Photos of Big Trouble
A band full of sex symbols delivering it for you on stage at White Squirrel.
Farewell YMCA Paul
I just learned that Paul Engebretson died. Travel easy Paul. Know that you did amazing things in your life. You connected with people. You spread your enthusiasm about music. You fostered community. You helped. You shined.
Everyone called him Front Row Paul and that guy really was out at shows all the time. I don’t know when I saw Front Row Paul for the first time but I feel like it was at least ten years ago. I’ve been playing shows forever, he’s been going to shows forever. But a couple years ago we started to see each other at the YMCA in Saint Paul. He and his wife went a shit ton. So do I. Paul was lifting weights, making friends. He had the earbuds in, often told me he was listening to the Shackletons. He loved music and he had a powerful enthusiasm for Minnesota music. It was always so good to run into Paul at the Y. We also lived really close to each other. We did the wave around the neighborhood thing.
I wasn’t close with Paul but he exuded a pureness and clarity in life that made even a small friendship feel bigger. He talked about music like his life depended on it and to look at his schedule I imagine that was true. He also didn’t go to the shows to act cool and hang in the back. It’s important to underline something about the nickname Front Row Paul; the man was in the front. Actually watching the show. Letting music do what it’s supposed to do, immerse you, pause the rest of your bullshit and deeply reinvigorate you.
Paul, I hope you are in a better place now. Here where I am is a better place because of you. I’ll miss seeing what band shirt you’re wearing at the Y.
Big Trouble with New Songs on Saturday
These fucking guys.
Big Trouble performs in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The capital city. The city of third chances and Pearson’s Nut Rolls. In Saint Paul it’s always Thursday. Saint Paul, you’re good. Anywho. Saturday Night. March 29. A celebration of music with Big Trouble. We’ve learned new songs. Peter wrote one. Steve wrote one. They’re both really awesome. We’re playing them. Catch you at White Squirrel on Saturday. 6-8. Free of charge. Your kids are welcome. They can even bring you.
To Really See Someone Improvise
Saturday was a good one. There haven’t been a ton of unadulterated good ones lately. So many things can make your day beyond shaky/shitty right now. You find out that the economic downturn has touched you or someone close to you. You open a news app, even though you promised you wouldn’t this morning, and there is a headline whose utter cruelty and destructive spirit makes you wonder about the human spirit at its most basic level. You realize there is no fathomable way our country will regain some of what we are hacking off our operations at the moment. But I didn’t come here to write about that. In some sense I came here specifically to not write about that.
I had a rehearsal with Big Trouble on Saturday morning that was so enjoyable. Here’s a horrendous photo of me from the beginning of the rehearsal.
Wow rough.
We as a band have finally hit that age where there is a vastly more giving spirit than there is a self-oriented spirit. I remember playing with some adults when I was in high school. It was Harry Chalmiers, then President of MacPhail, and Clea Galhano, then teacher at MacPhail. We were playing two songs at a fundraiser and we were going to do “Black Orpheus.” Everyone was trying to make their solo shorter, more collaborative, more inviting and spicy for the players supporting. It was night and day to my experience playing jazz with the high school student peers I was with most of the time. And, lest I sound like I was above the high school bullshit, I was absolutely oriented towards getting my solo in, getting my feature in, getting my shine on. But I saw this future, far away at the time and now firmly in my pocket, of truly generous collaboration. This weekend Big Trouble was making little tucks, trims and coda adjustments to make some new songs sing. Throughout the whole affair the goal was to tease the fundamental out of the composition. It was song-oriented, it was selfless, it was rewarding. It was also efficient, but not in the mode of ruthless efficiency that I have been sometimes praised/critiqued for throughout my years as a bandleader. This was the efficiency of four adults trying to get the most out of their 2 hours away from their families, jobs, et cetera.
After that it was off to a guitar lesson for my daughter S. and then we stuck around for a concert from Bring Your Kids at Cadenza. This was our second time seeing this group and the first time was amazing. Comedy, music, kid-oriented. The improv is front and center in the group and it gave me a moment to hone in on two improvisers who are on a whole different level than the rest of the players on the gig. All the players are good, no doubt. But these two people (who I suspected and just confirmed via online bios are a couple) have that comfort of improv that appears effortless but but being a middling improviser I understand is about as far from effortless as you can get. It’s Alsa Bruno and Morgan LeClaire.
To see great improvisation is to often see the absence of something. It’s the absence of overly formalized intros. It’s the absence of unnecessary adjustments to a speaking voice to accidentally call attention to the fact that this is suddenly improvised, everybody watch out, I’m pretending to be a lumberjack. It’s a comfort with blankness, a comfort with fullness. And an absolute commitment to something, and an equally absolute commitment to ditching that particular something when it has served its purpose. I’ve been around great improvisers in my life. I’ve seen poets and emcees arrive in a moment with no preconceived notions of where they will go, I’ve seen them rest on no crutch, rely on no safety net and deliver an image, a moment, a performance that is deep, rich and blissfully unscalable. It isn’t a moment waiting to be committed to tape. Not a moment to be committed to the page. Just a moment, imperfectly drawn in to a room, god-crafted for the energy in that room. When I see Morgan and Alsa improvise I see no artifice. I didn’t see the moment where the brain decided it was time to start improvising. I didn’t see the moment where the artist felt the trappings of the stage. The performance for me started long before the listed show time. The guitarist was playing. The kids were interacting. My youngest N. was connecting with them before we even found our seats. When Alsa or Morgan took on a character or altered their voice they did so completely. They did so with an unflagging memory for the traits of the character they were taking on and when the bit ended they seemed to shed the concept so thoroughly as to have never occupied it. Alsa used a stuffed animal to pretend to be a high pitched nasal sickness and the impact was so thorough and deep. I bet reading that sentence you are scratching your head. It’s a kids show, he was pretending to be a cold with a weird stuffy, who cares. I care. I care about great work and that was great work.
Watching them I thought about the great pianists I’ve played with, the drummers I’ve seen who fluidly become a vessel for the music, seeming to lose the indecision that most of us attach to musical choices. A vessel for entire sets, for entire universes, for an eternity that only stops when the eternity ceases being eternal. Where is the self-editing? Where is the self-policing? When do you stop? When do they stop? What should you play? How can I be generous and dominant? How can I be generous and miniature? How can I give the moment what is asked for when I am part of the moment? How do we paint so together that the word together is too distant? If you ask you’ve stopped improvising and started thinking.
Joe Horton is one of the greatest improvisers I have ever had the honor of playing music with. Horton made an amazing piece of art called “A Hill in Natchez.” Visuals, music, theater all at the Southern many years ago. He closed the piece with a statement in his voice that I paraphrase/remember this way “In making this work I realized we aren’t all related, I realized we are all one.” It stuck with me, especially when it came from someone who I had seen go so deep into a moment, someone who had worked hard to be available for anything in the realm of improvisation.
I was wearing very comfortable pants while watching this Bring Your Kids show. Why was I wearing comfortable pants? Well I was just out to bring the kids to their lessons so I wasn’t wearing anything remotely fancy. I leaned back a couple times in a wide ass stance on this couch at Cadenza with my arm around my daughter N. while witnessing these two utterly amazing improvisors and smiling from ear to ear. I’ve spent a lot more money to see great improvisors in much less comfortable pants and I have to say I preferred this. Thank you Alsa and Morgan and thank you to the rest of the Bring Your Kids performers.
10:50 Saturday Morning
Parking ramp at the Highland Lunds. Radio K is playing some long God Speed You Black Emperor dirge and I let it play. Pull out of the exit, disoriented in this new part of Highland where everything is new. I’m driving over an old Ford plant. The song is moving crazy slow. The small signs are all around of St. Patrick’s Day. That’s why they were selling corned beef. That’s why they had the cabbages on the end cap.
Mint teatree tooth pick in my mouth. The coffee tastes really good for the first time today. The coffee this morning felt like no coffee taste. Maybe I have a cold. I couldn’t smell the gross old salmon that Rachel is feeding the dogs either. The coffee wakes me up. The toothpick is invigorating. The song is slow, methodical. Clean guitar playing long single note lines with minimal support. Cloudy skies but not shitty yet. The weather is supposed to be strangely shitty later. Snow, rain, cold. For stretches of minutes I won’t be able to remember what month it is, always been that way. Is it one of the months where the weather is shitty, but soon it’ll be even worse (October, November)? Or is it one of the months where it’s shitty but it is about to get insanely amazing (March, April)? Corned beef. Irish flags. People walking to bars well before noon. It’s March. The leprechaun saw his shadow, we are moving into a positive season. Four women who I want to call girls cause I bet they are twenty three or younger getting dropped off by an Uber on Ford Parkway. Layers of makeup. Hair spray. I can imagine the bouquet of perfumes, lotions and sprays surrounding their entourage as they walk by the bus stop, probably going to Tiffany’s. Those white tops that look kind of laminated and perfect. I bet they have put makeup on the necks and what is that word for the top of breasts? Decolletage? That is not it. Necklaces. Hairspray. Green highlights like scarves and things. Green hats. One girl in a Vikings jersey cause fuck it Skol. I am thinking about St. Patricks Days in my late 20s/early 30s. Ipod in listening to I-Self Devine and drinking big gingers and getting lost in the drinks. Embracing the insanity of it all. Terrible weather. Muddy tent in the parking lot of Shamrocks. Bumming a cigarette and regretting it. Smelling the party vibes. Enjoying the party vibes. Taking out the headphones. Looking at the girls. Laminated white tops. Mardi Gras beads. It’s not Mardi Gras. The song on Radio K is still going. I have parked. The fajitas supplies are coming in the house. I am coming in the house. I am thinking about St. Patricks Day. And I am thinking about dirges, toothpicks but mostly how a gaggle of young women smell stepping out for a St. Patrick’s Day observed that starts at 10:50am in Highland.
A Cultural Rope-a-Dope?
In the pages of the New York Times the longtime person-on-TV-exaggerating-his-Southern-accent James Carville proposed a political rope-a-dope for Democrats in this era. In a nutshell he suggested the Democrats lay low and let the Republicans show their ass. He pointed out that the Republicans struggle when they are actually running something and the ideas they are forwarding are not the ones they were elected on. In fact the ones they are pushing are not even popular with their base. I am not going to spend a long time on Carville’s ideas primarily because I don’t know how I feel about them. Right now the Democrats don’t control a branch of government at the national level. At the national level we are flailing for a strategy and the idea that the Republicans could be their own undoing seems quite possible to me. Services are being gutted. Businesses are being ruined. National Republican policy will be wildly cruel to many Republican constituents. The idea of a rope-a-dope is at least worth entertaining at this moment in my opinion.
I move the frame of Carville’s piece in my mind to the cultural landscape. The mediums on which the grand majority of artists, broadcasters and writers build their audience are primarily awful. Why exactly do I want to create a great Instagram video? Instagram sucks. Even when I see a great Instagram video I think. . .it sucks it’s on this site. It sucks that me falling in love all over again with Chris Dave’s drumming makes Mark Zuckerberg money deflates me. It is where my eyeballs go, it might be where your eyeballs go. It’s a level of attention capture that is draining the possibility of making an impact without being on the sites.
I’m lucky. I’m on the radio. I can share beautiful music, vital news and positive energy on a medium that I think is quite good. It’s a medium that in my section doesn’t rely on keeping the audience listening at any cost. It involves keeping the audience listening and also feeling good enough about the overall service that they will part with some of their money to keep it going strong or stronger. Very different. It works for me. But, as I want to share more of my writing, my playing, my thoughts I butt up against the fact that the places to share have their own shitty reward system.
Is there a point in a cultural rope-a-dope? Stepping away from the mediums that are severely anti-artist? Creating a garden of output that thrives in places where the terms are better? That thrives in places where the outcomes can be deeper? I think there is. But it feels hopeless cause I don’t know how much real flight is happening from these services. Do I believe there will be a moment where a considerable portion of the population can’t be talked to, sold to, marketed to on Social Media sites? I do believe that. But I believe a lot of shit. I believe a lot of unlikely shit. I think ultimately people in their fastest thinking want to see somebody get drilled in the nuts by a tire, or they want to see a beautiful woman who is quasi naked. And if there is a machine in your pocket that brings you those things it will only be in the rare moments where most people pursue something else. I think it will take some level of big brother type controls, some stigmatizing that will help. Some fancy thinkers are guessing that at some point phones will be treated like cigarettes culturally. I think that’s possible. But I think a lot unlikely shit is possible.
The difference between the Carville play and the cultural rope-a-dope I’m considering is that there is some pride in a cultural rope-a-dope. I don’t believe there can be any pride from letting Democratic positions and institutions be denigrated and demolished. We don’t elect people to Congress to go take the punches. We elect them to solve problems and seek solutions. I believe it is possible for politicians to this. But I believe a lot of unlikely shit. But in this regard I do believe that artists, broadcasters and writers can wage the good fight. I believe they can wage the war on higher ground. They can care about where their art shows up. They can care about in what environment and under what conditions their art is discovered. Can you do this while trying to reach the maximum amount of people? I don’t think so. But I believe the allure of reaching the maximum amount of people is becoming less alluring. I’ve got a beautiful little garden over here on my newsletter, on my website, with my releases. I think if you found my work you might’ve found it in a feel good way. You might not have found it on your third scroll through Instagram. Maybe you found it from a friend, or from the radio, or from a local publication. I think there is a value in presenting yourself under terms that work specifically for you and your message. I don’t know that that transfers one to one to the political landscape, but there’s some value in this idea in a cultural setting.
Button down Monday, hello ladies.
Farting at Gentle Yoga
It should happen even more than it does if you think about it. I am in gentle yoga at the Y on Tuesdays. Average age I’m gonna guess is probably mid 50s but we have a pretty big age spread. And this month the specialty is “spine work” or as it should be called “fart conjuring.” I have a couple friends in the class from having been a regular for a year plus. My friend Emily’s mom goes, let’s call her Danielle, cause I for sure don’t know her name, sorry about that Danielle. There’s some lady who knows my friend DeVon from classical music stuff. I’m closest with Brian. He’s a retired fireman who wears ankle high socks and spends time in Florida in the winter. I have personally never farted in the class. As a 43 year old my anus is not yet fully autonomous from my control. In my experience, there is some age where any control of the farting schedule is completely placed in the hands of the anus itself. Nothing better than an old couple with one rogue anus and the other member of the couple keeps on hopelessly saying the other’s name; Robert, Doris, Ted, Helen, Anne. We need a punctuation mark that is a half exclamation mark because that is how it is always said.
As stated above, I have never farted in the gentle yoga class. Have I felt a fart hanging at the gates, looking around, deciding if now is a good time? Yes absolutely! Have I miraculously willed a fart back into the butt waiting room with sheer force of will? That’s a yes. Have I stopped doing some form of stretch and pretended to address a non-existent muscle cramp just so that I didn’t fart? I did that yesterday. But I have not farted. But I have thoughts:
The farts from the youngs are stronger and louder. Any fart a younger lady is letting out has been forged into diamond strength in her butt crucible. She has done everything she can to not let it get out. When it gets out it is fully pressurized. Same for a young man, but there aren’t many young men there besides for me, and like I said, I haven’t farted in the class.
We don’t have a God bless you equivalent for farting. When someone sneezes you say “God bless you” or “Gesundheit.” I believe when someone farts other people should say “you farted” with no emotion, no exclamation mark, no grabbing a doorknob. Just a simple “you farted” with sort of an accepting tone.
You don’t say excuse me when you fart in a yoga class and I get that. When you do fart in a yoga class, you don’t say excuse me. I’ve ran through the scenario for me and I believe if I fart I will go “oh my gosh Brian, fighting some fire this morning are we?” and then get up and walk out of class with my fingers clasped around my nose. But I believe you should have to slap the ground lightly after you fart. Everyone in the class is doing echolocation to figure out who farted and that extra piece of acoustic action would really help. I won’t do anything with the information, I just want to know who farted. So toss a slap out there, for the culture.
You should leave if you fart twice on one exercise. I’m no fart detective, wait yes I am. But look, if you fart twice in one position, it’s time to call it a day for that class. Come back for the step class, but you’re done with gentle yoga. Hit the fart showers, fart friend, cause it’s done. Farting twice isn’t terrible, but no one has ever farted twice. If you’ve farted twice your body is just letting you know there’s more where that came from. And we don’t want more where that came from to come in this full ass yoga class. If you fart twice, you’re out.
Reporting live from fart yoga, over and out.
The Friend Vortex
I spend a lot of my tangibly finite adult life longing for the infinite expanse of my childhood. Just today I texted my neighbors and asked them if they would agree to never see a movie in a theater again for $8,000. Some said yes, some said no. Depressingly I started thinking about how many more movies I would see in a movie theater before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I’m probably averaging a movie in a theater every year and a half. I assume that number will shoot way the fuck up when my kids are a little older. I would happily watch a movie a month if it didn’t involve a babysitter or taking the day off of work. But even at say six a year for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s forty more years. It’s a countable amount of movies.
I don’t have many friends outside of Minnesota. I think it’s maybe about ten close ones, five super close ones. Betsy, Izzy, Afi, Conor, Steph. How many more times do I see each of them? Everything is countable, everything is finite. Every time I hang with a friend someone has to work in the morning, someone has to relieve the babysitter. My life is a calendar. But my life used to be a wide open field; a bowling ball rolling on a street like the Breeders video for Cannonball. I’d spend days at Conor’s house. Multiple day sleepovers. I’d spend hours doing nothing with my dumb, beautiful friends. Lucky/stunting for me. . .the rhythms of a too-long sleepover became my office for my 20s and 30s as a touring musician. It extended my childhood.
Heiruspecs would just get to a town five hours early and post up at a Barnes and Noble and read magazines. And bullshit. And fight. And buy a drink. And me and Peter would smoke cigarettes. And we’d listen to records. Or go swim at a hotel, if we had a hotel. Or just sit in the van with the windows rolled down waiting for the first staff person from the bar to show up. An infiniteness. An adult childhood. A sleepover with performances. And there was no gaggle. No one tagging along. One time two dudes followed us and came to like three shows in a row in the Southwest. One time a friend named Jenny from Chicago traveled with us for two weeks. But basically it was just five dudes sleeping over, drinking, sitting around, begging to get a late check out so we could see both episodes of Dawson’s Creek.
Heiruspecs’ serious touring days ended in December of 2006. Since then we’ve played shows outside of Minnesota but almost always just one and then back home. Finite. Back home for the job. Back home for another gig. Back home for kids. Finite.
—
My final group of childhood friends is the Dessa band. Dessa is a singer/rapper/poet who has a thriving career and has a new set of musicians who are the Dessa band of now. But when I talk about Dessa band I’m talking 2010-2016 me, Dustin, Joey, Aby, Dessa. The old Dessa band. Last Monday me and the old Dessa band got together for our semi-annual get together and have drinks and talk. This one was probably less drinks than ever and certainly heavier talks than ever. Our parents getting older. People getting divorced. Bands taking breaks. Our own kids getting older. Our country going to shit.
The forties are a period of great struggle. They can often be the lowest levels of satisfaction that you’ll feel in your adult life. Weighed down with children or with the stress of not having children. Mid-career. Midlife crisis. There is a lot to worry about. And all around the table we worried; we shared the triumphs and the struggles. The struggles outweighed by a factor of 2 to 1. But we also laughed. And we laughed with the intimacy of childhood friends.
I’ve spent more time with Aby Wolf than I’ll likely spend with any new friend I’ll make for the rest of my life. Was it quality time? FUCK NO. It was staring at the back of her headphoned head bored out of my mind, annoyed that the Subway sandwich she’d take a bite out of every twenty-five minutes smelled like it was an onion sandwich made on onion bread with onion mayonnaise and with extra onions on it. But it was all day. And it was brazenly smoking bowls with the van doors open at 10:30am at a gas station in Missouri. It was seeing Joey’s child like love of getting a number of adults to aqua-jog around the perimeter of a pool to ever so briefly turn it into a vortex.
——
I don’t know what depth of friendships will be available to me when I am out of the years of deep ass hands-on-all-the-time-parenting. People grow up. They don’t like to stay out as late. They don’t like to watch one more thing on YouTube. They don’t want to drive to Rochester from Saint Paul just to eat at the Golden Corral cause that’s the closest one. I don’t know that I want to do that. But I know there is this special depth that only comes from this quantity of hang, this infinite hang, this forever talk. And I make new friends. I actively make new friends. I love it. And I got just a little taste of the infinite again during COVID. I hung heavy with the neighbors. Long hangs, long talks. Fires. Questions. Inside jokes. Peeing in the yard. It was magical, but it was fleeting. And fleeting is okay. The last real time the old Dessa band played a gig was July 16, 2017 in Rochester. I understood it was the last one. No completely clear articulation, but there weren’t more gigs on the books and there wasn’t much appetite to keep it going just like this from Dessa. I remember breathing in the fun, the crowd, the music, the quality of the band. We had gotten really good. And we had become magical friends. Close like childhood friends. And I knew it would be a bond that wouldn’t break up even if the band did. And that was all true. I didn’t realize it’d be the last group of friends I’d make that felt like that. And I’m grateful for that. A summer night - a group of friends turning it into a vortex one last time.
I Played Bass on a Bunch of Tracks on Brother Ali’s New Record
I got a great text a couple months ago from my guy Joe Mabbott. Joe Mabbott is one of the great producers and engineers in the Minnesota scene and in my reckoning the best mix engineer I’ve ever collaborated with. He runs The Hideaway Studios. But he’s also truly a super great friend of mine. If he texts me it’s usually to play racquetball or to play the card game Deuces with our friends Rachel and DeVon. But recently I got the text to play bass for some new recordings for Brother Ali. What an honor.
I’ve known Ali since I guess 1998? I remember him calling my parents house when I was in high school before I had a cell phone. I think it was before anyone had cell phones really. And I’ve had the honor of playing bass on a lot of his big records. It’s been a special relationship for me and I hope for him, ANT and BK-One too, but probably about nine years ago I thought that relationship had come to an end. No real stress but a lot of the Rhymesayers artists had started using a musician named G Koop for most of their live musician needs. All good. But I wasn’t getting the calls. Life goes on.
So it was an unexpected text that I was glad to get. I got to head over to Joe Mabbott’s studio The Hideaway. This is a space where some of the most magical moments of my life have happened. Recorded A Tiger Dancing and the Heiruspecs 2008 Self-titled album there. Played bass for Eyedea and Abilities there. Hung out with Stage One for the first time there. Spent a lot of time just partying there. So to be back there playing with old friends was great. That night it was just Ant and Joe. Ali lives in Turkey and is mainly just coming back for shows at this point. Anywho. I think the songs turned out really well and I believe the chemistry between Ant and Ali is undeniable. Here are the tunes I played on all lined up for you to check out and enjoy.
Performing with Big Trouble on Saturday February 23 at White Squirrel
Big Trouble is back at it with new material at our monthly gig. I can’t tell you how grateful I am get to play with this group every month. We’ve got a rhythm dialed in and we are adding great material. When ever I’ve been in a band that plays for 2 hours we have always had maximum an hour and forty five minutes of material. It’s always either been playing a song we don’t quite know or sewing a couple extra long solos onto arrangements. But Big Trouble probably has a solid 3 hours and fifteen minutes of shit we really know how to play. So to hit two fifty minute sets? We can be picky! We can follow the vibe. We can call audibles. We can make it happen. We are making great music up there. I hope you come through and check us out! Family Friendly 6-8pm situation.
Deerfield Dispatch
I am changing my mind right now. The Atlantic Ocean is to my left or straight ahead depending on how I have the chair position. I am in pain in paradise. Charles Mingus is playing too loud or too quiet, depending upon what instrument is soloing. A Florida breeze is hitting the glass and an obituary for a neighbor’s dad sings out from behind the glass of my iPhone. I think about Shawn Smith and Andrew Wood. Two Seattle musicians I love who died young. Shawn Smith died in 2019. . .torn aorta, high blood pressure. He made songs that escorted me through the hardest times I’ve faced in my easy ass life. Play the Satchel song “Suffering” while you are trying to turn your dad’s whiskey in your glass into the joint you wish you had. Listen to it when it shows up in the movie Beautiful Girls while you are watching it in the theater in Middletown, CT and you have a mercilessly real crush on your brother’s college friend and you’re in high school and there is no feasible universe where you ever date her. There is no feasible universe where you share a moment with her. Now look at that whiskey and remember that there is a Beautiful Girls poster sitting by the door to your basement that your wife bought you but it’s not on a wall cause you can’t frame anything, literally and figuratively. An active God, an involved God, a meddling God would take down Shawn Smith’s systolic by 25 and say “I’ve got you covered Shawn. You took care of another one of my children, Sean McPherson, with that song Suffering, so I’m going to make sure you live a long life.” We don’t have a meddling God. We don’t have a meddling God. There is a code that this universe sits on. It can never be written all the way down. But if someone all powerful is enforcing that code Smith’s aorta is not torn.
Andrew Wood died because he did heroin. He was the leader of Mother Love Bone. He and his groundbreaking spirit laid the groundwork for the juggernaut that is Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder is in the crowd this weekend for SNL turning fifty. Maybe he even played some uke before I turned the TV on. But Andrew Wood, and the movie about his band Mother Love Bone, taught me that it was okay to be a freak who wears make up and believes in making up silly songs and he lived with Chris Cornell, and maybe if the code you can’t read is enforced, they’re both alive today. Stone Gossard said Wood had a tragic flaw. But there’s no tragic. Your suffering isn’t for a purpose. Your non-suffering isn’t for a purpose. You are purpose. Plain, simple and unadulterated. Your flaws aren’t tragic. Your flaws aren’t flaws. Charles Mingus made music that touches me. It probably touches you. But if Charles Mingus decides to watch baseball games every night in the summer instead of make some of the world’s greatest music it’s not a tragedy. No one put Donald Trump on this Earth to make it worse. No one put the people who make the world better on Earth to make it better. We seek out what we can do. We do the best we can.
My neighbor, his dad died last week. It reads like the man did the best he could. It’s an obituary you’ll remember forever. He worked too much. Most of us do. But he raised a family. He liked to cross-country ski. He died young. His son is still in his thirties. It hits me, that hits me, that cuts close. My mom died when I was in my twenties. God didn’t take my mom. God didn’t give my mom. God didn’t take my neighbor’s dad.
There are breezes. There are courtyards. There is music. There are war crimes. There are children. There are shots at the buzzer. There are divorces. There is pure evil. There is toast with egg yolk on it. There is good. There is Mother Love Bone. There is the ocean. There is high blood pressure. There are tantrums. There is being in a hot tub on a windy day when your nipples are hard from the cold and your legs are melting into the bench. There are wounds that never heal. There is suffering and there is joy. There is a code but there is no enforcement and there is no appeal.
New Weapons For an Old Fight
In the last ten years I’ve learned two competing truths: social media is wildly powerful; social media is useless.
It’s a lever problem. I am the product. I am not the customer. The product is not always wrong, but it is always pliable. It is always a secondary concern to the customer.
I scream into an abyss on social media and the medium is designed for the disagreers to yell back. It is designed to sew foment.
Previous political mediums may not have been designed to do the opposite, but I feel they did the opposite.
They leaned toward building alliance, they leaned away from gridlock. They made gridlock costly. Social media makes gridlock vastly more profitable than consensus.
There is advertising to be sold to how I feel now. BLVGARI or someone else is buying ads on the New York Times so that when I look to find my outrage for the day I consider buying a medium sweater from a bearded man from Europe with a fine lady on his arm.
Social media doesn’t just feel futile, it feels warping. It warps some other me that could exist. I want none of it. Except I want to see my friends play music, I want to see the best musicians on earth shed in the studio, I want to see great dunks, I want to see friends like Desdamona talk about what is going on in their life in a low-impact way. I want MN music drama to be played out on Facebook and I want to eat my popcorn and watch and never comment. I want a lot of what social media offers. But it warps me. It has already warped me. How do I fight without it? How do I protest without telling you I protested and sharing a photo? Maybe that is part of my duty. I’m not without followers on these social media channels. Is it my duty to fight or to win? Am I the arbiter of what fighting is and what winning is? Is the mob on social media the arbiter?
But how is a weapon designed and consistently controlled by someone like Elon Musk a weapon I can wield to stop someone like Elon Musk?
——-
Social media killed many hierarchies in our world. There was a week in 1991 where Nielsen and Billboard changed how they tracked the Billboard 200 and overnight artists like Skid Row, N.W.A. and Garth Brooks were sitting shoulder to shoulder with who we thought were the biggest pop icons on planet earth because we switched to data, not anecdotal reporting. The gatekeepers before June 1991 were record store managers and other intermediaries who thought they had a sense of what actually moved units out of their stores. But they were wrong. Rap, country and heavy metal were profoundly under-indexed by record store managers. But when they started actually keeping track, they realized that those genres were wildly popular.
There are mainstream parts of our culture that I believed were on the absolute fringes before social media. The alt-right comes to mind. That’s the big one. But, so many micro-movements, so many things I didn’t read about in the paper, or in the magazines. So many things I believed were small were actually the N.W.A. of the 2010s. Fandoms built up in muted unison and then rejoicing when it is confirmed that the tribe is huge, the voice is strong, the movement is real.
Social media has made dreams and nightmares come true. And some of my dreams are some of your nightmares and vice versa. Social media will get us into problems it can’t get us out of.
——-
You are not going to be shocked that old Sean McPherson thinks that Donald Trump’s second term is already a huge problem. He is denying the humanity of so much of humanity. He is firing throngs people in cruel ways. He is investigating and deporting law-abiding humans in cruel ways. He is cruel. He is cruel to the world in a way the world has never been cruel to him. I have harbored some guarded optimism about a path forward in Palestine and Israel in the past two months. Trump seems to be unnecessarily derailing these potentials sby denying Palestinians a right to their homes and asserting Americans right to their land. Shame on you Trump. In an article about couples therapy in the New York Times I found this quote by Daniel Oppenheimer:
Epiphanies are real, but they’re fragile. They are a one-leafed seedling, pushing up through the crust of the ground, or a blind hatchling waiting, naked and alone, for its mother to return with a worm. They are easily crushed under foot or done in by harsh weather. If they’re not protected and nurtured, they will crumble and blow away in the wind, as though they never existed.
I immediately thought of the very shaky ground our world is built upon. The recently built alliances, the threadbare string tying two parties previously at odds together, ever so precariously. I feel conservative Anna. I want the changes to come slowly, purposefully, legally, humanely, carefully.
The changes are not coming this way. The speed of the changes is itself one of the changes.
——
What are the new weapons for the old fight? Are they the old weapons we had eschewed in favor of more efficient ones? I listen to Brother Ali’s podcast. He talks about the network of street team people across the country that he and his team let atrophy when they thought it could all be done on social media. Fuck a poster. Share it on Facebook, let the message spread that way. Ali now laments losing that network you could touch, that network you could email, that network you could put on the guest list and say thank you face to face to. That network you didn’t pay a third party to reach.
At a dinner on Monday a friend asked how you learn of protests without searching on social media. The table had no legitimate suggestions for how to do that. Has that network atrophied? The political bookshop that used to be at 25th and Lyndale. Posters up for protests. I don’t know if the network has atrophied. My access to the network has atrophied. The muscles I used to know of these protests has atrophied. They have been replaced with full-time jobs, little children, musings on text about favorite movies and early bedtimes.
What are the new weapons for the old fight? What do you stop first when the sky is falling? Do you stay local when the problems are national? Have folks you’ve had conflicts with before part of the same team for a greater good? Are you fighting to fight are you fighting to win? The winning message is never “fuck no, not this stuff.” The winning message is a message, not a counter-message. What is our message? Don’t be cruel. It’s nebulous, it’s reactive. It is what I feel. I just don’t want my country to wield cruelty at home and abroad against disenfranchised people. I don’t want my country to trample on the progress that has been made toward a more equitable world.
What are the new weapons for the old fight? I’m sure it’s not a blog with a peach background. I’m sure it’s not a Facebook post. What is the message? What is the medium? Where is the protest? The most optimistic and organized in my network are working on it. I get the emails, I read the google docs. When are the least optimistic and least organized like myself going to join? When I am going to start sacrificing for the movement? I’m typing cause I’m asking. I’m typing cause I believe it will push me to do more than type. And I’m publishing cause I think it might do the same for you.
Hosting Best New Bands at First Ave on Friday January 31
Friday night I’ll be hanging at First Ave for Best New Bands of 2024. I had a great time last year and I’m looking forward to this year. This is a great way to see a bunch of great bands from the scene all at once. I hope to see you there.
Flyer for a show at First Ave!
L to R: Sean McPherson, Jill Riley, DJ Horse Girl, Krista Wax
Romans and Reconstructions
I write a trivia question everyday for the Afternoon Cruise on Jazz88. I read it at 4:30 and I have a nice little crew of maybe 10-25 people who take the time to write in their answers. My favorite trivia to write at this point in my life is “on this day in history.” I enjoy going to the Wikipedia page about whatever calendar day we are in and finding a point of departure for trivia questions. This means that most days I read about some absolutely insane shit that happened during the Roman Empire era: An 8 year old becomes co-emperor of the Empire, an emperor designates the next emperor from his deathbed, an emperor who bought the emperorship on auction from the Praetorian Guard. The Roman Empire is chock full of absolutely wild, unfathomably wild leadership. My modern mind imagines some citizens of the Empire coming up to the capital and saying “this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. We are going to look wild on wikipedia. It is going to be obvious to everyone reading our history that we are currently heading in the wrong direction.” But nothing of the sort can be done. There is no button to press to stop decline. I think about this as I feel the country moving in a wrong direction for me. I think about large corporations both saying “we are going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership” and four years later saying “We aren’t. We aren’t going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership.” Saying both things within some non-generational period seems categorically more insane than saying either thing. I am learning that things I thought were lines in the sand for our country were just trends, reasonable and fashionable only at the time. Does it turn your stomach to think of that? I ask this of you even if we stand on a different side of an issue. If you think prioritizing better recruitment for Black leaders does it bug the shit out of you that Target was front and center on that issue for a couple seasons? Does it bother you that it was just a trend, just the wind blowing a certain direction and bringing many corporate policies along with it?
Reconstruction is a heartbreaking and fascinating period of our country’s history. I believe Andrew Johnson is our worst President. He’s our worst President because at a moment when so much was pliable and enforceable with military force, he found a path back to fortifying institutional racism. He never believed in the cause of the Civil War. He didn’t believe in reconstructing our society with a seat at the table for Black people. When he had the opportunity to put his thumb on the scale to favor slaveowners or slaves he chose slaveowners. Garbage. But I hear Reconstruction echoes right now. There is an obsession with undoing the policies of the Biden administration. But this is not an orderly undoing with an eye toward decency. This is an aggressive yanking, stripping and deriding of policies that sought to reconstruct our society with more seats at the table for more people. Are these policies being removed because they worked? Are they being removed because they didn’t work? Around MLK Day I realized for the first time that the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Alabama took place weeks after the “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington. August 1963 for the March for Freedom and September 1963 for the bombing. The Civil Rights era tells a story of resistance. It tells the story of America hearing Dr. King and other leaders and not changing minds but instead buying detonators and dynamite. Will 2020-2024 be looked at as a period of Reconstruction? Will the policies aimed at changing policing policies, renter’s rights, clean energy, diversity and equity commitments be looked at with the shock of how truly radical Reconstruction was? If you spend a lot of time writing trivia you will often hear of a Black person landing an elected position and being recognized as the first Black person to hold said office since the 1870s or 1880s. One at a time these asterisks can be looked at as an outlier. But they are not; the gains that Blacks made in the 15 years after the Civil War were clawed back violently around the country.
Gains are being clawed back right now. A new, indecent, vindictive America is not being born, it is coming of age. 8 year-olds will be Emperors. Money will be printed with our current king on the obverse. I want to walk out and tell the leaders “this isn’t decent, this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. When they read about this part in the 2070 edition of Wikipedia, they’ll wonder why it wasn’t stopped.” But I don’t have faith it will be stopped. In fact I have faith it won’t be.
Big Trouble Performs the Twin Peaks Theme Song at White Squirrel
Big Trouble has been covering the Twin Peaks theme song (Falling by Angelo Badalamenti) for years. This was our first rendition since the passing of director David Lynch. Recorded live at the White Squirrel Saturday January 25, 2025.
On Holiday Parties
The 9 bus line is comically long and meandering. From my house in Saint Paul I took the 74 to the 9 to St. Louis Park to work at Jazz88 yesterday because immediately after work I’d be going to a holiday party for Trivia Mafia. I imagined I’d have some alcoholic drinks and some THC drinks and Amy, my date for the night, agreed we’d Lyft there separately and then Lyft together back to Saint Paul. I rode past 82 stops on the 9. 50 minutes. Saw things in South Minneapolis I hadn’t seen in years. Saw things in South Minneapolis I had never seen. Wonderful. Joyous. I love a long bus ride.
I am the co-owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck is the other owner. I am the louder person, but I am the quieter owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck does it for his full time job. Many, many people do it for their full time job. I do not. My signature says I am the assistant owner. If an employee suffers a loss like a death in the family, a pet that really mattered to them, a medical situation for them or a loved one, I order the flowers. Otherwise, for the past two years I just root for Trivia Mafia and stay friends with the team, but I don’t do anything direct. I did make the introduction between Cory Cove from KFAN and Initials and Trivia Mafia. That led us to starting Initials Game Live which has proven to be an absolute slam dunk for Trivia Mafia. So I don’t do much, but I did do one important thing that got something started right before I retired from actually working for Trivia Mafia.
Riding in the Lyft over I reflected on Trivia Mafia. We started Trivia Mafia as a weekly at 331 Club in January of 2007. Chuck and I were introduced by the staff at the 331 Club and we started gelling as a trivia duo. We were good, but I didn’t know that 18 years later we’d be at a holiday party with 140 attendees who work for us sending love to our employees who work out of the state like Greg in Omaha, Aaron in Denver and Michelle in wherever she lives. . .I think Colorado now. It’s become bigger than I can truly understand. I am on the company Slack and I feel out of my league in a league I started. People are setting automations to remind writers to generate content for theme nights that have been scheduled by a bar via an app. I used to be able to put my arms all the way around the project. I knew how to do everything. I did everything. I saw the guts get built. I fucked up things routinely. So did Chuck. He fixed my shit. I fixed his shit. My arms could wrap all the way around this thing. And now they can’t. I can never get to every restaurant that uses us. I can never meet every person that works for us. We have a thriving business in New Mexico. I can’t put my arms around New Mexico. It’s a scale I just never thought Trivia Mafia would be. If it got big I thought it would get big from my sweat, from my effort. I can’t put my arms around it so I just go to the standard playbook of owner platitudes: “thanks for working so hard” “I’ve seen what you’re doing by following along on Slack and it is really impressive” “I keep on hearing great things about our social media presence”. These things are all true, these things all matter. I appreciate all of these people more than I can express. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. There is no denying that Trivia Mafia is a business. It is an LLC that generates a profit or a loss. Chuck and I are the owners. But I cared about all these people and all these events and all this content long before it was a capital “B” business. It is a factory of fun people doing special things that bring players joy. Brenna, the saint who has been running Trivia Mafia with us for 10+ years said we have 199 active locations at the moment. This is a big factory. This is a special adventure. And I have a special role in it. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. But I can wrap my arms around Christopher (Brenna’s husband), Brenna, Amy Woo, the Shoobs, Danno, Marcus, Keith, Martha, Meghan, Eyeball and so many other amazing people who give part of their life to this factory. I can wrap my arms around that. We are a big ass business designed to create fun experiences for players, hosts and venues.
The scene is great. We are at La Dona Cerveceria. I’ve been here a number of times. Name tags. Hellos. There is a picture of Chuck and me on the image round and many many many people have no idea who we are. The factory is bigger than the boss. The factory is bigger than the history. There are people working for Trivia Mafia who understand it in a completely different way than I do. But they understand it. They love trivia. They love how we do trivia. They are flashing their wristband and enjoying a beer tonight. We are celebrating. The joy is not pointed towards anyone. At a good holiday party the joy should be pointing in every direction.
After a short game of Lotteria (from Mexico, similar to bingo) and an obligatory round of trivia the night settles into karaoke. Karaoke has been a centerpiece of Trivia Mafia holiday parties for a long time. We always use Sharon as a host. She’s the best. The list fills up quick and people start singing. Trivia hosts make for amazing karaoke singers. The best hosts have a comfort with being the center of attention without an obsession with being the center of attention. I enjoy the karaoke and also make my way around party introducing myself to some and reconnecting with people I’ve known for years. Matt Schubbe sings a Cranberries song. I’m 75% sure it’s “Dreams.” He sings the whole thing in O’Riordan’s register. He is absolutely understated, just delivering the goods and wowing the crowd and me. The moment is right for a joint outside by myself. It’s frosty cold. No one is smoking cigarettes outside. That’s great news. No one is smoking weed. If people want weed they are probably drinking it. But I was born in 1981, I miss smoking cigarettes and I enjoy a marijuana cigarette from time to time. The air is cold as shit but I’m enjoying myself and the break from socializing. I return to my date Amy Woo singing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” It’s incredible. People are singing along. Many songs being sung go completely over my head. I don’t really know My Chemical Romance, Sum41 and many other bands that click just right for people younger than me. I look around to see a crowd of folks connecting with these songs and I have no idea. I’m gravitating towards hanging with a host Colin and his wife Elise. I trained in Colin in 2015. He is now a married father of two and I think none of that was in the mix when he started working with us. We have always had a good vibe. For many years Elise would call up the Current and request C+C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat” and every week I’d say “no fucking way.” I did play it for them once. . .on their wedding night. Their wedding planner brought them outside, they flipped on the stream and they heard the request. Isn’t that great? Isn’t life great? Aren’t you glad you smoked that joint? You are. Colin delivers an amazing performance of a Chapell Roan song called Pink Pony Club. It’s in a high register and Colin delivers the entire thing in his head voice. It is a show stopper. Colin at that moment is every woman in the spot’s favorite man. He is the man.
At some point a man named John steps up for karaoke and does something insane that I absolutely did not understand. The music begins and it is Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and the News. There is no question. The title of the song has flashed, the words are starting to flash. John begins to sing “Enter Sandman.” I don’t know what the shit he is doing. But I start to sense that he has locked this thing in perfectly. Kind of like when Kevin Hunt figured out that restarting a song on the Dodge Caravan took exactly a quarter note at the tempo of “Never No More” by Souls of Mischief. Thus, with a well timed tap on beat 4 of bar 8 one could freestyle forever in the car over that Hieroglyphics beat. When the groove drops out and Huey should be saying “it’s hip to be square” John death rattle squeals “off to never never land” and I believe I have urinated in my pants and also fallen in love with this dude. The phenomenon sort of cycles through the room. People start to hone in. It doesn’t need to be explained nor can it be. People are just nudging their friends or stopping mid-sentence and taking in the splendor of a karaoke take over. Sharon doesn’t know what to do. And then John air sax solos and then grabs the last half of “Hip to be Square.” I know that this will be the apex of the night. If Amy Winehouse came back to life and sang Valerie that would be second place. This “Hip to Be the Sandman” thing is a known gag and it is brilliant. Check it out.
The party goes on. I know I will do some amount of work at the end of the party. Put some shit away. Move some tables. I look forward to this. It will make me feel better about being an owner of a profitable company who doesn’t get his hands dirty anymore. I move some tables. Bring some empties up. Move a table or two. A plan is coalescing. We will got to Otter’s Saloon where we will sing more karaoke. Colin and Elise offer to drive me. They say they will move the baby seats. I know in my soul I wouldn’t move baby seats for them unless it was the last option. I feel a bit like a turd, but I also want a ride.
Otter’s Saloon is perfect. Weird, gruff and eccentric door guy wearing a cowboy hat. Kind of full. PBS News unexplainably on one of the TVs. Full bar but not too full. There’s no karaoke stage. It’s just two screens and two mics. This is ideal. Karaoke is the people’s entertainment. I run into an old acquaintance and make the mistake of the “how is your husband” and she says “we’re getting a divorce.” I am a connector so I always want to establish the ways we know each other and pursue those connections. . .but I feel like such a shit. She is chill about it and we are catching up. The crew is getting an elite seating situation and starting to get a little love from the regulars. At one point the door guy comes right up to me and playfully squares up with me. I look him straight in the eye to see where we are headed. He puts his arms on me, not a fan of that, and then he kind of half hugs me. Weird but I see he sort of this he’s part of the entertainment. I know I am part of the entertainment. There are some I-guarantee-you-these-white-girls-are-from-Columbia Heights-girls and they are singing Destiny’s Child and deeper r&b. The vibes are going from good to great. A strange older man who looks a little like Mystery Man from Mulholland Drive sings me a Billy Joel song directly to me face. It’s strange but at this point the weed is happening and I’m all the way in.
The night at this point is better than the magic nights I spend too much of my life trying to recreate. This is the best Trivia Mafia holiday party. This is a great night. I am in the bar. I am dancing a little bit. I am dressed spectacularly. I am a magnificent person in a magnificent moment. I’m with probably about seven or eight people. There’s always a watch the karaoke option. There’s also usually conversation available. Amy sings a weird song about Arkansas I don’t understand. There are layers of communication happening tonight. We have made mini karaoke friendships with a group of four girls next to us. We aren’t having big talks, they aren’t sitting with us. But we are commenting on the quality of the singers and the songs. We are making room for each other. ONE OF THESE FUCKING GIRLS TRIES TO UPDOG ME. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME KARINA. I’M 43 YEARS OLD. Here’s how it happens. Elise is going up to sing a song and she talks to Karina. I ask Karina if she’s singing with Elise. Karina says “I’m just hyping for her.” After the song gets going I say to Karina “she’s doing good” and I EXCREMENT YOU NOT Karina says “SHE’S GOT THAT UPDOG.” This is unbelievable. She should be arrested, or at least cut off, or at least she should be critiqued. Not this time Karina. I don’t fall for it. Of course I don’t fall for it. I’m 43 years old. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME.
Amy’s friend Meghan shows up and we go deeper than we ever have which is still not that deep. I can’t remember the details but I realize she has a depth of spirit and relation to the world that I just didn’t know she had. You spend years talking about bullshit between drinks at large hangs and bars and maybe you get to thinking that’s all there is to somebody. You don’t think it’s bad. You just think that’s it to her. And then suddenly some corner of her day opens up in conversation and you realize her soul goes all the places yours does and places yours doesn’t. You want to have a coffee with her for the first time in your life. And more than what you might find out over the coffee, more than the layers you peel back together, you just enjoy the coffee more knowing there’s layers to her. We can talk about bullshit over beers for another fifteen years but every moment will feel different now that I imagine the layers.
That’s it. That’s the night. I make it home. I am overwhelmed with this joy. I make my way home and hit the hay so I can have my shit together tomorrow. A part of life is being a part of a thing you don’t understand. I don’t understand Trivia Mafia. But I am a part of it. I’ll see you at the holiday party next year.
Big Trouble on Saturday at White Squirrel
Big Trouble at White Squirrel on Saturday January 25 6-8pm. Plying a new tune I wrote called “67 Ways to Leave Your Easel”. The bass solo should take up the majority of set 1. I’ve got a lot of scales I’ve been slapping and I’d like to share them with you slowly.
Location, Location, Locations
God damn it it’s important to be in places designed to be about the things you love. My 20s were parked firmly in the area where it was most efficient to go to where the shit you loved was. I love movies. Go to Home Video. I love instruments. Go to Willie’s American Guitars. I love recorded music. Go to a record store. I love making music. Go to your space and practice and write.
Now a lot of times you decide you love something and you search for a home for it on the web. Or you just hope that the thing you love comes across the identity-seeking graze of scrolling. I have gotten plenty of good experiences from that grazing, but no great ones. I fell back in love with things I used to love today by being in their physical presence.
I needed that affirmation of love. Staying creative, ambitious and enthusiastic about creative pursuits as futile as the ones I’m in requires recharging, requires fortification. When all you do is tell your dog “it” matters while you sit on your couch trying to finish up some piece of writing and you keep on dozing off I admit I get to wondering if it does actually matter. But today, I know “it” matters. The “it” is a life that is not a complete surrender to the algorithms, to the momentum towards doing what is easiest for your family and your immediate satisfaction. The “it” is purposely crafting a life that produces art, that fosters community, that helps things be better. I, like you, am surrounding by people who never gave a shit about “it”, stopped giving a shit about “it”, or harbor some bit of negative judgment for anyone who still cares about “it”. It’s a worthwhile fight.
This morning, after I made my signature pancakes and struggled through a walk with our rebellious pit bull foster Flex, the boys from Big Trouble came over for a rehearsal. Big Trouble plays once a month at White Squirrel (last Saturday of the month 6-8p). Big Trouble has been on a creative run that involves making new music almost every month. One rehearsal, one gig. New charts, charts we struggled with, songs we just want to revisit for whatever reason. Everyone sounds nice at rehearsal today. The guitars are brilliant, filled with clarity and tube warmth. Peter has his best snare on my house kit. The riveted secondary ride sounds beautiful. My bass amp hasn’t moved in years and it’s set up just perfect. I have new roundwounds on. There is an aesthetic joy in this band. There is a beauty to the sound. We dust off the Elliott Smith song Angeles. We finally find an arrangement that works for the bridge. We’ve been trying to make this song work for maybe a year and a half. Next up we work on a new original I wrote called 67 Ways to Leave Your Easel. Here’s the chart in case you want to play along at the next gig on January 24.
It turns out great. Tasty solos. Then we work on Waxahatchee’s Ruby Falls. This one has been a struggle spot. I transcribed the melody. My brother Steve got it more closer to the record. But me and my fingers were stuck in our ways and I struggled to make the transition. Her beautiful melody at times leaves some rhythmic uncertainty. Steve, who has been giving lessons and playing a bunch of music as of late, falls in and adjusts rapidly. Faster than I can. I figure it’s hopeless to make the decisions about the melody and firm them up in this one rehearsal. But here we are, getting it together. I love music and I am around fellow musicians. The room is filled with music, the room is filled with musicians. This is one of the ways I spend my life. This is one of the ways I fill my cup. This is one of the ways Peter, Steve and Josh also fill their cup. We wrap up the rehearsal and I rejoin my family.
My four year old N. took a risk on a toot in the tub and dropped a deuce. My wife Rachel is not super excited about the whole situation. I clean N. up while Rachel cleans the tub. A trade I’m happy to make. We play Mount Sean. It’s a game where N. steps across my spread out legs in a sitting position on her bed in order to “climb Mount Sean.” Then we head off to guitar lessons. I don’t want the guitar teacher to my house. I want to get guitar lessons at a spot where other kids get lessons. Location. Location. Locations. My seven year old S. drops down into a basement room filled with Beatles posters and peppered with Gary Clark Jr. posters and keeps on learning how to sight-read on the G, B and E strings. N. and I play upstairs, look at weird instruments, play around on the carpet and kill time. We join S. for the last ten minutes of her lesson and I love seeing her play with the teacher, laughing, learning. This is one of the ways we spend our Saturdays. During the lesson N. asks me to push my finger into her forehead. I am transported back to a video store from my childhood in Pownal, VT. I have one of the worst headaches of my life. My mom takes her hands and pushes my forehead and the back of my skull together. She then pushes the sides of my head together. I have never felt better. Better than Tylenol. Better than a cold glass of water on a hungover morning. I wonder if I am making N.’s head feel better than it ever will. I hope I am.
We drive to Caydence on the East Side of Saint Paul. Coffee, vinyl, live music. I am at a physical location for music lovers, for coffee lovers, for people who don’t want to do their things differently. S. looks at the impossible to sound out pastry kouign amann. You and me both. She orders one of those. N. gets a hot chocolate with whipped cream. Peter Goggin, Sophia Kaufmann, Nate Baker and some jazz musicians I don’t know are playing All of Me. No drummer. The percussion is a tap dancer. Rhythm is a dancer. Ashley Gonzalez.
I am in a city with jazz musicians who troop into the back of a record store and make beautiful music on a Saturday in January. I am here to consign records for Heiruspecs with my friend Niqui who I’ve known for years. She’s hung posters for Trivia Mafia. She’s been to a bunch of Heiruspecs shows. She’s worked hard for her community and she is a fixture here at Caydence. I drink a coffee, fill out consignment forms and put some records into the universe that I hope someone will buy and spend time with and enjoy and play for their friends.
I’m about to leave and I see Chris. I don’t know Chris’s last name. He played percussion in a band my friends were in in their early 20s called Latona’s Thirst. Chris is driving around putting up posters for his new band the Stone Arch Rivals. He is too old for this shit. I am too old for this shit. But we are here together, spending our Saturdays spreading the word about our art. Buying a coffee. Hanging a poster. Hearing a band. Browsing through records. Talking to a sax player. Fighting the algorithms. Visiting the locations. Filling our cup. The posters look good. They’re almost ready to put out a record. I return home, turn on Radio K. The genius DJ plays They Might Be Giants, Nirvana, Journey and Modest Mouse in one set. They rattle off all the famous Steve Smith’s in addition to Journey drummer Steve Smith. It is amazing radio. It is funny. Modest Mouse sounds amazing. My cup is brimming. I had to tell you about it.
Photo Dump
Photos of me holding containers of pancakes. Photos of my friends. Photos of jazz musicians. Photo of my old mailman. What a treat.
