent member of veteran Norwegian roots singer Trond Grandlund's band.
The drummer Per-Ivar Stræte learned to live with the tinnitus after a few years and the last line-up of The Contenders occasionally reunites for one-off gigs, mainly around Christmas time in their old hometown Flisa.