Found Something to Do on Labor Day
I have a magical friend in Duluth named Steph who lives in a magical house. Every house she has ever lived in has been magical. I met Steph when she was a server at the Green Mill in St. Paul for a handful of months in 2006 maybe? Somehow a couple hangs turned into a lifelong friendship. She’s an artist. She’s an interior designer. She has a reverence and fascination with the world that constantly inspires me. You know how people mention a great singer and say “I could listen to that singer sing the phonebook!”? I have a similar thing with Steph, I could read the phonebook with her and we’d discover something together, something magical about it. She brings magic with her, to everything.
Anywho, Steph said that Rachel and I could bring the kids up to Duluth for part of the weekend cause she’d be out of town. It was just the invitation we needed because:
1) Have you tried to book a hotel in Duluth? It’s impossible.
2) There’s a reason! Duluth is amazing and we were very excited to get there
I’m sure I’m cursing it, but traveling with the kids is getting just slightly easier. My oldest is five, she doesn’t have absolute nonsense tantrums anymore. Her tantrums exist, they’re rare, and while not logical. . .they are explainable. For the two year old, they are still random and unexplainable, but they are getting a bit shorter and a bit more directable.
We got to Duluth in high spirits and enjoyed a visit to Lake Superior where despite the sixty degree weather and the frigid water my daughters adventured in with their toes, lost many of Steph’s cooking utensils we had taken for sand time and generally had the biggest smiles on their faces on planet Earth.
In the same way that I spent years programming myself for how to take some lived experience and force it into the size of a tweet, the size of a facebook post, the size of an instagram post I now have something healthier but it still synthesizing real life into communication. I breathe in my moments slower, I think about how I’ll talk about it on this blog, I’ll think about how I’ll remember it for myself. This moment from Saturday September 3rd 2022: we are at the Lift Bridge Beach in Duluth, a woman is spending 40 seconds trying to get her cigarette lit against the will of the winds coming off of Lake Superior. Parents are standing by the water, kids are dipping toes in. T-shirts are getting wet. Kids are getting cold. Young men in wet suits are leaving with the pride that comes from surviving something difficult. Dogs are on leashes. And Rachel, Sadie, Naomi and I are having a beautiful time. I’m making sure Sadie and Naomi are safe, but they are being safe. Rachel is also making sure the kids are safe. And we are spending a kind of simple time together that can’t be found without a body of water.
We made our way back up to Pizza Luce Duluth after that. I have a very intimate relationship with Pizza Luce Duluth which I know is a strange thing to say about a pizza place. But that room is the place where I felt the closest to being a rock star. Heiruspecs played there before there was a stage. And we built our crowd there from nothing, to a guaranteed sell-out. I signed a woman’s breast in that bar. That’s not a big thumbs up 2022 approved moment, but it’s a part of my story and at the time I thought it was the most amazing thing on planet Earth. Beyond any Sharpie/cleavage moments what I really felt about Duluth was that when Heiruspecs came to town it was exciting for Duluth. Heiruspecs would get recognized at restaurants, we’d get love walking into the Electric Fetus across the street. Luce would give us free dinner, free drinks and then give us free brunch the next day. The shows were legendary, at least to me and Duluth. We were in our element and the crowd was with us. I remember us playing the first weekend of UMD one year and I’m sure they turned away at least 250 people, it was just absolutely packed. The first person who brought Heiruspecs up there, long before they were doing much music at all is no longer with us. His name is Scott and he was a truly amazing dude. We then worked with Maria Hickey who was also an incredible leader at Luce. That probably all wrapped up by 2004 and every show we’ve done there since was booked by Paige Doty who is actually still there. I thought I would have no chance of seeing her there because generally if someone has worked at a spot for twenty years they are probably getting Labor Day Weekend off. Not Paige! So I got to see her which was magical.
Me McPherson Left, Paige Doty Right
My feelings with Pizza Luce Duluth are deep because at one point in my musical career I thought a spot liked Pizza Luce was a stop along the way to super stardom. The way it was for Trampled By Turtles. I thought I’d be back years later as a wildly successful critically acclaimed musician. I’d be sharing an artichoke dip with Al Sparhawk from Low discussing who should produce my next record. And the truth is, that’s not where I or Heiruspecs wound up. Heiruspecs is a part of the story of Minnesota music. There’s years where we were delivering the best live shows in the state. There’s years where we were delivering some of the best live shows in the country. We aren’t a household name. Next time I can talk five other men in their late thirties to drive two hours, stay up til one in the morning, split a pizza and make $150 a piece we’ll play to a reasonably full but not sold out Pizza Luce. I’ll love it, I’ll stay at Steph’s house, I’ll stay out too late, we’ll listen to a Leonard Cohen record in the morning, drink the greatest coffee I’ve ever tasted and I’ll feel all the complicated feelings I have about my life, my path and Duluth. And I’ll also feel all the pure feelings I have about a friend like Steph, about a band like Heiruspecs, about a city like Duluth. I’ve found something more sustainable and more rewarding both financially and emotionally than being a bass player. I am a part of beautiful music everyday. I am a part of a lot of people’s afternoons every day. I love it. But when I step back into Pizza Luce I’m reminded of the trajectory I thought I was on for a handful of years, and I’m reminded of the fact that Duluth thought I was on that trajectory too.
The next morning we got breakfast at the greatest restaurant with a name so awkward it makes Ruth Chris’s Steakhouse seem normal. It’s “At Sarah’s Table Chester Creek Cafe”. It’s a great spot to eat. To my St. Paul tastebuds it’s “Day by Day Cafe” combined with the “Birchwood Cafe”. The next stop was the most magical though. Felix from Heiruspecs told me about a spot way past Canal Park that has an amazing beach. I believe I have only been past Canal Park once in my life to drop a friend off at her house. HOLY SHIT! That is beautiful. And the beach we got to was amazing. Again, ignoring the mother-nature-supplied cues of temperature my children demanded entry into their semi wet swimsuits for another go round. But today the play was even more inspired. The sun was shining. Rachel and I sat far apart for much of the time. Rachel got some time to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. . .leaving a friend’s house in working condition while also getting hungry kids into the car is quite the feat. If you stay at a hotel you can just leave the place in a burning pyre behind you Keyser Soze style, but can’t do that with Steph’s house.
That time let me really hone in on the kid’s playing together. Watching Sadie explore new spaces is unbelievable. It’s as if she has this choreographed yet improvised spirit that I simply can’t take my eyes off. It looks like she knows exactly what she’s doing and has no idea what she’s going to do next. It’s this music of chance that is so inspired and so pure. It’s different than when she was two, it’s for sure different than what she’ll be as an adult. It’s a magic time of childhood, in a magical city, in Minnesota. I captured a totally “taken on an iphone” quality photo of her. It’s incredible. Duluth, thank you.
