Eli Wulfmeier well remembers his parents taking him to see Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band perform in early 1987 at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena when he was about 7 years old.

“My dad and mom were good friends with a couple of guys in (the band,)” the Grosse Pointe Farms-raised Wulfmeier, now 45 and living in Los Angeles, recalls. “We went backstage and all that, and I said: ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I could do this. …’”

And, in fact, he has.

A guitarist, singer, songwriter and gun-for-hire for the past 27 years — since moving to California to study at Santa Clara University and then moving to L.A. — Wulfmeier has recorded and toured with a steady stream of artists such as Shelby Lynne, Nikki Lane, Dorothy, the Wild Feathers, Sam Morrow, fellow Detroiter Kendall Jane Meade and actress Kate Hudson. He interned for the record label Interscope and once was invited to audition for the Black Crowes.

Wulfmeier also maintains his own trio — Leroy From the North — which has a second album coming in September and performs this week at Detroit’s Cadieux Cafe. It marks only the second time he’s played at home since leaving for college, following Dorothy’s opening spot with Greta Van Fleet during a three-night 2018 run at the Fillmore Detroit.

“I’m pumped, especially since it’s my own band,” says Wulfmeier, whose parents and older sister still live in the area. The music career so far, he adds, “has been a fun grind. I’ve seen most of America, just from touring and getting out. We own (the song publishing), so we don’t really owe many people percentages, like management or agents.

“And we’ve been doing well with merchandise and whatever. As long as we can keep cranking out songs and touring and doing what we all love, anything else is kind of background noise.”

Wulfmeier started making noise of his own not long after that Seger concert. He began playing guitar when he was 7 and started writing songs simultaneously. “It was all trial and error,” he says. “I couldn’t wait to get home from school and start cranking away. When you’re playing so much, you just come up with melodies and things: ‘That sounds cool. I don’t know why, but that makes sense.’”

With tastes primed by MTV and classic rock radio — he developed an affinity for the Grateful Dead’s jam-oriented aesthetic early on — Wulfmeier began performing, underage, in now-defunct clubs with his teenage bands (one known as Emergency Grapefruit), mostly with original material. He considered moving to the music industry center of California as essential, and while in Santa Clara, he posted a magazine ad saying, “Guitar player that plays like Black Crowes and Led Zeppelin looking for a band.” One of the first to respond was Dean Delray, who’s gone on to become a well-known comedian and actor, while Wulfmeier’s first significant break came in the mid-2000s with a teen pop singer named Katy Rose, which patched him into the network of hired guns.

With Nikki Lane, Wulfmeier found himself opening in large venues for Chris Stapleton, while his five years with Dorothy — which came via hit-making producer Linda Perry — included two albums on which he also did some songwriting. Perry also brought him into the mix for Kate Hudson’s “Glorious,” which came out in 2024 and was promoted with a number of high-profile television appearances.

“She was really cool,” Wulfmeier recalls. “She could sing really well. We did the record kind of during COVID, and the years went by and she said, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re getting the band back together.’ We did (‘The Tonight Show Starring) Jimmy Fallon.’ … It was great.”

Leroy is Wulfmeier’s legal first name — “I have no idea where Eli came from, but that’s what everybody calls me,” he says — which helped give his band its moniker. “If you’re a country band or in that (Americana) genre, everyone assumes you must be from the South,” he explains. “I’m like, ‘Well, no, I’m from Michigan and my real name is Leroy.’ It’s a dumb way to make a name, but that’s how it happened.”

Wulfmeier played with drummer Jason Ganberg in Dorothy, while bassist Adam Arcos works with Flint Southern rocker Whitey Morgan. The trio’s first album, “Toughen Up,” came out last year, while “My Favorite Gun” is due out Sept. 19 and will be preceded by the single “Laid to Rest.”

“We were trying to make something that sounded a little more acoustic-forward — still rocking, but acoustic-forward,” Wulfmeier says of the latest set. “The producer, Joe Bourdet, calls it ‘meadow rock;’ it’s sort of Stephen Stills, Neil Young rock, J.D. Souther stuff, a little more organic. It’s still guitar heavy, tonally based, but we decided to get weird, too, and used some synthesizers on certain things — something subtle, so it wasn’t like ELO.”

Wulfmeier and his mates are looking forward to giving “Gun” its shot and building on an audience that’s been growing.

“You can start to see it snowballing,” he says. “We’ve been going out with Whitey Morgan, and … people are responding, wearing the shirts, singing the songs. We had no idea, but you can see the results from the work you’ve done, which is really rewarding. It shocks you a bit, but it’s been a nice sort of payoff.

“Honestly, I’ve been doing this for so long now, as long as I can make this a sustainable thing where it can be a career, it’s great. I’d like to be more comfortable, sure, but as of now, it’s exactly where I want to be.”