The Best 30 Minutes of My May
May 25th. The last Saturday in May. The last Saturday of every month I play with my group Big Trouble at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul. Turns out many of us had had an uneven gig in April. Not unanimously terrible, but it wasn’t the slam dunk it often is when we play. But by all of our accounts May was nice. The songs felt good, the audience was enthusiastic, the laughs at my between song banter was mild but real.
My dad was in town and me, my brother Steve and him went to the Tavern on Grand for one more walleye hurrah before they close on the first Sunday in June. I was the only one who got walleye and the rest of my family are the dumbs cause it was very tasty. My dad has a pact with himself where if his wife isn’t around he gets meatloaf with a blinding quickness and I respect that. Some guys have Ashley Madison. My dad has meatloaf.
I’ve already had a good gig and fried fish and I haven’t gotten to the best 30 minutes yet. After those Big Trouble gigs I have carte blanche to stay out and enjoy the night if I am so inclined. That means my wife Rachel has given me the greenlight to stay out and she’ll get the kids to bed. No small feat with a four year old and a seven year old. I frequently want to get back to the White Squirrel to enjoy the rest of the evening, but in this instance I really wanted to get back cause my friend Tim was DJing. I love Tim and I adore his girlfriend, the Trivia Mafia OG Katie. But given that I had arrived at a stopping point in my evening after fish it seemed right to check in with Rachel before I went back out to the White Squirrel. What if the kids were driving her crazy? What if bedtime had been a bust and the kids were still up? So I made my way home and checked in with Rachel. Turned out that she was doing good but that she was super thankful that I had the thought of seeing how the family was doing in person. This successful spousal interaction prompted me to liberate a marijuana cigarette from my basement and plan a celebration of my own.
I made my way down Randolph listening to Jazz88, the station for which I am a music director. The music was good and I was thinking about things to change about the station, things that are amazing about the station. I thought about my workplace the way you think about yours: what’s working? what could be better? what does this feel like to the outside world? But I was overwhelmed with the fact that my workplace is an awesome jazz station on an FM dial in a major metropolitan area. I was beaming with pride. What an amazing opportunity for me to get to work at this station. And guess what? I’m doing a pretty great job, I’m really proud. I can always do better. We can always do better, but we’ve made some great progress.
I parked in front of the White Squirrel and smoked that joint listening to the radio. (if you introduce a joint in the third paragraph you have to smoke it in the fifth). I listened and I felt happy in my life. I get to play music. I get to play music on the radio. I have two beautiful children. I have an amazing wife. I love my neighbors. I love my city. I love Heiruspecs. I helped start a trivia company that is an essential part of Twin Cities culture. Music sounds great on a Saturday night with a joint in your hand and a radio station you work at on the speakers.
As I entered the White Squirrel the scene was great. Maybe twenty five people in there. Conversation. Pretty dim dark lighting. Weird TV on a weird projector. Tim playing a series of obscure electronic-adjacent music on stage and grinning his ass off. I feel great but I harbor that curiosity if when I start talking with Katie will we really talk or do the surface talk. If my serious ass boyfriend was DJing at a spot I might sort of just want to small talk with other guests so I can enjoy the music and keep track of him, but I’m just not sure. As I’m milling about, feeling a little high and feeling absolutely magical I see that some random lady is wearing a Trivia Mafia t-shirt. I can’t tell you how cool that is, but I guess if I have a blog it’s my hobby to try to. Here goes something. Seeing some random person wear a t-shirt that is about something you built it is this gratifying feeling that the things that bring you joy bring others not only joy but an urge to support and broadcast that love. It makes you feel like the sweat, passion and attention you and hundreds of other people have given has paid off because when some lady in south Minneapolis was deciding what to wear on her way out to the bar decided to wear a shirt that probably was at some point in a strange tupperware container in a building you have the keys to. I’m now smiling like an idiot near, but not at the bar. That’s a classic me-high-at-a-bar move. I stand like three feet away from the bar, ruining everyone’s good time and feng shui except for my own.
But it’s in this random position when the most magical moment of the best thirty minutes of my May happens. One of the primary bartenders at White Squirrel is named Dinah. She is straight out of central casting for a bartender at a hipster bar. Tall, blonde and one of those skeleton keys permanently in her back jean pocket. She has a smile that she flashes rarely cause she’s a good ass bartender but when you get that smile you feel like she’s wearing a Trivia Mafia t-shirt. Dinah calls me a little bit closer to the bar and simply says “I heard the show was really great tonight”. I can’t tell you how this feels. This is the most scene-from-a-movie thing that has happened to me in life. I’ve been playing in bars for legit twenty-nine years. I got started when I was fourteen. A bartender has said “nice job”. A bartender has said “that drink ticket won’t cover that”. A bartender has said “my boss has the money and I think he’ll be back”. But in my gigging ass life no bartender has ever said “I heard the show was really great tonight”. I am currently rolling this statement around in my head and it feels so good. We did play good. But for it to make it into the staff rumor mill at the White Squirrel??? Are you kidding me.
I go over to strike up a conversation with Katie and I am immediately aware that this night is going to be awesome. Katie knows the Trivia Mafia shirt lady and we talk for awhile all together and then I recirculate. But when I get back to Katie we end up talking for a long ass time. We talk outside. We talk about the crossroads we are both at in different ways in our life. We are honest, we are going deep, but we are also aren’t pretending that the meeting is anything but a snapshot. We are not going to turn into meet for coffee friends. We are cool, we are friendly and tonight we are really talking, but it’ll be the exception not the rule to our friendship. But it’s magical, the night is magical. Dinah heard the show was really great tonight. That lady bought a t-shirt. You got the walleye. Your wife appreciates you. The Timberwolves are still in the post season. The windows are rolled down. The radio is on and sometimes you hear your own voice.
I’ve Learned So Much From Being a Dad, Now Give Me My Freedom Back Please
“But oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go” - The Beatles from “You Never Give Me Your Money”
I remember how obsessed my dad was with this lyric during my adolescence, especially in his busiest years professionally. He did a magnificent job of communicating the spirit of the lyrics to me but I couldn’t live inside of them. I don’t know if mid 20s McCartney could live inside them the way my dad did. But for my dad, probably late 40s at the time it was the distillation of a freedom he knew he had, but he could only remember it, could only taste it, when the Beatles were on. My dad put me on to this lyric before I had had the small freedoms of adult life. The impromptu visit to a bookstore for no reason, the purchase of an ice cream cone on an early November Wednesday at 1:30, the free ninety-nine double feature with your fellow deadbeat musician friends. As far as lived experience as a teenager I knew plenty about “nowhere to go” I just didn’t know anything about magic yet. But that magic came. The sprawling potential of almost any hang in your twenties. I spent a handful of years where it was immaterial to me what day of the week it was. I was a musician who worked at a group home. Equally likely to work Saturday and party on a Monday. I only tracked the days in order to show up at work and to know how busy the spots I was going to go to would be. I slept wherever. I slept at Martin’s house all the time. I slept on a friend’s couch. The fun would restart under slightly different parameters the next day. If I had a girlfriend I would spend two or three nights a week at her house most of the time and she’d do the same at mine. I was a leisurely nomad. I had that magic feeling so much that it stopped feeling magic. Even as life got more scheduled, it maintained something related to this freedom. I traveled with Dessa in my early thirties. It was a relatively responsible touring crew of people thirty and over (plus Ander). I traveled the country with a blue exercise band and a hotspot to work on payroll for Trivia Mafia. But did I smoke weed in the parking lot of gas stations on rainy weekday mornings when it wasn’t payroll week? (obviously I did). That magic feeling, nowhere to go. Except for like, we have to go to Columbus. But that’s hours from now.
When kids come into the equation it’s so different. I know you know this, even if you don’t have kids, but it’s like a good blues song I want to sing and you want to hear. A clock the size of a large pizza hovers to the left of my head at all times. It’s like a halo but it sits at an angle like a floppy sun-hat that a sexy lady from the nineteen-forties would wear. A ledger sits on a messy desk next to the clock. Every moment is clocked. Every moment costs money. You’re on vacation, but there’s still bedtime. You’re away from the kids at a dinner, there’s still the babysitter. I am never not scheduled. We are never not scheduled. When I meet a friend I know when that meeting will end. I never have to go refill my meter. I know how long it will all take. I know how long it can take. It can not take longer, the clock is hovering. I’ve met parents who still do mushrooms sometimes. How? When? And don’t say microdosing, just don’t say that, ever.
Being a father has made me a more patient, realistic, dedicated and caring person. Being a father has been the great gift of my life to help me smell the roses and love the roses and tend to the roses. Being a father has greatly improved me. But. . .I’m good. Thank you. Now I’d like to have a two hour lunch again. I’d like to have my first meal of the day at 1pm. I’d like to listen to a record and read everything I can about the record and then watch a forty minute documentary on YouTube about the record, and then masturbate, and then ride my bike, and then get a breve, and then take a dump and read an entire New Yorker article on the can, the process taking so long I’m afraid ye old sphincter is going to fall into the commode and then I’d like walk the dog. That magic feeling, nowhere to go and a sphincter brushing the toilet water while I read Louis Menand’s takes on academic freedom.
My capacity to enjoy this freedom will be so differently shaped by the time I get it back that I won’t use it for the same things. Or will I not use it at all. I know I’ll get it back in fits and starts. And I’ll get some of it back when the kids can make themselves a grilled cheese and can cross Randolph. But the clock hovers. And maybe once the clock hovers you can’t turn it off even when you want to. I think that’s what my dad was saying. You can’t know that freedom if you ever knew that obligation. People who at some point had kids wake up early like they still have kids. Even when the kids are way out of the house. The clock hovers. The clock stares at you. The desk with the ledger might change. There’s no babysitter, there’s no draining of money simply for the existence of your leisure time. But I can’t see this clock leaving. And I don’t think my dad could see the clock leaving either. The magic feeling you had is different than the magic feeling you’ll one day get back. It’s not just that times have changed. Time has changed. And at this moment, there’s no magic and there’s tons of places to go.
Big Trouble Live at the White Squirrel
Getting to play once a month at the White Squirrel has been a godsend for me. Here are some highlights. I get to see people in a night timey environment but not a night timey time. 6-8pm. Good grown up hanging time. And after most every gig I’m getting dinner with Josh and Steve. I have been campaigning, largely unsuccessfully, to have more social time with Josh ever since he said he quit Heiruspecs in probably 2002 when it was time to start going on tour. I remember giving him like $132 I probably owed him from seven gigs he hadn’t been paid for. I thought he was making a huge mistake to not hit the road with us, but I also thought he would have been making a huge mistake to come with us. I don’t think he would’ve have enjoyed any of those years on the road. But since 2001 I’ve probably suggested getting lunch with Josh one hundred and fifteen times. He had my family over for brunch once. That was nice. Suffice it to say a meal with Josh is a rare thing indeed. And with Steve living all the way in Northeast and having a tight neighbor circle over there and me having much of the same in Saint Paul means I don’t see Steve as much as I’d like to. And there’s something nicer about a dinner after you play a gig than just getting together for dinner. Also I simply can’t see Josh, Steve and I having dinner without an attached obligation. Okay, I’m blogging just trying to get you to a show I’m playing and I’ve been yapping about a dinner you aren’t invited to for six lines.
The music side of the show has been very rewarding. I’m very comfortable on the White Squirrel stage. I feel comfortable stretching out. I am seeing that we have a supportive fanbase that believes in what we’re doing and comes out to check out the music. I also think a lot of people swing by for a drink and get impressed with what we’re doing. As I step up on to the stage I feel comfortable trying out something because we are in a spot where we can understand the volume dynamics, we can understand each other.
My favorite part about this extended residency is getting to practice every month, add some tunes, brush the dust off some tunes and see what works for us. As I start to get some new music under my fingers each month for the first time in about five years I’m reminding that music is muscle. You train your connection to music with reliable challenges and it behaves better. My ears are stronger. I hear chord progressions and melodies notated simply as a listen. I am so thankful to have music as a part of my life. And I’d be doubly thankful to have my music be part of your life. Join us on Saturday May 25.
The Memory Lane to Winona
Heiruspecs is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in. The ups and downs of a band are not evenly distributed. The ups for Heiruspecs have been very high. In fact while sharing a delicious sandwich with Felix and DeVon from Heiruspecs this weekend we recalled playing for probably 4,000 people when we were opening for Cake at Universal Amphitheater. That was pretty great. An up. We’ve had downs. I remember sitting in front of the old J&S Coffee shop that was on Hamline and Minnehaha certain we were going to break up. Nowadays the ups are smaller, the downs are smaller. But they are still there. Like so many relationships, Heiruspecs has moved online to some extent. We are a “work from home” band. A lot more emails than rehearsals, a lot more texts than meetings. That can weigh a band down. I don’t think anyone is their best online. And if you are your best online you are the worst.
But, the music. The joy of standing in front of monitors playing the awesome music your group wrote back to you while an audience is there taking it in and enjoying it. That’s the stuff. That’s why you tolerate the emails. The ratios can get hard though, we just don’t get to play that often anymore. But the stars aligned and we got to head back to Winona to play the Mid West Music Fest. I did a little digging and I think the first time we played the festival was in 2011, the second year of the festival’s existence. We may have even done it before that too, every once in awhile I do delete some emails. Winona is a cool two hours away from the Twin Cities and I’ve always liked it. I’ve only ever gone there to play gigs or do radio work and every time it’s felt mellow, agreeable and a little on the hippie side. BUT JUST A LITTLE ON THE HIPPIE SIDE. This isn’t Stockholm, Wisconsin.
Long before Heiruspecs ever played in Winona this was a regular stop for the Martin Devaney touring ensemble. We would play at venues called “Acoustic Cafe” that are peppered in smallish cities all around the area: Northfield, Menomonie, Winona et cetera. Just walking towards the Acoustic Cafe I remember it all. Martin would load in one mic stand and then leave the rest of the loading to us while he wrote the set list down on hilariously small pieces of paper. Me and the drummer would go buy a pack of Camel Lights from the porn shop that was in the alley across the street and watch whatever porn was showing for an awkward eight minutes. And then we’d mostly cram onto this little ass stage, with our own PA in tow and play a show. It was on that very stage that I learned that you can’t leave a silenced cell phone on top of your bass amp because when it rings the amp will blast out all sort of electrical noise. I still remember my sky blue Nokia ruining the ballad we were playing.
I think the pay for the band was maybe $50, free sandwiches and two pounds of coffee. I don’t think I ever got any of that coffee.
I drove down to Winona with our keyboard player DeVon and it was wonderful to spend real life time with him. No texts. No misconstrued jokes left to hang cause it’s on email. Just good company and catching up. When we got into town we stopped by to see Felix from Heiruspecs finish up a panel on collaboration with a couple other folks from the festival. The brotherhood and sisterhood of the Minnesota music scene is beautiful. Everyone is trying to deliver good music and support each other and the “big names” are still small. The panel was largely populated with bandmembers of the panelists. There was also budding radio folks from the college station KAQL doing the questions. Awesome.
DeVon, Felix, Kit, Bug, Bill
After the panel, the sandwiches, then the load in, the stand around and the gig. Ran in to a couple friends. Got to see Landon Conrath play. Got to see the power go out and come back on. Mellow, positive. Power comes back on and Heiruspecs gets to do what we came to do.
Okay, the coffeeshop is closing. Might not be more to this story but happy to share. Happy to go to Winona. Happy to play with Heiruspecs.
Beeswing and My First Love
My brother shared a Spotify playlist with me sometime ago called “What You Left Behind”. It’s a little heavy on music from the National, which is a group I think I would like more except I overloaded on their music during my tenure at the Current, who once considered the tagline “The National, Brandi Carlile and sometimes other bands”. They’re both great artists, but it just added up to a ton of hours hearing their music. But the first tune on the playlist is Beeswing by Richard Thompson and it caught me immediately.
Whatever this song does is what music does better than art, than film, than literature, than poetry. It’s nostalgia with commentary and musical counterpoint. It’s the way Richard Thompson tells his story, but somehow sings mine. It’s the way my heart makes the journey from verse one to the end with complete freshness each time I press play. I academically understand I’m playing the song over again, but my heart is breaking new ground. My heart is breaking new ground in the spot it just broke new ground in five and a half minutes ago.
As I sweated it out in the sauna (they improved the sauna at the Midway Y, come back if you’re looking to sweat baby) and listened to this song I started thinking about who my first love was. I loved intertwining my stories with Thompson’s. The character in Beeswing was wild, enthralling and in Thompson’s retrospect there was no way they could last based on their trajectories. Young love fated by some combination of timing and chemistry to be fleeting. Something designed to feel like it would last forever while it fleeted.
I first loved a girl I’ll call Mary from where I grew up in Massachusetts. I don’t know why she loved me. She’s been a punchline for a lot of my life. She loved a lot of people. She went to third base with one of my best friends on the very evening of the morning my family left for Minnesota, and yes, we had plans to stay together forever so it was cheating. She was a punchline because she broke my heart and because she was promiscuous before, after and during our dating. But I know I loved her. I know she loved me. She taught me what it’s like to have a girl treat you like you matter more to her than her friends and family do. I don’t know why we got together. Or more accurately I don’t know why she paid attention to me. I know we both played in the pit for the musical Kiss Me Kate. I couldn’t read music so I mainly just played quiet and pretended if there were notes written out. Otherwise I played the chords and the teacher Mr. Moors tolerated this. Mary was wowza good at flute. Going places. Doing auditions. Private lessons, a beautiful sound. A beautiful spirit, she loved the flute. She’s also beautiful. Long brown hair. Sat on the sand in her senior black and white photo and she wrote a long note to me on the back that spent a handful of years as my most prized possession. And in that pit she fell in love with me. We didn’t share mutual friends. She was two years older than me. She was beautiful. I might’ve given off a beautiful spirit, in fact I’m sure as shit I did, but I don’t think I was a particularly hot catch. Didn’t dress well. Took a relaxed attitude towards looking good. But something about whatever I was doing and whoever I was worked for her. As this Thompson song plays I wonder why. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t fake. She was inarguably out of my league, but I think I might’ve been playing in the wrong league. She was a junior when I was a freshman and she cared less about the pecking order and the who-is-cooler-Olympics that plagues ninth grades to this day. She liked art, music, tenderness. I’ve got that. I’m a talker. I’m a charmer. I’m an artsy guy who can talk about it and isn’t 100% self-involved. Lots of practices for the musical pit, lots of hanging out, lots of sitting around and suddenly, largely through her initiative, she starts to like me. I have no idea what to do. Mary has a car. I repeat, Mary has a car. She isn’t borrowing a car. She is driving a car. She drives it home. She had a boyfriend recently in Albany. Albany is almost an hour away. HOW? How did you meet him? This boyfriend at one point listened to Pearl Jam’s “Indifference” on repeat in his room for a whole week whether he was there on not. HOW CAN I COMPETE WITH THAT MARY? WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME TO COMPETE WITH THAT MARY? But we were falling in love.
I remember kissing her early in our relationship. I remember kissing her breasts for the first time. I was a huge fan of that. We drove to Northampton all the time to see a singer-songwriter named maybe Rafe? We’d go to Fire and Water. I can’t tell you how cool I felt to be at a VEGETARIAN PERFORMANCE SPACE WITH A GIRL WHO LIKED ME AND LIKED WHEN I KISSED HER BREASTS LISTENING TO A PERSON SING THEIR OWN MUSIC. Here’s a picture of the owners of Fire and Water standing in front of it.
What exactly more do you want in life than this? The room is full with young people hearing these songs, falling in love, telling their own stories they’ll think back to for years. If the show was at 8pm Mary would still pick me up at 11am. She’d drive the hour to Northampton. She had a stick shift. Maybe it was a Honda. A girl who can drive a stick shift. Priceless. Every human is priceless. But if you can drive a stick you’re priceless plus a million dollars. Plus the magic of hearing her play the flute. She was incredible at something which mattered to me. Nothing sexier than being boss at something you care about on your terms. An amazing flute player. Probably going to go to college on scholarship for the flute. She had cool mixtapes in her car. She painted her toenails. She liked records. We’d get to Northampton and just walk around. The record store was Dynamite Records and it was amazing. Shop for records. Walk somewhere else. Did we eat? We must’ve ate? What did we do? On these trips we didn’t fight. I think we fought but not on these days when we were apart from all the difficulties of navigating a romantic relationship around fellow teenagers and meddling parents. I remember the band I was in learning to play “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” by the Allman Brothers while Mary just sat there listening to us rehearse. I was being taught a difficult song by my much more talented brother and I was struggling with some turn. As I struggled Mary asked if I was mentally challenged but she used the R word that none of us should’ve ever used. We fought that day. But I don’t know, I don’t think we fought that often.
We weren’t intertwined in the same friend group at first. We ended up of course intermingling in all those ways and it was all terrible. My mom didn’t like her and Mary didn’t give a shit, which made me love Mary more. My mom said she could tell Mary was promiscuous cause my mom said she had been the same way, my mom used the world slut which none of us should’ve ever used, but I couldn’t tell my mom that in 1995. Mary had a confidence in her sexuality that probably did remind my mom of her own but I think my mom was wrong to hate it. I think my mom could tell she would break my heart but she should’ve known there wasn’t shit she could do about it. I had a lot of firsts with Mary and I learned a lot. I doubt I taught her a damn thing. She told me she had first masturbated when she was young with some part of a broken phone that vibrated. This amazed me. The courage to do it. The courage to tell me. The seeming lack of fear about telling me this. Part of this is because we were in love, we were close. I say this next part with love and respect, she was a freak. I couldn’t match up, I couldn’t hang, I didn’t get it, I didn’t know anything and I learned a very little bit of what I needed to know from her, but she was older than me, more mature than me and I think more grown and comfortable in her own skin than most people her age. She was out of my league, but maybe I had been playing in the wrong league. Growing up fat in America I was convinced my body couldn’t bring joy to anyone under any terms. Mary disavowed me of that thought quickly. Maybe there was a world of girls who liked Ben Folds Five, who wanted to get more piercings, who wanted to go to concerts and who wanted to date a boy like me. Maybe there was a league in which I could be a starter.
There are few joys in life more amazing than being in love and in over your head with a precocious sixteen year old wearing a sundress driving around Northampton waiting to take in a show at a vegetarian cafe. She loved me without reservation. She loved me without agenda. She loved me without a plan. She loved me with abandon. And I loved her back. And it could never last. And it did not last. And it hurt like almost nothing has hurt when it ended, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. If you offered me a million dollars to be without these memories I could laugh in your face. I’m not me without that time with Mary. I do wonder if it’s the same for her. And I like to wonder while Richard Thompson’s Beeswing plays.
Pendiction
In mostly a good way I’ve been doing some soul searching in the past couple weeks. Some of the soul searching has been brought on by conflicts in my life, sometimes just because occasionally it’s time to do a bit of soul searching. I do yoga on Tuesday morning, there’s a term the teacher uses that apparently I can’t even spell bad enough for google to know what I’m talking about. I thought it was pendiction. Not a word. But pendiction to me is the slow stretching of your muscles within a comfort zone but further than you might in the regular course of life or a workout. Stretch your shoulder further, your neck further. And do it slowly and do it in both directions. By stretching further than you might otherwise, suddenly the everyday wear and tear might bring a little less fatigue or exhaustion. So in these handful of weeks I’ve spent some time in pendiction. As I spend hours trying to suss out the nuts and bolts of basslines to only realize I had been approaching the whole piece wrong I wonder. . . .is this part of my mission on Earth to struggle through these basslines that some of my peers get under their fingers in a half hour? As I hunt down "nos” for my band’s fourth annual almost booked August/September show in Duluth I wonder the same thing. . .am I on this Earth to do this? I have no idea why I’m on this Earth but I doubt it’s to ask or answer that question. But it’s my pendiction. It’s my stretching a little further, asking questions I usually just ignore. The pendiction isn’t just sitting in front of the computer rewinding the four seconds of a song to see if it’s a C# or a D. Pressing play on a song on the radio, interviewing an artist about their next show. Is this me? Am I the right person here. I watch basketball and wonder if I actually like it. Same as music, do I love this, or did I love my brother so much as a kid that it’s the best simulacrum I have of that feeling that is on cable TV at the moment. FOOTNOTE ENERGY: It seems important to point out this comes from a different section of my mind than the variety of imposter syndrome I can face. Imposter syndrome for me involves asking “you’re a fraud, what in the shit are you doing here”. My pendiction is more asking “how’d you end up doing this, is this right for you?” Stretch these muscles for awhile, but then stop thinking about it. Go back to your regular workout. Today I go back to my regular workout and it feels good to type here again, to think about things in a casual conversational way.
One pendiction I was asked to do by my nutritionist was to write an intuitive guide to weed smoking. Intuitive Eating is an important book to me that I read in 2023. The book does a lot to ask you to approach food with a less hierarchical good/bad approach. And the book asks you to do something I’ve struggled with for most of my life: believe myself in regards to what I want to eat. My nutritionist frequently asks me to write things that I won’t share publicly. I appreciate it because it’s tangibly good for my soul and I hate it because I love sharing. I’m here, I’m writing on this blog, because I still wanted to share and express but I wanted to keep those thoughts separated from social media. My desire to share and to broadcast is larger than most. That makes social media too enticing for me. So I’ll keep that writing to myself, but in it I reflected back on this particular moment that stuck in my head from the mid 2000s. Knol Tate’s band, Askeleton, was playing at The Triple Rock Social Club. Knol was wearing a sweatshirt I believe for the University of Montreal. At the time I was doing what I would now describe as pendiction. I was questioning whether I fit in to the life I had built. I was seeing peers step up on levels of national acclaim that I hadn’t, and I was watching the national acclaim Heiruspecs had attained start its decline. At the time I reached a conclusion that I was excellent at being me. Not in spite of my shortcomings, but in collaboration with them. I was drunk. I was looking in the mirror at the Triple Rock venue side bathroom. I was sure that the sum of my efforts, my collaborations, my friendships, my projects. . .I was contributing. To what? I’m not as clear on that. The scene? The universe? The future? I was doing a good job and my clarity powered me through a long set of months of keeping my head down and working.
I have to spend most of my life not thinking about my life. The navel gazing, the what is my purpose, the am I supposed to do this channel can only be clicked over to from time to time. I have a beautiful busy life but most significantly I have a life that rolls on best when I work on the projects in front of me. I don’t know if whoever hired me should’ve called a different bass player, but it’s immaterial, they called me and I said yes. I don’t know if the administrative work I do for creative projects is the best use of my time, but it’s on my plate, I better do it efficiently and keep it moving. And if I move it off my plate I should do it with love and joy, not indignation. I don’t know how deeply I like basketball, but it brings me joy when I watch it or discuss it in the right environment. I’m glad I thought about these things, but I’ve got projects. Projects big, small, indulgent, capricious, beautiful and inspiring. They are in front of me and I feel stretched and ready for all of it.
GIGS A PLENTY NEXT WEEKEND
I know your life hasn’t been the same since I stopped playing a ton of shows around the Twin Cities. We are all recovering in our own ways. But next week I’m doing it, a show on Friday and a show on Saturday! Like a teenager! Awesome. I’m playing with Pavielle at Icehouse on Friday. Man, it has been fun getting inside of her music and running it down with her incredible band. Can’t wait for that one. Want a flyer? You got it!
So that’s gonna be great. And the next night Big Trouble is back at it at The White Squirrel. This is a monthly hang and it is such a joy to get comfortable in the room, get comfortable with the players and find out what the music feels like if you get to revisit it once a month. Plus, we’re going to put some new things under our fingers for this one. We had to miss last month so I’m really excited about this whole situation. Jaboom. A Flyer? My brother Steve made an awesome one.
My 5 Favorite Jazz Records Today
In honor of Record Store Day coming up on Saturday I’d like to list to you ten records that you will not regret owning on vinyl because they are amazing. Do I own them all? Not on vinyl. Do I love them all? Absolutely. Will I one day own them all on vinyl? Probably.
Hank Mobley/Soul Station - This is a perfect record. This also might be Art Blakey’s best recording. His high water mark is almost definitely the Jazz Messengers version of a Night in Tunisia, but I do think this recording session as a whole is an even better outing.
Cassandra Wilson/New Moon Daughter - If you own one Cassandra Wilson record, it’s this one. In fact. . .if you can only one jazz album from the 90s, this would be in the discussion. Weaving a record through with covers and originals is a near impossible feat. One set is almost pre-destined to feel out of place. But on this one Wilson’s deep personalization of other writer’s material combined with her soulful and powerful pen result in one of the most impressive albums from any genre. The Grammys also got it right on this one, it won the Grammy for the Best Jazz Vocal Performance.
Alice Coltrane/Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana - I’m lukewarm on side B, not gonna lie to you. I’ve listened through all the way once and from time to time I’ll give it a flip. But, side one. . .side one is some of the most breathtaking, inspired and uplifting music I have ever brought into my ears. It is such a joy.
Stanley Turrentine and the Three Sounds/The Blue Hour - At some point you will need a record to put on for a quiet moment in your life. You will need a record to soothe your nerves rather than to excite your senses. This is that record.
Brian Blade Fellowship/Perceptual - So much praise is rightfully heaped onto Brian Blade as a drummer that it can obscure his accomplishments as a writer and bandleader. To me, the sophomore album of the Brian Blade Fellowship is the high water mark for Blade as a writer and for the Fellowship as a group. The instrumentation, collaborative spirit and emotional content of this record makes it a joy to listen to with the patience and attention that vinyl often inspires.
My Yoga Enemy
You shouldn’t have a yoga enemy. You shouldn’t. But it’s fun to have one. I go to yoga every week. And probably 95% of the time there’s a lady who comes in who I just. . .take issue with. I don’t hate her. I’d love to know more about her. I’d love to know every detail of her weird ass life that has brought her to where her behaviors currently reside, which I would say is left of “that’s weird” and right of “what the f*ck are you on?”. I don’t know her name but I’m almost sure it’s Sandra based on vibe alone. Sandra gets to the Y around when I do and before working out is working on her laptop in the area in front of the pool. That’s cool. That’s normal. But it is a short window of working time. Class is at 8:15. We are both rolling in at 7:35. I’ve got time to lift some weights and maybe look at texts and do nothing about them. You’re doing a laptop session? Cool. But, Sandra, you come into class 5-8 minutes late most everyday. I know you aren’t late from the roads, you’ve been on that laptop. The time is up in the top right on a Mac. Don’t be late for the class Sandra. And then Sandra waltzes in and puts her laptop bag and all that shit in the back of the yoga studio (when will the Y add lockers??) and then grabs a mat in the loudest way possible. AND THEN SANDRA goes and finds a spot and sometimes asks a person to move their mat a little. SANDRA YOU’RE LATE. If you need to move something move the garbage can, I’m already doing my shoulder stretches FFS. Okay Sandra and you aren’t in yoga gear. Neither am I, but you’re wearing a cardigan, and professional pants. Sandra, I am in gym shorts here, you have jewelry on. And Sandra, when the teacher says “do whatever moves for your body feel good to do, take some water, and move to seated” is she quietly broadcasting to you “now you go ahead and stay standing and keep on picking at your cuticles”. I didn’t hear her say that Sandra. I didn’t hear that. AND THEN SANDRA YOU LEAVE EARLY SOMETIMES. “Got to get back to the old lippity laptop!”. So you are then walking back into the back of the studio and grabbing your bag, and loudly putting away your mat. And for awhile I thought you were rushing to get to the aquatics class, which is a forgivable offense. BUT YOU AREN’T. That lady I thought was you in the pool just looks like you Sandra. I don’t know what you’re doing, but if I pulled half of that sh*t once I would just feel so awful. Inconveniencing folks, showing up late, walking out early, picking at my hands while everyone else is in sun pose. But for Sandra it’s just another day at the Y/Office and I truly love it. Sandra, I do hope you keep coming cause I love having you as my fake enemy. I know I’m supposed to say that I’m sure if I met you I’d think you were a swell person. Sandra, I am not certain of that. I am not certain of the opposite, but you have some explaining to do. Until next yoga class!
A Fun Weekend Celebrating 2 Years at Jazz88 and General Good Energy
This weekend I finally got out there! I went and helped my friend Sarah Sandusky celebrate her 40th birthday at Grumpy’s NE and I had a grand old time and ran into some old high school friends as well. On Saturday I was at White Squirrel with the Como Ave Jug Band celebrating 2 years on the air at Jazz88. Thanks to everyone who came out, especially the awesome people I forgot to take pictures with! I’m overjoyed by the hang and the honor of being your Afternoon Cruise DJ.
Heiruspecs is Playing in Winona
It’s a fact. See you on May 11 in Winona with the Midwest Music Fest. I think we played this event the first year they ever had it so it’s awesome to be back!
Celebrating Two Years at Jazz88 March 30 by Reuniting a Jug Band
Believe it or not it’s been two years since I landed at Jazz88 after almost a decade at The Current (longer if you count weekly trivia. . .and I sort of do).
There I am on my first day, happy. Happy cause I was going to get to play world class music, DJ everyday and try my hand at being a Music Director. I wanted all those challenges and I’ve loved experiencing them. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve interviewed a jamillion people. I’ve “passed it to Bob Jurek in Roseville for traffic” 2800 times give or take 500. I’m so grateful not only to the team at Jazz88 and the listeners at Jazz88 but also to the folks who started checking out jazz radio for the first time because they were curious enough to follow me here. That’s really heartwarming. Also, for years I’ve been somewhat known to the jazz players in town but not intimately, I was a bass player who had a fascination with jazz, I was at a station that from time to time covered some jazz, I was setting up a trivia night to play after their trio gig. . .it was all tangential. But it’s deeper now and I think all the players in town but especially Chris Bates, Jeff Bailey, Omar Abdulkarim, JT Bates, LA Buckner, Zacc Harris, Jennifer Grimm, Tony Baluff and Michael Cain. . .artists who have been willing to teach me and to frequently come by the station and talk up one of their favorite artists and share their experience and perspective. On top of that I’ve worked with a staff that has dealt with me as I learn how to be a Music Director, how to really handle a daily shift, how to hit the posts and how to learn a bunch of stuff on the job. The team at Jazz88 past and present has been amazingly supportive of me and I’m very grateful for that. . .would'n’t have made it without that support. How lucky am I? Two Years! I am going to celebrate every year cause this job is a really special one for me.
And celebrate I am! I’m throwing a little party at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul on Saturday March 30. Customarily, my band Big Trouble would be playing our monthly gig at this time, but we asked the Como Ave Jug Band to reunite for the gig since Big Trouble is short a couple members that evening. SO I AM ASKING YOU: will you come to the White Squirrel on Saturday March 30 from 6-10pm and help me celebrate my two year anniversary while enjoying the carnal pleasure that is a jug band in close quarters? I hope the answer is an emphatic yes.
If you have questions about this party you can email me at sean@triviamafia.com. But, it’s simple. Just come. It’s all ages and kid friendly until 8:30pm so bring your kiddos if that’s a fit for you! And they have great N/A and THC beverages if alcohol is not your thing!
Here’s a picture of the Como Ave Jug Band. I own a trivia company with the best looking guy in the band.
Are You Comfortable with Watching The Tiny Desk of Butcher Brown
Butcher Brown. What a treat. The drummer is such a joy. The way he plays his fills. The way he relates with the band. That would be Corey Fonville, he’s thoroughly enjoyable. Andy Randazzo, tasty solo that arrives at the very opening of a song. It’s refreshing. The guitar player, Morgan Burrs. Secret vibe weapon. Buttery tone. Great fancy guitar move arounds, and very patient. And when he repeats a part it sounds impassioned, not labored. DJ Harrison on keys is so solid, and so beautiful. Tennishu has a very Dave from De La Soul energy that feels excellent to me. His melodic sense whether singing or rapping is mesmerizing. The background singing is subtle, but absolutely essential. They can all be heard, singing just a little bit and it’s perfect. Shout out to the thousand people who told me I would love this band. You were right. Shout out Amy, who I think is writing something about them too.
Are You Wrong for The Moment?
There’s an art to great curating. It’s an art I’m aspiring to be great at and I fashion myself well on my way. I think in fancy writing situations people say it’s part science, part art. I think it’s a very small part science. Turns out, magic can’t be relegated to a set of time tested codes and research. Magic has to be magic. You have to practice science, study science and honor all of that research as you make your way towards being a good curator of something. . .but it’s all a wash if you can’t embrace the magic. The people I’ve had the worst chemistry with in the world of music performance and radio are the people who pretend that it is a knowable, explainable, measurable and quantifiable portion of the world. It simply is not. Music has a magic that refuses to be predictable and refuses to be fully explained by anything algorithm. This is not me eschewing algorithm. When Spotify hits me with Rhapsody right after Little Brother and then a late era De La Soul song, clearly that experience is algorithmically supported. But when Radio K hits me with a heavy haunting Boris jam at 8:06am right after the final kid is dropped off and the Jojo Siwa phone is disconnected, that is magic. I need it all.
But, I have me people who have good hearts but are plugged in wrong for the moment. These are people who want to play a comedy album when everyone is picking out songs at a cabin, people who randomly ask someone about their parents for the first time in months a mere matter of days after one of those parents died. These are people who think that trying their new Cantonese noodle recipe they just saw that morning in the NY Times is just the right dinner plan for the last night up North. There are right people, who are wrong for moments. They pick a weird movie, and not a fun weird movie, just a weird one. When they dial it up on a streaming service they tell you you’ll love it and you know you won’t. Pick a loud song when you need a quiet song. Pick a normal ass coffee shop when you need a weird one. Maybe this happens with wine too. But there’s people who can’t put their spirit and their drive into rhythm with the feel of the moment, with the immediate needs of the room. May God have mercy on those people. . .cause I won’t.
How Many Jobs Have You Had?
I’m part of a small little four person text crew with my brother Steve, Chuck from Trivia Mafia and my best friend Steve. Between this blog and that text chain, that’s why I feel alright being off of social media. Recently Steve asked how jobs each of us have had. I guessed about fifteen and I think I was right. I left out significant freelance stuff. . .like Heiruspecs, Dessa, Trivia Mafia. None of those things are in there. But all of those “jobs” served as my primary income for some years of my life. So those are off. I think the only freelance work I identified as a job was writing for City Pages. It felt a lot like a job, so I’m leaving it on there. So boom, here’s the 15 jobs I’ve worked.
babysitter for kids
sold baseball cards at the state fair
cheapo and applause
mass moca museum gift shop
dining hall at bennington college, focus on salads
toonerville trolley, record store, worked one day, couldn’t figure out the register quit
minnesota department of health, filed tests
400 bar, door guy
city pages delivery, i quit this job by leaving for tour with Martin Devaney on a Wednesday and not answering my phone
genesis (this was monitoring parents who had lost custodial rights)
creative care resources (working with people with autism)
mcnally smith
city pages writing
mpr
jazz88
Big Trouble Performs Instrumental Feats on Saturday at The White Squirrel
L to R: The Enforcer, Me, The Heartbreaker, The Dealmaker
As you decide what to do this Saturday you’ll want to give some big consideration to enjoying Big Trouble. A monthly show has been good for the musical constitution of the group and we’ve been stretching ourselves and exploring some more ideas for the group. But due to travel circumstances and the unrelenting shortness of February this week we haven’t done a rehearsal. So we are doubling down on our recent strides and playing the HITS. Does a band that has been together since 2007 and never released any music simply as a quartet have hits? NO, we don’t. But we are playing our hits, our jams. The ones that feel special to us. And as we all collectively navigate the strange vibes of this Mediterranean winter a nice little bit of instrumental music is just what the doctor ordered, if you could ask your doctor what they ordered without being charged $195. What a treat.
I Was the Coolest Guy in 55105 until Vincent Kartheiser Showed Up
Not good Bob.
You do know who Vincent Kartheiser is. He’s from Apple Valley, he was on Mad Men. He used to look like this.
Now he looks like this.
So Vincent Kartheiser was really good on Mad Men and your guess is as good as mine what he’s done since but presumably cool movie guy stuff. Juicing, expensive therapy, acting, impromptu trips to Las Vegas, hiking, farmer’s markets, hiking on rocks with women in yoga pants. I figure he's been doing everything all my friends who go to LA do. Bon voyage Vince, have an amazing life. You weathered a divorce last year, but that happens, I hope you’re on the up and up. But turns, out Vince has had a burning desire to get back to Minnesota ASAP. You can even see in the photo above that Vince-a-reeno is tearing off his lavalier mic and saying “get me on the next Sun Country to Terminal 2 folks”.
And you know what Mr. Kartheiser, Minnesota would be happy to have you back. Josh Hartnett lives here sometimes. Rent a loft in the North Loop and go to restaurants with names like “High Snap” and “Colton Twenty One”, find a spot where the average weight of a dog is nine pounds. ENJOY IT VINCENT. You worked for it. BUT NO. Kaptain Kartheiser is back in. . ..Saint Paul? Vincent, no movie stars live in Saint Paul. Josh Hartnett is from Saint Paul but I bet he lives in Minneapolis. And Vincent, if you want to live in Saint Paul, go to Lowertown, heck grab a condo fit for a duke on the West End of Grand Ave. But I believe the Kartheiser clan is shacked up in 55105 right by me. They’re going to name a Nook burger after him. He’s picking up poop from his dog on Randolph Avenue just like me. This is unacceptable.
Vincent, until you got here I was undefeated the coolest person in 55105 unless Marlon James was teaching a class that day at Macalester. Vincent, I am not that cool. But 55105 is really not that cool. Or at least it is not that kind of cool. The neighborhood is full of people walking their dogs, catching the bus, mowing their lawn, finishing their day with a nice old TV watch. Not everyone is cord-cutters. A lot of folks in the 55105 haven’t tried macrobiotic. Awesome people, not cool people. The average weight of a dog is 27 pounds. Restaurants have names like a restaurant name in a story written by a tenth grader would have: Carmelo’s, The Groveland Tap, The Italian Pie Shoppe. Delicious restaurants, but no random numbers, no unexplainable nouns. Vincent, I don’t think we can give you what you need. A person who has been in cool TV shows should eat at a place where you can say something like “and how is the seabass?”. It’s not happening in 55105. The only thing that is happening in 55105 is. . .well. . .me. I’m cool. I’m on the radio, I play in a band, we even rehearse in the 55105. We’re cool right? Well I felt really cool until you showed up Vincent. You outcool me and it’s rough. Your options are as follows:
1) not give a shit about this blog post
Nope, that’s it. You do you Vincent, me and Marlon James will get over it.
The Most Iconic Breakfast in Minnesota
Maria’s Cachapas Venezolanas, 2 cakes with Cotija cheese. $10.25 for the cakes, $2.25 for the must have Cotija Cheese
Summer of 2000 my girlfriend at the time moved into a house at 15th and Franklin meaning that by a long shot the closest breakfast to her house was Maria’s. She went there before I did and she told me about these corn pancakes and as a breakfast enthusiast I was vaguely enthused. Sunny Side Up was my breakfast North star in the Twin Cities. I’ve never been a deep pancake person as an adult. I needed a reason to step away from savory breakfast. But when my gf Anna mentioned that these were corn pancakes with cheese I became more interested. Not too long after hearing about these pancakes I finally got to dig in and it was astounding. IT’S SO MUCH CORN. And the corn tastes so good and it mixes with the rest of the batter to create this very satisfying sweet corn situation. Have you ever been at a Thanksgiving where a mom serves “corn pie” or something similar. I’ve only gotten it in New England with Conor’s mom. It’s delicious and this has a little corn pie situation going on plus this acidy cheese. I do get some maple syrup involved. Not as much as I would on a standard issue pancake, but some. Partially for lubrication, partially for flavor, partially out of deference to the fact that you put syrup on a pancake.
I’ve gone here many times across the years and if I have someone in from out of town I try to get them here. They usually don’t order the Cachapas Venezolanas. I tell them to. They look at it. They just have a bite of mine. They’re stupid. Get these pancakes. I haven’t seen them on the menu anywhere else in my stateside travels. They’re delicious. This place is a gem. The coffee is great. The hang is great. The staff is great. The pancakes are better. The pancakes are better than us all. I’ve been eating them for 24 years and look at me, I’m on the radio, I have a blog. I credit the pancakes exclusively. Dig in.