A Writer
I am, at my most fundamentally, a writer. It was the first identity I tried on and loved. I was told I was a boy, told I was a McPherson, told I was from Massachusetts, told I was white. But the first thing I told anyone was that I was a writer. I wrote a six page double spaced story in second grade called The Quest for Life and I sold it for ten cents a copy to the other kids. It was primarily the plot of a game called KingsQuest. I didn’t know I was a writer when I started writing it. I hadn’t written a one page story I was proud of. But something about putting my hands on WordPerfect every afternoon after school felt right. It didn’t feel easy, but it felt resonant.
My life has been about finding ways to “write” without being alone. Me and Brad Schroeter started Fungle Toxins when I was in sixth grade. A punk band with words to our songs but no singer. Me and Brad knew the words, but we agreed that neither of us were qualified to sing them. I played guitar, I wrote the words. We agreed on the words but we never sang them.
I came to music as a writer. I was more fascinated by creation than duplication. The first order of magic is in the song, not the band. I landed as a bass player. Rightfully so. I am, at my second most fundamentally, a bass player. Perhaps even moreso than a musician. I feel a kinship to the role of the instrument, to the spirit of the instrument, to the personality of the players. There is some sort of resolvable, welcome tension between being a writer and a bassist. Like being a gardener and a demolition worker. Bass is a blue collar instrument. And that goes for McCartney, Mingus, Pastorius, Pettiford, Weymouth, Barrett and every other great. We are supports, we are foundations, we are musical infrastructure. If we exhibit the highest forms of style, of decoration and of freedom while being the infrastructure we are golden gods and godesses. If we exhibit the highest forms of style, of decoration and of freedom while not contributing to the infrastructure we are trumpets.
I came to trivia as a writer. I was more fascinated by camaraderie than by facts. Trivia being questions that demand answers seemed like an ultimate complete protein. How many times have I heard artists say that the role of the artist is to “ask questions not provide answers”? Circa a bajillion. Part of me thinks and has always thought “what a half assed job you espresso drinking shitbag” when I hear that line. I appreciate the truth in the line, but it presumes that there is some other line of work where in their long interview sections they say “the job of the ice cream store clerk is to answer the questions that the espresso drinking shitbag artist has asked”. No, not true. You, artist, you are uniquely qualified to answer the question because you wrote the question. I don’t mean you are the only one qualified, I don’t even mean you are the best qualified. I mean you are uniquely qualified. And if you take that off your job description definitionally I think you are kind of a shit.
Let’s be fair. The great writers of the world don’t ask trivia questions. I am now envisioning Friedrich Nietzsche working bar trivia sucking down a couple weisses off of his $20 tab and saying “Round 2, Question 4: When you stare into the abyss, what does the abyss do? Again, question 2, round four. If you stare in the abyss, what does the abyss do?”
I have been more rewarded in life asking questions there are answers to. Trivia, interviews, random would-you-rather questions. Building a conversation has been more rewarding than fashioning myself a star. Ultimately, as an artist I don’t believe my role is to ask questions. My role is to make art that asks questions. But I don’t feel the clear clarion call of an artist. In the journey that has to do with work I feel the push and pull of an entertainer, a host, a bass player, a songwriter, a curator. But, below all of these, deeper than most anything in me, I am a writer. And as I willfully pushed down my writing ambitions in junior high to make room for music, to write songs at home and play songs in Jon Baker’s basement in Lanesboro, I thought it might bubble up again, later. Maybe I didn’t think it would bubble up sitting on the second floor of paradise at First and Rittenhouse in Bayfield, Wisconsin on my seventh straight summer vacationing on this corner. But it has. And I am in Paradise a fifty-yard dash from Lake Superior. I am a writer.
You are what you do everyday. That means that there are many things we all might moonlight as doing but we haven’t actually “stuck our dick in”. It’s a crass way of saying it, but it’s the way I’ve heard the work described for decades by creators of all stripes and all genders. I’ve done the music work everyday. I spent a time doing the songwriting work everyday but I regret to say that some of my early successes as a songwriter clouded my ability to believe the work ethic had to tighten up. I’ve done the trivia work everyday. I’ve done the radio work everyday. And by virtue of this blog I’ve started to do the writing work everyday. But I’m ready to tighten shit up.
This summer I worked with a student intern at Jazz88 from South High named Laelah and she is a gifted writer and a tremendously gifted young person. She wrote a bunch of small reviews for Jazz88 and I was sad that I couldn’t line edit her writing. I couldn’t give her the sentence structure guidance I bet she’s getting from her teachers at South. I took it to my awesome writer committee of Chuck Terhark, Martin Devaney and my brother Steve McPherson. These men are all awesome writers and we spend some of the downtime of our life in a long text conversation talking about all sorts of miscellany. They pointed out that there is no better activity for learning to write than reading. I simultaneously agreed and rolled my eyes. I read a lot. But I had stopped reading like a writer. I had stopped looking at the handiwork of a writer with the reverence that I use when I listen to a bass player, when I play another company’s trivia night. But on this vacation, here in Bayfield, Wisconsin in the quasi-wicker deck chair I sit in now I engaged in some ancient-to-me process I remember doing as a kid. I saw a sentence, and I put my thumb near it. I worked it over in my head. I said it out loud with my mouth closed. I looked at a how it felt and I let it burn into my memory, into my writing muscles, into my craft. The writer is Jessamyn Ward and I’m reading her because Rachel and I agreed to pick off some of the fiction from the New York Times list of Greatest Books of the 21st Century that we haven’t gotten to. I don’t know much about this woman but the book is amazing so far. It’s called Salvage the Bones. Here’s the sentence:
By the time the meat is done cooking, has turned brown and small with as many hard edges as a jewel, the boys have come.
I don’t know how to explain it’s excellence, but I’m not sure you need me to. You know it’s excellent. And I know I’m a writer.
The Country Cabin Crapper Companion
I made an awesome magazine. The Country Cabin Crapper Companion. Artwork by @stephtupper, Best of Twin Cities by me, The Best Record Released Every Year between 1959-2009 by me, Power Loon article by @kylematteson, awesome recipes, 100 Cabin Questions and playful interviews with @charlie.parr, @_omgigi_ , @abywolf, @laplantica, @derushaj, @mmyykkvibes @useful_noise. I'm really proud of this here magazine and I hope you pick up a copy and enjoy it. I wanted to sell it right here on Squarespace, but they want me to pay more for the website to do that. I already pay like $117 a year and I don’t want to pay more. So for now, I’m going to be mainly giving them away if I see you. If you really want one venmo @twinkiejiggles $10 and then email me (s@heiruspecs.com) your mailing address and I’ll send it it you. If you live outside of the US venmo me a bit more.
I’ll also have them at the merch table at the Heiruspecs Summer Classic on Saturday August 17. $5 on their own. Free if you buy Heiruspecs merch.
I Appeared on the Brian Oake Show
Got to connect with a long time radio friend Brian Oake and join his podcast. Thanks for having me back. We talked about my new zine (more on that later when I have shipping supplies), the Heiruspecs Summer Classic, my radio journey to Jazz88 and more. Give it a listen and thanks to Brian and Sean for having me and for connecting with local musicians and hosting these conversations.
Three Views of a Secret
2024
——
I have spent, charitably, 50 hours of my life in a tent. Maybe 95% of those hours, in blissful campy sleep. I’ve spent very few waking hours in a tent. Just those waking hours you spend in a tent wondering if you really want to get up and pee in the morning. This weekend we were in the storms in cabin country Wisconsin. Saturday night, Solon Springs. The rain starts up around 5:30pm. We are finishing up a lightly stressful pizza dinner at the town bar in anticipation of a rainy night. I pull up the car to spare the kids the rain only for the kids to take for-fucking-ever to actually get into the car. Back to the cabin.
Our two kids are watching an ipad on a porch. The 15 or so neighbors from Saint Paul we are with are mostly gathered in a small cabin room with couples tag teaming one another to handle the start of children’s bedtimes. Our kids go to bed later than most. Rachel goes into the tent for a little break that I know will be a long break. The storm’s going. I am sitting in the couch next to my kids and I’m listening to “Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye” by the Black Crowes in my headphones trying to decide if the drinks I had at the town bar are having any impact and also trying to decide if this is the greatest Black Crowes song of all time. I am also thinking about those artists, movies and other offerings of culture that played a disproportionately big role in my upbringing compared to other families. The Black Crowes. The movie Liar Liar. The TV show Twin Peaks. The Allman Brothers. Two rock bands you have never heard of I guarantee it: The Hatters and Reef. I am now encouraging you to listen to “Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye” by the Black Crowes.
I have spent, charitably, until August 3, 2024, zero hours in a tent during a rainstorm. The family uses a green Coleman Skydome. It was selected for its ease of assembly and goddammit the satisfaction I derive from setting up the tent even though it is easy to assemble. I was not on a “yeah I can set up a tent” path in life and having shoved myself onto that path I smile from ear to bug-bitten ear admiring the cover I have created for my children in the rugged wilderness of the mowed grass next to Silus and Kelly’s cabin. I did not know that as rain hits a tent the beads of rain dance and move in orchestrated improvisation much like they would on my parent’s Chevy Nova on rides home from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The rainfly and the tent in a taut bounce to keep the rain away from the people. The rain shakes the tent gently, the wind shakes the tent violently. My two daughters barter, cajole and acquiesce their way to an understanding of who gets what glow-sticks. With the exchange complete between the two of them I imagine some part of their attention also goes to the beating Mondrian painting that dances above our eyes. The sleep slowly rolls over both of them largely in rhythm with the storm rolling past us. Their bodies move less, their breaths more rhythmic, their glowsticks lazily sliding out of their loosened fists now shining inside their sleeping bags.
———-
2012
In my experience the tense conversations on tours never happen during the hours of easy driving between major and minor population centers. The conversations about publishing percentages, about who needs to help more with merch, about whether we can play an encore when only fourteen people come to our shows. . .those all happen amidst turns, the fighting happening in tandem with Siri reading take a right on Douglas, then continue straight on Douglas. One such argument came up in the Dessa band in regards to the ownership of sounds. The ownership of patches that Dustin, our amazing guitar player and keyboard player used in the studio and on stage. He played a tremendous role in both imitating sounds that had been acquired by other means on Dessa records and on creating his own sounds for new Dessa material.
So that’s the question. If Dustin subs out a gig, if Dustin quits, if Dustin gets fired. . .does the schmo who replaces him get those files? Does he get those patches or is the new schmo at square one? Dustin rightfully feels a level of ownership and identity over these patches. For some of the songs, it might be the hardest, most impactful work any of us in the band had done on the song. On the other hand, what about the Three Musketeersiness of all of this? If Dustin has to go play another gig or go to a wedding, isn’t the classy thing to send the patches over to schmo one so that they don’t have to spend hours crafting them for one sub gig? Continue straight to go on Hwy 12, then, stay in the right lane. But, how Three Musketeersy is the band at this point? Dessa’s making music with other producers, Dessa’s making music on her synthesizer, she’s restless. The writing is not on the wall, but the pen is out and the wall is there. Are we hired hands or are we in it for the long haul? Once they are shared with the schmo, what prevents you from saving them and using them after you fire me? Silence. Not even Siri is talking.
I want to be the peace keeper but there isn’t a needed peace to find. The argument is largely hypothetical. I don’t believe there is a gig we are subbing Dustin out for. I am a side person in the Dessa band. But I have been a bandleader a lot longer. My allegiance is to the advancement of the music with little patience for increasing the difficulty of advancing the music due to concerns of intellectual property. But I am not stupid enough to think that I am right, I just know where my allegiance lies. I say to Dustin “I haven’t been in the position to have a sound I felt strongly enough about to want compensation for it or to keep it for myself”. Without malice and without pause Dustin says “that’s right, cause you haven’t worked hard enough on a sound to feel ownership of it”. He’s right and it hurts. It hurts because when people say “you haven’t worked hard enough” it strikes a resonance in me, a harmony with the 24/7 screaming soundtrack of “you haven’t worked hard enough” already blasting through my head. I eat, sleep, work hard and think I don’t work hard enough. Those are my activities. Dustin just did the out loud on it. And it hurts. But I don’t have that perspective and I don’t have that experience. He’s right and fuck it hurts.
I didn’t understand, given Dustin’s level of sweat equity dumped into these patches, what his bargaining position could be. Dustin was right, I can’t speak as somebody who has put in that time. I can speak from my position, but it isn’t Dustin’s. I am working this story from 2012 into my campaign to not go back to one on one therapy. I had a strong year of therapy, I got through a lot of shit. I replaced it with yoga. I want to stay with yoga. But I feel under-appreciated in the grand majority of my relationships and Rachel and the couple’s counselor think there is work to be done there. Work to address my chronic feelings of not being appreciated enough. I don’t feel that Rachel sees what I do to keep our family thriving, especially in these years where she is stretched thin with grad school. I don’t feel that Heiruspecs understands how much work remains for me even if we don’t play that many shows. Rachel doesn’t know what it is to be me in this family. The gentlemen in Heiruspecs don’t know what it is to be me in our family. And I don’t know what it is to be them. I don’t know what Rachel or Peter or DeVon feels unappreciated about. I know my struggle. I know my pain points. I know the sweat equity I put in. I am not in charge of making the people I love understand it. We aren’t always in this together. It’s not three musketeers. It’s six guys. It sucks. It’s a marriage where your contributions feel invisible, feel ephemeral, feel negotiable. Why do I need to have someone else validate it? Dustin knew he had busted his ass to make these sounds, he was willing to hold his sounds hostage to have things work on his terms. Am I a leader or just a worker bee? Do I lead others in a meaningful way or do I just eat the shit others won’t? Am I one musketeer? Does that sound fun to you?
—-
2024
Today is my mother’s birthday. She’s been dead seventeen years. My relationship with her has gotten worse since her death. And it’s gotten worse in the last three years. The therapy I have done has been largely focused on my childhood years. Am I on my one musketeer program in adulthood because that was the comfortable way to get love from my family? I remember my parents rejoicing when I learned how to make them coffee in the morning, when I learned how to do laundry in the sixth grade, when I told my Dad I would happily be part of a book he wanted to write about how great our relationship was. The youngest child. I’ll play rhythm guitar Steve, no problem! Oh, you’re playing rhythm guitar? I’ll buy a bass! I’m just along for the ride and I’m also the road. One musketeer.
When I say my relationship with my mom has gotten worse I mean it’s gotten thicker, it’s gotten realer. There is more to it. There is more there. I understand our relationship differently. I was 25 when she died. I wasn’t really grown. I certainly wasn’t looking back much at the time. I wasn’t a dad. I wasn’t a grown man. I wasn’t a work in progress. I wasn’t working. I was a young man living. And now the good times we had are tainted, the always bad times look worse. Today I went to the bench they have for my Mom at Macalester, where my Dad was the President during one of the happiest stretches of her life. I sat at the bench and felt my body vibrate a little. I slowed down. I almost fell asleep. I wanted a security guard to walk up and ask me what I was doing here and I wanted to tell him that this is my Mom’s bench and I wanted him to read the plaque. The plaque for my mom said she had a genuine curiosity in everyone she met. That’s very correct Mr. Plaque writer. I know she loved me. I don’t believe she knew how to raise me. I don’t believe she knew how to care for me and how to give me the structure I needed to thrive. I don’t think she had that in her quiver, or if she did I don’t think she had the energy to call it up.
I leave the bench and walk to the President’s Mansion, the first place I lived in Minnesota. 1750 Summit Ave. Big ass khaki brick house. I drive past it sometimes just in regular life. But today I approach it on foot. I look at the alley. Just really one memory from the alley. A phone argument with DeVon from Heiruspecs as he was telling me he was going to miss the rehearsal the rest of us were all set up for. DeVon said “now if I understand correctly, you got laid last night, so I really don’t want you to be an asshole after I tell you this. I am not running late, I am not coming at all.” One musketeer.
I walk past the house up and down but don’t want to linger there, lest I scare the folks who live there now. The little driveway. I pulled the first Heiruspecs trailer up that driveway full of our gear all on my own after our first tour but I shit my pants about halfway up the incline. We had driven basically straight from Cleveland and I thought I’d wheel up about 700 pounds before hitting the commode. So instead of triumphantly walking in to the house and bragging about our week and a half long tour I frantically ran downstairs and tried to get the shit all cleaned off before I saw my parents and my aunt.
I then walk back to my car but I do the walk on Summit, not Grand. A couple steps in I realize I’ll go to a place I’ve never revisited before on foot. The Macalester Alumni House on Grand. It’s right near Great River Junior High which used to be called Ramsey. It was there, as my Dad was doing a round of meetings for his new job and Mom and I were shopping for high schools that she proposes that she and I get a divorce. I’m in ninth grade, we are fighting, and she says that we can’t seem to get along and we should just stay out of each other’s way. Worst moment of my life. We had watched Apollo 13 in the Alumni House the night before. I loved it, but even at the time I could feel the movie melting in with my memory of Mom suggesting that we would be well-served to stay out of each other’s way. Tonight I look out on the little extra parking strip of Summit where it happened, sitting in a rental car. Is that the worst thing that has ever happened on this little square of planet earth? Maybe somebody starved there in an unforgiving winter in 1837. Maybe someone got shot and died right there. I don’t have the data, but it’s possible a Mom proposing a divorce with her ninth grade son is the worst thing to happen in the parking space right outside of the Macalester alumni house. I turn the corner, great memories. Heiruspecs did the Battle of the Bands right here at Grand Old Day probably 1997 or 1998. Kicked ass, got second place. I think Curious Yellow got first. I remember walking around here, dreaming about kissing Christina Gosling on the mouth, thinking the high placement in the Battle of the Bands was bound to help my odds. I am back to Grand. I unnecessarily unlock my car from across Grand. I look at the bench. I’ve done the circle. 17 years you’ve been gone Mom. And I love you. I see you differently, I have lived so much life. I understand how much life you were robbed of. 60 seems so old to somebody whose 25. Today you’d be 77. A different person. I don’t know what we would have worked out. I don’t know what would have stayed unaddressed. You always had an appetite to talk. I’ll always wonder how you remember those times? Does your soul still negotiate with them? Are you at rest? The family that are still here aren’t really talkers like you and I are. When it’s in the rearview it’s gone. You and I are different from them and we are different from each other. I don’t think I’ll ever get to know who you are, cause I didn’t know who I was when you died. I am one musketeer. And I am your baby. And I can love you. And I can forgive you. And I don’t want a divorce.
I Appeared on the Show Some Kinda Fun
I had the honor of appearing on “Some Kinda Fun” recently. It can be an uphill battle covering a local music scene. At times it can feel like you’ll get more attention for your small handful of mistakes than you’ll get for your bushel full of slam dunks. Well, in my humble opinion Some Kinda Fun does it right and I’m glad they shared their platform so I could talk about the upcoming Heiruspecs Summer Classic and more. Check it out (my interview is at 33 minutes FYI)!
PWAAB and the Magic of City Billiards
City Billiards had shirts that said “Shoot Pool Not People”. You could smoke in their cause it was the 90s and the 2000s. It was downtown right by First Avenue and 4th Street. It was an amazing hang. When I was in high school me, my dad and Steve would go down there. My dad’s default activity with kids was to play pool. I played so much pool as an elementary school kid. As a junior high kid. As a high school kid. I suck at pool but I love it. If you have a pool table, I want to play it. I’m friends with a neighbor who has a pool table and he has never really invited me over to play pool with him and it breaks my soul.
The last months of City Billiards existence were probably in 2003/2004 something around there. Grant Cutler, who is now quite the musician and composer was the fuck-this-job and fuck-this-place all star because he knew the place was closing and he knew his checks were gonna bounce so he was just giving away mountains of drinks. I’d get six drinks, the bill would be $7. It was that stuff every time he worked. And between ten and thirty of us would show up for every shift and drink. Pool wasn’t the preferred game. The preferred game was darts. Me and Kevin played a lot of darts. I suck at darts. If you play darts you mostly play cricket. “It’s a game that rewards you for hitting certain parts of the dart board.” - Captain Obvious
Cricket is wild because you are competing both to finish hitting all the assigned spots but you are also accruing points by hitting spots you have completed and your competitor hasn’t. Kevin is good at darts. He would get all his stuff covered well before me, and then he’d just try to hit that bullseye. That bullseye was elusive. But as Kevin aimed for the bullseye, he made tons of points just by hitting the stuff I hadn’t yet. He called it PWAAB. Points while aiming at bullseye.
I think about PWAAB all the time in indie music. You ever met someone who has no business knowing how to fix a car but they had to learn to fix the van when they were touring on a shoestring budget. They were aiming at bullseye but they became an amateur mechanic. The only bullseyes I’ve really aimed at are being a musician, being a trivia business man and being a radio personality. I’ve hit some bullseyes but holy shit, have I scored a lot of points while aiming at those bullseyes. If you need to make something happen you work hard to cover what you need to. I learned how to book gigs. I learned how to set up and fix little shitty PAs. I learned how to edit audio. Interpersonal management. Trying to persuade people vastly more talented than you to follow your lead for a brief minute cause you have the vision. Aiming at that bullseye but learning stuff that helps me inside and outside of the dart game.
Sometimes when I come into regular job situations I feel so ahead of the game because of how ambitious the bullseye I’ve been aiming at has been. If you don’t want magical, spectacular, unimaginably cool shit it is harder to justify tolerating exhausting, futile, dangerous experiences. But if you are really about getting to some spot you want to find, you make a way, you work towards it. And I’ve worked towards it. I’m thankful. I’m exhausted, I’m happy. I could go for six drinks for $7 and a game of 9-ball.
Photos of Big Trouble Playing at White Squirrel
Had a great time playing outdoors at White Squirrel in June and we are back at it this Saturday! These photos were taken by Trevor McSpadden. Enjoy and catch us this Saturday for more Big Trouble action. 6-8pm at White Squirrel in Saint Paul.
Video of Big Trouble Playing at White Squirrel
My brother Steve, guitarist in Big Trouble, foodie and hair product enthusiast went to the trouble of capturing some video of Big Trouble’s latest show at White Squirrel. Check it out right here. We are doing “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles which is quite a tune.
There’s more where that came from bad boy. Join us on Saturday July 27 for more jams like this on a beautiful Saint Paul Saturday.
Heiruspecs Summer Classic
The Heiruspecs Summer Classic is back on Saturday August 17. We are playing with Greg Grease, Rabeca and DJ sounds from EmilyNayNay from the Cutthroat DJs. The event is happening at JJ Hill House. It’s free. It will always be free. But we have VIP tickets available for $40 that includes access to interior restrooms, private bar and balcony views. That’s nice. I recently just Number Two’d in a port a potty and I woulda paid at least $15 dollars to not have to. . .and I certainly didn’t get balcony views of hip-hop icons Heiruspecs. That’s for sure. I look forward to seeing you on August 17.
It’s just a Shame To Fall Without Aim
The soundtrack is Waxahatchee and the red herring was Lilacs. I wanted to learn Lilacs to slowly get to a cover of it with Big trouble. I gave that a lot of spins. It’s verse chorus. It’s a lyric song and the journey is the words. And it’s also beautiful in its little tricks. Its flourishes. It’s pieces of flair. And that doesn’t translate great into reading a song. Reading a song deep enough to only acknowledge the broad brush strokes because you have the essence.
But that brought me to Ruby Falls. And what I hear in Ruby Falls is something slightly smokier. Slightly more sinister but equally even handed. Equally invested. The story is sewn into the music. The words are there when the words aren’t there. It’s a gift in a giftsclothing.
When We Were Carried on Chairs at Our Wedding
I was just reminded of the fact that our friends and family carried Rachel and I around at our wedding lo the many years ago. Great memories.
A Great Feeling While Watching Jazz at Taste of MN
I spent all day on Saturday at Taste of MN. I am a DJ at Jazz88 at we sponsor the Jazz88 stage and this year we had a great lineup which I had a fair amount to do with. Steve Heckler did the calling, scheduling and advancing but a lot of the artists that played were artists I recommended and artists that I have fostered relationships with like BZ3 Organ Trio, Jennifer Grimm, HeyArlo, LA Buckner and Big Homie, MPLS String Project and more. What an honor to get to see these bands play a stage at a major free festival in Minnesota. I believe we need more free festivals in Minnesota. NOTE: I don’t mean musicians should play for free. . .I mean the economics of the event should be such that the event can turn a profit without making audience members come out of pocket for a ticket. It isn’t the only model, but it should be part of the offerings.
This particular Saturday was perfect even if it was demanding. Due to scheduling needs for my wife I brought my two heroic daughters to Taste bright and early circa 10:40. Because I’m a dumb dumb and forgot to do something at the studio I had to roll out to St. Louis Park before that, stuff them with vending machine candy and then take the bus into downtown. But I’ll be honest, I love the bus. We love the bus. When my seven year old sees the 74 on Randolph she rolls down the window and says “thanks for taking us to most of the places we go”.
From jump the vibe was great. Some shade. Not painfully hot. Trees. Food. Got my kid a seven dollar vegan cupcake that she stored upside down on the pavement below the table for safekeeping. Got my other kid a refill it yourself sno-cone situation and I’m certain that no one after her got anything but a sousant of root beer. As Jack Brass started off the festivities I was reminded that music is magic and it can turn a strange gathering into the most reasonable thing on Earth. Before they had played a note the vibe at Taste of MN was just. . .anticipatory. What am I doing here? I should have gone to the cabin. Holy crap, $7 for a cupcake with no cream in it? But then suddenly the music plays and I am more human, we are more human, we are together, there is art. There are speakers. There’s a tuba. Fuck that cabin. $7? A bargain? How bout a sno-cone?? About halfway in to the first band my wife came to pick up the kids and serve them something vaguely more healthy than I had offered so far that morning.
The day progressed. The crowds grew. The good vibes grew. A many with a classy ponytail said he loves “setting sail” with me every afternoon at three. I am grinning from ear to ear. HeyArlo sounds better than they ever have. The drums sound like someone is playing a record from 1978 on speakers from 1986. It’s spectacular. And the night ends with LA Buckner and Big Homie. I look out at the crowd. Young. Old. Black. White. Asian. Native. Latino. Nobody is looking at their phones and tolerating the music. Nobody is just tolerating the music to finish up the food they didn’t want to stand up for. The crowd is full of enthusiastic people who at this moment are connected with Mr. Buckner and his cast of incredible musicians. I also think some of the folks are there because they connect with Jazz88, they like what we have going, it’s what makes sense to them. It’s what works for their radio. I’m with Patty Peterson and Johnny. We are working the tent, we are working the area. Davide from Jazz88 is recording. And it’s a big ass crowd. I think it might be 850 people actively watching. More just breezing by. The band is the winner. The music always wins. The radio never wins. But radio and music have to work together and that night we did. Beautiful sounds. Some of which were broadcast on our airways. An amazing night filled with a music and a scene that I have played some role in cultivating. Grinning from ear to ear as something cool happens in the Twin Cities. It’s almost enough to go lick that cupcake frosting off the pavement, but it’s root beer flavored by now because my daughter spilled the sno-cone too.
Dispatch Denver
Let’s make that a large coffee. Let’s make it a double of the local whiskey my brother in-law bought. Because four year olds are the enemy. Because you sired the enemy. Because you love the enemy. Because you hate yourself. Because the coffee tastes better when it’s too late in the day to have coffee. Because vacations with young children are meant to remind you there is no release. Work is your escape from family. Family is your respite from work. Everything else costs money. Nothing else works. Your moments with your friends with your neighbors do not balance. These moments fill your cup with Phoenix’s rainwater. I was at a children’s museum today. Loud noises. Balls flying through the rooms. A woman having a long phone conversation. Said she had been seeing a man she liked, had taken him to her favorite Indian restaurant twice. He worked in a factory near downtown. It was great to hear that snippet. Great to have a favorite Indian restaurant. We should all be so lucky.
I got to see the four year old the enemy the angel my heartbeat my heartache send balls up into pneumatic tubes. I got to see her, the enemy the future the laugh track the villain, race around the room, gather the orange balls and find different spots to try them out. She comes to me and speaks: pretend we are construction workers. You’re the daddy construction worker. I’m the baby construction worker. What building are we working on?
I start to talk but an orange ball rolls past and the project is lost. The blueprints sit lonely while she shoots the orange balls into the tubes of the now past future into the walls of a Denver Children’s Museum. An hour later she will scream at me for thirty minutes straight to unbuckle her and let her into the coffee shop that she refused to go into ten minutes prior. I will choke back tears and a shockingly long and detailed litany of swear words and hand gestures while the four year old, the enemy the sunshine the moral center the tyrant, holds me and the seven year old hostage. The rental car A/C blasting while my wife buys coffee drinks. I was on Colfax Avenue near here September 23, 2003. Peter bought Speakerboxx/The Love Below. I bought Bazooka Tooth from Aesop Rock. Denver one of the only places where Heiruspecs felt kind of popular. Denver Duluth Chicago and home. And today 21 years later I drive us to our AirBNB. my wife handles the kid and I start crying in the bathroom. The enemy has won and I have won and we both grow. I turn on Waxahatchee and take a shower largely cause I’m committed to trying to regain the commitment to a good smelling crotch I had in my twenties. I open the window and look out at Denver from the second floor. I wash my whole body twice. I cry. I put on a white shirt and red underwear. I write this. I tell my wife I would eat spinach garlic feta pizza tonight. I will listen to Arkadelphia one more time, I will drink a lot of whiskey and I will be a dad. But a dad with a great smelling crotch.
HEIRUSPECS SUMMER CLASSIC NUMBER 2
It’s happening again! Heiruspecs Summer Classic. Shout out to Joe, Gibson, Felix and everyone helping us get this thing together.
BIG TROUBLE OUTDOOR STAGE AT WHITE SQUIRREL
We are moving it to the outdoor stage for a sassy explosion of instrumental joy. Going down Saturday June 29. You’ve made a great choice when you come.
Artwork photo
Taking in the backyard scene, SMINO right now musically. Mowed the lawn recently. Pulled out the cushions today.
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.
