"Yeah, we (he and his roommates) just got evicted," says Frederiksen during a phone interview form a Munich, Germany tour stop. "I was looking forward to chilling with my girl when we get back from Europe. Now I'll have five days to find a place to live before we start doing another video and go on tour over here."

"Some big rock star, huh?" he adds with a laugh. "Everyone thinks because you've got a video on MTV that youv'e got a BMW in the driveway of your mansion and bleach-blonde chicks with fake tits lounging around your pool. And here I am, f*cking homeless."

Homelessness is nothing new to Frederiksen or his mates, guitarist/singer Tim "Lint" Armstrong, bassist Matt Freeman, and drummer Brett Reed. Before earning a lot of attention late last year with Rancid's last album "Let's Go" the foursome had long lived hand-to-mouth existences, sometimes turning to squats and Salvation Army centers for a roof over their heads; these tribulations are eloquently documented in tracks like "Trenches," "Sidekick," and "Salvation." A year ago, Frederiksen was still living in what he calls a "s*ithole" in squalid West Oakland, before moving into the Berkeley apartment he now has to vacate.

But in the year since, Rancid's members have been able--evictions excepting--to put some distance between themselves and hard times. The band rose from a mohawked, leather-clad obscurity to "punk's next big thing" in a matter of weeks as it finished up touring in support of "Let's Go." Major labels hungry for an Offspring to call their own caught wind of the band's whipsaw, Clash-like stink, and before long there was an all-out feeding frenzy happening.

At the same time, the grainy, homemade "Salvation" video went into maximum rotation on MTV and "Let's Go" began selling in bunches, making the band an even hotter property. By the end of '94, a deal was struck with Epic, but at the very last minute Rancid backed out and re-signed with Epitaph, ensuring more noteriety.

"And Out Come the Wolves"--the title taken from a cryptic poem "Basketball Diaries" author Jim Carroll wrote and recited, fittingly, for the track "Junkie Man" when the band was recording at New York's Electric Lady Studio--was inspired by the whirlwind series of events.

"Everything you can possibly imagine happened," Frederiksen notes. "We were like, 'Whoa, this is crazy.' We're just a blue-collar punk band. We just want to make records and play our music, and there was all this other bullshit going on. But I'm glad that we all went through the shit. We went to the wall and came back."

"You learn just who your friends are, and you see people's motives. We went back to Epitaph because we knew they loved us as people first and foremost. With Brett Gurewitz we're more than some account on a ledger somewhere, we're part of a family."

And for a group of street kids who've known broken homes, alienation, and disaffection for much of thier lives, family means everything. Frederiksen reflects, " This is the only time I've ever experienced unconditional love and acceptance in my life, just by these three guys. We put our friendship and our family above music and whatever else."

"When I'm old, fat, and gray I can see myself sitting on Papa Freeman's front porch with his grandkids climbing all over me listening to my stupid stories about when I was 'a punk rocker,'" he laughs. "That's what makes this band so strong. There's a love and a bond here that goes much deeper than just words and music."

"One thing I could never understand is how you can have a band like Guns 'N Roses where everybody hates each other," the guitarist adds. "I mean, those guys communicate through their lawyers and they're suing each other and shit. But I guess if you're in it for rock stardom, then that's how it can be, and that's not for me. I'd just as soon go back to making f*cking sandwiches."

The Rancid family's roots go back to Freeman and Armstrong's high school days and their seminal ska/punk band Operation Ivy. The group soon became one of the big players in the Bay Area underground that centered around the 924 Gilman Street Theatre, then just a place for bands to play shows, but now a punk-rock landmark thanks to the attention the success of scenesters Green Day brought.

But popularity would eventually bring Op Ivy's demise in 1989 after an album and tour. The "Wolves" track "Journey to the End of the East Bay" recalls that band's brief history and how "too much attention unavoidably destroyed us." Along with working various minimum wage jobs to get by, Freeman and Armstrong did brief stints with a host of other bands afterward. The duo eventually went their seperate ways while Armstrong battled drug and alcohol problems, but reunited after he'd cleaned up to form Rancid with drummer Reed in 1992.

This time boasting an aggressive, all punk-rock sound, the group was quickly a Gilman Street fixture again. Rancid put a single out on Lookout Records, then signed with Epitaph, and released a relentless self-titled debut in 1993. Frederiksen was taken on as a second guitarist for the equally ferocious "Let's Go," issued in early 1994, and the current Rancid lineup was cemented-after some initial snags were taken care of.

"I was wild and crazy back then. Actually, I was a f*ck-up," admits Frederiksen, a Bay Area native and scene veteran who'd been playing with England's UK Subs. "I had to get myself straightened out, too. I couldn't do what I was doing and still be a part of this band. Tim had already been to hell and back. He had to live in a Salvation Army center--no one would put him up because of what he was doing to himself. So these guys knew how things could turn out."

"But now I thank God for them caring enough to make me see what was going on. They helped me through it, and that's part of that bond I was talking about. There's no straight-edge or twelve-step thing going on here. But we all watch out for each other. If Tim or I were to start doing what we were doing, we could die, and no one in this band is gonna let that happen."

That bond, and a few years of maturation, have made the sudden and large-scale rise in Rancid's popularity endurable, if not manageable. Still, on "Disorder and Disarray," Armstrong laments: "So many things to be seen, so many bands to be heard/Just for once can I be ignored?" Instead of running away, the band came back stronger than ever with "Wolves."

The record infuses a riffier attack and some infectious, Op Ivy-style ska numbers into an arsenal that once was primarily made up of exhilarating 90-second microbursts of raw punk energy. With its keen melodic sense still firmly intact, Rancid has broadened its scope while at the same time tightening up its delivery. With the Clash jangle of "Lock, Step, & Gone," the crunchy chorus of "Ruby Soho," and the "Oi" head slap of "Avenues and Alleyways," the band no longer simply hits and runs.

"We're really on a role creatively," says Frederiksen. "We wrote 40 songs for the album and we've already written twenty more since. The last two records were really hard, fast records, but this time we're mixing things up. Ska, punk rock, and reggae all have the same feel, the same soul, and we just love the music. We're a gut instinct band, and it just felt right to do this stuff now."

With "Wolves" release, things have picked up right where they left off for Rancid late last year. The record was greeted with critical raves and debuted at 45 in Billboard, the best start ever for an Epitaph album, topping Pennywise's "About Time" from a few months back. The first single, the exuberant ska ditty "Time Bomb," was an instant "Buzz Clip" on MTV, and the band--or at least Frederiksen and Armstrong-- graced the cover of SPIN and was featured in a big profile in ROLLING STONE.

The band's first gigs in Europe, after not touring there in a couple of years, showed just how far Rancid has come.

"Last time we played here we were in this wreck of a van with no heat," Frederiksen recalls. "It was November and December, and it was freezing. No on knew who we were, so we're playing these places where there were only 50 people all looking at us like, "What the f*ck is this?"

This year, Frederiksen enthuses, "The crowds have been sick, man. We played in Italy the other night, and they must have crammed 1,300 people into a place that holds about 800. And we couldn't even finish half the songs we played in London, because there were so many people on stage singing along. It was a weird scene, all these Enlish skinheads up there singing 'Olympia, WA'. But it was cool."

Frederiksen looks back fondly on the days when it was him clambering up onstage to sing along with hardcore bands like G.B.H., D.O.A., and Black Flag at the gigs he used to frequent as a mere pup after being introduced to the music by his older brother.

"I never even played guitar until I was sixteen because I could go to these shows and jump around and sing, and it was like being part of a band," he says. "Then I got alienated by the whole things because kids I hated in high school, the jocks and the "cool" crowd who'd given you shit if you had a mohawk, started going to the shows because it was the cool thing to do. That's not what it's about, so I said f*ck it, got a guitar, and started learning to my brother's Ramones records."

With the influx of millions of new fans over the past two years, the guitarist admits he's eased off a bit on his exclusionist mentality with regards to the punk-rock audience. But he remains a purist when it comes to the music itself and the message it carries.

"When you're a kid you like to think of things in terms of "your little club". Well, it's not our little club anymore, but that's all right. I think the bands that are popular now--Offspring, Green Day, Pennywise, and even ourselves--are playing music that's real and speaks to people the way bands like The Clash or The Vibrators spoke to me when I was a kid."

"That's what punk's about--real life, real situations,real problems, real people. Look at me, I'm a real person. I get up every day and make coffee around ten and take a shit about twelve . I deal with stuff that everybody else deals with. I've got a mom who's been working at the same place for years and still can't afford to go to the doctor when she gets sick because she's got no benefits."

"I think that's why punk rock is so popular now," he adds. "People got sick of bands singing about all that rock-star fantasy s*it. The sad truth is there are a hell of a lot more people who can relate to living in a homeless shelter or struggling to get by than (can relate to) Steven Tyler bragging about all the chicks he's f*cked."