The Ballad of DJ Horsegirl, DJ Horsegirl, Krista Waxx and Jill Riley

L to R: DJ Horsegirl, Jill Riley, DJ Horsegirl, Krista Waxx

For the purposes of this story, call me DJ Horsegirl.
Best New Bands Night at First Ave is a special ritual. Generally it’s held the second weekend in the new year and it celebrates some of the most promising bands to sprout in the past 12 months from the Twin Cities scene. Have some of the bands been around for significantly more than a year you ask? Always. But in general, the spirit is to take up and coming artists and put them on the big stage in First Ave’s Main Room. I’ve been to maybe five or six of these across the years and it’s an amazing opportunity to see a large volume of awesome new bands efficiently. Usually there are six acts, they get to play a proper thirty minute set and you can get a real picture for what is happening in a subset of Minnesota music. Most years the hosting duties fall to a couple folks representing Radio K, The Current and KFAI. Most of my memories involve Andrea Swensson representing for the Current. Regardless, I was honored this year when I got asked to host and represent Jazz88. First off, always fun to host a cool event. Second off, cool to see Jazz88 representing for the show cause I don’t think that’s happened before. This year it was Grace from Radio K (she goes by DJ Horsegirl on air), Me (I went by DJ Horsegirl that night), Krista Waxx from Radio K and Jill Riley from the Current.

OMFFFFFFFFG it was cold that day. My wife asked me really casually if I could walk the dog before I left because she would be tight for time. Totally okay to ask that Rach, absolutely. But let’s be clear, this is not like asking me to throw on a windbreaker and take our dog Warren for an autumn jaunt. This is multiple layers, shield the dog in every stupid dog coat Rachel has ever bought him and pray to Jesus Christ himself that my fingers don’t freeze whilst gathering his poopy doops. But, I realized at that point that I should definitely continue to wear all the clothes I have on right now because guess what. . .First Ave can stay cold for a long ass time. Especially if it is not going to be an asses to elbows sell out. So, wrapped in a basketball jersey, white t, long john shirt, fancy logo shirt and yellow “Thank God For Music” hoodie plus my jacket I navigated out to First Ave. (you can see the little corner of the basketball jersey if you look at the photo up there). What a treat. Not bad traffic. Had to get there by 5:30. The Wolves are playing the not mighty Portland Trailblazers. I’m gonna guess not a sell out to see the ghost of Damien Lillard. There wasn’t much of a rush hour to speak of.

You need to know something about being a radio personality introducing bands at a live show. . .it mostly does not matter. You can do it really badly if you don’t try at all. You might be remembered if you do it really badly: butcher a name, talk away from your mic, say something strange and incorrect about the band. BUT IN GENERAL: it just doesn’t matter. Before I was a radio host I was exclusively a musician. Probably total maybe 75 times in my playing career before I began working radio, a radio or local writer type introduced a band I was in. I remember basically nothing about any of these introductions. They serve multiple purposes, but if you don’t do anything memorably bad, those things are forgotten ASAP. I remember Jim Walsh introducing Heiruspecs at a Movies and Music thing for the Walker. I remember talking to the woman who was going to introduce Dessa at the Montreal Jazz Fest. I remember Jim Walsh because he was the first guy who ever wrote about Heiruspecs in one of the daily papers. . .and I’m mildly embarrassed to say that I remember the woman from Montreal cause she was wild hot. My bad. She was la renard. So, again, I think the job of radio host is really awesome and quite difficult. Hosting live shows is part of that job. . .but it’s only an awesome part, not a difficult part. Do some homework, print out the set times, listen to pronunciations, listen to the music of the band, get familiar with the names of other band members, introduce yourself and act like it’s awesome when you’re up there. Because it is.

When I tell you that this night was magical I mean it sincerely. I had awesome real conversations with many excellent people. I’m not talking about “hey how’s it going, everything good?” conversations but actual touch base reflection conversations. Amazing stuff. I felt comfortable. I loved hanging with the other radio hosts. I loved the bands. I had a great time. That’s why the hell I’m blogging about it. Even before I got to see a band I got to talk to Eric Mayson who was playing with Barlow. He told me that some of the folks from Caroline Smith’s band had been saying nice things about my work when they were playing at First Ave a couple weeks earlier. Does anything warm your heart more than hearing that when you aren’t around people aren’t talking shit about you. . .but rather, they’re being positive? Unbelievable.

I got to have a brief dinner at the Depot hang with Grace from Radio K and Krista from KFAI. It set a nice tone so that we could be more comfortable around each other the rest of the night and when Jill did make it to the show (she was stuck at work) I got to actually really catch up with her one on one. I started doing radio with Jill when I knew nothing about how to do radio. If you are talking about actual fundamentals of radio. . .I learned 90% of what I know from Jill. And I learned a lot from Jill about performance and philosophy not only from her explaining things, but also just from being over her shoulder watching her run the morning show. Jill and I also spent 255 hours together on ZOOM calls trying to get the Current their first Union contract. Jill has seen me in parts of my house I haven’t sat in since the pandemic has receded. Sometimes when you stop being a co-worker with somebody you stop having the intimacy it takes to really catch up, but this evening I fell right in with Jill and I was grateful for it.

Claire Doyle’s up first and holy shit awesome country situation. And I’m up front just really enjoying it and not doing the thing of pretending like I’m too cool to just shut up and listen to the music. I check out the songs, I dig into the band. I don’t realize that I’m watching Dan Lowinger on guitar but I am and he is just one of the most compelling country guitar players I’ve seen in town. The other compelling country guitar guy is that guy who worked at Willie’s and played with Molly Maher for forever. He is also unbelievable. Seeing someone play country guitar well is like seeing someone prepare a deer for processing. It is so technically exacting and so emotionally impacting. During the set Martin Devaney and Lincoln Scully showed up. Martin’s my best friend but these two are both classic “awesome to see you at this show” all stars. Loved it. I loved it so much I’m taking a picture cause at this point I’m thinking this is a pretty classic night already.

L to R: Lincoln Scully, Jill Riley, Martin Devaney, DJ Horsegirl

I also ran into this guy who I run into every 7 years. We worked on a project the first time I went to the U in maybe the year 2000. We worked on a project with my then girlfriend and still friend Anna about prostitution in the 1910 and 20s in Minneapolis. I think his name is Chris. I see the professor of that class sometimes fully in the buff at the Midway YMCA locker room. What a world.

L to R: Chris Maybe?, DJ Horsegirl

The magic just continues. The bands are excellent. The hang backstage is excellent. Something is bubbling up for these groups. They all have fans there. She’s Green knows exactly how to do the shoegaze thing and sound compelling and inspiring. Laamar has a tight band with an awesome idea and his songs are on point. Ber is already streaming millions and there’s something very real to back it up. She’s commanding. Everyone who was talking during Barlow’s show had to stop talking because he’s taking up everyone’s mental real estate with his awesome sounds. Reiki is simply a star. The crowd loves it. The band is loud as fuck. Too loud for me to hang with the whole time but the audience is all there. And LA Buckner and his band’s set is just simply filthy. Jazz88 is supportive of LA Buckner. I am supportive of LA Buckner. I haven’t seen him in some time with Ethan Yeshaya on bass. The band is so energetic. And this is not wasted energy of nerves or of pure youthful optimism. This is the energy of career musicians playing the best music they get to play in the best unit they play with. Every hit just jumps out at you. THEY EVEN PLAYED HALLELUJAH a song I am 100% done with. But turns out I wasn’t all the way done with it because Big Homie delivered something new and special and the guest vocalist was on fire. Wow. I took a video of one of the instrumentals cause it was too good.

LA Buckner and Big HomiE killing it.

I ran into Keith Harris from Racket. He’s been an amazing force in my life. He was supportive of Heiruspecs early on and beyond that he is someone whose taste and knowledge about music has had a huge impact in my path as a musician and as a listener. What a treat to see him. I ran into Maria Isa and had a real talk with her. Maria Isa is in a perpetual state of movement for good reason. She’s running a movement, she’s a politician, she’s a rapper. But even we found five minutes to catch up. I’ve known Maria since maybe 2007 and this was still one the biggest touch bases I’ve ever had with her. Also, she debuted some new music at the Timberwolves game which is awesome, shout out to Mad Mardigan for doing things like that. I don’t know why but Sonia Grover from First Ave told me I had to meet Dayna Frank, the owner of First Ave, so I did and we talked for a couple minutes. I don’t know what about. I doubt she had a clue who I am. (do I have a clue who I am?). But it was still a good feeling to actually pause and talk to someone. And to top it all off while I was finishing my night at the Depot I ran into an awesome photographer from town named Nick Greseth. He is an awesome young man and when he was like 9, I think really like 9 years old, he was a big Heiruspecs fan and he came to all our shows. I shit you not we one time did a chat live stream before we released a record in 2014 and it was just everyone from Heiruspecs in a room at McNally Smith and than little Nick Greseth was the only one watching. Legendary. Here’s a pic of Grown Greseth.

That’s Nick Greseth. Photo Credit DJ Horsegirl.

This is just one of those nights I’m pretty sure I’ll remember for forever. But instead of letting those memories live in a Mark Zuckerberg hard drive I wanted to put them on ‘ye old blog and make it happen on my own format. What an adventure in the cold ass weeks of January.

Big Trouble Back at It on Saturday With an Exciting Amount of New Songs

I’m in a forward thinking, backward looking instrumental quartet called Big Trouble. We are a side project that started while George W. Bush was President and we’re still going today. Spicy. And frankly, we are hitting a nice pace. We play once a monthat at the White Squirrel and we are staying true to bringing new sounds to the stage every month. We aren’t sitting on our non-existent laurels. The busiest writer in our band is my brother Steve who plays guitar. He gives lessons, he consumes a bunch of music and he has a really good sense of what popular songs can be a point of departure for a longer exploration. Very thankful for that. It was cool to see our other guitar player, Josh Peterson, drop some ideas into the email chain. Josh is full of ideas, but he isn’t frequently an idea starter. But he brought in an absolutely thrilling Lookbook tune called “My Darkness”. I adored Lookbook. Minnesota duo, rising stars circa 2008 but I think had fizzled by 2010. Spectacular writing from Grant Cutler and Maggie Morrison and magical, enthralling vocals from Maggie Morrison. One of those voices that is so full of amazing power and technique but also so honest and pure, never sounds music schooly. Unbelievable. We are doing some cool shit with that tune. Josh also threw us a left curve and suggested “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” from Marvin Gaye. I didn’t expect that one, but we found some good stuff in it. Swing through, enjoy some instrumental music this fine weekend! This Saturday 6-8p!

My Body Your Rules

A special thing happened to me at the Erykah Badu concert on June 30. Frankly, a lot of special things happened to me, including making the decision that Erykah is one of those artists I am going to see every time she comes through town. The way that Badu and her team utilize technology to make their show more intimate, more memorable, more human is the gold standard. But I’m not hear to talk about the musical side of Erykah Badu. My wife and I got to the show on the early side, lest we miss Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def. The seats next to me were unfilled but I figured that would change at some point. When the seats next to me did get filled the woman who sat next to me was a tall, thick not mega thick, younger black woman. I didn’t register anything but positive energy from her but I still said to her “I’ll switch seats with my wife” gesturing vaguely towards my smaller wife sitting next to me to offer her a more comfortable experience. Very quickly, very sweetly the woman looked at me and simply said “you’re fine”. If I remember correctly she gave a smile that was far from flirty, but very humane. I felt seen, I felt welcome, my body felt welcome. Her voice had love and sweetness in it but frankly also just practicality. I don’t think she had an issue with sitting next to me, nor an issue with some of the very incidental contact she would have sitting right next to a fat guy. At this moment I felt very comfortable. Comfortable in a way I rarely feel trying to be in a seat at a big ass event. A seat that’s too small for me, and a seat that frankly is often too small for a lot of folks whose weight is closer to average than mine is. That woman’s comments set a beautiful tone for me for what went on to be a beautiful show. Me and everyone else in the venue spent a lot of time standing up, enjoying ourselves and seeing some of the greatest to ever do it doing it right in front of our eyes.

This all stands in pretty broad contrast to the way I feel a lot of times trying to just sit and be comfortable at events. Ticketed events are big business. The seats are not big. America’s getting bigger, the seats aren’t always moving at the same pace. American business is not always answering the need for larger spaces with the brutal speed one might expect a capitalist venture to move with. Racism, sexism, religious persecution, fatphobia. . .these are part of the relatively small list of things that can go head to head with capitalist impulses and win. At the same time scientists are learning so much about drugs that are helping many people lower their body weight, society is learning so much about what is wrong about our disposition toward fat people. A larger portion of society is looking at the data for weight loss and weight gain and the comparative futility of sustained weight loss over an extended period of time. Less doctors are white knuckling it through with the conviction that another year of telling fat people they’re lazy is the best course of action for helping this societal ill. And a lot of people, some fat, some not, are putting shots in their butts once a week and shedding large percentages of their bodyweight.

Somehow I feel the need to credential my experiences as a fat person in some way that will let you know that my experience with medical professionals has been a profound shit show for my entire life. No one has done better work in this space than the podcast “Weight for It”. This episode should make you cry pretty reliably. I went to a nutritionist with my Dad maybe fourth, fifth, sixth grade. Nutritionist was a young man, hiker biker type, had a beard, I believe his name was Tim. I don’t know the exact impulse for our visit, but the undergirding fact was I was fat and fat people, fat kids, fat everybodys went to nutritionists. Tim had some type of height, age, growth chart laid out on his desk. Tim, speaking to my Dad, not to me, pointed at some spot on the chart and said “here’s where most kids his age are”. Then Tim went ahead and cleared away his coffee cup, probably some cup of pencils, maybe a paper weight, maybe a little plaque with his name on it and then pointed to close to the very top of his desk, many inches away from the actual chart he was referring to and said “here’s where your son is”. My dad is a chart guy, an economist by trade and he and Tim seemed to both be looking at this soberly, some trackable deviation from the norm resulting in a grown man pointing out to another grown man in the presence of a boy how abnormal, how problematic, how poisoned this boy’s life is. Later in the meeting Dr. Tim suggested that I not run because of the certainty I would break my ankles under my own weight. At my best every time I finish a run I imagine the final step being upon Dr. Tim’s throat as the last breath of his little shithead life ends and his Sauconys shake with a soft death rattle.

After some years of working with a nutritionist who actually treats me like a human, some years of therapy, weekly yoga and weekly appointments with a trainer I am happy with how I live. I sleep well. I don’t drink a ton. I have multiple groups of friends I love deeply. I can cook delicious food for myself and my family. I have the agency to deal with the doctors even if it breaks my soul and my family’s bank account to do so. I have all these wonderful things. I do all these wonderful things. I am wonderful. But, I don’t know where I stand with these medications. These medications will change our bodies. These medications will change bodies that don’t need changing. Does mine? Does yours? What I wished I could change was my relationship with my body and I did change it. What a success story. What I wish I could change is your relationship with fat people. Can you look at a fat person and think of someone who has a good night sleep, who exercises, who eats well, who cooks well, who spends his life well? I know that for years I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I always felt like the boy off the charts, the boy who’d break his ankles if he dared to jog. The boy whose existence was a problem. And now that my existence isn’t a problem to me, there’s a solution that just requires a prescription. But is there a problem? The solution we really need we could never give to ourselves, that solution would be love and understanding. That solution would be giving the person next to you humanity, respect and love. A young woman gave me a little bit of that at that Erykah Badu concert and it did a lot for me, maybe more than these medications ever will.

Large Talk

The other night my wife and I made it out to a birthday party. Neighbors on the other block, close to em but not too close, forty years old! A spread! A band! A birthday party at a venue!

I ran into an old co-worker from MPR and discovered that her husband was a professor at Macalester. That level of connection to my life (my dad was the president of Macalester from the mid 90s to the early 2000s) is a pretty well-worn lane at this point. Me and said employee of Macalester go through a pretty normal dance “how is your dad? what is he doing? I heard about your mom? Did you go to Macalester?”. A fun dance but one with predictable moves. But turning on one fact made this particular interaction quite different. The professor, let’s call him Jack, partially because I think that’s actually his first name, was also the son of a college president. I didn’t think of this as a uniquely unifying experience to be perfectly honest with you. But perhaps that’s because I’ve never had the opportunity to talk to someone in that position.

It brought up lots of feelings I had about moving across the country and being the son of a president at age 15. I believe there are a couple outrageously positive things about one of your parents becoming a college president that need to be said straight out. First off, unless your parents really mess it up, you should be moving up a couple tax brackets. It was a high paying job then, it’s even higher paying now. Money gives you a lot in this society and I have benefitted greatly from my dad locking down a job in the low six figures before Y2K. Nice job literally dad. Second, living in a mansion was largely an amazing experience for my family. We paid ZERO dollars to live on Summit and Fairview in St. Paul. I threw concerts in high school for my bands and others that could comfortably accommodate 100 stinky high school kids in the basement. I rehearsed with seven piece bands for hours in the evening while making somewhat minimal impact on my parents’ area. We drank budget impacting levels of Schweppes Lemon Sour and Maraschino cherries seemingly with no one noticing. When my mom did the think the sound from the rehearsals was too much she had someone from Macalester come in and install sound proofing that I’m going to guess would cost maybe $3500 in today dollars. I had once forgotten to write/learn a bassline for a recording session for OddJobs in my early college years. As I was very stressed out and trying to rush to learn something I decided I would save time by dropping a banana peel into the toilet after I peed to shave the handful of seconds it would’ve taken to visit the garbage can. Turns out that’s a stupid idea. Stupider still is to not tell anyone smarter than me right away about putting a banana peel into the toilet. Days later I realized that that the toilet isn’t doing the old flushy-poo routine it’s designed to do, instead the banana peel has become some sort of feces condom capturing well, the feces. A plumber came and took care of that idiocy with an implement called a snake that all my plunging couldn’t have matched. If I could find the man who had to plunge a banana out of a toilet because the president’s kid dropped a banana in a toilet I would treat him to a night on the town at a watering hole of his choice. These are all perks: Money, mansion, music and free plumbing. But there are a lot of non-perks to be perfectly honest with and that’s what me and Jack honed in on. Not negative, but not perks. Neutral and negative elements of having your family be a public adjacent private family at a higher education institution.

My dad got the job when I was in tenth grade and I hadn’t been conditioned for what being the son of a president is like. I don’t know how you do get conditioned to that, but my dad didn’t live a president-in-waiting type of life before becoming a president. He was the Dean of Faculty but I never went to any ‘Dinners with a Capital D’. I don’t know that he did either. Dinner at the McPherson household was largely a fend for yourself affair. I usually had dinner with Mama Celeste on the pizza box staring back at me and that was about it. When my parents told me we’d be having “a lot of Dinners” in Saint Paul I legitimately thought I would be a part of all them. I mean why not? I need dinner too. One of the first “Dinners” happened before I had even started at St. Paul Central High School. My parents informed me I wasn’t invited to the dinner, I’d go down to the kitchen and get a plate from the caterers who would be working in the kitchen and I’d eat it upstairs in my bedroom. I wouldn’t even be with Mama Celeste anymore. Just so lonely. Don’t know anyone for hundreds of miles besides for my parents and can’t have dinner with them.

I communicated my calibration of what “Dinners” meant with Professor Jack over the din of the band at this party and he understood. His daddy had become president of a University after Jack was already in college. He came home to a mansion but he wasn’t living there. He told me that what it did show him was that the whole affair/charade: the fancy talks, the passed hor dourves, the clinking of glasses - it was all a sham. Or if not a sham, it was a lane that Jack wanted none of in his professional life. At this particular soiree it was wildly apparent to me that Jack was telling the truth. He didn’t look like one of those men who loved parties and pretended to hate them. He looked like a man who was happy to be out with his wife, but might be even happier to be at home with her.

I like parties, they energize me. I like spinning a yarn. I like hearing a joke, I like introducing people. I like finding out that people listen to me on the radio, or play Trivia Mafia or have seen Heiruspecs a couple of times. If you see me at a party I don’t look like a guy who would be just as happy being at home with his wife. But I have been involved with a lot of the fancier parties both with my dad and with being a musician/radio host. I’m talking about parties where Kofi Annan uses your first floor bathroom or where Amy Klobuchar cuts in front of you to get a carrot. I’ve had fun at these parties, but generally the further I am from the center of the party the better. Run a little trivia for the fancies, play in a jazz trio, set up the Dessa band for a fancy MPR fundraiser on lake parkway in Minneapolis. I think I played a party for August Wilson at Saint Paul Hotel in the mid 90s with Walker-West Music Academy. Great stuff all around. But holding court with the famous, with the money people, I enjoy it if I can do it on my terms, if it’s on someone else’s terms, stressful.

I told Professor Jack another success story from my years being the son of the president of Macalester and now I’ll tell you: I was a pretty observant kid, kind of saw how stuff generally went for the parties at the house. Caterers and some event staff show up two hours before. Ovens get going, little weird go-karts in the back by the garage. Lights get turned on in parts of the house we never use. Smells start coming out that smell like catering cooking, not like us cooking. Then maybe one hour before the liquor people show up. Different go-kart. Ice noises. Bottles. A couple workers have a cigarette outside. Lots of white button downs over t-shirts. Someone yells out “WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL OF THOSE MARASCHINO CHERRIES???? SARA DRIVE BACK TO 1600!”. Anywho, some random Sunday I’m hanging around the house like a teenager and I know there is supposed to be an event at our house that afternoon, some post conference gathering. But I notice that it’s only the liquor people around. One go-kart. No smells. Less cigarettes. I decide to call up this lady Erlene who was the big boss in charge of all the fancifulness that happened around Macalester. I’m proud I did that, things felt a little off and I wanted to help. Being a president is a family business, I’m sure my home girl Chelsea Clinton would’ve done the same for Slick Willy. As the phone is ringing I don’t realize that Erlene is about to perform for me a sound that we all know well in adulthood but didn’t know yet in our teenage years. I tell Erlene that the liquor people are here for an event but I don’t see her and I don’t see food. Erlene then says nothing, opens a calendar and then silently says “shit”. I just hear the “shit” in the back of her throat like she has a banana condom on, capturing all the shits that usually come out. She then tells me to get dressed and that she needs my help, she forgot to book the caterers. She pulls up in the back alley and drives the seven hundred feet to the Whole Foods at the end of the block and we race through and buy I don’t know maybe $250 worth of all sorts of foods I have never heard of, including dolmata. I will forever think of Erlene when I eat dolmata. I don’t know if Erlene really needed my help. If you give me the option right now of buying $250 worth of food in a big ass hurry without or without little Jimmy, the imaginary current son of the President of Macalester, that’s a hard pass on Jimmy’s help. But I don’t know, Erlene took my help and I felt spectacular for it. We put the food on plates. She showed me that karate chop with your hand move to make the napkins look nice (the Internet doesn’t know about what I’m talking about, maybe it’s a secret beteween just me and Erlene).

I told Professor Jack all of that over the din of the band and we reached an easy impasse. I clearly had a lot rawer feelings about my time as a son of a president than he did. I maybe not so clearly had also had a THC edible before I came to the party and I wasn’t sure if we had been talking for seven minutes (acceptable) or over fifteen minutes (a little too long to talk to rando professor plus one at a gathering). We found our way back to our spouses but I felt really engaged, really activated. Maybe my next step is to talk to more children of college presidents, find out what it was for them, what they felt like. Maybe we have something in common and I hadn’t even considered it. Strange, but beautiful, an inspiring talk with a kindred spirit that recharged me in many ways.

Inviting you to see Big Trouble on Saturday

Big trouble is “back at it” on Saturday at white squirrel. Your friends are coming the drinks are legit. Have a blast and live your best life while we play our best songs. What an idea.

The show is on Saturday at white squirrel in Saint Paul from 6-8pm it’s free it’s all ages and Chris pours the best Shirley temples in all of MN - also the grown up cocktails are great

School Photos

My wife has a good policy: don’t say your kids full names on this here blog or on your social media. She has guided me away from sharing some photos. These are good policies. I follow these policies and I might have arrived at them on my own because it just makes sense. I aspire to share my life with a lot of people I don’t know, on this blog, also on the radio, in the songs I write, in the person I am. But I can’t make that choice for my daughters and I work to not make it for them. My wife Rachel is a good guide for this. We are figuring it out on the fly, we will make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place.

But if I could show you one photo it would be S’s first grade school photo. There is an unbridled courage in this photo that I am glad I will fail to put in to words. She wears glasses but not that often at home, needs them for screen, needs for reading. And like all glasses on a six year old, they are comically large even though the good people at Target optometry say they’re the right size. I have some bond with the glass-wearers of the world. Both my parents wore glasses. My wife wears glasses. My people wear glasses. I was close to 20/20 during the “do you need glasses” years so it never hit for me, but I’ve always felt a kinship with the bespectacled. These glasses are perfect on her. They are perfect on her in their “a little too bigness”, they are perfect on her in a way where it still looks like she borrowed her mom’s glasses for a laugh around the dining room table.

When you see a portrait photo of an adult part of what you wonder on is that conversation between the photographer and the subject. Was it warm? Adversarial? Did it aspire for a level of intimacy the actual photo couldn’t match? But in this photo the parameters of the conversation feel clear, simple and resolved. I presume S was brought in to the room they do the photos in. She’s smiling ear to ear, she likes cameras. They tell her “smile” cause they tell everyone to smile, she tries to paste an additional smile upon her pre-existing resting smile face and the results are in the photo. She has her necklaces just right. Her hair is looking good. Maybe the teacher helped her out before she went in. And her shoulders stand steady, not so prominent that they look unnatural, but with none of the world-weary curve that has bent second graders and older however infinitesimally toward the ground. In the photo I see what I see when I interact with S: a fascination with the world as it is and a open mind toward making it better. I see a visual representation of “yes and”. I see that ability to explain some event in the world completely illogically, absolutely incorrect and be absolutely certain in the answer. I see exuberance and I love it. I want it bottled. I want it protected, but I know an overprotected exuberance is a squandered exuberance. As her shoulders inevitably bend a couple quarters of a degree towards the Earth I want the compromises, the disappointments and the heartbreaks to be epic, to be beneficial, to be shaping, to be restorative. And I want to hold this photo and I want the progression of her growth, of her maturation, to be welcomed, and I want the innocence of her first grade photo to be documented.

The Rainy Christmas Folder

It’s Christmas Eve Eve and it’s rainy. There’s no precedent for that. I don’t remember a rainy Christmas. Or if I do, it’s raining on a snowy surface. This 2023 sitch is rainy like an early November is supposed to be. It’s disorienting. It pushes all your Christmas feelings into a carnival mirror. Christmas sits in a strange place for me. It looms large in my world, my family doesn’t celebrate it, and growing up it was all done with a wink by my areligious parents. It was sort of “let’s go pick out a tree” with a big wink “this is bullshit, corporatization bullshit”. We were like the people throwing their hands in the air for the first three beats/first two measures tops before returning them down to our sides as if the action was out of our control.

Today it’s non-stop errands all morning and a slow afternoon. Tried Home Alone 2, not a good fit for the six year old, too much stressful stuff. Went with A Muppet Christmas Carol at my wife’s suggestion. Gold star. And we have neighbors who with real enthusiasm endeavor to have Arby’s every December 23rd of the year. We joined. Shakes for the kids. Just a sandwich for me cause I had fries at lunch. My wife voluntarily gets crinkle fries when curly fries are available. Yes, it’s vexing.

I’ve got clearance to leave my family at 7:30 to see my brother play guitar at The Fine Line. The Fine Line, I played there in 1997. New band night. Amazing, why doesn’t new band night exist*? But man, new band night? Classic. 4 bands. NO LISTENERS. Comp tickets flooded out to hundreds to attract the 27 people who will come see a show on Monday. But somehow, you always learned something. Tonight Mae Simpson is leading a Festivus concert and my brother’s 90s alternative cover band 120 Minutes is the first set. It boggles my mind to think about the random, scattershot list of artists I’ve seen at the Fine Line. Finding out who you’ve seen at the Fine Line is somewhat a way of asking “what artists did you follow on their way up and which ones did you follow on their way back down”. Here’s my list: Lisa Loeb, Keb’ Mo, Tortoise, Atmosphere, Boogie Wonderland, Angie Stone, Run The Jewels, Makaya McCraven and presumably a lot more. Played there a lot with Jessy Greene. Always kind of epic nights. Played their with Dessa. Heiruspecs never opted to play our own shows there, but we still played there a lot. Before Fine Line was a First Avenue property I did a lot of just hanging at the Fine Line. Knew the manager. Sat in the back, got some drinks, loved the shit out of it. The Fine Line is a blank slate to some extent, bring a fun show it’s fun, you bring totally meh! energy and the room let’s that meh! energy sit in a pile. I don’t think the Fine Line ever had pool tables. Why not? Maybe there was no real location for them. Miss pool table life.

Well my brother Steve is an excellent guitar player and has always been a student of the alternative side of 90s rock and more widely, a fan of the alternative side of music. I’ve only ever seen Steve listen to records that could reasonably expected to be played on the stereo at the Electric Fetus. Almost no better place to hear a new record than while shopping for records and these records are almost always. . .alternative. To some extent, if a record store employee is confident enough to play an album on the speakers, that album can fairly be described as alternative.

I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about the nature of alternative music in the past month. If you listen to the Open Mike Eagle podcast “What Had Happened Was” you are aware that he is doing a season length interview of Questlove. It is abundantly clear that Questlove is aware of an monstrously huge swath of the music world and able to communicate a hands on, building blocks level of music better than anyone else, and he is also capable of intellectualizing it. Of placing his group (The Roots) into a cultural space that plays against the major jiggy stars of their coming up era and connects them with the likeminded artists of Jill Scott, Badu, Mos Def and more. This very forward awareness of the music his community was crafting as alternative music was really awesome to me. I think I’ve taken alternative music as being the center of the music universe for granted, and a lot of the reason was that my musical universe was Steve, and his universe was alternative. I didn’t have a counter factual of someone equally into music who enjoyed The Eagles, Garth Brooks, En Vogue and Bon Jovi. I understood those groups as vital, as worthy of study, as worthy of spins. But I understood them to not be the groups you would argue over for three hours at 2am explaining a nuance of production of that you are very aware the creator of the song also belabored in different proportions. So Steve holds my hand as my older brother and plays me Helmet, Pearl Jam, David Bowie, The Foo Fighters, Justice System, The Roots, Charles Mingus, Autechre, Andrew Hill, LaMonte Young, Boards of Canada, The Pharcyde, Albert Collins, Feist, Amy Winehouse, DJ Shadow and so many more. And in our life together music was the language we shared. I learned music so I could speak the same language as him. So to see him up there, on a stage we played on in 1997, was to see a history of our time as musicians. Our way up, our way down, our ways of staying on, our ways of moving on. Noah Pastor was on the drums: I remember some magic nights with Noah. I remember sharing maybe a cigarette, maybe a joint, outside of Pizza Luce Duluth, 2005, 06 sometime. And talking, and laughing and visiting a friend’s house. I remember just the constant joking. Joking was the only language permitted in that circle. If you wanted to pull over to pee you had to say it with humor, with an angle, with something to make your request memorable. It was exhausting and hilarious. Now he is back behind his kit playing so beautifully. Faithful to the originals, but not annoyingly so. He is breathing an energy into the drums that is appropriate. The singer is the sleeper hit, effective and tasteful vocal reverbs, delays and more deployed from his own pedal board. Nice guitar work too but always supportive, my brother Steve is taking lead and singy mcsingsomethingson is handling the rhythm work. IT’S REALLY NICE. The bass player is the bartender over at the White Squirrel. Believe it or not I saw him driving into work 9 and a half hours before when my wife and my daughters and I were at the White Squirrel getting stickers and t-shirts out of the Trivia Mafia office that sits above The White Squirrel. Told you we did a lot of errands today.

I’m in the audience with Chuck from Trivia Mafia and Justus and Emily, both Jazz88 albumni. It’s fun, there’s a parameter setting with cover bands that is more compressed than original bands. Like the best cover band you’ve ever seen is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY less enjoyable than the 10th best original band you’ve seen. But that cover band is going to be many times over more enjoyable than the worst original music you’ve heard. The band is pulling out shit from Blur, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode and more. The band sounds great, steve is all over the guitar stuff. He sounds practiced but loose, and inventive and committed. It is thoroughly enjoyable, it is disorienting to really get to see Steve’s awesomeness from a fan POV, usually were’ just living and sharing the stage. It was great. I have desires to see Mae Simpson. We play her music on Jazz88. She and her band are no joke. Win over crowds. Work crowds into a frenzy. Developing a thing. She’s got the great players in town on her side and she can sing. I want to see Mae Simpson. I also want to celebrate my brother kicking ass and I want to sit down cause I am old and cause yes I do.

But we don’t sit down and then a man named Dru gets up there and starts doing some hosting plus stand up comedy. At first I don’t realize he’s doing stand up comedy. The stakes are at a completely different portion of the scale for stand up comedy. The worst stand up comedy you’ve ever seen is the worst shit you have seen in your life, eclipsing the worse band you’ve seen by MILES. But the most transcendent comedy you’ll ever see might surpass all but the best musical acts in my opinion. I remember seeing Hannibal Buress defended the easiness of confusing the words Asheville and Nashville during a show in Asheville. An audience member yells “it’s easy to say the right one” and he snapped back “obviously it’s hard, I just said the wrong one. You’re theory is disproved”. I still laugh about that. Dru’s got a terrible batting average but he says a couple downright funny things. And he frames it all as his “airing of grievances”. That’s classic. That shows hard work and a willingness to meet the moment. He’s not just up there doing his regular set. He wrote for the occasion. I had seen this coming on the schedule, but I knew there would be Seinfeld trivia. I’m there with Chuck. We own the biggest trivia company in the upper Midwest and the best one in the entire fucking world (Trivia Mafia). Once the trivia question starts this feels like a scene from Rounders. I get one, Chuck gets one, Steve hands me one answer now that he is in the crowd with us. We’re doing old mechanic shit, stuff we’d never try in the city, Teddy KGB would have us thrown out. But I’m ambling over to Dylan from First Ave and writing my name down for a prize and then sending Chuck to write his address down for the second one. People are saying “shouldn’t you bow out of this?” semi-playfully cause they know who we are. But, like, it’s not our trivia. We aren’t in charge of all trivia. You think I raced home to catch the 6:00pm Seinfeld between 1998-2005 to not fucking run the board at Festivus trivia in 2023? Get thee fuck, out of here. Emily wants to smoke a cigarette and the crew moves outside. It’s a fun outside. Quiet. Rainy. We are sewing new rainy Christmas memories into our heads for the first time. They are towing all varieties of car off of 1st Avenue. We are instinctively vomiting up our different towing/parking sign debacle stories as one is legally mandated to do in such situations. We have a number of them within the group, of course we do. I think now when I have guests in the studio to check their mic instead of asking them what they had for breakfast I’ll ask them for a story where their car got towed. Wouldn’t you listen to that podcast? Joshua Redman on when his car got towed. The winter Zacc Harris’s car got towed not one, not two but three count em three times podcast? You’d smash that like button so hard.

We decide to decamp to Pizza Luce which feels so 2004 it hurts. The hang is joyous. The large spinach salad no protein is a wildly underappreciated. I’ve also tired of your Pizza Luce slander, Twin Cities. It’s a great menu and when you want a champagne and a salad after a downtown gig wherein the hell are you going? We watch the Timberwolves coast toward a win easily, then briefly difficultly, then they clinch it against the Kings. We are watching the Wolves win games they always lose. We are watching them press the ignition in ways that are firmly un-Wolves like. Why don’t the busses read “Go Wolves” right now? They are doing great. Get those signs up kings of mass transit. It feels like the non-basketball fan population of the city hasn’t quite realized that the world’s, or one of the world’s greatest basketball team might practice right down the street. Wild.

The conversation flows between alternative music, basketball, radio stories, Luce menu items. This is a beautiful spread of topics. It is raining, it’s Christmastime. I’m making my first great raining Christmas memories. I’ll be able to go back to the memory bank and see my brother nailing these guitar parts, really putting it all in and then having spinach salad and focaccia katerina and talking it out. No one I’d rather have in the mix than Chuck from Trivia Mafia. For me we’ve hit some kind of world class balance. We’ve built something amazing together, we started Trivia Mafia. You don’t have a friend if you don’t have struggle. Starting a business is a struggle. Playing in a band is a struggle. Your friends that you’ve been through it with. Like, I’ve been through a lot with the members of Heiruspecs. But we’re still going through it. If I’m sitting with Felix or deVon or Peter or any of them, we’re still on a journey together. Chuck and I own Trivia Mafia but I’m silent now, I collect my money or my no money every quarter and I cheer him on in how he runs the business with our amazing team. So we have real history, real conflict, but now we are mainly friends. He’s in the weeds but I can stand back and admire the thing we’ve built. This morning me and the kids went to the Trivia Mafia office. There’s t-shirts, there’s computers we bought with company money, there’s posters, there’s a coffee maker. I OWN A COMPANY THAT OWNS A COFFEE MAKER. I have a coffee maker that can be distributed for outstanding debts. It’s magical, it’s amazing and it started with me and Chuck. It grows without me. Beautiful. But I’m in that bitch. I tell this to Chuck, when I go to restaurants I have flashbacks to the years of building this thing. My family gets seated and I look around and think, “that’s probably where the host plugs in the mic”. I look around and see a manager at a table with a laptop out, a cell phone, a coffee, a pile of bills. I think about all the meetings I had with that guy. That walk in. “Sean hi, welcome, you want anything?”. “I’m good, I guess coffee if you have it” “so let’s talk trivia, I tried to go see one, couldn’t make it, but I think I get it, I talked to the bartender at the Old Chicago, says it’s good, is it good?” “it’s good, are you talking about Michael, the bartenders tell the truth right. They see it firsthand, they see the crowds. See that they come back, see that they tip, see how it builds”. “right, I’m thinking Sundays, do you have Sundays? What else do you do on Sundays? Maybe afternoon. But we want some special ways to make it ours. Do you know we have all the sports here, couple screens too, do you ever do sports trivia”. I’m having this whole conversation in my head. My family is looking at the menu, my daughters are losing their shit. My wife is losing her shit that my daughters are losing their shit and I’m not doing shit but in my end I’m pulling out the contract and the one sheet and explaining that the prizes need to be consistent week to week. “It’s more important that they’re consistent than it is important exactly what they are”. But now I can just laugh with Chuck, talk about Depeche Mode. Talk about drum fills.

It’s your first rainy Christmas and your memory file will start here next time it calls upon the rainy Christmas folder.

*Bbecause in many ways it can be figured out if you’re shit without making you load in all your gear.

Have You Ever Dated an Asshole?

The moon in St. Paul tonight looks like one of those candies that is supposed to look like a lime. That candy is supposed to look like a lime, it fails at that. The moon is not supposed to look like said candy, it exceeds expectations tonight. The earbuds are starting a Eva Walker on KEXP. New host of Early. She opens with the Balanescu Quartet covering Computer Love and when it starts it is as revelatory as something can get on a two block walk in 17 degree weather. I would say that environment is. . .pretty revelatory friendly all things considered.

Have you ever dated a true asshole? I ask because while gathered around a group of high school classmates at the Heiruspecs show we happened upon the question: have any of you dated an honest to goodness asshole? I believe that based on my consumption of social media we all have. Correct? You agree right? If you just scroll there’s always a story “he didn’t even call to explain, I’m stuck, I can’t believe it happened” or some variety of that. Or there’s just someone saying “I’ve dated some real assholes”. This group of three men, four women. . .we all said we had never dated a real asshole. And two of the people had been through divorces. But a divorce doesn’t mean you think the other person is a real asshole. But, I must say I still kind of default to thinking that you must at some level think the person you divorced is an asshole, because, you divorced them. I know people change and grow apart, but that’s a big strong grow apart. I find it easier to believe that you are still friends with your ex than to believe that you don’t think your ex is an asshole.

2023. We are all young forties. I think at twenty five maybe more of us would’ve said we had dated assholes.
A) because you want to substantiate that you have dated plenty of people you reason that just by pure stats one of them must be an asshole.
B) things are raw, I know I hated a lot more people at age 25, I have mellowed. Maybe we have all mellowed.

There was one woman there who I didn’t recognize until I asked another friend who she was after the show. We had been in a sauna at the Y together either super late 2019 or early 2020. She looked completely different now. On Saturday, I looked in her eyes, but I didn’t place her. I looked for awhile cause I was confused, I recognized her but it wasn’t just a forgot your name. . .I had forgotten the connection. And to be fair, I had not looked in her eyes or real much towards her in the sauna at all back a couple years ago. I figure she’s in a swimsuit and happy to see someone she was friend’s with in high school, but probably doesn’t need my eyes running over her and I feel the same about me and my swimsuit world. So instead of strong constant eye contact I opted for kind of the way you look away when one of your friends is changing pants. Plus, saunas are kind of dark. Anyway, I didn’t recognize her last night. But she had recently gotten a divorce, but her ex wasn’t an asshole.

When I think in my head I think of two women who might say they dated an asshole and be thinking about me. I would love if it was zero. Do assholes know they are assholes? There are people walking around thinking, “everyone who has dated me has by definition dated an asshole”. I don’t identify as an asshole. But if one of those women said to me, “Sean I think you’re a real asshole” I would have to say “I understand that”. This blog entry will likely feature more uses of the word asshole than any blog entry going forward or backward.

The Best Rhythm Sections of Each Decade Draft

I’m working to try to think up the most impactful rhythm sections (generally defined by me as just drummer and bassist) of each decade. I’m not done. But I’ve got to get some of this stuff down.

1950s - The first great Miles Davis quintet so that’s Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers primarily
1960s - Motown - James Jamerson and Richard “Pistol” Allen
1970s - The Wailers - Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett and Carlton Barrett
1980s - I don’t know, I have a strong feeling that what Quincy and Michael did was the most compelling grooving of the decade, but I also feel that Stewart Copeland and Sting made something special and worth celebrating, but it doesn’t always feel. . .rhythm sectiony?
1990s - Rage Against the Machine - Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk (I think I’m good with this)
2000s - The Dap-Kings - I’m not the biggest Sharon Jones fan in the world but the totality of what the Dap-Kings sound did to bring some of those vintage rhythm sections back into the conversation needs to be discussed
2010s - Maybe too early to call. Hiatus Kaiyote seems to me to be a nominee. The Derrick Hodge/Chris Dave continuum with with Maxwell (late 2000s TBH) and Robert Glasper

Okay. Bye. Continuing to work on this.

My Creative Mornings Presentation

I’m really proud of a recent talk I gave at CreativeMornings. I was nervous coming in to it, but I thought about it, worked on it and I’m proud of the product. If you get the chance please do watch. If you want to see more of these, check out their website.

Does Music Matter?

The rehearsal space for my bands is the basement and it’s looked rough basically since 2021. Whenever I started really going back to work at The Current whenever I wanted to (we were never fully remote but they encouraged hosts to be remote as much as possible) the space went to shit. Piles of stuff, cables, detritus, turntables with Band of Gypsys on channel 1 and Eleganza on channel 2. Turntables are barely plugged in. The printer doesn’t work. My wife has a massive soda stream canister on the desk she uses to work down here. . .does she use a soda stream? Nope. Is that canister blocking most of the view of her monitor? Absolutely. But I knew Heiruspecs would have a lot of rehearsals for our upcoming shows. And I also now that a cluttered room and space is kryptonite for making me want to get in on the work. Write new music, write more of this blog here et cetera. If I’m stepping over my 2021 taxes sitting on the floor to get to the desk I won’t get to the desk as often. As I’m writing now I’m fresh off of 30 minutes cycling out of my neighbor’s sauna listening to “Best Jazz Songs of 2023” playlist on Spotify and feeling like 3/4 of a million dollars.

After I got the rehearsal space into pretty good shape I had the opportunity to come down and run a couple basslines before going to work. Some of the new Heiruspecs songs are a handful on bass, and let’s be honest some of the old ones are too. I feel in good shape lately on my instrument because of that monthly Big Trouble gig. . .plus a monthly rehearsal for said gig, plus practicing for said rehearsal and gig, it’s adding up compared to where I had been at. My fingers feel good, my ears feel pretty good. My spirit feels good on the instrument. I have a 1*15 Mesa Boogie speaker down here, with an Mesa MPulse600 Head I bought right when Heiruspecs started going out on the road. I don’t take it out of the basement anymore. It sounds so fucking good. I’m playing on flatwounds I’ve had on the bass since I was Dessa’s bass player. At least 6 years ago. I haven’t replaced a single string on my bass since becoming a father, I assure you of that. For a bass player working my corner, dead strings are beautiful. Anywho, I’m running some bass line and I remember just hitting a B on the second fret of the A string and the note and this thought washed over me: “this is the most important shit you do”. When you are an anchor of a band. When you are holding a note for just the right length, and you’re ready for the next part, and the drummer is locked in, and the writing is solid, and the band sounds energetic. . .is there something I do that is more than that? In a fundamental sense it feels less important than radio. I like radio more in many specific ways, I also like radio in a lot of philosophical ways more than performing my own music. But as far as importance, holding that B in the corner of this room that is covered with pictures of me and my friends having played music since the mid 90s, it’s centering. It’s reminding me that my life largely consists of a continuation of the things I thought were the coolest on earth before I did them. Every note felt so special. Bass is such a special instrument. It is the ultimate stealth instrument. It often doesn’t have to change when every other instrument does, it can also completely change the valence of a piece with an utterly subtle change. From time to time I reference an idea that Jeff Chang introduced me to in his book “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”. The idea is that of dub history. You have the history of an event, of an era, of a person. And you also have the dub history, the B side, the smaller stories. Slate’s One Year program seems to be telling the dub history of an assortment of random years from the last 100 years. Basslines are the dub history of music. Not the guitar solos, not the lyrics, not the interview with the singer and the discussion about her belabored reworking of an earlier demo and turning it into gold. The dub history: legato, open string, passing tone, ghost note, unexplainable placement of a non-chord tone on beat one, one chord played across a song otherwise filled with single notes. That’s one of the most rewarding parts of Questlove being an icon. This is a dub historian on the mainstage. It’s exhilarating precisely because it’s not. It’s inspiring because Questlove’s stories are about scheduling sessions, being intimidated by drum machines, being overwhelmed by Dilla. It’s insider baseball. Playing that B I know I’m telling the dub history for Heiruspecs, a nothing band that means everything to a significant amount of people. A band that made some jams that have meant the world to some people. I know of one dude who has the lyrics of a Heiruspecs song tattooed on his arm. I got the dub history tattooed on my beautiful butt, the octave pedal settings, the dotted half note rest.

Jim Anton is the best bass player in Minnesota. John Munson is Minnesota’s bassist though. He played with Semisonic, that’s semi-iconic internationally but that’s the king shit right here. When you do the math I think they are the only BIG THINGS rock band from the 90s out of Minneapolis. In the intervening thirty years and the ten years prior he’s ran some great bands, collaborated with some people and generally is at the center of some great musical moments. I don’t know how much older he is than me but I’m going to say 12 years. That feels good. John Munson is 54 in my dub history of him. Maybe about 12 years ago I’m doing a thing at McNally Smith (not working there yet) and I believe he’s getting his band "The Twilight Hours” off the ground. John Munson at the time might not have been at a vastly different age than I am now, and I know he’s got kids in his life. But Munson mentioned that he and Matt Wilson were driving down to Chicago for a gig and they made this observation to each other: “this is simultaneously the most useless shit we do with our life and the most important”. And at the time Munson shared that with me I struggled to understand it. Driving to Chicago to play music seemed unimpeachably like the most important thing I do in my life. A distant second might be you know. . .working at a group home for kids with special needs? But driving to Chicago for a gig, what is better? What is more important? But now, age 42 me radio host and father of two, as almost every gig involves a serious interruption of previously scheduled activities, it involves time away from my kids, which involves more work for my wife (you see she’s already overworked, she’s reading PDFs through the shadows of a sodastream canister in a clean ass rehearsal space). I get it. But listen:

At that moment, when I’m hitting that B, it’s the most important thing in my life. Last night Heiruspecs played to a sold out Turf Club audience. We’ve been doing a Holiday Classic basically straight since the early 2000s, and for me this was one of the best. We debuted new music, the bass drum was loud as shit, I was really happy with our playing. THIS NEXT THOUGHT IS GOING TO SOUND ARROGANT AND VERY WELL MAY BE BUT I AM JUST GUESSING THAT YOU WILL ROCK WITH ME CAUSE YOU’VE COME THIS FAR. I have to accept that Heiruspecs has honest to goodness fans who like our shit, who listen to our shit, who care about what we do. It’s inarguably true that we do. We have decent listenership on Spotify, when we put out physical product a small but reliable cohort of listeners buy it. When we play people come out. One of the best rappers ever to come out of MN, Meta, just played a poorly attended show in Minneapolis. That’s a tragedy, the man is unbelievably gifted. As Heiruspecs was playing to a really big crowd last night I took a moment to be thankful. It’s not a guarantee that your crowd will stay with you, will put up with your shit. Meta should have that when he comes back to Minnesota. Simple. My struggle when I play up there is I think about my wife, and my neighbors and my high school friends who come out cause it’s a good night out and I think “what are they actually doing while we play. . .are they intent upon on deVon’s solo, are they connected to Felix’s lyrics?” Or are they looking at their phone, waving down a bartender, trying to remember the name of someone they recognize from across the room. Some of all of that happens, but what actually fills up the house is people who I’m not legitimately friends with, people who like the jams, who want to hear the jams, who want to hear the lyrics, hear the solos, enjoy the art. And I have to admit that for all of my confidence in myself and my projects, that is a thing I am working to process. When I’m digging into my bass and trying to deliver the best sounds I can, it’s the most important thing in my life. Playing the bass is this physical thing, it’s not physical like drums, but it’s not typing, it’s not without a physical engagement, especially the way I play. I woke up this morning feeling like a 42 year old man who put on brand new sneakers and played a 98 minute set and then hung out and chatted up the bar for another hour. But I spent the day today being easy on myself, taking my time, spending extra play time with my daughters, reading things a bit more slowly, pulling out the headphones to actually talk to the neighbors on the walk. The last couple weeks of making an extra radio program for every weekend, navigating Hanukkah, a Heiruspecs show and more. . .it’s been a lot. But there was a lot of release after the Heiruspecs show. I hugged most of the band. We don’t get to see each other that often, we get to play less. We get to play a steamy ass sold out show that we curated ourselves less often that. One of our most dedicated fans is an amazing woman named Oogi and she pointed out sweetly to me at the beginning of the show that. . . “someday you’ll stop doing these”. She’s right. At some point the stars won’t align for us to do Holiday Classics. At some point the stars won’t align for us to really be a band. We’ve made it 23 years. That’s insane. It’s my life’s longest professional project. And everything else in my life professionally comes out of that. And when I played that B in a newly clean basement practice space. . .I was thankful for where it started and where it’s going.

The Best Record Released Every Year Since 1959

1959 - Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
1960 - At Last! - Etta James
1961 - The Blues and the Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson
1962 - Waltz for Debby - Bill Evans
1963 - The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
1964 - Folk Singer - Muddy Waters
1965 - A Love Supreme - John Coltrane
1966 - Sinatra at the Sands - Frank Sinatra
1967 - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
1968 - Electric Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix
1969 - Abbey Road - The Beatles
1970 - Moondance - Van Morrison
1971 - Blue - Joni Mitchell
1972 - Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones
1973 - Headhunters - Herbie Hancock
1974 - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On - Funkadelic
1975 - There’s No Place Like America Today - Curtis Mayfield
1976 - Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder
1977 - Aja - Steely Dan
1978 - The Cars - The Cars
1979 - London Calling - The Clash
1980 - Remain in Light - Talking Heads
1981 - Street Songs - Rick James
1982 - Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
1983 - Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
1984 - Purple Rain - Prince
1985 - Hounds of Love - Kate Bush
1986 - Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi
1987 - Sign O’ The Times - Prince
1988 - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
1989 - Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails
1990 - Sex Packets - Digital Underground
1991 - The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
1992 - Blind Melon - Blind Melon
1993 - Enter the 36 Chambers - Wu-Tang Clan
1994 - Illmatic - Nas
1995 - Post - Bjork
1996 - Entroducing - DJ Shadow
1997 - Surfacing - Sarah Maclachlan
1998 - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill
1999 - When the Pawn - Fiona Apple
2000 - Voodoo - D’Angelo
2001 - The Blueprint - Jay-Z
2002 - Kill the Moonlight - Spoon
2003 - Get Rich or Die Tryin’ - 50 Cent
2004 - Madvillainy - Madvillain
2005 - Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
2006 - Ani DiFranco - Reprieve
2007 - Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
2008 - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
2009 - Maxwell - BLACKsummers'night

Open Mike Eagle is Creating Amazing Content

I seek a lot of escape, education, distraction and magic through my ears. Walk the dogs, drive to groceries, lift weight, wash dishes, put away clothes, shovel the snow that will one day arrive, do more dishes, sit in the sauna. I’ve got earbuds in for all of that. I love radio. I love music. I love podcasts. I’ve got my go-tos. I was just smiling from ear to ear today because Bomani Jones is back making podcasts and today in reference to a black quarterback phenomenon I barely understand because I don’t watch football Bomani still lined up an incredible run of mildly obscure references to white R&B/soul singers. Laughed just at the construction and at how much he was cracking himself up (19:31 in the video).

I don’t want on YouTube because what has time for entertainment in my chapter in life right now is my ears. The eyes and the hands are busy. But having Bomani in an unscripted video experience is the ideal. The man is wildly talented but it’s more him without the script. In my opinion he doesn’t need a writer’s room, he needs a podcast. And he’s back.

But Open Mike Eagle is taking the cake. He has been doing a podcast called “What Had Happened Was” for a handful of years and it has the production quality and narrative arc of an interview show, but the comfy bullshitty chew the fat energy of a “same folks every week” podcast. He hits both by having the same guest in for an entire season. At some point even if Open Mike Eagle isn’t friends with guests like El-P, Prince Paul, Questlove et cetera. . .they grow to find a chemistry. Cause Mike is a wildly charismatic person. The show is so commited to providing a level of quality that I think must be such a small market. The theme songs are co-created with the guests and they’re awesome. When they come upon a topic that would benefit from an audio clip, they take the time to drop it in just right. It is an incredible thing to listen to. I love the Roots. Right, I’m not saying I’ve bought every record from the back half of their career. But it’s so interesting to hear Questlove discuss the “tribulations” of a group that I think of as just such a profound success relative to my live band hip-hop trajectory. But Questlove is sharing it all, and sharing it compellingly and Open Mike Eagle is a huge part of that recipe. It is just absolutely invigorating to listen to this podcast and I’m just hear typing in hopes that Open Mike Eagle gets a couple more listeners off this. Cause when you are making world class shit people should take the time to spread the word and get more people involved. Open Mike Eagle is doing the damn thing and you should listen. For now watch this little clip but this whole season is an audio journey I recommend you take.

My Last Walk with Zoe

We’ve had a brick building of a dog for the last maybe 8 weeks. Her name is Zoe. She is a Mastador. A mastiff mixed with a labrador. I didn’t need to explain that one. She’s middle aged. Maybe 9. The man that really took care of her died, somewhat suddenly. The man’s husband had too much on her hand, couldn’t walk the dog. Grown kids, they couldn’t/wouldn’t help. There was another dog. Zoe was always a temporary foster. We were just rocking with her for awhile and it’s been “nice”. She’s got a good soul. She is needy as all shit. Like right now she is lying in the kitchen while I sit in the living room and me and Warren are watching the Wolves on delay. But if Zoe were here she would be working her big ass wet snout underneath my hand to demand some attention even though she knows I’m blogging hits over here. And she’s relentless. If you rub her for 22 minutes and stop on minute 23 she’ll look at you with a face that says “fuck is the hold up big guy, let’s keep a rubbin’”. Because she’s a big ass dog and she came carrying extra weight on her frame I foolishly thought she was chill. She loves to walk. (are you wondering why you are reading a long blog post about a dog that you don’t know at all and I don’t even know that well, I am). But she’s an enthusiastic walker. At first that was all for the good. But she has no etiquette on the dog walk. She will pull as hard as she wants. She pisses where ever she wants (I appreciate that). And in the past maybe three weeks, if she sees any dog in any kind of distance she is 100% committed to losing her shit. My dog Warren wants in on the shit losing so now walking the dogs is an exercise in absolute vigilance of crossing the street at even the sighting of a husky squirrel. It’s a lot. But, like all these dogs that Rachel brings into our life. . .I will miss the beautiful things, the annoying things and I will love the process. Some family in Prior Lake that has some chicken chasing opportunities next door (THAT IS A GHOSTFACE LYRIC I’M SURE OF IT) is going to get Zoe. And she’s going to have fun. She’s going to start some shit and she’s also going to be an awesome dog for this family. Best to you Zoe. I’ll miss you, but like, just somewhat.

Sharing Your Music Is A Vulnerable Moment

On Sunday Heiruspecs got together to share some new music with each other. The process of this is different for every group and style of music. But, since I started sharing songs with fellow band members in about seventh grade there’s been some similarities. You are standing in front of a group of your peers, sharing your ideas hoping for some amount of consensus. You want some consensus from your bandmates that the music is good, or that it can be good. Add to that the dynamics of rappers, it changes things a bit more. When you’re sharing music in a group with rappers there’s an additional dynamic. That dynamic is that rappers don’t have a ton to do during the actual sessions where you’re recording the beats. I don’t need to show Felix or Muad’dib the chords. They don’t need to know the inner working of the beats. If they elect to ask or get in to it, no problem. But they don’t have the necessity to do so to navigate their way to their art and their statements. The reason that changes the dynamic is because you might have people in the room whose lack of enthusiasm is further amplified because they are just sitting there not engaged with asking about chord qualities or loop lengths.

My first couple bands I felt a fair amount of comfort shooting out song ideas because the band was started with me as a central piece. I played in a band called Grin. I wasn’t the singer, thank god for all of us, but it was understood that for Jon Baker, our singer, it was presumed I’d be bringing in some music and some lyrics. We were just learning how to play music, I think we were comfortable bringing those ideas in and exploring them. We were in middle school. I took that shit so seriously and I realize that my parents were probably more thinking, I’ll drop Sean off for a couple hours and life goes on. But to me those hours were the most important part of my week. And in retrospect, some of the most important hours of my life. Laughing, fighting, joking, and really drilling shit. I think the groups I’ve been a part of are generally recognized as some of the most efficient and dedicated rehearsers in our community. That’s not strictly good. I think at times we have been too efficient, too all business. But even in those middle school years with Grin we took our rehearsal time serious, we expected people to be on time, we played things til we got them right. I learned a lot. But I learned that it’s hard to bring in a song and tell other people your age how the song goes, what part you hope they’ll play and how you envision the song going.

In middle school some of the difficulty is just the raw insecurity that is the nature of those ages. But even at age 42, there’s something about bringing your sheet, with your chords, and your tempo, and you’re hoping that what you’ve put down is not only great sounding. . .but it leaves enough room for the other players to bring their own greatness to it. You hope you have left enough invitations inside of your writing for other people to do their best work.

As a non-singing bass player who is a pretty bad ass songwriter I can also come into the position where me bringing in music at all is a bit of a nuisance. Through sheer will I forced myself into my brother Steve’s band Catfish Blue. And we found a path to my writing being if not welcome. . .at least expected. But at first my brother was in this situation where he was hunting for a bass player and instead he got a bass player, sibling and incessant writer of tunes that I demanded the group play. I always wanted to just be a bass player. In middle school I would listen to Van Morrison and imagine being a skinny old black man wearing a green suit playing amazing bass with Van Morrison. I know that’s a tall order. Not black, not skinny, not a bass player for Van Morrison. But I thought of this emotional distance and technical authority that a pure bass player could have as something beyond my reach. You know someone who didn’t have to ask what key a song was in, he can just drop in and start adding his sauce to it. But I’ve always had to ask what key. Every once in awhile I’ll drop in and find the groove, but I struggle with that. I was jealous of that technical facility because it was what I saw my friend Conor bring to Catfish Blue. He was the ideal as a rhythm section player. Incredibly committed to each song, but not necessarily bringing an agenda of his own to the songs. A supportive player who was shaping his raw technical facility around songs with tons of artistic investment. Conor’s an amazing player, he still is. Years later, I’m a freshman in college, he’s a senior in high school and I’m sitting on my cordless dorm phone talking to Conor about me moving to Minnesota and the end of the chapter of me being in Catfish Blue. It was a hard phone call, I know it was hard because I know it was two phone calls that we split up because it got too hard. But, while I was in that first phone call sitting on a closed toilet looking in the shower for some privacy; I remember realizing that writing these songs was a gift. It wasn’t the gift I wanted most desperately, but it was the gift I had. The fact that Conor envied something I had in a musical setting was almost unfathomable to me. Knowing that he was gave me more confidence to what I can bring to a musical situation. Man, I love you Conor.

I led the music side of Heiruspecs with a stupid, arrogant iron-fist for the first couple years of the band. I started Heiruspecs in 11th grade. There was an important way to present hip-hop music with a live band and I thought there were maybe three people on Earth who knew how to do it and I was one of them. I loved the music, I studied the music and I wrote the beats, so fuck you very much. I had a great bass teacher at this time at Walker-West. Her name was Laurie Lang. Looks like she’s still active. I brought all this arrogance about my new band into my lessons with her and she just flattened all of it. She basically said that even if I knew exactly what the horn players should do and exactly how they should do it. . .I would get better results if I got buy-in from the horn players, if I let them use some of their own expertise, some of their own knowledge. And now look, she knows what I don’t know. I don’t actually know what this horn section should do, I barely know what I should really do as a bass player. She knows this, she wants to see me start to use the brains in the rehearsal room to unite for a better sound. She was right. She put me on a better path. But I still wasn’t collaborative enough, I couldn’t loosen up enough. I thought running a band meant yelling.

DeVon Gray is the keyboard player in Heiruspecs. He is spending a lot of time in Rhode Island right now, so he wasn’t at the rehearsal last night, but we’ve had quite the rollercoaster with playing each others music. He was (and is) the stronger player. Now a lot of his life is about composition, but he’s still no joke on a keyboard. He knew great music, he turned me on to great music. He was aloof and at times incredibly demanding as a collaborator in our high school years. I spent a long time in my youth thinking he didn’t think of me as shit as a writer. But he shared with me that when he joined Heiruspecs in our early 20s he was scared to bring his music in. That’s actually a failure on my part as a leader. He should have been welcome, encouraged and excited about bringing his music in. But some basic part of my brain thinks it’s great news that he was scared. . .cause I was scared to bring my shit in to Catfish Blue. I also think that even if everyone is supportive around you, it’s still scary to bring your music out and see what other people make of it. If that doesn’t scare you. . .I don’t know, I just can’t even imagine that.

Now we’re all adults. And not like young adults, we are a band of middle agers. We shouldn’t fuck with each other. We generally don’t. We do this band cause we believe in it. But sharing your music still makes you vulnerable. Josh asked if some of the C#’s in my chart weren’t minor. Naw, they’re all minor, I just fucked up the chart a little Josh. Getting over those things, it’s vulnerable and you want to get to the point where you press record on your iphone, start counting and try the song on. Try a couple random things out, change some things, shout some things out.

The session went well. Got through two of Felix’s beats, two of Josh’s beats, two of mine. My second one was voted “most likely to be a dud” by me so I figured we’d try it when we only had fifteen minutes of practice time left. I’d put a little money on it being a dud just cause the A section sounds like the A section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993 and the B section sounds the B section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993. But, we do not sound like an acid jazz band. So there might be a dud in there. But I love the other jam I did and I really love what else was offered up by the other players. There’s less mind games, there’s more shared vision.

Sharing songs can be a crucible of emotion. Especially in those young years in a band. Especially in those years when we don’t exactly know what comfort zone each person is going to operate in. I like that crucible, I learned a lot being in that crucible. And trust me, I’d love to just be a bass player, but it’s not what I have, it not’s what I can do. I don’t need to yell to lead a band, but I’m meant to be the leader, to bring the thing together. It’s one of the things I can do. And I’m finally proud of that and finally don’t have to prove I’m good at it by making my peers feel lesser than.

I Had a Really Good Sunday

Last Sunday as November 19 and though nothing was out of the ordinary, everything was spectacular. We started off with an extra house guest because our 6 year old daughter had her first sleepover. This is a big deal. The big deal is realizing is that I’m sleepover Dad now. I’m no longer sleepover kid. 42 years old. I think the first sleepover was at David Rice’s house in second grade. He was a redhead and a huge fan of the recently created Minnesota Timberwolves. I didn’t live in Minnesota at the time, and I don’t know if maybe David’s extended family did. But he had Timberwolves shit all over the wall, I don’t think they had even played their first game as a franchise yet. But I loved sleepovers. I loved the questions. I loved the vulnerability. I loved the late night stuff. I remember some legendary sleepovers with John Roy and a couple older boys. Those were the sleepovers where if you actually fell asleep everyone made fun of you. It was just a drive to stay awake the whole night, keep the energy going, keep on watching another thing. Listen to the Beastie Boys again. Wrestle. Watch the one funny part of the movie. Wrestle again. It was amazing to see the sleepover culture start for S. I know she is going to have a me approach to sleepovers which is to say positive and enthusiastic and proposing sleepovers all the time with friends way too early in the friendship cycle. My wife is more reserved, loves her friends more than almost anything in the world, but one of the things she does love more is a nice long sleep in her own bed. But I think Sadie thinks of companionship and friendship through more my lens than my wife’s.

I frequently enjoy a cup of coffee and an hour and half of conversation on a Sunday morning. The default is me and Martin Devaney at JS Coffee in St. Paul. The last couple weeks have involved some different configurations and some welcome variety like hanging out with our other dear friend Kevin Hunt. But on Sunday at JS I had a bit of that recharge feeling I really like to get from these Sundays where it’s Martin and it’s JS and it starts at 10:45 and the medium coffee tastes just right and the cup feels perfect in my hand. We are hashing out problems, joys, jokes, memories, reflections. We had some big larger things to talk about, but ultimately we crawled from topic to topic with many a sidebar explored. During the conversation I felt almost out of my own body reflecting on it thinking: “this is good for you, this will bring you back to your family stronger and more ready for a week”. I also got to put up a poster for the Heiruspecs show coming up on December 16. When I am putting up a poster for one of my shows at a coffee shop I am living MY LIFE fantastically on my terms. It’s a good feeling. Not it’s a great feeling.

Me and Rachel do the handoff in the afternoon. She’s been with the kids in the morning and I take them in the afternoon so she can do something that recharges her or gets some schoolwork done. My engineer neighbor Aaron comes over and “helps” me put up hooks in the garage. Aaron basically does it, but gives me a little bit of knowledge about how to get these things hung up. He cares about me developing, as do I, but we are both on a semi-time crunch and he basically just announces all the steps he’s doing and then does them. I also was informed that some super serious folks wax their nails before they drill for best results. I just googled that and all I’m seeing is paraffin wax treatments so maybe he’s fucking with me. But I doubt it. Like always Aaron helps me get some stuff fixed up around my house. Now that that project is completed it’s time for a neighbor to come pick up 6 year old S for a birthday party. That leaves me with three year old N who will always remind me that she would rather be with her momma. N is still deep in momma love. Always wants momma, always wants to be with momma, wants to sit with momma, directly, immediately. When momma isn’t around, she wants to be around S. When S. isn’t around she wants to see some videos. BUT, when all those options are exhausted she does very much love the shit out of me. We spent the afternoon buying Thanksgiving groceries at Kowalski’s, getting some hardwood to give to Aaron who lets us use his sauna sometimes. The whole afternoon is laughs and jokes and HELP! N just wants to help. Grab things, organize things. Ask about things. The world is her oyster and I’m the dude with those little things that crack open the oysters.

Dinner is uneventful while also being awesome but the beautiful coda is getting invited to use the sauna over at the neighbors. It’s becoming a Sunday thing and it’s deep. I hit the sauna in the Y often. Often like twice a week. But this sauna on my block is both hotter and more of an event. It’s frequently with other people but tonight the people of the house had retired so after a quick check in it was me back there. Sauna is very much a mind body experience. And when I put on Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert I know I’m heading in the right direction. The music washes over me, the heat washes over me. The sauna slows my brain down, I feel more connected.I spend about an hour in there on and off and it just gives me what I need. I waltzed into hosting Thanksgiving with a winning attitude cause I got that big recharge on Sunday night. Sundays used to be my most dreaded day of the week, and then I did trivia for 15 years on Sundays and felt great. But there’s some understanding that Sundays can bring some blues. Not today, it was a magical day and the minute we got home from the park I knew this was one for sharing. Legendary.

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.