Harvilla on Soundgarden is a Great One

I love me I hate me some Harvilla. To me he is the David Brooks of the music world. But his last run of episodes has been next level. And the Soundgarden episode is the best one yet. The podcast is called 60 Songs that Explain the 90s. Please listen to the episode. We need to start raving about great podcast episodes cause man there is a spectrum. I’ve listened to some really long useless episodes of things. Let me tell you about the cream. The best ones. This is some of the best it gets. Take your time with it. Don’t expect to take it in one sitting. It’ll be like a long magazine article. You’ll spend a third of a Saturday with it. You’ll get some in the grocery store and some st the Y and plenty of dog walks. This one is magic. Enjoy ir.

For Small Business Saturday - Instrumentals from Big Trouble

What say you to the joys of seeing Big Trouble on Saturday night on the week of Thanksgiving. Not familiar with Big Trouble. We are great. Peter, Josh, Sean and Steve. Instrumentals. 6-8p. Lots of variety of sounds and songs. Great solos, excellent fun. And music from 6-8 on a weekend is really quite the treat.

Creative Mornings - Spreading The Word

In Massachusetts in the 1990s the French language was still a big thing. Everyone took French in elementary school. Thirty minutes at a time a couple days a week we all held a plastic piece of jambon and discussed visiting la bibliotec and l’hopitale. In 1991 when I was in fourth grade the Spin Doctors were also a huge thing. The song, 4:30 was built to annoy adults, but it could also serve to derail a group of French learning etudiants. Innocently I asked professeure how to say “what time is it” in French. The answer is “quelle hor eteil”. I then asked her how to say 4:30 in French. Quator e demi. With that I was armed with enough French to take over the class. For the next le vingt minutes finally, for the first time that year, the class only spoke French. But all we said was quelle hor eteil and quator e demi. Over and over again. She asked us to stop. We refused. I refused. I got the class going. I was overjoyed. I was in charge. And I thought it was bulletproof because it was all in French. The teacher pleaded, she went red in the face. But I went redder. I had the chance to get the class under my control and I would not give it up. After the entire class period had been used, I stood with pure satisfaction. The teacher asked me to stay around after the class left. When the class emptied out she, in her Quebecoise accent, told me that I had a unique power to get to people to do what I wanted them to. She told me that was an incredibly powerful skill. And she told me I had completely wasted it that day. I had used it in a way that could get me in a trouble. That day I didn’t get in trouble, but that teacher let me know that the things I can do can be wasted, or they can be put to better use. I can get everyone to do something cool, or I could get everyone to do something we’d all get in trouble for. During that class I realized what I would do with my life, travel the world with the Spin Doctors.

In St. Paul in the 1990s you went to the Kinkos on Snelling to either purchase or steal your flyers. You brought your files, you picked the canary yellow, the astroblue and you printed your copies. You kept those flyers in the back of your pocket if you were sucker, and you put those flyers in other peoples hands if you did it right. You gave a flyer to the reluctant and you gave a stack of flyers to the enthusiastic, let them spread it further. But if you really did that, and if you could actually play, you got the people to your show. You spread the word and people started checking out what you were doing. I was in a cauldron of talent when I went to St. Paul Central. A bunch of great bands and artists were all around the same program. We all put our flyers up on the wall, talked about who was playing where, what we were going to, what was happening. One day I put up a flyer where I was covered in sand up to my neck. My teacher Red Freeberg caught this and said “this is the best flyer anyone has ever made in the class”. It was not an artistic achievement. Red just stated “people who might not go to the show will want the flyer for the laugh, for the novelty. But some of those folks will go to the show to see more of it”. Flyers were another way for me to communicate the viability of the music I was making. It was another way to call attention to the work we were doing. During that class I realized what I would do with my life, work jobs that involve going to Kinkos all the time.

In St. Paul in the 2010s, a lot of bands didn’t go to FedEx Kinkos as much as they did in the 90s. You have Facebook ads, you have blogs, you have radio stations that at times are supportive of local artists. But, by the 2010s I was the co-owner of a trivia company. I worked for the Current, I still printed posters for Heiruspecs and Trivia Mafia in the year before the pandemic was spending about $900 a month just on copies. I walked in to the Roseville FedEx to pick a small order for Trivia Mafia, maybe 20 sheets for a private party. When I said my name at the front desk the guy got a glassy face of recognition and in awe said “you’re Sean McPherson”? So I had arrogantly say something to the effect “what part of my vast media influence are you a fan of Ted from Kinkos, do you listen to the Current or do you like Heiruspecs? He just said, still in a bit of a daze, “naw man, you just make so many copies”.

My life has been about making the word and then spreading that word. I believe in the shit I am a part of. I believe Heiruspecs is one of the great live acts in Twin Cities history. If I didn’t, why the hell would I still bother to print posters out and put them up at age 42? I believe playing a Trivia Mafia trivia night is one of the most awesome things you can do with your friends. I met my wife at a Trivia Mafia event. I think if you play Trivia Mafia you will meet a great romantic spouse. I believe in this shit thoroughly. I believe I am doing you a favor when I give a flyer. Great radio brings you closer to the music. You should listen to it.

I can’t imagine spreading the word about things I don’t believe in. I have friends in my life who spread the word for the highest bidder. That’s probably what some of you do. Excellent for you. Excellent for them. It’s not for me. Spreading the word is sacred. Spreading the word about something you don’t believe will poison the waters for when you have something you believe in again. And also, spreading the word about things I believe in is part of my brand. I’m the flyer guy, I’m the event guy, I’m the person who used his network to start filling 15 bars with trivia. That network was the seeds of a company that now provides trivia to over 160 locations. If you have something worthwhile to spread, you are doing a disservice to not spread it. I understand that art is selfish, I’ve been indoctrinated with that statement for 30 years. But aren’t you glad Erykah Badu connected with a manager and became a household name? Don’t you think it’s wonderful that Jeopardy is on the air? Life is hard. Great art and entertainment make it better. If your work is legitimately good what are you doing not trying to share it?

Spreading the word is not about brute strength. It’s not about putting up a million posters that will get torn down. It’s about sensing somehow that a flyer at Caffrey’s and the CC Club will yield you more eyeballs than all of the U of M spots that are already plastered with “UPS is hiring” posters anyway. Spreading the word is not about going red in the face yelling “quelle hor eteil?” It is about getting Pizza Luce to agree to giveaway a Heiruspecs promotional CD announcing your upcoming release show with all pizza deliveries for two months. You figure out what you can do, that others can’t or won’t, that will help you do what you love. I love spreading the word.

In the year 2000 in Minneapolis press releases were a thing but I sure didn’t know about that yet. I knew about booking shows and making flyers. I was interning for a woman named Kim Randall who ran a label called No Alternative from town that had artists like American Paint, The Love-Cars and Happy Apple on the rosterer. While helping Kim Randall for almost full-time hours for a winter study I ended up telling Kim that my band was releasing an album like so many interns had told their bosses for time immemoriam. I told her the album was coming out at the end of the month with a show at the Foxfire Coffee Lounge. She asked if I had sent out a press release and I told her I did not know what she was talking about. She showed me a press release. She told me how to find everyones names. She told me where I could find the huge weird 24 hour mailboxes at City Pages and the Star Tribune. I put the press release in and suddenly we got on the radar. Within a year the lady who was music editor at the Star Tribune said I was one of the most reliable publicists in the Twin Cities music scene and she said that would help me get good coverage. NO SHIT. This one kernel of info let me soak up mountains of press because I was ahead of my peers in knowing about issuing press releases.

You need to build an advantage in to distinguish yourself, to create differentiation between you and your peers. When everyone in your scene starts making flyers, you better have the best looking ones. The cream rises to the top, but if you’re the cream, you can’t just wait for it to rise. You better push the cream up and try to find that top. When everyone writes press releases, yours need to come early, with the best quotes and the most insightful strategy. But more importantly, when you’re in a scene, help your competition make flyers, help them write press releases. They have skills you don’t have. You share, they share. Announce your advantages, exploit your advantages, but don’t be stingy with sharing your skills. Ultimately the distinction is always the word, not the spreading. I’m here acting all cool not because of the spreading, but because of the word.

If Trivia Mafia sucked, no amount of facebook invites could change that. If the rappers in Heiruspecs couldn’t rap, or if the band didn’t make great music, we’d just’ve been a weird CD on your pizza in 2008. But the word is good. And there’s no trick to making the work good. There’s no angle to exploit. There’s no workaround. But if you don’t feel like telling your friends about your thing, or more importantly if your friends don’t feel like telling their friends about your thing, something is wrong with the word. And no spreading can fix that. Fix the work, spread the word.

—-

Do you know what a stage plot is? It’s a graphic representation of what a band is going to place on stage and what they need from the sound person to put on a good performance. But in it’s rawest sense it’s a shorthand way of saying “this group is serious”. Long before you have a tour manager, or your own sound person, you have a piece of paper that you can walk up to the house sound person with. Both with Heiruspecs and with Dessa, before we even finish unloading I’m offering the sound person this piece of paper. I’m getting their name. I’m seeing if they need an extra copy. I’m asking if they have questions. I text their name to everyone else in the band. That way two hours later when Dessa isn’t getting what she needs in the monitor she can say “Morgan, I need more of my vocals”. It’s a way to command respect early on in a relationship. Every industry has its stage plot. You don’t skip this. It demands a respect that not everyone great musicianship will confer upon you.

A very talented rapper from town, Mally, paid me an amazing compliment some years ago. He said that I took Heiruspecs’ work so seriously that no one else in our circle could do otherwise. That compliment touched me. Do you know how often artists, particularly local artists, are simply shocked that when they come in for an interview at Jazz88 I’ve listened to the music, I’ve prepared the questions and I’ve treated them with respect. Given them good directions to the studio. Tell em where to park. Offer them water when they come in. This is basic 101 stuff. But it establishes the right precedent. If I take the artist seriously, they’ll take the station seriously. If I treat the music with respect, they’ll treat the platform with respect.

Are you familiar with the marginally fancy word incredulous. It’s one of those words I understand but rarely use. But I’ve spent plenty of time being incredulous at events like CreativeMornings that they weren’t booking me right out the gate. Look at this guy! Radio host, spectacular trivia company, amazing work as a musician. Are you familiar with the 100% fancy word incredulity? Some of my incredulity wasn’t just pure arrogance, it was that ever important sense that I had given the Twin Cities scene my stage plot. I had told them in many ways for many years that I was serious with mine. I put out great records. I had great ways to promote them. I helped launch a spectacular entertainment company. I snuck in through the backdoor of morning trivia on the Current and parlayed that into becoming a full-time radio host and music director for a one of the best rated jazz stations in the country. But I can’t yell my way on to the CreativeMornings stages. Are you familiar with the fully made up word incredule? I can’t incredule my way on to this stage. All I can do is hand everyone my stage plot. All I can do is prep for every interview. All I can do is try to make the next song better than the last one.

I find that drive to do just that internally and externally. I let myself get my ass kicked and turn that into fuel to be stronger myself. When I slid into filling in on the morning shows alongside Jill Riley, I was pretty useless as a co-host. I had strong verbal skills, I knew music, I could crack a good joke. But I was very light on fundamentals and I was wildly nervous. One of the jobs I was given early on was to read the news on the :20. I would work as hard as I understood I could at the time to make that news break great. It was wildly far from great, with profound omissions, misattributions and sloppy copy. But worse than that I was so stressed about it that at 6:12 in the morning Jill would simply say “how you doing this morning Sean” and I would bust in with “Just peachy Jill. Reports coming out of Washington point to a recalibration of the question of illegal immigration”. Jill would let me run down the whole newscast, get back in to the music and then simply state “you did the news early, not a big deal, there’s just 180,000 people who think they are late for work now”. I saw in her a tireless professional, someone who did it right when no one was looking, who did it right when everyone was looking, and who made it right on the rare times when she did get something wrong. It was a level of professionalism I thought was unattainable. Are you familiar with the kind of weird word strove?I strove my ass off to handle mine like Jill handled hers. I saw how she had an unbelievable array of dates linked to artists we were playing locked up in her noggin that she could drop on the spot when we played the song. I went to check if she had a cheat sheet, a little set of notes. When she caught me looking she just pointed to her brain. The stroving continued. Got to get that sharp, got to get that quick. Got to get the guidance. I brought a more disciplined view to my development in radio than I did in music. Part of that is straight up age. But part of that is also just having made the mistakes with Heiruspecs and not wanting to make those mistakes again. Heiruspecs got relatively successful relatively quickly. I was hitting the road on tours I booked that were breaking even by age 21. We were on the road opening for Fishbone when I was 22. Signed to a label when I was 23. Opening for Cake when I was 24. How could I need to practice bass? We were opening for Cake! What’s a mixolydian scale for, I’m opening for Cake. I was incredulous. We were hot shit and I was lacing up my shoes for a victory lap before looking at a lot of things that were shaky under the hood. I didn’t know how to read music, there was a sophistication of rhythmic patterns that eluded me. I wrote what was comfortable to play with my limited vocabulary. I maximized results in those zones, but I didn’t expand my vocabulary. I avoided situations that would expose my shortcomings on the instrument and my shortcomings as a writer. I curated my career to highlight the things I was great at. Those gaps in my skillset limited what I could offer Heiruspecs and severely limited what I could be used for outside of Heiruspecs. I have made no such mistakes in radio. I have made completely new, completely unique mistakes. But I’ve practiced the things I’ve sucked at. I’ve taken the opportunities that I know will expose my shortcomings. I’ve ignored my successes to soberly look at my weak spots. I am going to lean on my strengths, but I am not going to limp past my shortcomings, I look at them head on, address them and improve my skillset.

My incredulity about not doing CreativeMornings faded away pretty quickly after Drew asked me to speak for this event. I am pretty comfortable doing my “here’s the cool shit I’ve done and here’s some cool ways I’ve done it” stump speech to a group of music students at Augsburg, I’m pretty comfortable speaking to a group of young aspiring anythings and giving out some legit kernels of wisdom. But, for this audience, you’ve covered a lot of that territory in your life already. You’re more likely to dole out that advice than to need to hear it. You’re here to get the extra sauce and I’ve spent a bit of this week of preparation feeling ill-suited to give my extra sauce out. This is not because my sauce is proprietary. It is because I struggled for some time to articulate what my suace is. My sauce at times can feel industry specific, music specific, radio specific. My sauce can feel insufficient. What do all you fancys sitting at Dogwood Coffee with the new kind of Apple charger in the $390 sweater want with my sauce? Many of you make more money than me. Many of you have stronger work ethics than me. Many of you probably have stronger stage plot game than me. But I have some sauce for you that I think will stick. I think this sauce will help you. I don’t want to waste your time. I’m not wasting your time.

Make work that you believe deserves the utmost respect professionally. Make work that you can press play on with no preface. Make work where you don’t have to say “we didn’t get the coloring quite perfect on it, but you’ll see what it’s supposed to be”. Make work that requires no preface for respect. Spread the word about that work with a contagious pride and reverence for the beautiful work you have just made. Be an ambassador for that work day in and day out in a way out that demands respect for the package. Some people will not like your work, but do the ambassadorial work to show them that you take it seriously, that you have presented it with authority and with enthusiasm. Make sure that those that don’t like your work have been given no excuses to also shit on how you package it, how you present it, how you yourself represent it.

Don’t let the success of your work dilute the weak links you know you have. A weak link is just that no matter how strong the other pieces are. Sharpen your skills at every opportunity. And when you happen to come up short of that credo, to not sharpen something you could have, fix it without guilt. Improve yourself and represent yourself without excuses, without asterisks, without drama.

Heiruspecs Holiday Classic

The Heiruspecs Holiday Classic is Saturday December 16. We are with Dosh, Lady Lark and DJ Eddie Sizza Hans. Grab some tickets and let’s have some fun before 2024.

Words that Let Me Know You Aren’t Really From Saint Paul

If you struggle to pronounce these words correctly you aren’t really from Saint Paul:

Hamline
Iglehart
Ayd Mill Road
Aldine
Pascal
Edgecumbe

Happy Birthday to Pavielle

I want to send a birthday shout out to Pavielle. There’s a good chance if you are reading this blog you know who Pavielle is. She has been a part of the Twin Cities music scene for years and for as long I’ve known her I’ve recognized her as one of the real talents our cities have to offer. She has made masterful albums, put on incredible shows and broken boundaries in collaborations with artists and with arts institutions. I had the honor of interviewing her at the Current a couple of times and we’ve shared bills a couple of times. (Once, there was a TPT supported show at Vieux Carre and she “opened” for Heiruspecs, blew us off the stage and I believe won an Emmy for her efforts, here’s her episode). Lately, we’ve been brushing shoulders a lot more because she does a show on Fridays on Jazz88 from 9-11pm (she uses the nom de plume Lady Luca but’s its the Pavielle vibe through and through). Today is her birthday, she’s a Scorpio, I can’t wait to listen the show tonight. You can listen here during the show or afterwards on-demand. She’s releasing some new music and new visuals today and she asked her friends to share online. She didn’t ask us to say anything nice about her with the posting but I’m going to do that too.

A lot of people who feel a lot about music don’t necessarily excel at knowing the “liner notes” side of the music. They can emote, but they can’t rattle off the engineer on a record or which orchestra did the strings on the remix. In the vice-versa column: a lot of people who know liner notes inside and out can’t actually share a feeling about the music. They can tell you what gauge strings the guitar player was using, but they can’t write/say/share something that brings you deeper inside the music in a soulful way. Pavielle can do both and it’s stunning. I remember riding the elevator with Pavielle years ago and she rattled off some relatively deep information about Johnny Otis. Did I know who Johnny Otis was? Yes. Did I know who Shuggie Otis was? Yes. Did I know Johnny was Shuggie’s daddy? No. Did I know Johnny played key roles in the development of r&b? Absolutely not. Did Pavielle? Yes. But she gave me that knowledge with the spirit of someone who just wanted people to know the stories, to dive deeper and come back with stories of their own.

In her almost year doing a show at Jazz88, our conversations haven’t been exclusively about music. We talk radio, we talk St. Paul, we talk life, we talk race, we talk relationships, we talk business and of course we just talk. During that time I’ve learned that Pavielle is a north star. She’s principled, she’s passionate and she cares about how she shows up in the world. She has strong ethics which is a rarity period and even in shorter supply in many corners of the music world. And the two most inspiring things to me I’ve learned about Pavielle this year:

• She has humble, hungry ears. She listens to an incredible amount of blues music to offer up a great program on Jazz88 and that effort is clear in every episode. If I knew as much as Pavielle did, I might think I didn’t need to learn much more. But she’s not wired that way.

• She cares for the world and takes self-care seriously. When she needs it, she takes a week off, when she needs it, she does something to take care of herself and hit the reset button. She vacations, she enjoys awesome food. She lives her life right. I think this actually amplifies her ability to care for others. I admire it.

I didn’t learn it this year, I already knew it, but Pavielle is a pioneer in the music scene here in the Twin Cities. She has undertaken ambitious projects and has handled the details to make sure they are presented the way she wants them to be. She has done this in a scene that is often content to play it safe, to make the safe play, to repackage the old and keep on working the same circuit. It’s something to see and I’m proud to share some of that work now. Here’s a piece of the Sovereign Suite visuals that she just released today. Give it a look and thank your lucky stars you share a city with Pavielle.

A Quick Dispatch

Tomorrow Ela plays at the White Squirrel. A band I joined I think in early 2002, a band that struck “gold” quick. A small label in New York liked us. We got good looks. We went on tours, we played shows. We had some people who really liked what we did. I think we were an awesome rock band.

And we get that back together on Saturday at White Squirrel. 6pm for Rob Skoro, 7pm for us. I hope you can make it out. It’s free. Watch a video about it.

Don’t Worry Jim Jordan, The Same Thing Happened to Heiruspecs in Omaha

What do you know about an off night Jim Jordan? Sometimes things just keep on going in the wrong direction. Across the last seven days you’ve asked your fellow members of the House to consider you as a Speaker, and every vote, less people have voted for Jim Jordan. What is happening is that as people get to know you better, they like you worse. Don’t worry, I can’t help you, but I can comfort you.

I’m in a band called Heiruspecs, I’m sure you’ve heard of us. We were trying to make a go of it nationally in the early 2000s and making a go of it means going to Omaha. And listen Jim Jordan, every time we went to Omaha, less and less people liked us. We played the Sokol Underground in 2002. Probably about 135 paid. Wowza, Jim. You won more votes than that every time you ran a vote like this. But it bodes well. We rocked it Jimbo. If just 15% of those folks bring three of their friends we are cracking 200 paid easy baby. Two hotel rooms tonight boys, Omaha is on our side! But Jim it gets worse. When there were 135 paid, we were playing with a lot of other great artists. But Jim Jordan, we came back on our fucking own and there was probably 150 paid. Wowza, Jim. 150 paid, in Omaha. We had a great time. We drove past Warren Buffet’s house. It was a thing. Not 200, but building. Can you feel the momentum Jim? Lick your finger, put it in the air. The winds of change are blowing towards Heiruspecs Island. Maybe bout a year later we came back. 105 paid. All good Jim Jordan! Shake it off. Rainy night. Promoter said everybody had to go see Conor Oberest who was back in town to see someone play and Omaha would rather watch Conor Oberest watch a show than watch us play a show. Water under the bridge, Jim Jordan. Shit happens. Conor Oberest happens. Cool, another eight months go by. Time to make that long not strange trip to Omaha. 75 paid. What the shit Jim Jordan? Not to worry, Jimmy baby. It’s all good. New venue. Folks got to get used to it. The local opener didn’t invite anyone. Don’t worry Jim, we got this. Omaha is ours baby.!150 paid just a couple years ago. Remember that Jimmy? We got this. Next time . . . . . .? I don’t know Jim, but it wasn’t good. I’m gonna say 50 people. I remember two bartenders fighting over who would get to sell me a drink cause they were bored out of their mind Jim. Omaha doesn’t love Heiruspecs. Sure, we got one guy on Facebook who likes us. And if everyone of his fingers and toes bought tickets we still aren’t breaking even in Omaha. And Jimmy Jim Jordy Jordz, the House of Representatives is to you as Omaha is to Heiruspecs. It’s over baby.

Maybe We Are Bowling Alone Cause Our Kids Are Playing League Soccer in Andover

I’m very into podcasts. Spent a while being very into The Ezra Klein Show, Plain English with Derek Thompson and The Grey Area with Sean Illing. I still listen to at least one podcast from that trio a week. And a lot of the observations are about the benefits of social gatherings. I listen to these observations with comfort. I hear of the loneliness epidemic and it breaks my heart but it doesn’t resonate with my life. I have a uniquely positive relationship with about 20 people on my block, couples, kids. We have routine activities. We have gone out of town together. I can share difficult things and get useful help and tangible empathy from many of them. Bands are a unique source of togetherness. Playing gigs, rehearsing. I think one of the reasons the pandemic was hard on my work in Heiruspecs was how the shitty, solitary parts of being the manager of a band remained exactly the same level of shittiness and the good parts of being in a band basically completely disappeared. Suffice it to say, loneliness is a rough shake for a lot of people in our society. But even for people who are not suffering from abject loneliness, they are spending less time with friends than we were a generation ago. There is less membership in civic groups, less engagement in Church et cetera. I want to talk about that variety and strain of loneliness. And what I haven’t heard connected yet is if it a never ending cycle of parents who were over-scheduled and over-parented engineering an even more scheduled life for their children and then when the children grow up they seek out a similar level of intensity for their kids. I know a handful of people who do massive amounts of demanding shit with their kid/s on the regular. Largely sports, but not exclusively. You do everything you can for your kids. It’s the adage, it’s frequently the reality. But what do YOU lose when you do everything for your kid, parent? And perhaps, what does your kid lose when they can do everything? It’s an arms race of busyness. I read about the meritocracy. Or more accurately about the falsities and the hopelessness of the meritocracy. I read about the meritocracy trap depriving young people of free play. But I think this is impacting the parent’s too.

I struggle mightily with making sense with the good and bad of my childhood. Plenty of good, but the good is boring. It doesn’t roll around my head like the bad does. I had a bunch of time to myself, a bunch of skills/knowledge that seem to get passed down as a birthright from one generation to the next wasn’t passed down to me. I learned amazing things learning on my own. But I didn’t learn to swim until late like maybe second/third grade. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until sixth grade. The whole affair seemed very ala carte. And part of me liked that, but also, it’s all I knew. I look back and long for some more structure. But I am comfortable being bored, I am comfortable engineering an evening of events I believe I will enjoy, I am comfortable getting my own affairs in order socially. I find these skills immensely helpful. Do I wish I had been strong armed into Little League cause most kids were doing it? Yes, I do. I don’t think I should’ve have that much of a choice in it to be honest. I don’t know. For some reason I went to the try-outs, but I didn’t try-out. I can’t remember all of that one, it’s so vague. . .I think a lot about Little League for someone who never played it.

But, a lot of what I hear about parents from previous generations just seems generally more adult-centric. Dinner groups, rotary meetings, Church groups, longer visits with friends that had nothing to do with kids. Maybe this is the way I see it because this is the way I want it, now that I’m a dad. I envision these quiet, compliant children in the 70s who were allowed to roam the neighborhood with zero observation. I envision parents living fuller lives as individuals, and the children living fuller lives as individuals and I imagine more happiness. It’s a fiction, but I think there’s something to it. When there is no limiting factor on what activities your kid can do if the activities they choose are generally agreed upon to be positive, what gives the parents the breathing room they deserve to craft their life to. When you as the parents have let your friend group atrophy, can you refill your cup to give your children what they actually need, which is a complete person for a parent. I understand though I question the fear side of the equation. The abductions, the violations, the horrors prompting parents to maintain a level of control previous generations hadn’t considered. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I reject that as a whole story. I think we say yes to activities to kids, and the internet has made the buffet of activities overly sized. So on a note when you could be with your friends, you are at a league soccer post-season game for the bronze medal. It’s commendable, it’s likely fun to be at the soccer, perhaps you even build a rapport with your fellow parents. But does that rapport go deep like it does with your chosen friends? Does that rapport fill up your cup? Does that rapport challenge you? Maybe we need a recalibration with a lot of room built in for “jack shit” “playing grabass”. I fear we have sucked every inefficiency out of life, the texts roll in like clockwork, the kid is picked up if the sleepover is bad, you can watch the games online, there are snacks for sale. I want less certainty. I want more slack. I want more parent-centric gatherings. I want to be absent for some of my kids firsts, I want them to find their own way to things from time to time. I don’t want to go to Andover. I don’t think she needs to do league soccer.

The Greatest Rock Band I’ve Ever Been In Is Getting Back Together

NOTE: I think I’ve really only been in one rock band since turning 18 so this is a relatively non controversial statement. But I am really proud of the work I did with Ela. For the majority of the Ela run we were a trio with Peter Leggett on drums, me on bass and leader/writer/heartbeat Bill Caperton on guitar and vocals. It was a rewarding run with Ela but my loyalty was always with Heiruspecs. Heiruspecs was my passion and it was something I felt uniquely qualified to guide whereas I felt like a very important but ultimately replaceable part of the Ela stew. But, that doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel the music we made was really special. The album “Stapled to Air” is an amazing document of the time we spent together as a band. Although we recently played one Ela song with Big Trouble, we are going to go full on reunion on October 28 at The White Squirrel. Rob Skoro is opening and he’s definitely the fifth member of Ela (the fourth member of Ela is Knol Tate who engineered our first record and then joined the band for our second effort). 2003 is back and it’s spectacular baby.

Bill made two flyers so I’m posting them both. And look how cute I am in flyer number one. What a great chapter in my life.

The 20 Most Influential Musicians of the 20th Century

I confidently said that George Clinton was in the Top 20 Most Influential Musicians of the 20th Century. I’m sure that’s correct but I’m going to check my work and make a list of twenty. Not listed in an order. NO GROUPS. This has to be individuals. Some of them will represent groups. But I’m using the individuals. Also, I’m not looking at other internet lists while I make this so I will no doubt have huge gaps and spots I missed.

Robert Johnson - the blues happened before Robert Johnson, but blues doesn’t happen the way it does with Robert Johnson and those recording sessions in San Antonio in 1936 are still perhaps the most important things committed to tape in music history.
Carole King - If she had just been a writer she could still be on this list. But she opened a new lane for singer songwriters with Tapestry.
Prince - Obviously. But also, he saw how someone could transcend pop stardom better than maybe anyone else, ever.
Duke Ellington - The greatest jazz composer of all time.
Chuck Berry - If you like great lyrics over distorted guitar raise a glass to a very complicated man, Chuck Berry.
James Brown - I can’t find a truly compelling path to the sound of funk that doesn’t pass through Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag. Sometimes there’s innovations that were bound to happen, it was just a matter of time. The feel of funk is not one such thing. I think without James Brown’s contributions funk might not come to be.
Bob Dylan - He opened the possibilities of what a songwriter could do up. He made it possible to have a unique and in some ways undesirable voice and still have the only voice some people care about.
George Clinton - The sonics of popular black music from 1975-2015 can mostly be found inside of the work of George Clinton. Obviously, he wasn’t an island creating all the sounds, but when you hear a synthesizer doing the heavy lifting on a bassline OR a high register synth. . .it’s his curation. So that might get you there period, but check this out, his relationship with black futurism, with sexual desire, with cocky braggadocio shit. His finger prints are all over culture.
Kurt Cobain - He changed rock so much it’s easy to forget he changed it. But he offered a pretty unique way to be a rock star, a voice of a generation, an icon. And he made people who hate guitar stores want to play guitars. He made room for a lot of people in the rock world.
Mahalia Jackson - It’s somewhat rare for a genre’s ambassador to also be the most compelling and talented artist from said genre. But to my ears there’s something in Mahalia Jackson’s voice and presentation that isn’t matched by anyone, anywhere, singing anything.
Woody Guthrie - I’m not going to act like a dial up Woody Guthrie all the time and give it a spin. But I am under the clear impression that Woody Guthrie was a speak truth to power all star and that shit was wildly important for this century of music.
Miles Davis - If you change the course of music three times you get on this list. So Miles is on this list.
Rakim - Nobody raps like they do today if Rakim didn’t rap like he did. He changed rap music once, but he changed it at such a molecular level. He made it possible for rap to be an art without making it hoity-toity or somehow academic, he just laid out some new levels of expression and of technical facility.
Stravinsky - Playing it safe here. Anytime I read about classical music in the 20th I hear about Stravinsky and I hear about Schoenberg. And I really struggle personally with Schoenberg’s music, so I can confirm I think Stravinsky wrote some amazing things.
Louis Armstrong - Not only an icon, but someone who recalibrated jazz players via early recording and pointed towards solos that highlight one individual at a time.
Ornette Coleman - I don’t think that “someone” was going to come up with what Ornette Coleman came up with. Unless maybe Charlie Haden was going to. But mostly, I believe Ornette Coleman heard a path in music that we might never have gotten to if we hadn’t heard it. That’s so wild.
Bob Marley - A courageous ambassador who cultivated world wide passion for a formerly under-celebrated music.
Aretha Franklin - She’s on the list cause she’s the best. When she sings, you wonder why others bother to. Her majesty as a vocalist is unmatched, not a hot take.
Chuck D - It’s not just his voice. He was a part of the bomb squad. The Bomb Squad is the most compelling collage music peddled to the mainstream. So take that influence and add on one of the greatest voices in the history of music.
Garth Brooks - The modern Bing Crosby. There’s whole formats, venues, radio stations that don’t stand up without the power of Garth Brooks. And I think he sold more records than all of them.

The Biggest Thing For Me Is That I Thought We Would Talk More

Sitting at my desk today at Jazz88 I got one of those short washes of regret. Not a thorough wash, not a painful wash. But some nostalgia, mixing with some kind of uneasy mood and together it ends up being something describable. I’m forty two years old and day by day, year by year, the things that felt infinite are all slowly and at the same time feeling finite. And one of those things is conversation. I just imagined the talking never stopping. Before kids, but say after age 17, there was just this surplus of conversation. If you had asked me twenty years ago how many nights I would spend talking about music, politics, women, racism, great food, movies I think my truest heart would’ve envisioned the number north of 10,000. It just seemed so commonplace to talk for hours, to dissect a different thing, with a different group of friends. My ex-girlfriend turned friend Anna to me seemed like this unending font of conversation and of wisdom. I thought we were going to get to it all. Now I count her among my close friends and I probably get six proper conversations with her on a good year. Now of course some of that is because we aren’t partners. She’s got her wife, I got mine. But we hang pretty often. But we often have our kids. And we have the dynamics of our partners. Conversations are now interrupted not because they ran their course, but because the babysitter can only go until 10:30 on school nights, or because “she naps better if the car is moving”. I get it. But I hate it. I miss it and I don’t know if everyone misses it like me. I love conversation. I have a relatively free flowing conversation every Sunday with my best friend Martin. We are talking one and half hours to two. Sure, sometimes there’s more left to say, but generally we got to “it”. I’m in a season. I’m in a season where my ears don’t belong to me. They belong to my children, they belong to my job, they belong to my rest. It’s an uphill battle to find a conversation. It’s also hard to conduct the type of conversation I want exclusively with my wife. If me and Rachel are going to talk we will of course have to stumble into all the mundanity that surrounds our life. Things will naturally drift to our children, to our schedule, to our needs. It’s just part of the deal. Make any rule you want, you might delay it, but you’ll still fall into the conversations that need to be had, not the ones that want to be had.

This is what I love about listening to the conversation based podcasts I go hard on. And I don’t mean interview based podcasts. I mean conversation based podcasts. Easy top 4: Juan Ep is Life, The Political Gabfest, The Rewatchables, Bill Simmons when it’s with Ryen Rusillo. May I take an aside?

It’s Bill Caperton’s birthday. Gold medal conversationalist. Wide, and deep and so curious when he does find something he doesn’t know about. Hilarious but never cracks a joke. A straight man with one of those unassailable controls of the creativity of the English language. A man who coined the term “bum son” for the feeling of doing something vaguely juvenile or immature while in the blaring presence of more traditional adulthood. For example: Lifting weights in the middle of the day at your parents house because you are just working as a touring musician at the time. Enjoying two beers on a back porch at an uexplainably early hour. He’s a man who used to say “grit me” when it was time to smoke a cigarette. He has opinions about Neutral Milk Hotel records that were only released in Denmark on 8 inch acetates. He will read a poem with a conviction that is startling and heartfelt. Seeing him love a song is better than listening to the song alone. You go back and look up the artist after the hang is done, it’s good, but not the same. Aside Aside: Have you listened to this song that is super not well-known but matters so much to me and Muad’dib?

<p>Hello, Have a Listen You Coward!</p>

Back to podcasts and the importance of conversation: These podcasts capture some of the vulnerability and free association that went into the conversations I had back then. There’s a thesis, there’s a centerpiece, but there’s something else. There’s where the conversation because of the exact people who are having the talk. It’s not a regurgitation of Wikipedia. It’s not as formulaic as an honest to goodness interview show. This is something that is shared with a handful of personalities negotiating how they move together. I believe this will be the kryptonite for the AI folks. Will I listen to an AI be Drake. . .maybe but probably not. . . . . .Will I listen to AI Marc Maron? Absolutely not. These podcasts demonstrate a growth that is absolutely not exponential. It’s incremental. I need to hear their life move at a similar pace to mine. Or at least a comparable one. I feel some sort of connection to Bomani Jones because on his personal podcast he compellingly makes his P1 listeners feel like they are the journey with him. I love Juan Ep is Life because the hosts are honest about their travails, their jealousies, their neuroses. They show their bruises, they involve their failures, they critique their own relationship with their appetite for fame. It’s not raw, it’s presented, but the artifice is light.
It is something deeply important to me to get these types of conversations in my life, and I’m not getting the mental real estate from the random stuff I used to read before I had an iphone. One of the huge shortcomings of the contours of my consumption patterns now is my access to written content that isn’t about politics. The era of music magazines, and just fuck around graffiti mags and all sort of random periodicals you read because it’s all you could at the time, they weren’t fully immersive. If you gave me a magazine of yours to read in the early 2000s you weren’t saying “put down that sandwich and watch this clip right now”, you were saying “see what part of this works for you”. There was an exploratory nature to my reading that I just don’t have. I read shit I had no interest in. I remember thumbing through magazines and thinking “this article looks stupid” and then reading the whole thing. It forced a breadth of knowledge that I can pretty easily avoid. I’m aware of the most recent meme things, I’ve read the three big articles that everyone is supposed to read this month, but I haven’t learned about a butterfly collector in Florida that is suing a pet store for using a photo of one of his butterflies. Back in 2005, I’m reading that. No questions asked. And reading with very low expectations.
I look forward to getting some of this back. Because a lot of it is is not the presence of children, it’s the age of those children. I remember having amazing conversations of this nature with my parents and my parents friends. I also now realize, my parents were getting these long conversations in with their friends and me and the rest of the kids were just running a whole separate fair conversationally. I dream about being 67, semi-retired, having a talk, discussing a couple movies with a couple people, some close friends, some friends of friends. You’re talking, you’re laughing, you’re sharing experiences, you’re sharing common thread cultural experiences even if you didn’t experience them with these people. It’s special. It’s coming back. It will be finite. You’ll be interrupted by other things. But the gift of gab will be back, it will be different, and I’m getting these podcasts in in the meantime.

Funkadelic in the Year 5784

Last Saturday as the Hebrew calendar slid into 5784 I was able to witness one of the most important musical heroes since 5680. Through almost exclusively faults of my own I had never seen George Clinton live in any capacity. When I was in high school and my early 20s I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars played in Minneapolis on average twice a year. But at the time I thought of Funkadelic as a group I should like, not a group I did like. If you look at Funkadelic from a distance it is easy to think of them as black GWAR. An institution that needs to be witnessed and recognized, but maybe not researched and studied. It became clear to me probably about fifteen years ago that I was wrong. Everytime I went to deal with Funkadelic, usually because I was studying a sample that had been used later I was completely floored with how the rest of the song went. I realized that the from a distance view I had of Funkadelic was dismissive. . .Curtis Mayfield was a genius, Stevie Wonder was a genius, P-Funk was a sideshow. And then, through my years of deep connection to the Prince universe I made a friend named Stone whose favorite group is Parliament/Funkadelic. I had a special night in his basement learning and deepening my connections to the Funkadelic. I’ll bold the things that Stone taught me that I didn’t know SHIT about until that night.

• George Clinton started out as a barber and a doo-wop vocalist

• He was interested in making in-roads with Motown

• There are songs that are world-wide known as funk songs, but started as doo-wop soul jams

• He legitimately became a writer for Motown for some years

• He scored a boatload of musicians from Cincinnati into his band when they parted ways with James Brown, specifically the Collins brothers

• Bootsy explained the importance of emphasizing “The One” to George Clinton. This recalibrated George Clinton. You might say he had the funk attitude before this explanation, but maybe lacked some of the funk architecture

• The Brecker Brothers played with Parliament

• The spirit of doo wop and well-executed harmony vocals is a centerpiece of Parliament Funkadelic work

• There was an Ohio Players/Funkadelic continuum as well

• Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and other key horn players also moved from James Brown to George Clinton

• Junie Morrison existed, and he is responsible for some of the greatest moments in funk synthesizer history

• Junie Morrison is also unique capable of delivering something I might call pretty funk. This takes more explanation, but that night I realized that a bunch of disparate songs I liked were actually all the handiwork of Junie Morrison

• A universe of records effectively made by the Parliament/Funkadelic continuum exist from their golden era with different incarnations (Parlet, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, et cetera)

I’m glowing. I’m ready. I’m engaged. These are revelations to me. I walked out of Stone’s basement so ready to dive into this world and I do. Like almost any true musical education it impacts how I listen to so many other things. I hear Prince differently, I hear Maceo different, I hear Dr. Dre differently. I hear music differently. I’m glowing. The other thing that happens is I hear Funkadelic’s fingerprints all over, in spots I had never noticed before.

And I add to this rebirth a new general enthusiasm about seeing music. I brought an arrogance to my viewing/listening to music in my 20s. I was so on my own shit that I couldn’t be patient with my listening, I couldn’t be humble. I was hunting for things to steal when I should’ve been hunting for an education. I can now go to shows and quiet myself and let my body and mind be present with the music. I’m not standing as far away as I can carrying on a conversation. This helps me because I am fully convinced that one can’t be a music director of a radio station worth a damn without getting out and seeing the music live. It brings a context and relevance to what I bring to my on air shifts that I find tangibly better. On top of that, when I’m figuring out what might work on Jazz88, I can also know if the artist is the real deal live. . .can they actually deliver the goods outside of the studio. Now look, that doesn’t come up that much with jazz. Generally, if you can’t do the thing live, you’re not going to get to the point inside the studio where you are churning something of any quality. But, I still believe seeing what level an artist is on in a live setting is utterly pertinent to my job.

So when Stone told me had tickets for George Clinton at the Uptown Theater I was all the way in. I was surprised how many people in my life had close to no idea who George Clinton was. I said that George Clinton was one of the 20 most influential musicians of the 20th century and I believe that stands up to scrutiny. But he just isn’t in the conversation around my neighbor community in the way I wish he was. Regardless, I made tracks to Uptown to see a legend. I missed basically all of the opener who was fucking George Porter Jr. of the Meters. The Meters are one of my favorites so that was a tough one. But the schedule just wasn’t going to permit it. Without much difficult Stone, his crew and I got up to maybe let’s say 15th row vibes on that floor. A good situation. I could see. It felt pretty right to me.

The first way that Funkadelic interrupted my expectations: usually a headlining band is going to send out either techs or the actual side musicians to check their gear and get ready for the set. Hit that tuner. Tape the set list. Play a chord! Is the keyboard still on? Does my monitor work? Snare on? But after that, the group will retire back to the backstage to pour that show drink, stretch out, maybe a quick pep talk before they hit. But George’s crew is all in the mix, everyone is checking their instruments and getting prepared. And the drummer seemingly out of nowhere gives one visual cue to the house crew and suddenly the stage lights are on and my god within the first measure it is the best funk band I have ever witnessed. The authority of the bass drum, the drive the groove. I just melt. 20 people are telling me to put my hands up and I am fucking obeying. Visually, the group is stunning. A couple eccentric outfits but also just a pile of amazingly charismatic personalities and frankly, some blindingly foxy women in the mix as well. I realize that I am witnessing not only a musical icon, but an icon who turned the musical universe in a direction that is better. A focus on funk, on sex, on self-expression, on imagining a science fiction solution to society’s ills, an honest critique of society without a big “I’m the teacher” attitude. Every time Clinton is asking for the crowd for something I’m mouthing “thank you, thank you”. This man made my life better. And now I’m witnessing him live. It is a new year, George Clinton ushered me and the rest of the crowd into it and we’re all better for it.

Crescent Moon is in Big Trouble

Saturday September 30 - Crescent Moon is in Big Trouble is in a small venue. We are playing at the White Squirrel and I demand you attend. We make awesome music. 6-8p. Thanks in advance.

The Rejuvenating Powers of Superior Lake

First off my daughter calls it Superior Lake, not Lake Superior and I love it.
Second, for six summers the family and I have been getting up to Lake Superior. Usually about three nights. A stop in Duluth. Maybe a stop at the Delta Diner (get the pancakes with the jalapenos). But the destination is Bayfield. We stay right in town. We hit the ferry to Madeline Island maybe once, maybe twice. There are two beaches we like in town. One is called the Ferry Beach. One is called the Edge of Town Beach. Swimming in Lake Superior is a very physical experience. You might be giving me the same face as my wife when I say that. . .”obviously it’s a physical experience you jackass, you are doing it physically”. What I mean is that it is physically impactful. I can feel it in my skin, I can feel it deep in my body. And it’s not purely physical, it’s emotional as well. When I am in Lake Superior I feel like I am stepping into something more connected to the Earth, more deeply of this world than the majority of things I touch and feel. On top of that, I get to swim in Lake Superior one weekend a year. It’s a chance for a snapshot with my soul, with my body, with my family, with my wife. This year felt magical. I feel like the therapy I’ve been deeply involved in (couples and one on one) has helped change my character. I love myself more easily, I forgive myself more easily, I am less of an asshole* to my wife during hard times, I am more gentle with my children. It’s a beautiful thing to witness, it’s slow and it’s not every transformation I wanted to see. Some of the things I struggle with in my life are in my estimation here to stay for the long haul. But it’s about managing them, interrogating them and also just identifying them, having a word for them, having a space to understand these things as a part of me. And as that cold lake water is surrounding my body, so still, so frigid, so powerful, I feel strong, I feel proud, I feel loved and I love the world back.

Night one I am jonesing to get to the beach. It’s cold, but the lake has a draw where I want to get to it as many times as I can. Me and my eldest go to the water and tip toe in the water but it is just painfully cold. Slowly I convince myself to get all the way in. The nuts, the belly button, the nipples, they are all stages of good pain. I’m reminding immediately of how powerfully cold the water can be. Sadie focuses mainly on the sand situation and a rando momma and kid help build her up into a sand mermaid. Her excitement, her curiosity, her joy it’s all beautiful. The mom we are hanging with is smoking cigarettes and my daughter is always just so confused by that process. I don’t even know if kid’s her age will go through a smoking phase. I did. But we are thirty years apart. It’s beautiful to think of her never smoking. Maybe she’ll make a different decision, but she seems legit just confused by it.

On the first morning me and the daughters wake up earlier than Rachel, but still later than usual. One of the best things about a vacation for young parents is the return to BREAKFAST OUT. It just isn’t really sensible or sustainable in regular life. It’s expensive and the real pain in the ass is you still have to have breakfast at home before you leave because kids can’t handle a twenty-five minute wait unexpectedly. Let’s be honest, neither can Rachel. So I only eat breakfast out on weekdays with friends or business associates. But a breakfast out on vacation is. . .magical great easy. For the first morning me and the girls decide to go to Gruenke’s across the street. We arrive at 6:52am and the restaurant doesn’t open til seven. I love the about to open energy. I can see there are workers in there getting ready for the day. I am not the asshole who will knock on the door at 7:01. I’ve worked just enough “open up the shop” jobs in my life to know that me getting in there before they are ready is only slowing down my breakfast. So we play on the grassy area in front of the restaurant. I am playing tag in flip flops desperately nervous I am going to twist an ankle. As we approach the restaurant my three year old elects to vomit on the stairs leading up to the restaurant. This is one of those “not to worry and not too gross” vominos, just a lot of snot to be gross and honest with you. We walk her back to the two bedroom rental we have and Rachel watches after her. The vomit toddler is feeling fine. Me and the six year old head back with paper towel to clean up the throw up and to build up an appetite for BREAKFAST. I love Gruenke’s. They’ve got record sleeves stapled up all over the ceiling. Sadie notices the cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” out of the hundred fifty or so we can see. “Daddy, look at that man pointing his hand next to the woman”. I just can’t bring myself to dive into the complicated discussion of the fact that Joni “One of My All Time Favorites” Mitchell sported blackface for the cover of that album. Maybe next summer we’ll get into it. We talk about serious stuff, and we discuss race. But I don’t know if I’m ready to explain what is wrong about a white woman coloring her face to appear black this morning. The speaker is playing some kind of Sirius Rock Station with a lot of Beatles in the mix. Anytime they come on it’s clear that it’s only the right channel located in our dining area. We are getting served all kinds of George Harrison guitar and John Lennon vocals. I imagine some other room where they are only getting Paul and Ringo. What a treat. But the music is enjoyable and the food is great. An older gentleman sits next to us and tells us that Jimmy Buffett died. We agree that the man created an empire but neither of us are big time parrotheads. He says there’s a record of Jimmy’s up on the wall. There’s not. We talk about the area, he recommends a walking path in Ashland. A young waitress comes in to get some breakfast before her shift. 10th grade. First day of class was on Friday. She gets the omelette and I can’t hear what’s inside of it. Our server is named Corey. We had him as a server last year. He works during the year at Kwik Trip and then picks this up for the summer. I told him that my wife and I just joined the loyalty program at Kwik Trip. He could give a shit. I could give a shit. Nobody gives a shit. But it’s classic Sean to bring it up. There is a wall in Gruenke’s devoted to a single visit that JFK Jr. made to Bayfield. Yes he ate at Gruenke’s. He even rented a room. Yes he tipped. Yes the lady that owned it back then still owns it. I miss reading the old newspaper article format that was basically “a famous person did something in our little ass town”. Classic, the details. You always get what they ordered, and you get the server with the single quote of something like “he asked for an extra glass of ice”. It’s all so dumb and great. The heartfelt coverage of the non-viral, local story is sorely missing in our modern era.

Day one we get out to Madeline Island. Riding on a ferry is a beautiful thing, and everywhere I’ve taken them they all feel kind of the same. The water is different, the views are different. But it’s a combination of working people, tourist people and commerce related travel. A plumbers truck next to a Harley Davidson next to a $1500 mountain bike. Everyone making their way to this island that we adore. We bring our car out, we want to get to the State Park, which we’ve never been to before. The water is beautiful. This is my first real long swim of the trip and it doesn’t feel nice, it feels epic. The water stays cold. It gets better, but it doesn’t get tolerable. But there’s something epic about that. We head back into town to go to the restaurant we both hate. But guess what, we hate it cause it’s full and cause ordering is stressful. But if you walk in there prepped, and the kids have something to do, the food is actually good. The food is actually legit good ass basket food. Even if you’ve never heard the term “basket food” you know exactly what I mean. I had a black bean burger with onion rings. Onion rings are amazing. And god bless a black bean burger. I don’t need my veggie burger to bleed. I don’t need it to taste just like beef. That’s great technology, it’s important. But I’ve been rocking veggie burgers long before they were impossible.
We went back to the State Park after lunch and found an amazing part of Lake Superior. I can’t tell you why but I have millionaire feet. My feet can't stand the rocks in the lake. I can’t handle it. I handle a little of it, but I really struggle, it hurts bad. But my sweet daughter saw a spot with no rocks when we were out on the big boardwalk walk and it was just magical. Hot sun, frigid lake, quiet, beautiful, epic. Lingering out there. Loving life. Back to town, one margarita at the world’s greatest bar, Tom’s Burned Down Cafe. And in the same way that I communicate with Lake Superior every summer, taking some kind of inventory of myself in those cold waters, I do a version of that at Tom’s. How do I relate to the servers? To the customers? Who do I feel connected to? What are the new stickers, what are the vibes? This year both of my visits were rushed. Now you might say that if your wife watches two kids while you get to suck down a SINGLE MARGARITA you should be thankful. And indeed I am thankful for that. But you have to admit that you get the feeling for the bar on maybe that second drink. You start to recognize the voices, understand the playlist, use the bathroom, ask the bartender a stupid question, notice something you hadn’t noticed before. I didn’t get quite there, but regardless, it was so nice to be at this bar I have such warm feelings about.
We catch the ferry back and we make the strong executive decision to just pick up pizza and to not try to pull of a whole dinner out situation. Sometimes you are just aware that the universe would be better if you and your family stayed home and kept it all inside and that’s exactly what we did. Good pizza, frankly unnecessarily good pizza. Also, my family doesn’t eat pork at our own home and that sort of has led us to not eat much pork elsewhere. And that lets me embrace one of my favorite pizza toppings: hamburger. Not meatball, not sausage. . .hamburger. I don’t know, I just dig it. Hamburger, green pepper. That’s a good dish. Sausage can be a lot. Pepperoni is great, but again, we aren’t going to be bringing any pepperoni home. I bought a six pack of Finland’s national malted beverage, Long Drink. Why this shit has not caught on in the US is one of history’s mysteries.

We still had enough gas in the tank for me and my oldest to get a little extra night swim and we went out to our favorite beach, the Edge of Town beach. It’s so wonderful. There’s something very industrial about it. It’s around a number of boat yards and it feels like a boat on a working lake. Which of course, is what it is. It’s wonderful. The water is cold but it’s been hot all day and the water retains that heat. I’m swimming, I’m overjoyed. My daughter is in her own world shaping sand, trying projects. But we are in our own worlds together and it’s a quiet magic I can’t duplicate with the larger family unit. But just me and her, some silence, some peace, the great feelings that come with that. A walk home after dusk, asking and answering questions, exploring things briefly. It’s one of my favorite moments of the trip, I’ve already decided that.

The next morning the kids stage a strong mutiny and say they want to “explore Bayfield” and don’t want to go back to Madeline Island. You know what? Fine! I love Bayfield and the best vacations are not about sticking blindly to a plan. We explored Bayfield. We walked to a playground up away from the Lake. It was beautiful. There was a swing that was sturdy and wide enough for me to swing on and I was reminded what a beautiful action it is to move your body in a swing. Exhausting, but beautiful. We ran into a mom from North Carolina who had bought land up in the area for the climate crisis. I didn’t realize people are doing that. Or rather, I didn’t realize people who rented Honda CRVs and didn’t appear to be bajillionaires are doing that. Okay, so everyone is going to come to Lake Superior and make it an even more impossible spot to live in if you aren’t loaded with money. We’re fucked. The lady was nice. She found some basil and put it into the water her kid was drinking. That sounds good, have to try it. We eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and carrots with dip next to a fountain and it’s some of the best food I’ve had. Food is sometimes all about location.

We did end up going to Madeline Island that afternoon and it was a special one as a trip to Madeline Island always is. We didn’t bring the car, so no easy way to get to the parks. But we went to the town beach. I carried our three year old multiple blocks to get her there cause she wasn’t tolerating the stroller. That was hot as hell, so by the time we actually got to the water, it felt just amazing. It was a hot day, the water was easy to get into and it was easy to stay there. Just playing and laughing with the kids. Exploring, swimming, laughing. I am communing with the water and with my family. I am communing with who I was one year ago, two years ago all the way back to when we started coming here. If things go as planned I will spend one weekend of every year of my life here, as me and my family age and change and evolve. Superior Lake our aquatic journal, taking our stories, and so many other stories, and keeping them cold until we get the next round.

*I am still often quite an asshole.

The Era of An Ending/Life is Blurry

Two redbreast whiskeys and three lagunitas hop waters in I find myself unloading and reloading the dishwasher listening to the back half of the 2002 Heiruspecs album “Small Steps” after witnessing the second to last Sunday trivia at 331 Club ever. It’s Sunday August 27, 2023. I’m forty three years old. Eight hundred sixty six weeks ago I started a weekly trivia at the 331 Club with Chuck Terhark. Next week it’s cancelled. Tonight some of the old gang comes back out. Chuck, the CEO of Trivia Mafia, the company that was born out of Sunday at the 331, comes down tonight. My wife, who met me her husband and her best friends at the 331 comes down. The old gang is there, and we’re older. The big to-do was one year ago when Chuck and I called it quits. Couldn’t do the weekly trivia, didn’t want to drive to NE Minneapolis every Sunday to ask questions on the mic. But the real last call swan song one year later, it’s different. The whole day was sort of a reckoning on the business of trivia and of trivia mafia. Can a reckoning be good? Can it be neutral? Spent my dinner with Rachel talking about my relationship with my dad. And we talked about my relationship with career goals, with privilege, with the fact that I feel like a triumphant sexy God when I unload the dishwasher in my home but I feel like a nobody, a flat note, a footnote, when I’m around fancy coastals who use summer as a verb. FUN STUFF. Got the quesadilla at Maya.

But as these Heiruspecs songs that we worked so desperately hard on in 2002 come on now, I’m just reminded of the sweat, of the arguments, of the fact that Heiruspecs built this career and this command with a level of aspiration and ambition that actually proved to help. What do I hear in Small Steps? Effort, hunger and a desire to put it in a package. Also, why am I listening to music I made twenty plus years ago? Well, the barback at 331 put it on after trivia was over and it brought me such a ding of complicated joy. It felt like an awesome funeral. But he put it on cause he loves the jams, and the bass player from the band, who has been M.I.A. from the bar for a year is back there. It’s cool. But it’s weird. And the record is old. I can’t carry on a conversation, I’m listening to bass fills, I’m remembering what song is next, I’m listening to us rip off Thelonious Monk, and then rip off the Spin Doctors and then listening to P.O.S. being a full octave above where his voice would ultimately land.

And as the music plays I keep on thinking about what Trivia Mafia is and was. We are a company that wants to get it right? People always say “businesses exist to make shareholders money”. Fair, public companies, and maybe shitty companies. I’m glad to make money off of Trivia Mafia. And it is necessary to make money to keep going. But that’s not the center. That’s true of a lot of small companies. They want to do right and make some money doing right? Do you get that? We want to meet the moment with questions, with extra content, with joy. That started with how we did at the 331. There’s no doubt that the 331 Club is the bar I will have spent the most time in in my entire life. I couldn’t break that record if I slept in a bar every night for my entire fifties. We are talking five hours minimum a week for decades. And me and Chuck worked to make something so cool that it could broadcast further. We have 160 odd nights and some other trivia adventures as well. But it started on that stage 16 years ago and it ends for me tonight. I’ll never bundle those 331 cables, I’ll never make sure the mic works. I’m closing this chapter. Or rather, the bar is closing it. Now the trivia loyals sit around and we say our goodbyes to a soundtrack of an album I made at age 21.

I grew up wanting to be a writer. I am a writer. I love this blog. You do too. I want to celebrate these moments. You do too. I want to share my view of the world, my view of my world and my view of the scene I am a part of. I didn’t know trivia would become a big part of my life when me and Chuck dialed up a Myspace page in early 2007 and started promoting. I didn’t know I would meet my wife there. I didn’t know I would serendipitously get a start in my radio career through trivia. I knew it felt good to ask these questions, to invite my friends out, to drink pints of vodka diet cokes and party. To be at a bar scene where I wasn’t the weirdo. To be at a bar scene where we were all the weirdos. It was magic. Sitting out there correcting sheets, sometimes smoking a Camel Light, always talking and ribbing Chuck and talking with the players and the regulars. Working the bar on nights where it was packed to the gills and working on nights where we wondered if it was all over. It was magic, it was special. It’s a way I spent part of my life. It was time to be done. There was going to be more mundanity and less magic if we kept on going. We were going to start punching the clock. But a weekly event is a magical thing and I think the 331 Sunday trivias was a truly special one. It’s all wrapped up in Heiruspecs too. What is my mission? What have I contributed? Why am I concerned with that? Is there a dude just like me in Phoenix wondering what his life is all about? Does he have a blog? How does his record sound? Who has heard this record? Anyone super famous? Who has played his trivia? One time K.T. Tunstall played our trivia. What do you think of that Phoenix Sean? Does that count? One time Dave Chappelle sent his assistant to buy a couple copies of Small Steps from our merch table in Denver. Did he like it? Did you like the song Meters, Dave? Do you like vocal trumpet Dave? Do you play trivia Dave? Have you ever balanced your self-worth on a hot laptop on a Sunday night after saying goodbye to something you did for 16 years with a $30 gift certificate to a bar you’re not sure when you’ll come back to Dave? Is this how things end Dave? Jagged and smooth. Bitter and joyous, nostalgic and dry.

Do You Know About Mischke?

I was just talking with Sarah Lemaczyk from Radio K who is one of many folks I look up to in the world of radio. She is also my neighbor for just a couple more weeks before she moves to Minneapolis like a real asshole. She is immensely fun to talk to about radio and recorded media. She is a person who has thought it about it so much that she is simple. . .do you get what I’m talking about. Sometimes someone who has worked very hard at something for ten years is just too deep into nomenclature, and terms, and ideas and it’s all swirling and if you try to get an idea from them you are drowned in terminology. Switch that to someone who has been in it for thirty years and they are full of well-seasoned information that is digestible and you can actually bring it back into what you’re doing. Pretty incredible. So I love talking to her and she’s often hanging out when I’m walking my dog. I was telling Sarah how much I’ve been loving Mischke, who is a celebrated radio personality turned podcaster. I’ve been hearing ABOUT him for years. My friend Martin Devaney is an enthusiast. But I read about him in the Star Tribune recently and so I dove in. Wow. These podcasts are well-crafted, they are engaging, and I’m gonna say it, they are world-class. I know he has a dedicated fan base, enough of one for him to pay his bills doing a podcast, but I am a bit confused why he isn’t even more of a household name. The work is high quality. The performance of it. The art of it. Part of what you do behind a mic is entertainment. Unless you are simply sharing the amazing songs you wrote and now are disseminating for your fans sake, or perhaps if you have been asked to simply read the news with no flavor. Part of what broadcasting is is entertainment. Mischke seems to get that. He makes an art of the ad reads he does, he makes an art of the traffic breaks he used to have to do. The man has figured out how to put personality into everything. AND MOST PEOPLE WHO PUT PERSONALITY INTO EVERYTHING ARE UNDYINGLY ANNOYING. They are the type of people who have many color markers and who like the musical group The Capitol Steps and love horrible vegan food from the town they went to college in. But Mischke has this personality that his work drips with, without him being extra. He trusts his audience, he is efficient with them, he is a master.

When I told Sarah about this she pointed out that no matter where you are in your career, it’s important to have dads. It’s important to have folks you look up to, folks you study, folks you learn from. I’m learning a boatload from turning on these Mischke podcasts. Check out these episodes and see what you think.

Enjoy these. I hope you love them.

BIG TROUBLE AUGUST 26 WHITE SQUIRREL

It is happening again. These Big Trouble shows have been a joy. The fun of exploring some of the same material once a month but adding something on, tacking something on. Throwing in a challenge. And also frankly something just attacking the beautiful, but existent, monotony of Saturdays with the family. Saturdays with the family are beautiful but days with children fall into a weird rhythm that feels kind of like an unbalanced song. It’s a long intro, a short chorus, an absurdly long bridge, a weird short solo. Things start too early, things end when they are just starting to get good. And a gig forces a little bit of adulthood into the mix. I play music from 6-8 and through some EASY conversations I’ve established with my wife that I can’t make it back for any of the bedtime which generally wraps by 8:45. So I get to sometimes see my family at the gig but I then move into a bit of a night with less commitments. That generally ends up with me eating Shamrocks with some members of Big Trouble and coming home full of energy at 10:45pm and finding out that no one on my block wants to hang out. Man, forties are weird. I’ll tell you that right now. We have an obligation to obey social norms that so clearly don’t work for us anymore. It was clear they didn’t work before the pandemic but now it is painfully clear they don’t work. I thought I was making a Big Trouble post and then I’d do my real blog, but it’s just becoming one thing I suppose. Okay, please do come see Big Trouble on Saturday at 6pm.

Enjoy the music of Big Trouble with special guest you.

A BIG NEW TITLE CAUSE THIS IS NO LONGER JUST A FLYER: DIVORCE SOCIAL FROM MEDIA AGAIN

I love social things. I love media. I pretend to hate social media but I love it, I just know it’s bad for me.
I’ve spent the last six weeks trying to make myself unflinchingly available for any opportunity to draw more people to the Heiruspecs Summer Classic. Even though it was 100 degrees out it actually still turned out really good for attendance. But my gosh, interviews, go to a new coffee shop to put up posters, share what Maria Isa said, share what Unknown Prophets said, write an article, text people to invite them to the show, got a podcast? I’ll appear on it. I used to have an un-fillable capacity to talk about myself, my projects and all of that. And my capacity was so deep that I thought it couldn’t stop. But actually, I’ve told a lot of my stories to the media folks who want to talk to about Heiruspecs. There are always new angles, I appreciate what Chris from the Star Tribune did, I appreciate what Ali from the Current did. It serves a purpose for the world. Media is wonderful. I like reading about bands, I support organizations that write about the arts. I have spent some of the best hours of my life deep in websites or magazines consuming content about artists. But it serves a delicious poison for me. I love the feeling, I know the feeling is valuable and it’s one of the first ways I could bring value to a project. I’ve had a gift at presenting the music I make in a way where it might get written about. I had good mentors for such things, and on top of that, my brother was a music writer, I’ve felt a connection to writer culture probably as strong as my connection to music culture. But for coverage of me it’s empty calories. It’s begging the town crier to talk about you, and then announcing to the same town that the town crier is talking about you. So I am doing a break from it. I’m not making the post about taking a break cause that curses the break. And I bet you I’m gonna put up that Big Trouble flyer. But I’m not scrolling. I can’t take it. I can’t take the ways people are shining, I can’t take the ways people aren’t shining. I’m full up on cool ideas for my job, for my band, for my fall, for my recipes book, for my erections, for my weightlifting routine, for my t-shirts that don’t fit right, for my friends recording perfect drum takes with musicians all over the globe who all film themselves playing small keyboards in well lit rooms with a smiley face while they play a perfect sound. It’s a parade of too much. I’m not getting it in the doses I want. It’s wrong-sized. I took all the shit off my phone. But now I just hop on instagram on chrome. And when I was going hard on Heiruspecs I was getting on twitter on my phone as well. Wasn’t there for my kids the way I’d like to be. So I got back to the grind I was on about a year ago of really letting the scroll go. That means not scrolling when I’m doing work for Jazz88 on social media either. Just get in and post and get out. Check the comments but keep it moving. Don’t scroll. Don’t live your life through the screen. Live your life.
And that’s good energy. That’s what I’m even following today and it feels good. 20+ alerts for Heiruspecs. Surely mostly people saying positive supportive things about our recent show. But it’s filling the wrong hole in my soul to look at those right now. My heart isn’t open for those things right now. It’ll reopen, but I have to find a different thing for awhile. I have to see what that silence gives me back.

I listened to a nice podcast today. The Gray Area with Sean Illing on Utopia. Isn’t it great to think about the world becoming better in the future? I spent so much of my life thinking the world was getting better, it was refreshing to imagine it was possible. And this isn’t one of those: the future is in the children’s hands, they know what to do tirades. This is more of a respond/react. It is abundantly clear that pointing my ire at national and international politics is absolutely justified and totally fucking pointless. But there are better ways that I can live in 55105. There are better ways that I can relate to my world. And they aren’t all about municipal impact. They aren’t even all virtuous. I’d like to eat more meals with larger groups of people. I’d like to have a more relaxed attitude towards parenting other people’s kids. I’d like other adults to do some more serious parenting of my kid. You ever got a volleyball game size party? When I was a kid Dad would often bring us to parties I don’t even fully understand. I think it was faculty at Williams College with a bunch of college students at the party. And it wasn’t at someone’s house, it was at a dorm like thing. If you’re at a party big enough to have a volleyball going on, that’s a nice big ass party. And kids would just be off fucking off doing whatever and getting into the small little trouble, the joyous trouble of childhoods spun free at an event designed for adults. I want that. I got that Trevor McSpadden dude in my life. Also a Jewish family, three kids, ping pong table, house that feels kind of like you could spread out over there. Trevor, I know you read this blog. I’m thinking about bringing my entire family to your house close to once a week and just inconveniencing you in every imaginable way except it’s not actually an inconvenience. THERE’S A BULK DISCOUNT WITH SOME KID ORIENTED SHIT IT’S JUST TRUE. These years of trying to make it happen with me and my wife mainly raising the kids. . .it’s hard on my schedule, my body, my spirit, my mind. It’s rewarding, but I’m not exercising the autonomy I want to over sleep, over what I eat, over my social time, over my career. No, I’ve got my head down cause the modern language is that with young children. . .just hold the fuck on to your hat. Does it definitionally have to be like that? Do we have to white knuckle the hardest years of our life with the smallest circle possible? I don’t think so. There’s a better path to find and this podcast made me think I can find it. And turning off social media made me think I can find it. Last night when I wanted to give my daughter some tub time I didn’t just pull out my phone and see if anyone still liked Heiruspecs. I read a weird book review in New York Times. I can’t remember a thing about it now, but it felt better at the time than scrolling. When I watched the Twins game last night and drank Busch Light I read the New York Times magazine during commercials. I coulda fast forwarded it, I was watching it late, but it was nice to watch the ads, and read, and absorb and reflect. I slept like a baby. And now my wife is back in town and I’m excited to read with her. And when I finish this blog I won’t spend fifteen minutes fucking around on FB, IG, Twitter. I’ll walk the dog and start reading the third chapter of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”? It’s all a journey and finishing that particular Heiruspecs show is turning a little page for Sean towards something that feels a bit healthier for the coming months.

Heiruspecs Got Some Coverage in the Twin Cities

It’s a big week for old Sean. Heiruspecs is playing at Keg and Case on Saturday and we are covering most every element of getting the show running, promoted, stage managed et cetera. A lot of that is falling on my shoulders and I’m feeling the stress. That’s okay. It’s going well. We’ve done a boat load of press for it. First off, this whole show on Saturday wouldn’t be happening without the support of Joe Alton. Heiruspecs has known Joe for years and he’s not only an absolute organizing force, he also understands music and creatives better than most anyone I’ve dealt with. He pointed us to Mary at Field Guide to get our press release out to the right people. Thank you Mary. Since then we’ve had the chance to connect with a couple of the great writers/media folks from the Twin Cities in advance of this show.

Thanks to my old colleague Brian Oake for having me on his podcast to discuss Heiruspecs and more.

Thanks to my new colleague Davide Rasso who serves as the engineer for Dave Lee’s podcast for sliding me in.

We also just got a write up in the Star Tribune from Chris Riemenschneider. Chris has been covering Heiruspecs since about 2001 when we were getting our first shot at playing the State Fair when Nate Dungan booked us over there. Chris has been supportive of us and has featured us frequently in his columns. Certainly appreciate the coverage for this and the angle. The angle is that both Heiruspecs and the Unknown Prophets were getting started in the early 2000s in the Twin Cities and now we’ve both returned to the fold with high quality new records. I’ll take it. Here’s the link to the article.

Fun Photo Dump

My wife bought some very abusable cameras for the girls to explore with and I promptly demanded one of my own. I get to capture some photos of my life. Hanging out with my daughters, my neighbors and my bestie Martin and his wife. What a treat. Long live looking through a photo book and this is getting me a little bit closer to that lost art.