Big Trouble Performs the Twin Peaks Theme Song at White Squirrel

Big Trouble has been covering the Twin Peaks theme song (Falling by Angelo Badalamenti) for years. This was our first rendition since the passing of director David Lynch. Recorded live at the White Squirrel Saturday January 25, 2025.

On Holiday Parties

The 9 bus line is comically long and meandering. From my house in Saint Paul I took the 74 to the 9 to St. Louis Park to work at Jazz88 yesterday because immediately after work I’d be going to a holiday party for Trivia Mafia. I imagined I’d have some alcoholic drinks and some THC drinks and Amy, my date for the night, agreed we’d Lyft there separately and then Lyft together back to Saint Paul. I rode past 82 stops on the 9. 50 minutes. Saw things in South Minneapolis I hadn’t seen in years. Saw things in South Minneapolis I had never seen. Wonderful. Joyous. I love a long bus ride.
I am the co-owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck is the other owner. I am the louder person, but I am the quieter owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck does it for his full time job. Many, many people do it for their full time job. I do not. My signature says I am the assistant owner. If an employee suffers a loss like a death in the family, a pet that really mattered to them, a medical situation for them or a loved one, I order the flowers. Otherwise, for the past two years I just root for Trivia Mafia and stay friends with the team, but I don’t do anything direct. I did make the introduction between Cory Cove from KFAN and Initials and Trivia Mafia. That led us to starting Initials Game Live which has proven to be an absolute slam dunk for Trivia Mafia. So I don’t do much, but I did do one important thing that got something started right before I retired from actually working for Trivia Mafia.
Riding in the Lyft over I reflected on Trivia Mafia. We started Trivia Mafia as a weekly at 331 Club in January of 2007. Chuck and I were introduced by the staff at the 331 Club and we started gelling as a trivia duo. We were good, but I didn’t know that 18 years later we’d be at a holiday party with 140 attendees who work for us sending love to our employees who work out of the state like Greg in Omaha, Aaron in Denver and Michelle in wherever she lives. . .I think Colorado now. It’s become bigger than I can truly understand. I am on the company Slack and I feel out of my league in a league I started. People are setting automations to remind writers to generate content for theme nights that have been scheduled by a bar via an app. I used to be able to put my arms all the way around the project. I knew how to do everything. I did everything. I saw the guts get built. I fucked up things routinely. So did Chuck. He fixed my shit. I fixed his shit. My arms could wrap all the way around this thing. And now they can’t. I can never get to every restaurant that uses us. I can never meet every person that works for us. We have a thriving business in New Mexico. I can’t put my arms around New Mexico. It’s a scale I just never thought Trivia Mafia would be. If it got big I thought it would get big from my sweat, from my effort. I can’t put my arms around it so I just go to the standard playbook of owner platitudes: “thanks for working so hard” “I’ve seen what you’re doing by following along on Slack and it is really impressive” “I keep on hearing great things about our social media presence”. These things are all true, these things all matter. I appreciate all of these people more than I can express. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. There is no denying that Trivia Mafia is a business. It is an LLC that generates a profit or a loss. Chuck and I are the owners. But I cared about all these people and all these events and all this content long before it was a capital “B” business. It is a factory of fun people doing special things that bring players joy. Brenna, the saint who has been running Trivia Mafia with us for 10+ years said we have 199 active locations at the moment. This is a big factory. This is a special adventure. And I have a special role in it. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. But I can wrap my arms around Christopher (Brenna’s husband), Brenna, Amy Woo, the Shoobs, Danno, Marcus, Keith, Martha, Meghan, Eyeball and so many other amazing people who give part of their life to this factory. I can wrap my arms around that. We are a big ass business designed to create fun experiences for players, hosts and venues.
The scene is great. We are at La Dona Cerveceria. I’ve been here a number of times. Name tags. Hellos. There is a picture of Chuck and me on the image round and many many many people have no idea who we are. The factory is bigger than the boss. The factory is bigger than the history. There are people working for Trivia Mafia who understand it in a completely different way than I do. But they understand it. They love trivia. They love how we do trivia. They are flashing their wristband and enjoying a beer tonight. We are celebrating. The joy is not pointed towards anyone. At a good holiday party the joy should be pointing in every direction.

After a short game of Lotteria (from Mexico, similar to bingo) and an obligatory round of trivia the night settles into karaoke. Karaoke has been a centerpiece of Trivia Mafia holiday parties for a long time. We always use Sharon as a host. She’s the best. The list fills up quick and people start singing. Trivia hosts make for amazing karaoke singers. The best hosts have a comfort with being the center of attention without an obsession with being the center of attention. I enjoy the karaoke and also make my way around party introducing myself to some and reconnecting with people I’ve known for years. Matt Schubbe sings a Cranberries song. I’m 75% sure it’s “Dreams.” He sings the whole thing in O’Riordan’s register. He is absolutely understated, just delivering the goods and wowing the crowd and me. The moment is right for a joint outside by myself. It’s frosty cold. No one is smoking cigarettes outside. That’s great news. No one is smoking weed. If people want weed they are probably drinking it. But I was born in 1981, I miss smoking cigarettes and I enjoy a marijuana cigarette from time to time. The air is cold as shit but I’m enjoying myself and the break from socializing. I return to my date Amy Woo singing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” It’s incredible. People are singing along. Many songs being sung go completely over my head. I don’t really know My Chemical Romance, Sum41 and many other bands that click just right for people younger than me. I look around to see a crowd of folks connecting with these songs and I have no idea. I’m gravitating towards hanging with a host Colin and his wife Elise. I trained in Colin in 2015. He is now a married father of two and I think none of that was in the mix when he started working with us. We have always had a good vibe. For many years Elise would call up the Current and request C+C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat” and every week I’d say “no fucking way.” I did play it for them once. . .on their wedding night. Their wedding planner brought them outside, they flipped on the stream and they heard the request. Isn’t that great? Isn’t life great? Aren’t you glad you smoked that joint? You are. Colin delivers an amazing performance of a Chapell Roan song called Pink Pony Club. It’s in a high register and Colin delivers the entire thing in his head voice. It is a show stopper. Colin at that moment is every woman in the spot’s favorite man. He is the man.

At some point a man named John steps up for karaoke and does something insane that I absolutely did not understand. The music begins and it is Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and the News. There is no question. The title of the song has flashed, the words are starting to flash. John begins to sing “Enter Sandman.” I don’t know what the shit he is doing. But I start to sense that he has locked this thing in perfectly. Kind of like when Kevin Hunt figured out that restarting a song on the Dodge Caravan took exactly a quarter note at the tempo of “Never No More” by Souls of Mischief. Thus, with a well timed tap on beat 4 of bar 8 one could freestyle forever in the car over that Hieroglyphics beat. When the groove drops out and Huey should be saying “it’s hip to be square” John death rattle squeals “off to never never land” and I believe I have urinated in my pants and also fallen in love with this dude. The phenomenon sort of cycles through the room. People start to hone in. It doesn’t need to be explained nor can it be. People are just nudging their friends or stopping mid-sentence and taking in the splendor of a karaoke take over. Sharon doesn’t know what to do. And then John air sax solos and then grabs the last half of “Hip to be Square.” I know that this will be the apex of the night. If Amy Winehouse came back to life and sang Valerie that would be second place. This “Hip to Be the Sandman” thing is a known gag and it is brilliant. Check it out.

The party goes on. I know I will do some amount of work at the end of the party. Put some shit away. Move some tables. I look forward to this. It will make me feel better about being an owner of a profitable company who doesn’t get his hands dirty anymore. I move some tables. Bring some empties up. Move a table or two. A plan is coalescing. We will got to Otter’s Saloon where we will sing more karaoke. Colin and Elise offer to drive me. They say they will move the baby seats. I know in my soul I wouldn’t move baby seats for them unless it was the last option. I feel a bit like a turd, but I also want a ride.
Otter’s Saloon is perfect. Weird, gruff and eccentric door guy wearing a cowboy hat. Kind of full. PBS News unexplainably on one of the TVs. Full bar but not too full. There’s no karaoke stage. It’s just two screens and two mics. This is ideal. Karaoke is the people’s entertainment. I run into an old acquaintance and make the mistake of the “how is your husband” and she says “we’re getting a divorce.” I am a connector so I always want to establish the ways we know each other and pursue those connections. . .but I feel like such a shit. She is chill about it and we are catching up. The crew is getting an elite seating situation and starting to get a little love from the regulars. At one point the door guy comes right up to me and playfully squares up with me. I look him straight in the eye to see where we are headed. He puts his arms on me, not a fan of that, and then he kind of half hugs me. Weird but I see he sort of this he’s part of the entertainment. I know I am part of the entertainment. There are some I-guarantee-you-these-white-girls-are-from-Columbia Heights-girls and they are singing Destiny’s Child and deeper r&b. The vibes are going from good to great. A strange older man who looks a little like Mystery Man from Mulholland Drive sings me a Billy Joel song directly to me face. It’s strange but at this point the weed is happening and I’m all the way in.

The night at this point is better than the magic nights I spend too much of my life trying to recreate. This is the best Trivia Mafia holiday party. This is a great night. I am in the bar. I am dancing a little bit. I am dressed spectacularly. I am a magnificent person in a magnificent moment. I’m with probably about seven or eight people. There’s always a watch the karaoke option. There’s also usually conversation available. Amy sings a weird song about Arkansas I don’t understand. There are layers of communication happening tonight. We have made mini karaoke friendships with a group of four girls next to us. We aren’t having big talks, they aren’t sitting with us. But we are commenting on the quality of the singers and the songs. We are making room for each other. ONE OF THESE FUCKING GIRLS TRIES TO UPDOG ME. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME KARINA. I’M 43 YEARS OLD. Here’s how it happens. Elise is going up to sing a song and she talks to Karina. I ask Karina if she’s singing with Elise. Karina says “I’m just hyping for her.” After the song gets going I say to Karina “she’s doing good” and I EXCREMENT YOU NOT Karina says “SHE’S GOT THAT UPDOG.” This is unbelievable. She should be arrested, or at least cut off, or at least she should be critiqued. Not this time Karina. I don’t fall for it. Of course I don’t fall for it. I’m 43 years old. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME.

Amy’s friend Meghan shows up and we go deeper than we ever have which is still not that deep. I can’t remember the details but I realize she has a depth of spirit and relation to the world that I just didn’t know she had. You spend years talking about bullshit between drinks at large hangs and bars and maybe you get to thinking that’s all there is to somebody. You don’t think it’s bad. You just think that’s it to her. And then suddenly some corner of her day opens up in conversation and you realize her soul goes all the places yours does and places yours doesn’t. You want to have a coffee with her for the first time in your life. And more than what you might find out over the coffee, more than the layers you peel back together, you just enjoy the coffee more knowing there’s layers to her. We can talk about bullshit over beers for another fifteen years but every moment will feel different now that I imagine the layers.

That’s it. That’s the night. I make it home. I am overwhelmed with this joy. I make my way home and hit the hay so I can have my shit together tomorrow. A part of life is being a part of a thing you don’t understand. I don’t understand Trivia Mafia. But I am a part of it. I’ll see you at the holiday party next year.

Big Trouble on Saturday at White Squirrel

Big Trouble at White Squirrel on Saturday January 25 6-8pm. Plying a new tune I wrote called “67 Ways to Leave Your Easel”. The bass solo should take up the majority of set 1. I’ve got a lot of scales I’ve been slapping and I’d like to share them with you slowly.

New Haircut Alert Very Important

As you can see I’m foxy.

Location, Location, Locations

God damn it it’s important to be in places designed to be about the things you love. My 20s were parked firmly in the area where it was most efficient to go to where the shit you loved was. I love movies. Go to Home Video. I love instruments. Go to Willie’s American Guitars. I love recorded music. Go to a record store. I love making music. Go to your space and practice and write.
Now a lot of times you decide you love something and you search for a home for it on the web. Or you just hope that the thing you love comes across the identity-seeking graze of scrolling. I have gotten plenty of good experiences from that grazing, but no great ones. I fell back in love with things I used to love today by being in their physical presence.
I needed that affirmation of love. Staying creative, ambitious and enthusiastic about creative pursuits as futile as the ones I’m in requires recharging, requires fortification. When all you do is tell your dog “it” matters while you sit on your couch trying to finish up some piece of writing and you keep on dozing off I admit I get to wondering if it does actually matter. But today, I know “it” matters. The “it” is a life that is not a complete surrender to the algorithms, to the momentum towards doing what is easiest for your family and your immediate satisfaction. The “it” is purposely crafting a life that produces art, that fosters community, that helps things be better. I, like you, am surrounding by people who never gave a shit about “it”, stopped giving a shit about “it”, or harbor some bit of negative judgment for anyone who still cares about “it”. It’s a worthwhile fight.
This morning, after I made my signature pancakes and struggled through a walk with our rebellious pit bull foster Flex, the boys from Big Trouble came over for a rehearsal. Big Trouble plays once a month at White Squirrel (last Saturday of the month 6-8p). Big Trouble has been on a creative run that involves making new music almost every month. One rehearsal, one gig. New charts, charts we struggled with, songs we just want to revisit for whatever reason. Everyone sounds nice at rehearsal today. The guitars are brilliant, filled with clarity and tube warmth. Peter has his best snare on my house kit. The riveted secondary ride sounds beautiful. My bass amp hasn’t moved in years and it’s set up just perfect. I have new roundwounds on. There is an aesthetic joy in this band. There is a beauty to the sound. We dust off the Elliott Smith song Angeles. We finally find an arrangement that works for the bridge. We’ve been trying to make this song work for maybe a year and a half. Next up we work on a new original I wrote called 67 Ways to Leave Your Easel. Here’s the chart in case you want to play along at the next gig on January 24.

It turns out great. Tasty solos. Then we work on Waxahatchee’s Ruby Falls. This one has been a struggle spot. I transcribed the melody. My brother Steve got it more closer to the record. But me and my fingers were stuck in our ways and I struggled to make the transition. Her beautiful melody at times leaves some rhythmic uncertainty. Steve, who has been giving lessons and playing a bunch of music as of late, falls in and adjusts rapidly. Faster than I can. I figure it’s hopeless to make the decisions about the melody and firm them up in this one rehearsal. But here we are, getting it together. I love music and I am around fellow musicians. The room is filled with music, the room is filled with musicians. This is one of the ways I spend my life. This is one of the ways I fill my cup. This is one of the ways Peter, Steve and Josh also fill their cup. We wrap up the rehearsal and I rejoin my family.

My four year old N. took a risk on a toot in the tub and dropped a deuce. My wife Rachel is not super excited about the whole situation. I clean N. up while Rachel cleans the tub. A trade I’m happy to make. We play Mount Sean. It’s a game where N. steps across my spread out legs in a sitting position on her bed in order to “climb Mount Sean.” Then we head off to guitar lessons. I don’t want the guitar teacher to my house. I want to get guitar lessons at a spot where other kids get lessons. Location. Location. Locations. My seven year old S. drops down into a basement room filled with Beatles posters and peppered with Gary Clark Jr. posters and keeps on learning how to sight-read on the G, B and E strings. N. and I play upstairs, look at weird instruments, play around on the carpet and kill time. We join S. for the last ten minutes of her lesson and I love seeing her play with the teacher, laughing, learning. This is one of the ways we spend our Saturdays. During the lesson N. asks me to push my finger into her forehead. I am transported back to a video store from my childhood in Pownal, VT. I have one of the worst headaches of my life. My mom takes her hands and pushes my forehead and the back of my skull together. She then pushes the sides of my head together. I have never felt better. Better than Tylenol. Better than a cold glass of water on a hungover morning. I wonder if I am making N.’s head feel better than it ever will. I hope I am.

We drive to Caydence on the East Side of Saint Paul. Coffee, vinyl, live music. I am at a physical location for music lovers, for coffee lovers, for people who don’t want to do their things differently. S. looks at the impossible to sound out pastry kouign amann. You and me both. She orders one of those. N. gets a hot chocolate with whipped cream. Peter Goggin, Sophia Kaufmann, Nate Baker and some jazz musicians I don’t know are playing All of Me. No drummer. The percussion is a tap dancer. Rhythm is a dancer. Ashley Gonzalez.

I am in a city with jazz musicians who troop into the back of a record store and make beautiful music on a Saturday in January. I am here to consign records for Heiruspecs with my friend Niqui who I’ve known for years. She’s hung posters for Trivia Mafia. She’s been to a bunch of Heiruspecs shows. She’s worked hard for her community and she is a fixture here at Caydence. I drink a coffee, fill out consignment forms and put some records into the universe that I hope someone will buy and spend time with and enjoy and play for their friends.

I’m about to leave and I see Chris. I don’t know Chris’s last name. He played percussion in a band my friends were in in their early 20s called Latona’s Thirst. Chris is driving around putting up posters for his new band the Stone Arch Rivals. He is too old for this shit. I am too old for this shit. But we are here together, spending our Saturdays spreading the word about our art. Buying a coffee. Hanging a poster. Hearing a band. Browsing through records. Talking to a sax player. Fighting the algorithms. Visiting the locations. Filling our cup. The posters look good. They’re almost ready to put out a record. I return home, turn on Radio K. The genius DJ plays They Might Be Giants, Nirvana, Journey and Modest Mouse in one set. They rattle off all the famous Steve Smith’s in addition to Journey drummer Steve Smith. It is amazing radio. It is funny. Modest Mouse sounds amazing. My cup is brimming. I had to tell you about it.

Photo Dump

Photos of me holding containers of pancakes. Photos of my friends. Photos of jazz musicians. Photo of my old mailman. What a treat.

Scenes from the Holidays

Walking out of the Midway YMCA I saw an older man in a jacket struggling mightily with the big ass pole that holds up the big ass US flag that waves across the parking lot. I can tell he works for the Y; he’s wearing a big ass winter jacket but I can see the telltale signs of the YMCA blue polo by his neck and belt. All around the country and presumably beyond that, people of all ages are struggling with big ass poles bringing big ass US flags down to mark the death of Jimmy Carter. Grunts, mumbles and youtube videos being dialed up to pay tribute to a man who struggled as a President and flourished as a human. I only knew him as an ex-President. He had a spine and a moral compass which seemed to be his undoing and his doing. Is the man trying to half-mast the Ross thinking about Jimmy Carter or is he just thinking about the mechanics of the flag? I’m thinking about both.

——

Everything points to the reality that my friend Seth has blow-dried his testicles, perhaps in a locker room setting.
Years ago I used to go to LA Fitness. I say this with all of my heart: fuck LA Fitness. Ending my relationship with them was more complicated than breaking a lease with a dickhead landlord. But the sauna at the LA Fitness was good. My high school friend Bryan Jameson was in there sometimes and it was always hot. My guess is it’s 2017 and the sauna is full. You’ll have to remember, if you can, that as recently as 2017 earbuds were way less common. At that time people either just sat in the sauna or they held their iPhone in a plastic bag like a fucking idiot and scrolled a loud ass Facebook page sans headphones. But, on this particular evening a young man walked into the sauna with earbuds in and started his sweat. An old man managed to tap young guy on his shoulder and proceeded to give a weirdly calm tirade with the thesis “what the fuck is wrong with this young generation? Plugging in at every possible moment and never just enjoying the moment! Why don’t you take out those headphones and just chill in the sauna?”. The young guy basically just said “I don’t know what’s wrong with my generation, leave me alone, I’m listening to my music”.
Flash forward to ten minutes later I see the same old man 108% naked over by the rarely used counter with mirrors, stools and blow dryers. Old man has his left foot up on a stool and in his left hand he is blowing air with a vigorous focus upon his previously saunad testicles. For me this negates any validity his point about the “young generation” possessed previously. What’s weirder: sporting ear buds in a sauna or blasting your nuts with a public use CONAIR? Don’t answer that. I know you think the air bath for the family jewels is weirder. NOT SO FOR SETH.
I told this story at his family’s Hanukkah party (the kids were downstairs playing) and Seth real quietly, just to me, goes “was it a steam room or a sauna?” It was a sauna Seth, but the point stands. Seth speaks up, “just enjoy the sauna, you don’t need earbuds. And in a steam room I certainly wouldn’t wear earbuds.” Are we doing this Seth? Are we re-litigating the headphone thing or are we laughing about an old guy doing a dong dry? And Seth says “the blow dryer thing seems more reasonable.” Also, what problem are you solving by air drying the family cashews? I don’t blow dry but I think it’s to bring your hair quicker to its preferred appearance. Is that what we’re doing with your nuts Seth? Are you making sure the hair dries in your preferred part?

——

Humans are so obviously better than computers. As I’m shopping for food, for gifts, for books. As I’m giving my credit card I want to give it to a human. I want a human to lower the flagstaff. I want a human to dry his testicles at the LA Fitness in the Midway. I don’t want the robots to do everything. A couple days off from the radio job brings me to different businesses at different times. I see different humans doing different things, reading different things, laughing differently. Just in Saint Paul there are so many great people that I never want replaced by computers. I don’t want everything to be efficient. I want to buy my groceries from Michelle at Oxendale’s. I want to buy my records from Mike at Barely Brothers. I want to ask if Rainer re-dyed his hair while I buy my medium medium with room for cream. I don’t need convincing. I want humans.

——

I spent one fantastic New Year’s Eve in Duluth playing at the Norshor Theater with Heiruspecs. 2003 into 2004 I bet. Rest in peace to Rick Boo, the promoter who brought us there. He probably lost his shirt that night. There was a radio station doing announcements, there were bartenders, there were sound people. But there wasn’t really an audience. Maybe seventy five people? Maybe. The famous music writer Jessica Hopper was there. Big Quarters had traveled with us and I believed they opened the show. Heiruspecs drank heavily but we were in healthy playing shape and put on an awesome show to that small crowd. I remember having so much fun and thinking building the crowd wasn’t our problem, at least on the actual day of the show it wasn’t anymore. There was a party afterwards, primarily curated by a woman I had kissed a couple times when I was in Duluth. Never more than kissing and not much more than kissing that night. A really fun party. A lot of people. And her house, I think her mother’s house, was out on Park Point. Her backyard was Lake Superior and it was a pretty modest house. And it was New Year’s. Cold, windy and majestic beyond all imagination. We kissed a lot and I don’t know a classier way to say this, I felt on her booty a lot. A lot. Everything about the moment, very much including her butt, felt just like the greatest possible situation. I was glad for the small crowd. I was glad this famous writer Jessica Hopper had seen us perform. I was glad to party and I was glad to be kissing with a beautiful girl whose mother lived on the peninsula at the end of the world. Her bedroom was the top floor. The sun came in and it felt late even though I bet it was early. 2004 had started. The band went to Pizza Luce for brunch.

Something Else Works

We need a way to bring problems to a wider awareness without murder and terrorism. We are overloaded with information but that’s been true for a long time. We spend a lot of time on platforms that focus in on conflicts, on anger, on division. Social media might be supercharging that mission, but foregrounding tension and conflict has been part of the media landscape for a century plus.

I learned of the events of October 7 in Israel with a quickly sickening stomach. The purposeful slaughter of civilians sickens me. Young people, babies. Old people. Murdered. No good should come of it. These actions should be an absolute dead end. They are reprehensible. What did happen though is that the journalists I listen to and read starting covering Israel and Palestine with a focus and intensity I haven’t witnessed in the past decade. This focus and intensity brought me voices from many sides of the conflict. I learned of veterans of the IDF who believe Israel is on the absolute wrong path. I heard from centrist thinkers who critique Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas inside of Gaza at the corners but generally support it. I heard from Palestinians, both from the West Bank, Gaza and from the larger diaspora who offered tragic first person narratives of their lives in war and also offered ideas for the future. Why do these conversations sprout from murder? Where was the appetite and offerings of these conversations beforehand? It existed. But I didn’t put my eyes on it. I didn’t hear about Jewish Currents, I didn’t see these episodes in my feed from the NYT, from Plain English, from The Gray Area. I didn’t read articles about Palestine in The Atlantic, NYT and the other places I read. My media diet is full of blind spots and it would be arrogant to simply say “the conversations started after October 7”. But it became impossible for me to ignore after October 7. I didn’t digest the Great March of Return protests happening in 2018-2019. What made the journalists I read and myself turn my head was October 7. I feel guilty about that. A reprehensible slaughter brought me to look at issues I had willfully ignored, issues I misunderstood, injustices I muted without realizing I had. The March of Return protests were largely peaceful. This news of peaceful protest didn’t reach my feeds. I am reminded of the folks in my Facebook feed 2013-2020 who seemed to think that the very first think any Black Lives Matters protesters decided to do was to block a highway, the Mall of America, the marathon. As someone who followed the developments of individual chapters of Black Lives Matter more closely I wanted to shout out “they’re trying all sorts of shit, this is not a one approach movement, it wasn’t a block the highways on day one situation. Read more! Learn more!”

It can’t be murder. Cause when it’s murder I can’t remove the cause or the righteousness from the murderous actions. And it can’t be murder cause someone else chose murder. Apartheid is repugnant. You can’t justify it. There isn’t a set of circumstances that will make me think “obviously you had to resort to apartheid, obviously you had to resort to 2,000 lb bombs in crowded areas with children, obviously you shouldn’t do everything in your power to feed starving people”. These go against my moral fiber. These are actions I won’t be forced into. These are actions that you must acknowledge weaken your moral fiber, weaken the potential for you to be regarded as a moral actor. And maybe being regarded as a moral actor doesn’t matter to you anymore. And if that’s the case you’ve lost already. And when you murder to push your agenda, when you murder indiscriminately and viciously, I can’t remove those actions from your cause. Your cause is stained.

Flash forward to Luigi Mangione presumably killing Brian Thompson from United Health Care. Thompson was a father, a husband, a human. He’s gone. The kids don’t have a daddy anymore. It’s reprehensible. It can’t be defended. But here I am again, hearing podcasts that haven’t said shit about healthcare in months dedicating multiple episodes to the topic. And they’re telling me about new ideas. Talking about ways in which health insurance companies might be the easiest entity to point a finger at, but not being the only party culpable for the horrendous health care offerings in the US. I’m hearing talk of solutions, of some of these companies changing their behavior, the government taking a more concerted effort to limit some of the BS these companies offer. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Derek Thompson from Plain English to have two health care economists on his podcast. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Ezra Klein to do the same. But, it’s clear that it is Brian Thompson’s killing that has put these issues on the front page. Murder is sticky, we look at it, we read about it. I contemplate a murder in a way I don’t contemplate a protest. The protests don’t rise to that level. They don’t stick.

It’s terrible. These murders are a stain, a tragedy, an act that hurts everyone, not just the murdered. But I stand back and wonder what else rises above? What can get the podcasters to not just talk about efficient work habits and micro-dosing and re-litigating our election? What can get us in our easily distracted world to not be distracted? To not keep on scrolling, to not let the status quo win. It can’t be murder. It won’t be murder. What will it be?

Day Off

I have the day off from Jazz88 and I always want the days off to be simple, joyous, fancy free. Occasionally they are. Mostly they are a parade of errands, fun and otherwise. I owe the United States Treasury a little bit of money. They wanted it by December 2. I am sending the check today hoping that they will call it even. (they will not). I finished the book my wife Rachel and I agreed to read this summer. It is Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones.

I want to read more books but I am pulled in every night to magazines and sometimes even to news on my phone though I’ve really cut down on that. Reading at nighttime is really no substitute for a long daytime session of reading. I imagine I probably get three long daytime sessions of reading in a good year. A flight, a vacation, maybe a long repair job at a mechanic where I elect to wait for some reason. As a person who has never been a truly capable sight-reader of music, I still imagine that the reading I do in the middle of the day is how it feels when the great readers in town sit in front of a piece of music. I know the characters, the references and the general outline. I predict what is coming, I navigate my feelings while the plot rolls on.

When I get the five or six odd pages in during a session of nighttime reading it is barely the same sensation. I am flipping back, I am remembering character names, I am feeling the left side of the book hit my nose as I am dozing off. It is altogether a different sensation to try to cram a little bit of the book into my head before I sleep. Maybe those sessions are better suited for magazine reading. Something digestible. Books are digestible too, but not on the same timetable. I will be digesting Salvage the Bones for a handful of days, a couple talks with Rachel, a couple moments of reflection.

A Farewell/Pause to the Performance Career of Haley

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Minnesota-based singer-songwriter just announced her “last live performance for a while” and it hit me in a very intense way. I am an agemate of Haley’s and though we are far from close friends our careers have consistently crossed paths for over twenty years. For years I’ve thought of her as one of the great writers in our scene. I’ve probably really spoken to Haley maybe ten times in my life. But the amount of times I feel shoulder to shoulder with Haley in making music, in crafting a life, in pursuing a balance between family duties and music duties are countless. She’s made songs like Kismet Kill, Hometown and Last War that I think are some of the finest music to ever come out of the Twin Cities. She’s lived a beautiful life sharing music with her fans, eschewing much of the social media game (I onetime told her I said something nice about her online and she said “I will never see that ever”), and generally charting her own path. There’s a time where Haley moving to Portland got a fair amount of coverage in the Star Tribune, Vita.mn and City Pages. But we’re in a different era where the end of her performing career doesn’t come with big fanfare. When I heard an announcer mispronounce her name on the radio as “Hallie” I felt compelled to put down just how important Haley and her path are to me.

I remember hearing about Haley from Bill Caperton. He described a young woman signed to Low’s label Chairkickers Union and making waves in Duluth. She had moved to Duluth from her hometown of Rapid City. This was 2003 I bet. And then she starts working with Vickie Gilmer. Vickie is managing my band Heiruspecs at the time as well as her primary bread-winning client Mason Jennings. I’m barely 23 years old, shocked I am in a band that has a manager. Everything is new, everything is amazing. I see a tour poster for Haley (at the time performing as Haley Bonar) that says “Save a horse, ride a cowboy”. I hear her music around then and it’s just simply stunning. It seems patently obvious why Chairkickers would be involved with her. Her writing is pure and intimate. That’s kind of the Low formula but frankly Haley has always gone for the visceral in a more convincing way lyrically than Low has. There’s something sort of just straight forward about Haley. That straight forwardness brings her closer to the visceral than grand imagery or poetic statements can every get you. Her songs are amazing and she performs them well. She will toss off an absolutely amazing line into the third verse of a song where most writers are hiding their third-rate material.

I don’t know the ins and outs but Haley didn’t work with Vickie for long. But Haley seemed to keep on getting the right calls and opportunities. Opening tours, opening sets. Everyone else in the world of music was older and Haley was my age. We weren’t friends, I can’t even remember necessarily “meeting” her during these years, but we were on a lot of bills together. She was friends with Martin Devaney and Joanna James and I was playing music with both of them at the time. We ended up together at a small apartment party on Grand Ave and I learned that Haley is absolutely hilarious. She made one of the funniest jokes I ever heard that night. I still probably think about it once or twice a week.

At this time Haley is the talk of the town in a way that seemed mega significant to me at the time. Shows are full. City Pages is writing about her. She’s opening for bands. The best players in town are playing with her. And her records keep on getting better and better. I feel this kindredness with her at these moments, not cause the same things are happening for my band, but because we are in the same universe, pursuing what I think are the same goals. And every time I hear her music I think, what an amazingly great song. Even if I don’t like the guitar tone, or the drum part, or the mix. . .the song is always bulletproof. Haley signs with Afternoon Records, which at the time seemed like a really big deal. The rumor was that Afternoon footed a 10k bill for big deal guy Tchad Blake to mix her record. I don’t know if it’s true but holy shit that record sounds great. It’s shortly after that that Haley moves to Portland for a time and I was wildly confused. Haley! How could you leave this? People come to your shows! You’re writing amazing songs! Everything must be perfect right?

I saw Haley when she came back from Portland at a great short-lived restaurant in Saint Paul called the Strip Club. I was there with my now wife Rachel and Haley was there with a couple people and a. . .BABY! I didn’t know many people with babies at the time. I didn’t know many musicians with babies. I think I knew no women musicians with babies in my age cohort. I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t understand how she could do it. Live the life maybe we’re both still aiming at and having this beautiful child to care for at the same time. I didn’t know how brunch with a kid was supposed to work. I still sort of don’t. We talked as long as you can really talk when someone is holding a baby and everyone is trying to have a brunch.

The records kept on coming and they kept on being amazing. Seemed like a miracle to me given how much the music business is designed to kick everyone who isn’t a single, white 17-25 year old male out of the fame. Some friends of mine joined her band and they seemed to be doing these things that I knew were hard to navigate period, and harder still to navigate while raising a child. I was so impressed. More than impressed I was in utter belief of Haley. She means this. She means this music and she will do what it takes to share it.

Haley came back from Portland quick and I ran into her again at a Duluth show with Gramma’s Boyfriend (her awesome sideproject), P.O.S, Heiruspecs and maybe one other act. This might’ve been the mid 2010s. We talked backstage and she said something that always stuck with me. She said “I heard that Peter (Heiruspecs’ drummer) is working for the city or something?” (Peter was and still is working for Mayor Carter’s office). I confirmed that yes and Haley just said “and here the rest of us are, just still doing the same stupid music stuff.” It stuck with me cause I know, and she knows, the music stuff isn’t stupid. The music stuff is magical. The times I’ve seen her on stage or heard her on record and it’s changed me. And I’m not the only one. When she announced she was taking a break the fans came out of the woodwork to celebrate her and her music. It’s great music. It’s hit me. It’s struck me. That isn’t stupid. But the world thinks it’s stupid if you aren’t famous enough to be widely recognized.

Maybe in 2019 or so Jade from the Current had Haley on for an interview. I do not know exactly what they were talking about. But I was struck by how absolutely real and transparent Haley was. Haley told a story about getting in a bad fender bender on her way to a show at the Walker and what hit me was how much she sounded like a human talking to another human about a little car accident. No artifice. No returning it to talk of her album, no shoehorning in references to her upcoming shows. Just talking. It was so refreshing.

And when I thumbed across Haley saying she was stepping back from playing just a couple weeks ago I couldn’t help but think about how well she has lived her life. The big record never hit for Haley but she has fans, sells records, makes an impact and has given countless people mountains of joy, hours of music to deploy for the hard times. I think it’s easy to wonder what the hell you’re doing if your career is music. I am pretty confident Haley knows she hasn’t done “stupid music stuff” for her professional life. But I just had to type it into existence that Haley is one of the greats from our town, and she decided to press pause on a portion of her career on a random Wednesday in November at the Dakota. And more power to her, but she’s spectacular, I appreciate her and I hope you’ll take some time to listen to her work today.

Maybe You Should Play Rapscallion

I struggle to play with my kids. Do you?
Sometimes play is boring to me. Sometimes Legos are small. I want to do the dishes. I want to talk to Rachel. I want to look at my stupid phone and read about another terrible act of violence that has happened in the Twin Cities metro area. I do play with the kids. But I struggle to play, I struggle to stay in it. But across maybe the last two and a half years a very elaborate game has evolved between me and my two daughters called Rapscallion. I love it. And you’ll love it too. And you can play it. BUT, there are tons of rules.

HISTORY: One time my oldest daughter, who at the time was probably five, grabbed my hat and I told her she was a rapscallion. I tried to get the hat back and she refused. We wrestled. This was on the couch downstairs. We laughed and I’d get the hat back and she’d take it back. Then she started adding “freeze” to the lexicon. She would freeze me and position me like I was picking my nose. I started to complain that she was not only a rapscallion but the largest rapscallion in North America by quite a fair clip. She would then permit me to call different dignitaries by using her foot as a phone. I frequently called Joe Biden, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and many others. I would say “hello Joe Biden, I’m Sean McPherson in the 55105 zip code and I have the largest rapscallion in human history here in my home and I need your help”. My daughter would then go “SQUAWK! I can’t hear you, I’m with my chickens.” I would then go “President Biden, can you please step away from the chickens?” My daughter would say “SQUAWK, SQUAWK, I can’t hear you, it’s the chickens.” At one point at a family get together I probably put eight different feet to my ear and pretended to talk to the sitting President Joe Biden.

My younger daughter soon wanted in on the game nightly and we started having spirited rounds of rapscallion. A couple firm hits to the couch during the rough-housing inspired us to decamp to my bed upstairs and things have been much safer since then. We’ve still had accidents, kids fall off the bed, hit something, but the main playing field is soft and comfortable.

THE PROCESS: Rapscallion starts with my two daughters on the bed, the oldest usually wielding a pillow. Once I am armed with a pillow she is then able to hit me with the pillow. I work my way down to the bed while taking body blows from the pillow wielder and making sure to not fall on top of the youngest. From there we enter into a set of loose rituals as part of rapscallion:

• Snack Time - This is where the girls eat at my fingers and wrists. They understand I hate this. But me hating it is an important aspect of the game. If I resign myself to getting my hands licked and surrender they say “daddy, you hate this right?”

• Mrs. Whobewubba - For Mrs. Whobewubba I lay on my back and my oldest daughter sits on me down by the small of my back. Then my younger daughter sits on my shoulders and they refer to her as Mrs. Whobewubba. The oldest is known as the safety belt and the safety belt holds Mrs. Whobewubba in place. They then ask me start driving and I start moving. My eldest smacks my side and says “does this thing go any faster??” Then my youngest hits my side and says “yeah! does this thing go any faster??” After I pick up speed the oldest tells the youngest “don’t you dare say this is the life.” After a second long pause the youngest says “this is the life.”

• Secret Weapon - My youngest’s secret weapon in her reckoning is her ability to jump from one side of me to the other. She asks to use her secret weapon and we clear out so she can execute a couple jumps. My oldest is disqualified from jumping across me cause if she falls on me it cracks my back and hurts like hell and I have to say “oh fuck, fuck me oh my god” and I try not to talk like that in front of my kids.

• Balance of Power and Secret Alliances - In this game my kids are the rapscallions and as someone trying to destroy the rapscallions I am referred to as a rapscallander. But frequently my youngest will start as a rapscallender. She will hide under a blanket and hand me different “powers” that she has. When she gives me her final power, the strongest power which contains all other powers within it, she then joins forces with my other daughter and becomes a rapscallion.

THE OFFICIAL RIDES: After our period of loose playing I then inform the girls as to whether they get one ride a piece or two rides a piece on this particular night. They then pick from an ever-expanding set of games.

• Volcano - the kids lay on top of me and say “I hope this volcano doesn’t eru. . .” and as they say erupt I jump up and start imitating a volcano and trying to knock them off me.

• Pizza Pie - I grab my oldest daughter and hold her upside down. I say “upside down pizza pie, she’s a pizza pie, but she’s upside down.” I then turn her right side up and in a very faux Italian accent I say “Tony, Giuseppe, grab the sausage, grab the spinach, grab the Mozzarella we’ve got a pizza pie” and then I throw her on the bed.

• Laundry - I remove all the laundry from a full laundry basket and then my youngest climbs into to the laundry basket. I return all the clothes to the basket. I pick up the basket and say “this is so heavy, why is this clothes basket so heavy?” My daughter says “it’s Momma’s winter clothes.” I then empty all the clothes in the basket and when I get to my daughter I say “this isn’t a shirt, this is a whole person, what are you doing in here?” and she says “I’m a laundry person!”

• Weights - With my youngest daughter who I can still easily pick up this involves doing ten chest presses. Sometimes while lifting her up she kicks her feet out and attempts to leave. Those ones are called escape weights and she’s only allowed to do a couple of those. With my oldest daughter she sits on top of me and we hold each others hands. I try to push her up off of my chest and for 14 reps she lets me do this. On the fifteenth she pushes back incredibly hard and I suffer and grumble. She then says “daddy, was the fifteenth one harder than all the others put together” and I say yes.

• Rocket - I hold my oldest daughter in my arms and then launch her like a rocket onto the bed.

• X - In this game one daughter gets on top of me horizontal and the other one vertical and then they hit me and say “does this thing go any faster?” Sometimes the youngest says slow down but I only listen to whoever picked “X” for their ride.

• Hit Daddy - This is a theoretical game because when they say they want to play “hit daddy” I say no.

• Fight - This is a real game that is effectively just hit daddy but for some reason I let it happen.

CONCLUSION: I think that just covers it. I hope you’ll consider getting a black belt in rapscallion with your kids. It’s truly changed my life to have a game I love to play with my kids.

Big Trouble Is Playing Saturday at the White Squirrel YES it’s TRUE

Big Trouble is back at it. As we get closer to the end of 2024 I realize that Big Trouble is one of the favorite things happening in my life right now. We get in a rehearsal once a month almost like clockwork. We play the monthly at White Squirrel. People like us and Peter, our drummer, was commenting that he’s pretty sure there are some people coming out repeatedly who we don’t know personally. The technical term for that is a fan. . .but Big Trouble has never really been a big fan group. We’ve more been a spot for a couple degrees of separations of friends and family to join together. But I think our 15 years of medium work has finally paid off. We’ve got some people who like us. I like us. You’d like us. I’m sure of it. 6-8pm this Saturday at White Squirrel. Flyer by my brother Steve McPherson.

I’m Presenting at the Minneapolis Music Census Report Launch

I'll be involved and presenting at the Minneapolis Music Census reports launch at the Women's Club of Minneapolis. Come on down if your schedule permits. I care about the scene here and I hope to share some meaningful insights and to get info from my fellow panelists.

Here’s a huge photo of me I bet that’s helpful. 

The End of Shortcuts - Directions to a MaLLy Show

There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities anymore. Google Maps ruined that. Maybe social media ruined it too. No shortcuts, just secret paths. Last night I had the opportunity to take two iconic secret path routes on my way to and from the best rap show I’ve seen this year. If you live in the Twin Cities and you have a soul and a working set of ears you’ve been rooting for MaLLy for years. He’s a beyond proficient rapper with an immense dedication to professional presentation. He’s made many solid LPs, some which I’ve played bass on. But none of them stuck to my ribs. I would put them on when they came out, admire the craft and rarely revisit. His new record “The Sweetest of It All” is different and the release party for that album was really special. There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities and every inch of MaLLy’s journey is essential to this release.

One of MaLLy’s lyrics-turned-tagline is “unapologetically nappy”. There’s nothing Minnesota seems to love more than the apologetically nappy. Being unambiguously Black is far from career suicide here, but it wrongly closes twice as many doors as it may open. There’s no shortcuts, but there’s a secret path. MaLLy has his email list out at all his shows even the low key ones. He played with Heiruspecs two summers ago at Icehouse. ‘Twas a vinyl release for Heiruspecs, a decidedly low-key affair. But he had that email list out and I shit you not the morning after the show, before I had even flipped the pancakes for my up-bright-and-early daughters, he texted me asking for me to decipher one of the email addresses he got in case I recognized it. Hard work is embodied in the details. I love a master stroke, I love brilliance, but the infrastructure to share your brilliance relies on your dedication to your email list and to your craft. Especially if you are in a city where the coverage is limited and skews hipster.

If you can talk to directly to your fans, if you can talk directly from your life, if you tell your stories on your terms than the idea of being apologetic is just theater. MaLLy is Black and he had an email list full of people bouncing at Icehouse last night. One of the most dance positive fans was a portly white dude named Doug who was the entirety of the front row. He had an unfathomable wingspan. One lopsided dance move would bring him from stage left to stage right in a nanosecond. Nobody seemed more surprised by this wingspan than Doug himself. How do I know his name is Doug? He came up to me real close and said “my name is Doug”. I said “nice to meet you Doug” but did not volunteer my name. Doug stood there for a moment as we both wondered if there was a next step and if so what it was.

There are no shortcuts in the Twin Cities anymore and last night I didn’t need any. Before MaLLy’s show I went to a rehearsal dinner in Saint Paul for a wedding I’m officiating. After the mother of the groom poured out the last third of the Lagunitas IPA I had been drinking cause it was sitting on a random table while I used the bathroom, I sucked down two thirds of a Coors Light in a weird futuristic milk bottle and pointed towards Icehouse from Saint Paul. When coming off 94 West at the Hennepin/Lyndale exit and favoring Hennepin North I see no serious benefit time-wise to taking that first turn onto Dell Place and then on to Groveland off of the exit but it’s what I’ve done for twenty years if I’m going to Nicollet. And I’m in no hurry to get to Icehouse. One flyer says doors at 8. The ticket says 9. It’s 8:51. I’ve got plenty of time. But when I turn on Groveland it’s a wealth of shortcut memories. My girlfriend Anna taught me the shortcut in high school when she did all the driving. It was the cool way to get to Little T’s. It was so cool I’d use it inefficiently to get to the Electric Fetus. Take Groveland and I’ll go past the only church I’ve ever played a funeral it, I go past the therapist I went to briefly before she unannouncedly raised her prices and only told me after the session was done, what the fuck, past DeVon and Seana’s weird ass apartment I used to wait in front of for half hours at a time waiting for D for gigs. Past Andrea Swensson’s house where the staff of the Current started to understand that it would be necessary to unionize on account of a variety of fuckeries happening at the station. Past the place called Big E’s that Heiruspecs played a very strange show at in 2003. Past Nicollet Franklin. That’s where Acadia used to be. I saw a production of Glengarry Glen Ross there. Now it’s a Cajun Boiling. Sidebar: It’s wild to think about Acadia. Moved out of Nicollet Franklin. Moved to the West Bank. Regrouped. A city bus runs into it and busts the whole thing up. Elite veggie burger at Acadia.

Back to Franklin/Nicollet. There used to be a Superamerica where there also used to be a CVS. And there used to be a Starbucks across the street. I drive past the old Twin/Tone building at 25th and Nicollet. I always hope that in some wildly deep game of six degrees of Twin Cities music scene separation it would come in handy that my very first day of work for No Alternative records in the winter of 2000 was helping Kim Randall move out of Twin/Tone. The place was empty, a shell of what it was in the 80s, but it had been the nerve center of a very important chapter in underground American music.

There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities. I learned how to write press releases and keep good relationships with the press from Kim Randall’s apartment in Uptown that I helped her move her office into. The secret path was being able to iron out a press release before a lot of my peers. But, a press release’s potential is still limited by the press’s appetite for a given artist or event. We live in a city that will spill more ink on Dessa having a new line of alfalfa sprouted tortillas than on MaLLy having a new record. They both have nice press releases. I love them both deeply. If there was a knob I could turn that skewed the coverage more towards new records and less towards alfalfa sprouted tortillas I would. Sometimes I think when I’m doing the best at my life’s work I am very much turning that knob. Let’s be real. There’s no knob. There’s no shortcuts. But there is a secret path. I’m in a basketball-centric text group with some friends, one of the members is a bonafide 25-years-in-the-game-career-performer-artist and he said “I know good journalism when I see it”. I can’t recall a piece of writing about artist curated alfalfa sprouted tortillas that stuck with me, that stuck to my ribs. But I remember interviews, podcast episodes, reviews and yes even blurbs that hit me, that were worthy of discussion, that mattered in the discourse. The secret path is doing the work, listening to the record, going to the show and not copy and pasting someone else’s hard work. I know good music coverage when I see it, and I know good music coverage when I do it, and I’m trying to do it.

Even with my questionably efficient shortcut I have arrived at the MaLLy show profoundly earlier than I’d like to. There’s no shortcuts to an old person rap show. I’m in line at Icehouse and the two women in front of me are discussing planter fasciitis and the number it did on their running routine. The first conversation I have in the venue is with Terrell from Radio Pocho on KFAI and he confirmed my scheduling mistakes: DJ just Nine just started his set. I could’ve drank that whole metal milk bottle Coors at the rehearsal dinner party. But actually, getting to an old person rap show early is part of the program. Part of the experience. Part of the routine is the hilariously inaccurate set times. Your feet should be a little sore the next day. The ad hoc hosting should be provided by the performers. It is a wildly more communal vibe than the jazz, rock or classical things I see. The performers of next week are the attendees of this week. Medium Zach is on stage and he shouts out a couple of his people who are in the crowd. I am with my people. I don’t want to be with them just for 110 minutes while MaLLy performs. I want to be with them for the changeovers, the “hey remember when we” stories. I talk To Elliot Looney and a different man named Doug who has been a merchandising icon for years. Probably eighty people in the building at this point and two are named Doug. We are at a 2% Doug rating which seems very high. I would also like to seem very high so I go outside and smoke. Back with Elliot and Doug. Sharing stories. Some of the big national artists that Doug works for will sell 80,000 of a single t-shirt design on a tour. I can’t even understand that. How many t-shirts has Heiruspecs ever sold? Is it two thousand? I think it could be two thousand. I have no idea. It’s not 80,000.

I am at an old persons’ hip hop show definitively. One breakdancer is at the corner of the stage dressed like a business casual breakdancer. Medium Zach’s opening set is more Tortoise than Z-Trip this go-round. The breakdancer is attempting to get started but Zach has taken a slow tempo groove and pushed some of the instruments so far behind the beat I am questioning where the one is. So is Zach. So is the breakdancer. When I take a break I learn from the manager of Icehouse that said breakdancer is a high powered downtown Minneapolis attorney. The breakdancer is an attorney. I am at an old person’s hip-hop show.

The important part of the night isn’t the funny part. The important part doesn’t make a fit for the essay I’m writing. The important part is that after seeing every shortcut measured and announced on Google maps I saw an artist on stage who is allergic to shortcuts. I saw an artist who is many LPs deep into a career that has come with equal parts ups and downs and yet at this comparatively late stage in his career he is making the best work of his career. It’s not what I expected. After an artist has made 3-4 albums it is unlikely for them to move 15% or more towards better or worse. MaLLy’s new record is full of great decisions, small nuances, inspired production. My favorite song is Summers on the Southside. Production by Last Word. Two, count ‘em two, great guitar solos from Jeremy Yvilsaker.

It’s a painting. It’s a portrait. I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t skip a step, I wouldn’t trim a hi-hat. I’d never take a shortcut when the secret path brings me here.

10 Year Anniversary of “Too Big To Fail” by the Twinkie Jiggles Broken Orchestra

I’m Twinkie Jiggles. I don’t use the moniker as much anymore but I spent a few blissful years of my life where I was almost equally likely to be called Twinkie rather than Sean. A long time ago the dude who did the booking at Barrio in Lowertown wanted to book my group Big Trouble but none of the dudes wanted to do it so I started my own band. I called it the Twinkie Jiggles Broken Orchestra and we set off playing a tremendous amount of lightly attended restauranty type gigs for $150-$250. Barbette, Red Stag, Sauce, Barrio (just the once, weren’t a big hit) et cetera. I was doing this in the midst of one of the biggest estuaries in my life: heavy responsibilities for Trivia Mafia, a receding role at McNally Smith but still working there, Heiruspecs is active, Dessa is crazy active, my first live-in girlfriend relationship is ending, my relationship with my now wife is starting, radio is just starting for me with me dipping my toes in at the Current. It’s all happening and I don’t know what is really going to stick. A bunch of things that feel settled in my life at 43 do not feel resolved at 33. And I’m spending a lot of time trying to make this happen while sitting in a van with the Dessa band careening across the country with questionable access to the internet.

A lot of time to think, a lot of time to stress, a lot of time to write and the inspiration of being around young writers out of McNally who are kicking ass, seeing the work that Dessa and Dustin are putting in surrounding Dessa’s albums, wanting to be involved, not knowing how to get involved. I believe the music that is dominating my life is Dawes, Frank Ocean, Aesop Rock, Future Islands, Bahamas, Joni Mitchell. These are all sort of guesses but my head is full with the idea that dense lyrics can be sung, not by me, but they can be sung. For a short period of time I live in a condo that has a piano in it. It’s right next to my bedroom. I wake up and play it and as a I play it more, more songs come out. And I start to be drawn to the piano. When I’m at Rachel’s parents house in Fargo I sat down and wrote “Hi, My Name is Ana” while the family was out of the house for I don’t know. . .one hour? Two? My fingers never felt better on a piano but those couple months. I don’t know how to get it back. I’ve got a piano now but it’s in the playroom. It’s covered in papers, paints, receipts, dolls, bath toys. It isn’t calling my name.

The Twinkie Jiggles Broken Orchestra gigs started feeling great. Joey Van Phillips on drums, DeVon Gray on keyboard, Ashley Gold on vocals. That’s the nucleus. It’s great when Chastity sang with, great when Linnea sang, when McGlone played drums, when Patrick played guitar and keyboards. But the nucleus is Joey, DeVon and Ashley. I think we had fun times. No one really came. We ate dinner, We played these songs and we started going into studios and recording. I at some point convinced myself that this record I’m talking about broke even, but it’s hard for me to believe that. Right now I’m listening to the song “Sister’s Wine”. DeVon on keys. Graham O’Brien on drums and Chastity on vocals. I’m on bass. Scott Agster played trombone, can’t remember the name of the beautiful man who played saxophone. I think it’s Bobby playing guitar. I think this song is great. I don’t need to be humble if I think the shit stands up to me.

At the writing level I wasn’t trying to make sense out of my life, I was trying to make it into a superhero’s story. It’s what inspired me to call it “Too Big to Fail”. It’s what inspired me to be rather awkwardly sex forward. If I put my professor glasses on I’ll say I wanted to assert my full humanity as a fat man who could be heartbroken, arrogant, fragile, confident, fictional, realistic and everything in between. The way it makes more sense to me is I wanted to write the stories where even where I’m the loser I’m still the hero. I wrote a bunch of songs about my struggles with my ex (Perfectly Enamored, Free Change, Easy Enough). I wrote largely fictional songs that still kind of sounded alcohol fueled and edgy (Fat Jodie, Cigarettes, Sister’s Wine). I covered a Sleater-Kinney song I used to play with my first serious girlfriend. I would play drums and she would sing and play guitar. Some of the funnest moments of my life. Play Sleater-Kinney, listen to Sade, go to Lifetime Fitness and eat at Pizza Luce. God damn it that was great.

I’m proud of this record. Some days I think about getting the band back out of retirement to play them. It would be different. It might not be worth dusting off. But I wanted to at least write about it, and remember the remembering. When the anniversaries come up for these releases in my life I both want to remember the album and also remember what I thought about them years later.

The release party was great, did it at the Icehouse. I remember being gassed up because Lizzo came out. 1000% guarantee that her and her coterie hung in the back and were far from hanging on every note we played, but still felt good that the jam was cool enough that the coolest person at that moment in the scene decided to hold court in the back of that particular room. We debuted the song Achilles at the show which I still feel is the best song that I’ve been exclusively responsible for writing.

In the end it was radio and trivia that came to dominate my working life. Still plenty of music, but a different relationship, a different angle. But I listen to this record and I want to liberate that piano from the playroom detritus and find out what’s under my fingers now.

The Music Tells You - There’s No Freedom In Freedom

I went to Bennington College my freshman year. I had a great year but I was ready to get Heiruspecs going so I left after that first year. Dorm advisor at Fells Hall freshman year was named Bryn Mooser. From Maine. He’s turned out to live kind of a Hollywood life but back in the year 2000 he was a very attractive alto sax player who had the misfortune of knowing he was very attractive. He was an incredibly fun dude to be around as an eighteen year old. I played in his junior concert which was called. . .wait for it. . .get ready. . .you can’t make this shit up. . .America. I think there was maybe five chords in the whole show. Plenty of headbands and wardrobe discussions. Lots of drummers. A lot of TVs playing art school shit. It was ambitious, and frankly more enthralling than seeing a more talented musician play it safe over eight songs from the Real Book. I was an impressionable sponge and Bryn was full of ideas, advice, album recommendations, and more. I’m grateful for that year I got to be around him. He turned me on to a movie from 1992 from Branford Marsalis called “The Music Tells You”. Watching that video I was so fascinated with Branford Marsalis. Honest to a fault, arrogant to a T, and seemed earnestly excited about making music and disillusioned with the things surrounding making music.

We watched the movie together and I was stuck on the scene, clipped above, where he says “the music tells you” when explaining the stricture of improvising, the stricture of writing and of collaborating. Artistic expression to me is about limiting potential choices and then finding remarkable opportunities within those choices. Practice in the largest sense of the word is cultivating a vast arsenal of skills to deploy when a potential choice that requires one of those skills is available. ProTools, the most advanced multitrack recording software in the world, is a creative godsend but it clouds some into thinking that limiting potential choices isn’t part of artistic expression. Spotify’s business practices and the major labels’ complicity in obscuring them is a cancer on the music industry, but it also clouds people into believing that any song can go after another song. That every song looks the same. That every song is best measured by the amount of people who have listened to it since the dawning of streaming.

I prefer thinking of music like a war of inches in trench warfare with groundbreaking artists forging yards ahead and permitting others to benefit from those gains and fill in the missing pieces. The music told Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden that something else was available when improvising after a melody. There was more that could be up for grabs in real-time. But I do believe the music told them that. I believe that the music called for a larger canvas and they painted on it. In breaking old rules they made new rules. Same year that Bryn Mooser from paragraph one showed me the Branford Marsalis documentary I took counterpoint from a composer named Stephen Siegel. The king of counterpoint was a writer named Palestrina from the Renaissance. What’s counterpoint? Take a melody and with a set of pretty demanding rules navigate an additional three independently moving voices to supplement the melody. I hemmed and hawed my way to what would’ve been a C if I hadn’t gone to Bennington where they didn’t have grades but I gained a lot. I do believe the music told Palestrina something. He formalized these rules and I do believe in the hands of many teachers the rules are taught like unmoving policies bound for eternal truth. I don’t believe that’s what music tells you. Music is not black and white, but it’s not a free for all. Even “free” music is not a free-for-all. Free-for-alls are terrible. Terrible. The music tells me that your free-for-all is just a jerk fest for your three favorite scales. Or it tells me that it has become too demanding or rote to listen to the rules inside of music; it has become more expedient to pretend that there are no rules even though you know it to not be true. And if someone is following Palestrina’s rules from a cool half a millennium ago with no innovation then I have doubts that you are letting the music tell you anything, you are just painting within the lines. There is a merit to learning counterpoint that I barely appreciated as a freshman in college. There is a merit to transcribing solos and melodies that I am finally embracing, far too late for it to have an appreciable impact on my career, but blissfully early for it to have an impact on my musicality and my soul.

The music tells you on the radio too. I believe a good radio person should be in the business of stretching and breaking those rules only if they are also a student of those rules. I believe that the path to creating great radio involves listening to great radio. In fact, I believe it involves listening to the radio period. Different shows, different formats. Different hosts. Different cities. There are plenty of Palestrinas in the radio industry clinging unexplainably to a set of rules that don’t make sense or that fortify and codify things that are best left in the past. I’ve been in radio just over ten years and I’ve heard of program directors talking about not playing two black artists in a row, not playing more than three songs from women fronted projects in an hour. These ideas are immediately reprehensible but they are also outdated. It is a disrespect to your current audience and your potential audience. It is enshrining a hierarchy that throttles the digestible output of talented artists who aren’t white men. The music didn’t tell those programmers that. I don’t even think their gut told them that. It’s a play-it-safe strategy that perpetuates our worsts. Our AI, our legacy media and our habits enshrine the long-established hierarchies in our world. Through practice, through listening, through imagination I aspire to cultivate an arsenal of skills that will make decisions from what is available. And I know great radio is available that adheres to none of the stupid rules. And the more I practice, the more is available.

My brother Steve, fellow musician and writer, has been firing on all cylinders in Big Trouble, the band we play in together. He’s been writing, practicing, videotaping, designing and doing it with an enthusiasm I am amazed he has mustered this deep into his years. The big record isn’t coming. The honeymoon is over. But he’s reaching out to schedule a rehearsal and sending around the flyer. He added a keyboard/sampler/synthesizer into his rig in the past handful of practices and gigs and it’s been a mixed bag by his own accounting. I have a distrust of gadgets that is LOUDLY amplified in my feelings about Steve having gadgets. Steve has been a gadget guy since he was born and I’ve been a “fuck it, I’ll make it work with your hand-me-downs let me try it” guy since just as long. So I look at these new technologies under a different light than if another bandmate might do it. But after the gig we talked about the need to try, to expand, to push. It doesn’t have to be gadgetry, but without a push from somewhere we’d miss out on so much musical expression. Years ago Steve bought a pitch shifter pedal and I will still jokingly point to that pedal and say “that’s the pedal that broke up Big Trouble”. We’d be playing restaurant gigs with tentative support at best from the booking person that a two guitar quartet could cater to the dinner and cocktail crowd that might be coming in. Steve soundchecking the pitch shifter through the VOX AC30 at above full volume forty minutes before downbeat wasn’t making my booking job any easier. But, we do need these new technologies to push us to see what we can do with the music. We need to be pushed into finding out what of this new technology can be used while always letting the music tell us.

No one person gets to be the arbiter of what it means to let the music tell you. I think with the new sampler/syth/keyboard doo-dad Steve is listening to the music, sorting out how to work it into the web of Palestrina-like rules that Big Trouble has concocted throughout the years. Where is their room to expand? What is available? What expands and what diminishes? In these musical pursuits I am on the conservative side and I need to be surrounded by a spectrum of perspectives on innovation. What could a more-mature-me do enthusiastically with the potential of Steve having a pitch shifter? I’m not certain, but I think I could’ve done a lot better than bellyaching about the volume during soundcheck.

In radio I don’t know where I land on the conservative/liberal continuum. I believe radio stations have a unique responsibility and freedom that comes from pursuing experiences 24 hours a day. A peer in radio talks about “the promise”. What is “the promise” when you turn on that station? Is the promise genre specific? Is the promise an ethos towards music that floats above genre? Is the promise an ethos towards presentation? Is the promise no promise at all? Is the promise that it’s a dice toss every ten minutes? I’m writing this four days before Halloween and “the promise” is such a strange combination of strong and weak around Halloween. I can accept the Monster Mash being played on almost every radio station on planet earth this week. But what is “the promise” surrounding Monster Mash? Is it the promise of being seasonally appropriate? Is it the promise of what sits next to the Monster Mash on the playlist?

I’d like to answer a question I can see a reader asking at this point:

—-

Dear Blowhard Bennington Sean,

Is it really all this complicated? Just play the music! So Steve got a pedal! Figure out what songs it sounds good on. Share your opinion and keep it moving. Stop acting like there are massive rule books lining the walls of every practice room and radio studio in the world. It’s music and you’re ruining it.

A Concerned Blog Reader

——

Thanks for writing ACBR. It is this complicated. It ends up being simple. At the best it sounds simple, but the people I respect think that under the hood can’t be pure simplicity. There is history, there are precedents. There are rules to break and rules to honor and a beautiful life with beautiful offerings for the world in caring a ton about this stuff and working it over in your head. There’ is a difference between someone who plays a D chord because it’s the only thing in their arsenal and a person who picked a D chord out of fifteen different options because it was ultimately the best option.
—-

What does a radio station promise on Halloween? Does it promise a detour? Does it promise a sincere seasonality that Spotify’s “Ghoulish Grooves” with an AI ghost and a turntable graphic simply can’t? What does a bluetooth speaker offer at a Halloween party? At the neighbor’s Halloween party on Saturday I had already clocked in a beautiful discussion about creative responsibilities with my brother post-gig and futilely fumed in the car at a radio station for not satisfying “the Halloween promise” as I wanted them to. I was tasked with bringing over a bluetooth speaker after the other one had run out of juice. I tried to dial in what might work for the group of assembled neighbors on Halloween. Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Monster Mash, Whodini, Blue Öyster Cult (but I did Burnin’ for You for a little flex). I was ready to get some suggestions from others and to pepper in some more. I was letting the music tell me. I was following the spirit and trying to let the music help the great time. I HAD TO TAKE THE DOG AROUND ONE SINGLE CITY BLOCK BECAUSE HE WAS BEING AN ASSHOLE AND I RETURNED TO A LOSS OF CONTROL OF THE SPEAKER. My neighbor Blake ceded it to a man who listens to a Wall Street Journal podcast in the shower every morning. It was atrocious. He was starting podcast episodes. He was picking songs to purposely pick fights with certain people who he knew hated certain songs. He’s drunk, leaning back, an evil wizard who was both picking shit songs and then getting lost in emails/texts/facebook and not even tracking what is coming out of his cranked JBL. And when other attendees would discreetly turn down the speaker he’d indiscreetly turn that bad boy back up. The music tells you Andy! You aren’t listening but the music is telling you. It’s sacred. It’s sacred to share music. It’s sacred in a bluetooth speaker, it’s sacred on a stage, it’s sacred in your own playlist, it’s sacred in a booth at a radio station. It is not reserved for professionals; it greatly benefits from youthful indiscretion. It greatly benefits from seasoned veterans who have been making these choices for years. It greatly benefits from a drunk guy having a fun time in his garage, but you got to try and have fun. But if you don’t think it matters, if you don’t think it’s a gift, if you don’t think it’s a miracle you don’t belong to it, you aren’t Palestrina, you aren’t Ornette Coleman, you aren’t bending or breaking rules, you are out of the mix. I don’t think you’re listening to yourself. The music tells you. Listen. Even if the music tells you to play some wild off the wall shit that Bennington Sean McPherson turns his nose up at. . .listen to the music and I’ll believe you. I’m bringing a bigger speaker next year.

I Just Believe in Courtney Williams

I don’t believe in wrong or right,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe in linear time,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe in Loch Ness Monsters,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe in Courtney Williams and other things,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe in the importance of sleep,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe you need to wait 45 minutes after you eat before you swim,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

I don’t believe it’s important to be able to drive a manual transmission,
I just believe in Courtney Williams.

Shoulder Season

My brother Steve and I know something about driving between the Midwest and the East Coast. We were raised in Massachusetts but my Dad’s from Milwaukee, Mom’s from Chicago. Plenty of childhood roadtrips. And since we’ve been in Minnesota, lots of miles logged. Steve says when you pass Ashtabula, OH on your way towards PA the whole vibe changes from Midwest to East Coast immediately. Even with the limited amount of actual region-specific shit you see from I-90, there’s something very East Coast about the minute you enter Pennsylvania. The road signs, the age of the houses, the names of things, the proportion of house size to street size. There are close to intangible differences between the East Coast and the Midwest and a lot of it can just be sensed, if you know what to be looking for.

Just yesterday, Saturday October 5, 2024 in Minnesota, I got to see it change from summer to fall in about an hour’s time. It’s member drive at my workplace, Jazz88, so I spent 1p-4p sitting in my dark basement answering phone calls for donations. I walked out, still summer. Silus and Kelly from across the street were playing with their kids, Vikings jerseys on but still a summer feeling temperature. The sky looked summer. There wasn’t much wind to speak of. I drove over to pick up my kids who had been hanging at a friend’s house while I answered the phones. Stand out on the porch. Take the remainder of the snacks I brought over and chat for a minute. Still summer. Some extra glow to the world, felt almost artificial to be honest, but summer glow. The next stop was JS Coffee for a coffee for me and hot chocolates for the girls. Outside of the coffee shop I knew the season was changing. I both felt hot and felt like it was a mistake the girls didn’t have jackets on. It was kind of electric. The glow was there. The wind was blowing. Transitory.

My wife taught me the term shoulder season. It’s old folks farmer’s almanac talk for the period of time when a season is changing over to another season. And wow, I got to experience a short ass shoulder season across maybe thirty forty minutes sitting outside of JS. A strange breeze, a strangely quiet crowd of people, that strange feeling when things are out of sync and you know no writer has ever tried to describe this scene. No novel set in one of those 79 degree early October Saturdays just before the running of the marathon. It’s an undocumented eerie. Nothing amiss. Just nothing the opposite of amiss. . .nothing on point, nothing to a tee.

The girls consume their hot chocolates whipped cream first. The drink was out of season when we ordered it. It was even maybe out of season when S. spilled the entirety of hers on the pavement outside and Katie the barista was nice enough to make her another one no charge. Sidebar: I don’t love the term barista. But as this shoulder turns and the wind announces itself, it gusts instead of blows, the hot chocolates are becoming reasonable. Becoming downright fitting. There are hats I can start to wear again. Soups I can start to make again. Records that will sound better like Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele, Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter and Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else. I can text Peter Solomon and invite him to this year’s Thanksgiving without him saying “it’s still summer shitbird”. Fall has arrived in seconds flat. The green leaves numbering their days, the tabs on my car asking me to make sure they are renewed on time for the first time in years, the warm cup of coffee laughing that I might’ve considered getting it iced just minutes ago. I will lose track of my gym shorts. I will find track of my gloves. I will find $6, a lighter, the end of a filtered joint and an over folded flyer in my jacket. I will watch the next chapter of the Timberwolves reach the Western Conference finals and beyond. If you know what you’re looking for you couldn’t miss it for a minute, it’s the Midwest and it’s fall.

Big Trouble at White Squirrel Saturday October 26 6-8

The boys are back in town and also never left town. Big Trouble is gracing the stage of The White Squirrel with our winning spirit and instrumental jams. I hope by October 26 you won’t be wishing we were playing outside. I’ve got too many nice sweaters for it to stay this warm. Since I’m putting it in my blog I know it’ll happen. . .I’m making a chart for the Waxahatchee song “Ruby Falls”.

Universal Truths

Here are little-known universal truths.

If someone starts a speech with “I’m going to keep this brief” they are not.
If you are an adult at a zoo without children you are high.
If you still have a set of CDs in your driver side visor in your car and a colorful, fuzzy steering wheel cover you are a dynamo in the sack.
If your favorite apple is a Golden Delicious you are an AI who has been sent to kill someone, probably Senor Honeycrisp.
You have clogged a toilet before, everyone has.
From time to time you do snore a little.
Drum solos are better than bass solos.
Maxwell sounds better when played in New York City.
Low sounds better when played in Duluth.
Vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate ice cream.
Mobb Deep sounds better in cold weather and best in a hoodie in weather so cold you should be wearing a jacket too but you aren’t.
Vinyl doesn’t sound that much better, but it feels unbelievably better.
When you are a little “off” you will always feel at least slightly better after a glass of water.
The Summer Olympics are better than the Winter Olympics.
The guitar player should turn down a little.
Chaka Khan.
Cable was better when you had to remember what number the different channels were.
We’re all impressed you change your own oil but you don’t really save that much money Joe.
A trumpet is better than a saxophone. Saxophones are better than trumpets.
Generally the best seasons of all shows is the third and fourth season.
The best sausage pizza is better than the best pepperoni pizza, but if the worst sausage pizza is much worse than the worst pepperoni pizza.
Many people sing better after two drinks than stone sober. No one sings better after a six pack*.
Whenever somebody on foot says “it’s like four blocks away” it’s definitely at least six blocks away.
The intro to your song is too long, the outro is not long enough.

*credit to excellent producer Knol Tate on this take.