For a Minute We Got it Right at the Place Where We Hide

If you’re driving home from my daughters’ daycare you hit Linwood Park at St. Clair and Victoria after about two minutes of driving. I’ve loved this park since I was in high school. In high school it was the smoke cigarettes watch the sunset park. In college it was the bring girls, get freaky and still smoke cigarettes park. There’s a big field and some sports fields. We started going there with the kids, and my oldest started calling the park “The Place Where We Hide” because there is legit forest in the back of the park that I had never noticed in my cigarette smoking days. And because of where it sits in St. Paul it’s the best place to watch the sunset. My youngest daughter Sadie has learned to appreciate sunsets and Hanukkah all in the same two week period and it’s beautiful. Just yesterday on the ride to swim lessons everything lined up and I had one of those rare perfect moments in my life.
Climbing up St. Clair my daughter says “look at that daddy, that’s the most beautiful blue. Isn’t it the most beautiful blue daddy?”. She was right, the sky was beautiful, with those thick, paintbrush drawn lines of cloud that reach across the sky without taking up much of the real estate. We advance maybe fifty more yards and Sadie exclaims “and look at the orange, look at that orange, it’s amazing!” She was right, it was amazing, that type of orange that looks like it won’t be orange for long. Orange in nature is always temporary and at that moment it was glowing. I was listening to the Current and I had already been marveling at my co-worker Mary Lucia. She’s always a joy to listen to, but you get the feeling like somedays she’s DJing for you and only you. Everything she was playing was hitting me perfectly. At that moment this tune from Gang of Youths came on called “Tend The Garden”. I’m a sucker for a great first line that just arrives as if me and the singer were in the middle of a conversation. They open with this one: “I was young, it was the '60s, you see”. And it’s a one beat pickup plus one measure before the lyric comes in. The song is the least epic song by them that we’ve played on the Current and it’s easily the best. The song’s coming out of the speakers and me and my daughter are admiring the sunset, and for a solid three minutes I’m just smelling the roses cause this moment is perfect.
Ever since my brother got into music I wanted to be a part of the music thing. I’ve wanted it to a be career, to be the center of my life. That’s gone surprisingly well for me. I’ve gotten to play bass all over the country, record records at world class studios. And for me, I had an aspiration to be a part of the story of Minnesota music and I can comfortably say I’ve achieved that. It feels wonderful. But, finding a way to stay being a part of it, while raising a family, while making a living, it’s hard. I will announce the opening and closing of venues on the radio without an honest chance at spending an evening there. I have little children, my wife works full time, I own a trivia company. I want to be a part of the music thing and I know to do my job at the Current well I have to do that. But hearing Gang of Youths and remembering that I interviewed them at the Current reminded me I am a part of this music thing. The Midwest rep for the label was in the studio, he even took the time to call my boss and tell him he thought it was a great interview. So it helped me feel great that I have some tangential relationship to helping Gang of Youths be a part of the story here in Minnesota. They were great to interview, sweet, caring and obviously destined to make great waves. My dog Warren could’ve interviewed them and they’d still be opening for the Foo Fighters and making awesome songs called “Tend the Garden”. But I did the interview. And I’m a part of the music thing. And I’m a dad. And the sun is setting and my daughter knows the sunset looks special at the place where we hide. The song changes, the sun sets, we are five minutes late for the swim lesson, I have to shop for Thanksgiving, the butcher can’t get me beef ribs for Hanukkah cause they’re too busy with Thanksgiving, I’m afraid people will stop having children cause the world is melting and people are plowing through parades and murderers like Kyle Rittenhouse create danger and then “defend” themselves from it. But orange in nature is always temporary and at that moment it was glowing.

I’m Starting to Feel the Pull of this Service

I haven’t read the work of the person who said “the medium is the message”. His name is Marshall Mcluhan and he gets namechecked all the time in NY Times podcasts. I look forward to reading him, but I already really agree with this format. When my most rewarding form of expression was writing songs I metabolized my feelings into thinking how they could be songs. And for quite some time I was drawn to twitter as the easiest and most comfortable way to get my ideas out. When I saw something I thought about sharing it on twitter. And now that this blog is semi cooking, I am finding myself free to think in this format and let me just be honest, it is really freeing. Really freeing. So here’s some free wheeling stuff I’ve been thinking about.

Sandra Bland - I do not believe that Sandra Bland took her own life. I understand all the things about mental health that can lie beneath the surface for every individual. But I have to admit that seeing Sandra' Bland’s bright optimistic “I just got a job” video had me feeling confident in the positive energy she was bringing to planet earth. On top of that, I saw nothing in the operations of the police personnel that made me believe they had a moral code for how to treat a fellow human, particularly a black woman who seemed to know her rights and was willing to be vocal about said rights. I believe there is more to Sandra Bland’s story and I don’t believe suicide has anything to do with it.

Minnesota’s COVID problems - The state I live in is by far the worst state for COVID cases right now. I have no idea why this is happening, but I do understand that Minnesota simply can’t take a sober look at itself and ask the question. Headlines that paint Minnesota in a negative light are the least sticky things we can offer up. It should be front page that this is a dangerous state to live in even if we have reasonably good vaccine rates. It also is not said enough that the clogging of the hospitals is primarily, though not exclusively, created by unvaccinated individuals.

Some of the funkiest music on earth doesn’t require bassists - This hurts me to admit. Organ jazz, which is often delivered with the organist providing the basslines, is absurdly funky and it works without bass players. I’m a bass player, I’m funky and there’s still no getting around these facts.

Fiction - Why can’t I read fiction? Why can’t I watch movies? Why don’t I have the stamina to consume this stuff. It pains me. I fear I’m going to die wondering why I never read Tolstoy, why I never got through all of James Baldwin’s writing, why I have seen only a smattering of movies on purpose. I can’t figure out a way to diligently work towards this. My hope is that viewing movies with my children is going to be the path to this. I don’t know if that will work.

That’s all for now you weirdos.

Why I’m Doing This Blog

Most of us have facebook and instagram accounts, a lot of us have twitter accounts. I started my relationship with social media in a pretty healthy way. I’m 40 years old. So before any social media platform had come along I had made lasting friends, had girlfriends and even gone on tour with a band. I joined friendster first, and loved it. People I knew said nice things about each other. I laughed at jokes and I spent maybe five hours on it a week. A fan of Heiruspecs from Chicago named Jenny Fujitsu told the band we should get into Myspace. I loved Myspace. I kept a blog. I made friends. I got laid off of Myspace. Heiruspecs got “big” on Myspace. It was a good time. Myspace was good for musicians, it gave you an incredible level of freedom to do your thing and push your music.

That same Jenny pushed us all towards Facebook and it was clear to me that it combined the clean design of Friendster, the elitist history of starting in the Ivy League that credentialed it as where the cool people already were and the ambition of Myspace and it was off to the races. I was team Myspace, as mentioned, I had gotten laid off Myspace and was reluctant to leave such a platform. So I came on Facebook with a real clear mandate: I’m on here to get more people to come to my shows. This is where the people are, and I want them to come to my shows. Walking into social media with a clear mandate makes the whole thing pretty logical. That worked for Facebook. My willingness to add “friends” who I considered fans worked for me. I was able to make sure that fans of Heiruspecs might become fans of Dessa (back then we had more fans than her), they might start playing Trivia Mafia. Facebook functioned as a way to take someone who liked one part of the what I offer publicly to connect with the rest. Mission accomplished.

I remember my first night on Facebook: working at a group home in Anoka, invited to the service by my friend Josh Peterson, sitting with my laptop on the other side of the sink to steal the neighbor’s WIFI. I add friends, I create events. I promote my shit. Besides for a couple years of dumb scrolling I didn’t fall in to terrible ruts with Facebook. I knew why I was there, and the products/events/bands I was there to hawk were good enough that people stayed connected with me.

Twitter was different, better and intoxicating. It’s probably mostly cause my brother was really good at twitter. My life in general is just me following wherever my older brother Steve goes. Steve played guitar, so I played bass. Steve liked basketball, so I liked basketball. Steve was good at twitter, so I wanted to be good at twitter. What do I mean he’s good at twitter? My brother is brilliant in long doses but he has a special gift for taking the 25 word joke and making it the three word joke. He has an uncanny ability to drop into someone else’s moment and say the thing everyone was thinking but no one had thought to say. If you are still on that twitter narcotic (and I am!) you should follow him. But twitter was this service I heard about from cool people: my brother, NPR, the woman from DC who got hired at Minnesota Public Radio who said she “connected with new people in new cities on Twitter”. What? Really? Amazing. Twitter was and is a place where cleverness was celebrated and brute promotion was useless. I couldn’t hang and that made me want to hang so bad. Twitter was also great for something that I’ve been all about since I was in fifth grade: asking random ass questions. Suddenly I could ask some question about something dumb and some pseudo-celebrity like A.C. Newman is in my mentions.

Everything I’ve said in this blog has been said by other people, but I need to set up why I’m where I’m at with social media and why I have this blog that at least Andrea Swensson, Chuck Terhark and Bill Caperton read from time to time (hi Andrea, hi Bill, see you tonight Chuck).

I couldn’t be on twitter just to get people to come to my shows. That is, if my desire was to get people to come to my shows, the effective way to do that was to be on twitter about all sorts of other shit, and then jump in authentically and organically with your promotional materials. At the same time I’m realizing this, the trivia company I co-own has to start advertising to keep up attendance at our events. And Facebook is the behemoth in online advertising and somewhere around 2015 we are starting to spend hundreds of dollars (and now probably over 5k a year) on FB advertising. I hate the feeling of typing in the credit card number and giving money to the blueprint-for-all-future-little-shits Mark Zuckerberg, but it’s where the eyeballs are and it owns Instagram where the other eyeballs are.

All of this isn’t enough to make me quit social media. It is still legitimately valuable to my career prospects, to getting people to the things I am promoting. But I’ve fallen for the twitter thing. I’m not there to make money, I’m there to see the responses, I’m there because it’s an incredible place to be. I follow brilliant people who say brilliant things, but I also get to know about the mundanity of their life and I love it. But why am I giving my eyeball dollars to these companies? I love the community, I love the news, but I miss the Wild West of the internet, reloading blogs, laughing about videos, having weird URLs you had to remember just so to share with friends at actual in person parties? I miss those things, but not enough to depart from the zeitgeist. Everyone I’m into is on twitter so there I am.

The whole time this is happening the best things on Earth are happening to me professionally. I used to come to the Current  as a musician and think all my problems in life would be solved if I had a desk here. I thought it was so cool, to be in this physical space that is dedicated to sharing great music with the world. And I’ll tell you, I was right. I have a desk here and I love it. Right now it kind of sucks cause I’m usually the only person sitting in the entire floor, but I still love it. I’m where I wanted to be. I’m doing what I wanted to be doing. Did twitter get my foot in the door at the Current? Hell no. Trivia and being a member of Heiruspecs got my foot in the door. But amassing a following on twitter suddenly seemed like a hurdle that was worthwhile to jump over. In this era you can go check out the stats on the people you admire, and I start to see that they’ve almost all jumped the hurdle of amassing a following on twitter, with some notable exceptions including kick ass music radio jocks in all sorts of markets across the country. But for the most part, it looks like a hurdle the people I admired had jumped over. It reminded me of pre-social media success hurdles.

Time Travel with me to 2003 for this paragraph please: Heiruspecs’ manager was trying to lock down the support of a more elite booking agent at one point, Tom Windish. Tom Windish came to our show at the Abbey in Chicago, dug it and told our manager Vickie, call me when they sell 10,000 records. BTW, not a dickhead statement from Windish, 10,000 records was a doable amount to sell from our infrastructure at that point. Heiruspecs did sell 10,000 records in the end, but by the time we had, we weren’t really in need of an elite booking agent as we couldn’t figure out a way to stay on the road with the money we were making.

Time Travel to 2011 for these next couple paragraphs please: Me and my guy Mike Fotis wanted to do a podcast with APM when Steve Nelson was running the Infinite Guest network. Sat down with Steve and Mike Fotis at Amsterdam Bar and Hall. Nice meeting, love how Steve thinks, but the basic question he asked was as follows, “why start a podcast with two schmos who don’t have 10,000 followers on twitter between ‘em?” I start realizing that twitter is a thermometer check to let you do other cool stuff in life. You get that number far enough up and you don’t have to keep on hawking your value inside the 280 character limit, the doors open up.

All of this thinking still didn’t get me to buy in deep into twitter. It was being on the road with Dessa that sent me towards being oriented towards twitter. Why? Well, first of all, tour is boring. And in the early 2000s when Heiruspecs was on the road we killed time by reading magazines at Borders, listening to records and throwing phone books at each other in hotel rooms. With Dessa, only one of the speakers work in the van so we never get to really listen to music together. Everyone wears headphones and everyone tweets. I still wasn’t personally bought in. Dessa told me, “just tweet twice a day for a month and see if you like it”. I did, and I did. People laughed, people commented, I felt connected. It did all the good things social media was supposed to do.

But, connecting to twitter twice a day and more created an obligation that I carry to this day. I feel the need to see what people are saying about the world and what people are saying about me. I feel compelled to make a comment about any big event happening in the world. Not a statement, not an action, just a comment. I don’t have my brother’s gift to say what everybody’s thinking but nobody’s said. My gifts involve speaking from my heart, being vulnerable in public and crafting ways to get people to attend events and moments I’m a part of or believe in. I am good at asking seemingly stupid questions. They aren’t actually stupid, and we all know that, they just help people think about choices differently than they did before they asked. But I’m trying to fit into this twitter box of success so that Steve Nelson walks to my house with flowers, kisses the ground and says “I was wrong about not giving you a podcast, how many do you want now"?”

But I sat there busting my ass on Facebook creating groups, invites and advertisements hoping first that Heiruspecs would blow up, and then that Trivia Mafia would become a force in the nightlife industry. And I created a non-promotional identity on twitter so that places like the Current and City Pages could see that I had something to bring to the table, not just the amount of followers, but a viewpoint on the world that would fit well with their brands.

Welcome to 2021 again: I’m doing this blog, cause social media has done what I need it to do for me and I don’t think there’s much else it can do. I can’t get laid off of Myspace or any site anymore; I’m in a wonderful monogamous marriage with Rachel. Heiruspecs’ amazing fanbase seems to accept that we will be purely advertorial online. Heiruspecs’ amazing members certainly are not chompin’ at the bit to create some sort of online identity for ourselves beyond “we have shows, we have music, we have videos, please consume”. I have a full-time job at the Current. I have a desk at the Current. I have some modest amount of impact on where the station is heading as a whole, I have a large amount of impact on where the hours of programming I’m doing are heading. I play a role in celebrating and broadcasting Minnesota music. I am beyond humbled by this opportunity. I want to do more, DJ more, do more work in non-music spaces, but I don’t think there are any doors that would be busted wide open for me if I tweeted more.

I listen every week to a podcast called “Political Gabfest”. David Plotz from the show succinctly stated some months ago “social media was a huge experiment and it’s failed”. The words stuck with me, reading Cal Newport’s work has stuck with me. I have goals in life, I have goals for my career, and I think I got a better shot of hitting them if I start relating to social media differently. There are things I want to say about the world, about music, about my friends that I can’t put on to twitter. For many of the hours of my week there are better ways to spend my time than hopping on twitter to join a conversation. I will miss things, I will be misinterpreted, but I believe I have the compass to make sure that across a longer period of time, I’m delivering something better for myself and for the people who care about what I do. I also want my children to see a man who has a good relationship with social media, who handles his involvement with it in such a way that he’s still present with them, present in meetings, present in rehearsals, present at dinner.

It scared me when I realized I was metabolizing my life in twitter. Something bad would happen to me and I’d think about the tweet I could say to have my followers make me feel better. I would view raw injustices happening and I would think about twitter, not about protesting. I thought twitter was all I could do. But, when other organizations would ask me to write something I would take that invitation to think for a longer time in a longer format. I wrote something shortly after Philando Castile was murdered that I’m still proud of. I wrote a commencement address for Slam Academy that I ended up being really proud of. Why do I have to wait for these other organizations to ask me to think? Why do I stay in my twitter box waiting for some company to invite me out to write my thoughts? It’s dumb and frankly, I don’t think tweeting keeps me in good shape to share the longer thoughts I have when I have a larger platform. This blog does.

Also, I want a way to look back at the things I’ve thought in a way that I can digest. I do a very strange IG live video series with my wife on Mondays called Tilapia Mondays. Rachel has archived them on my IG page, so we can watch them later, when we’re older. Right now we are snapshotting our Mondays with a humor and diligence we could never muster if it was on a camcorder. But I can rewatch those, sometimes Rachel does. Years from now we’ll get to see our daughters grow up a week at a time. I’m not doing that with my twitter feed. When I remember how I was doing in 2021 I don’t want to give Mark Zuckerberg my eyeballs. I want to read this blog, I want to read my private journal, I want to listen to the records I made. I want to listen to the programs I did on The Current. I’m not quitting twitter, I still think it is an indispensable way to let people start a journey of connecting with you. But that’s how I’m using it now. You won’t be able to get to know me on social media, and that’s great news for you and me.

How Would Cupcakes Taste without White Supremacy?

I didn’t see the strong backlash to Critical Race Theory coming. But I have a garbage track record. If you told me that a large group of people’s response to signs that say “Black Lives Matter” was to make signs that say “All Lives Matter” I would have laughed in your face. I think what I’ve gotten wrong about a large portion of mainstream America are as follows:

Mainstream America Thinks They Can Curate a Life Where They And Their Children Never Think About Race or Think About it Less and Less - I think Black Lives Matter offends a lot of people because it is a three word statement that firmly states “IT’S NOT FIXED YET”. It blew my mind when I read a piece that argued that the middle age, upper and middle class black hostility towards rap and hip-hop (I’m most aware of the negativity at black radio stations in the 80s and 90s) was because the mere existence of a genre as capital B Black and very outspoken on the ills of urban life was like a loudspeaker announcing “the Civil Rights and Black Power Era didn’t fix it, we are still in this struggle”. This opened my mind, the mere existence of the genre of hip-hop is an indictment of anyone who tried to fly a Mission Accomplished flag across black America in the mid 70s. An honest teaching of race in America would prevent anyone from pretending that the problem of the 21st century isn’t also the color line. And I believe for pretty obvious reasons, if one is convinced they can shelter themselves or their family from the realities of racism, they would! It’s not possible, but there’s a lot of energy being expended to try to create that culture.

Let’s Stop Your Bullet List and Talk About What You Mean By “Fixed” in the paragraph above - Fine. What does it mean to say racism is “fixed”? First, let’s have everybody who actually thinks race has any biological grounding to leave the room. Awesome, those people are dumb and I’m glad they left. If you believe race is a social construct, that means that a large amount of the disparity in wealth, health, lifespan et cetera are caused by society. For generations the money that I’m now spending and saving as a white man has been protected, supported and bolstered by opportunities handed primarily to white men. I believe that “fixed” means counting back those benefits and distributing the fair share to black families. Most of the opportunities to build wealth I’m speaking of have passed over black families since the end of Reconstruction. I also believe that slavery creates a scornful legacy that we WOULD ALL do well to do something to remedy/address. I support reparations for descendants of slaves. I believe that if you do that, many many less young black people would be killed. Less would be killed by police, less would be killed by fellow civilians.

I took a “Racial Equity through Action and Learning” training this summer. It was mandatory for my job at American Public Media. I found it to be really well put together. But, there was a dismal part where the majority of the participants and the leaders voiced their feeling that racism wouldn’t be “solved” in their lifetime. I bit my tongue but I disagreed. I don’t believe the pernicious impact of racism has simply receded in a straight line for this country’s history. We’ve moved backward at many times in history and we’ve moved backward at times in my lifetime. But, progress has been made. Progress has been made (and has recently been lost) towards more comparable levels of wealth for black families compared to white families. But, correcting for redlining, for GI Bill omissions, for illegal hiring practices and paying out reparations could change that wealth trajectory quicker than anything we’ve tried so far.

Fixed to me means household wealth for blacks that is in the same ballpark as whites. I think it’s doable. I think we could get way close before I die and I’m pretty old already! Ok, let’s get back on the bullet points.

Many White People Fear Competing with Black People on Equal Footing - I can’t know this for a fact, obviously. But here’s where I’m coming from. That book “The Sum of Us” from Heather McGhee messed me up in the best way possible. There are tangible ways in which white leadership at local, regional and national levels chose and chooses to go without rather than share with black people. Part of what I extrapolate from this is a fear of brushing shoulders with black people because maybe you’d find out that any inferiority you’ve ascribed to black people just doesn’t track when you actually spend time at a swimming pool, on a job site or any other spot with black people. If white communities segregate access to the best amenities, job opportunities and rapid mass transit lines and leave them most hospitable to white folks, there will be less opportunity for fair competition.

Many White People Believe That Their Success is Dependent Upon Black Failure - Why do many of my white brothers and sisters seem to stick their heads out only to make sure black people are held down? Why will you go out of your way for that? What does it matter to you? The policies you will show up to vote against, the steps you will take to insure that a two tiered society exists. Why? I haven’t ever read a convincing argument as to how that helps out your family or your pocketbook.

Many people lack the imagination for a better America - I believe that the willful drive to ignore racial disparities from so many people in our country comes from a disinclination to imagine a better America. Combined with some of my points above I worry that many people think that a better America in general would be a worse America for them in particular.

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I think a lot of the people who operate with these views would disavow them, wouldn’t recognize them. But I think at a group level, I see these philosophies in action. I want to talk about the potential invisibility of white supremacy. It’s become part of the language in my world to say something like “white supremacy is the water we swim in, or the air we breath”. It’s often stated as a defense for stating that white supremacy exists in places where you can’t measure it’s impact. My point of departure for a lot of this work was a document written by Tema Okun. It’s a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture. It’s a conversation starter for sure because it lists a lot of characteristics that most readers wouldn’t face value take as part of white supremacy. . .I certainly didn’t.

I didn’t take to this document too well at first: I think of things like perfectionism, quantity over quality as characteristics that are more widespread than just white supremacy culture. I’m all in on ending white supremacy culture. But does that mean I want to end perfectionism? Does that mean we have to end perfectionism? If we believe that white supremacy culture is everywhere can we start saying anything we want is part of white supremacy? There’s no way cupcakes taste this way without white supremacy! I don’t think movies would be so long if it weren’t for white supremacy! We can recognize those statements as humorous, but they are as investigated and supported as the characteristics listed by Tema Okun. But I ask you to read the Okun piece. I got something out of it, I started thinking differently about how we could imagine a world that was calibrated differently. Calibrated without the traumas that racism has given to everyone. You carry trauma from racism. We all do. Maybe that calibration means we don’t celebrate quantity over quality anymore. Shit, maybe the cupcakes will taste different too. I don’t know. But I want to know it. I want to know a world where I don’t pencil in an asterisk next to some of my biggest achievements, a world where I recognize how the road to them would’ve been very different without white privilege. I want to taste a cupcake in a world where a large percentage black people have access to family wealth. I want to watch a movie in a world where we have made an honest effort to right our wrongs.

My First Divorce and Car Accident

At the time I thought it was a coin toss whose fault the accident was.

Eleanor Shoreman was driving. She was my best friend Betsy’s neighbor growing up. Her family was vaguely eccentric for a non-eccentric Williamstown, Massachusetts family. I think the dad had a British accent. The mom was a caterer for Williams College and for herself. The mom took better care of her skin and jogged longer than most of her age mates. They had an additional greenhouse type thing on their small property, not a shed, not a garage, just a space. But that was eccentric.

Eleanor was dating my friend Conor. He had dated my friend Betsy. Maybe he was just dating everyone on Moorland Avenue before he moved up Cole Avenue. The summer of 1997, I’m preparing to go into my junior year of high school but I have a level of freedom that would make most college sophomores jealous. I don’t have a license, a learner’s permit, a car, but I also don’t have parental supervision. And Eleanor is doing most of the driving that summer. The hand me down ride is a Chevy Malibu that looks nothing like a modern Chevy Malibu. We are on Route 7 by Lake Pontosuc, soon to past Dunkin’ Donuts when Eleanor hits another car. The front of her car is completely shoved in. All I can see in the windshield after the accident is the brown hood of the car pushed all the way up. Besides for my dad hitting a parked car late into the night on a ride home from Fenway Park, I have never been in a car accident.

Even then I experienced the whole aftermath fondly. Me, Conor and Eleanor. We have no idea how to comport ourselves post accident\. Eleanor’s face is bright red, she is crying. Conor is not comforting her. Conor is making small talk with me and laughing. There are no cell phones quite yet. The police make everything easy on Eleanor: she is young, she is white, perhaps they can guess that she has a greenhouse looking thing from the address on her driver’s license.

I’m 1400 miles away from my mom and dad. They are in Minnesota, where I live. I am back in Massachusetts, where I once lived, for the summer. I’m sleeping in a house my parents haven’t sold yet, playing in a blues band every Tuesday night for $200 total at a club that, according to their promotions, is “the only straight bar in Provincetown”. We are playing in Western Mass. on the weekends. The spending money is from these blues gigs, the house, the Toyota Previa we drive in, it’s all bankrolled by my family. My brother is four and a half years older than me and he is the closest thing I have to an authority figure. He’s responsible in a junior in college way. I don’t call my mom, dad, brother to tell them about the accident. Why? On whose phone? With what phone card? Everybody’s fine. Somebody picks Eleanor, Conor and I up, we skip the movie we were gonna go see and the night proceeds quasi-normally.

At that time, heading into my junior year of high school in St. Paul, I had already been through my first divorce. Sitting in front of the Alumni House of Macalester College in St. Paul in the spring before we moved to St. Paul my mom pulled the rental car over and said “I propose a divorce”. We were at each other’s throats. I wanted to stay in Massachusetts. I had a girlfriend named Karissa, she was a junior. She was no-joke-sexually-ambitious and she loved me. She wrote all her yearbook notes diagonally. She drove me to Northampton to go recording shopping and she convinced me I liked Tori Amos. I was in heaven. And then my dad got a job in Minnesota. Not any job, he got the job as the President of Macalester. It was futile to be mad at my dad about it, when would he find the time to respond? He was wrapping up affairs at his job at Williams College and directing all his home energy towards talking about blues music and new movies. I saw my dad behind a set of papers for much of my childhood. In elementary school Dad would take me to breakfast before school on Tuesdays. He’d read the New York Times while I tried to find things interesting enough to get him to fold the paper and look at me. I think it’s why I’m great at asking questions now. Probably no prouder moment than seeing that Science Tuesday crumple down and see his moustache turn up and have him ask “explain that, what do you mean?” But there was no paper to crumple here, Dad had one leg at Macalester, one leg at Williams College and at home he was just letting his nuts hang.

But I could be mad at Mom. She was there, she listened and she fought back. I hated her. I blamed her for moving our family to Minnesota. Granted, my dad landed the job, but my mom had told him she wanted out of Massachusetts after she got fired from teaching job at the Elementary school. I thought I hated her for all of that and all of that alone. But I hated her for the way she treated me when I was a little boy. The way she treated me when me gaining weight at age five confused her, and the way she treated me as the weight just kept on coming. The way she treated me when she couldn’t get back into the teaching world cause there were no jobs when her kids were finally in school. The way she told me she’d feed me paper towels to help me lose weight. The way she called me dumb shit more than she called me Sean. But I thought there was a rule, no matter how much you hated your parents they couldn’t hate you back.

On the day of the divorce we were driving around the Twin Cities looking at different high schools I might go to when we move out here. We skipped Cretin-Derham Hall cause there’s a note in the guidebook that says “good page boys won’t have hair growing past their ears”. So we are in the car, fighting, without an agenda, with some gap of time before my Dad came back from his meetings and we had to make a half-hearted attempt to appear like we were fine. We are yelling at each other and she pulls over to this quiet lane on Summit where no cars are whirring by. She says “I propose a divorce. You don’t like me. And I don’t like you. And we are a family. We can get through these next couple years before you go to college apart. We’ll share a home, but we’ll stay out of each other’s way”. A truce between completely unequal partners, astronomically unequal partners.

It made so much sense at the time. I didn’t like her and I learned that day that she didn’t like me. It wasn’t an uneasy peace. It was just a peace. She said what I thought she couldn’t even feel. And it exposed this rawness of the world that changed me from that day forward. There are actually no laws, no rules, and no conventions against hating your kids. There are no rules against telling your ninth grader you want a divorce. It’s shit. It’s forgivable shit, but shit nonetheless. But my Mom never asked for forgiveness. She’s dead, but I have no idea if she even remembered that day for the twelve or so more years she would live. I made her a card for Mother’s Day once when we were in a better place telling her I was thankful for how far we had come from that time, and she cried. But we never talked about it. That day I learned that there aren’t rules, there aren’t things you can count on.

Back to the car accident: I’m a divorced rising junior in high school making small talk with Conor while he ignores his girlfriend and I’ve never felt freer. I was a musician, high school was a technicality. I was on my own, my mom and dad were a technicality. There were no apps to look for a new mom. There was just me getting home somehow to our old empty house in Williamstown and telling Steve “I got in my first car accident today”. He asked a couple questions, made sure I was okay, we played a game of Road Rash on the Sega Genesis and we went to bed. Two brothers with a more different set of parents than I think he’ll ever realize.

When Life Is Lemons, Lemons

Sometimes life bears down on you from every direction. I have learned that my natural cries for help at times like this are not very fruitful. They generally involve fishing for enthusiasm from support from people I don’t know on social media. Sometimes when life is hard, the best bet is to let it be hard. Before social media I faced difficulty largely by looking internally and to people who loved me. When a bad thing happened I didn’t immediately metabolize it by thinking I could share it on my network. And I need to go back to that. Pain, disappointment, they are all a part of life and none of that pain will be resolved in a meaningful way by seeing how many likes it gets or how many “you’ll get there bud” messages you want. It flicks the little light in your heart, that little alert feeling. I didn’t even have a word for it, but a feeling in your shoulders and the top of your head when you have new notifications. I need to hurt without that feeling, I need to grieve without that feeling. I am already pretty good at smiling, laughing and loving without that feeling. But pain is something different. And accepting the way through pain as largely solitary is something I want to get back to. Is it a strange half-measure to say that but write about it on my squarespace not my ms word journal? Absolutely. It’s a half measure because I am trying to make sure that this page documents much of my spectrum with the slightest bit of compression. I’ll keep the low lows and the high highs to myself. But I want to publish a more complete version of who I am than I am comfortable doing on social media sites. So here I am. These lemons are delicious, I’m gonna go eat them alone.

Don’t Punch Down or Up, Stop Punching

After a night with friends on Friday night I sat down and watched all of the new Chappelle special “The Closer” on Netflix. The next day I listened and re-listened to a number of podcasts featuring the linguist John McWhorter. These two individuals are worlds apart in many ways but I’m writing about my reflections on both because there are some small through lines between the biggest points they are both arguing in the public stage. Briefly: Dave Chapelle is widely mentioned in the conversation of greatest stand-up comedian of all time and frequently forgotten as someone who built his career on misogynistic and racially insensitive skits on the Chappelle Show*. I loved the Chappelle Show, I hear the jokes differently now, but I do still enjoy watching the show. Throughout his last couple Netflix specials, Chappelle has been making more jokes at the expense of the trans community. In the past couple specials these statements have generally been an aside, not the centerpiece of the special. After watching “The Closer” I’m comfortable saying that the thrust of it is to establish some fraudulent differences in the freedom to denigrate, critique, scapegoat and kill black people relative to the freedom to denigrate, critique and scapegoat trans-people. This shit is not laugh out loud comedy, but Chappelle has made specials in the past that weren’t laugh out loud funny that I still thought were excellent. Chappelle’s thesis, which I don’t buy wholesale, doesn’t do enough to establish the fact that there are plenty of black trans people, who stand in a confusing relationship to Chappelle’s relatively cut and dry judgements.

Do these differences actually exist? Is saying something disparaging about a trans person or about transexuals as a group a third rail in public discourse in a way that saying something disparaging about a black person or a black people as a group not? One of Chappelle’s big tent poles is establishing that DaBaby killed a black man in a Walmart and the world didn’t blink, DaBaby’s cache didn’t really drop, but DaBaby rushed to backpedal when he spoke on stage at Rolling Loud saying negative things about gay and trans people. Based on my media consumption, Chappelle is right, I had to google DaBaby killing this black man (the charges have been dropped) but I was very familiar with DaBaby’s statement on stage at Rolling Loud. That stayed in the zeitgeist, but the killing did not.

An aside: I believe the Netflix employees are 100% in the right to walk-out and demand the Chappelle show to be removed. Whether they prevail or not, they cash a check from this organization and if they don’t like what’s coming out, they have every right to leverage their power to try to change that. Jaclyn Moore, a writer and showrunner on “Dear White People” said she wouldn’t work with Netflix. In the interview I saw she also went out of her way to say that Chapelle should be free to say whatever he wants, but she didn’t want to be a part of a company that put out the content. I find no issue with her doing that, and I find no issue with people critiquing her for doing it.

Chapelle has a point: what issues do we and don’t we make third rail issues. I think about this a lot in reference to Israel and Judaism. Many people in our world (but particularly in the US and Western Europe) like to equate a critique of Israel with Anti-Semitism. People get fired and forced into huge apologies for critiques that I think they have every right to make. Why can’t you critique Israel? They are a country. You can critique countries. But if you want to critique Israel you have to be ready to lose your job over it. I don’t think those are the right stakes. I don’t think the answer is creating more and more third rail issues that can’t be discussed. But making certain things third rails is a way that many of our workplaces, homes and public gathering spaces have become more inclusive, more inviting. Fifty years ago, ten years ago, five years ago— there were comments, actions, innuendo and disposition that I believe made the world a worse place. Creating these third rails improved things, but over enforcement of them, expansion of them, yes I think they could make things worse. These conclusions seem destined to be forever gray. There will never be clear lines that stay solid. Chappelle seems to be pointing out that it’s a lot riskier to walk on the third rail in regards to the trans community than to kill a black man. That’s not punching down in my opinion, it’s not comedy, but it’s within the realm of what Chapelle has presented in the past as a celebrated media personality.

But during the whole special Chapelle does all these ticky-tacky side jokes that are dismissive, unimaginative and truly tasteless. He checks every box, misgendering someone on purpose, tossing in tons of letters after LGBTQ+ to minimize this identifier. It’s shitty material. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t need to suppress laughter, it’s cold and it’s pathetic. And I think ticky-tacky side jokes like that about the black community would get you roasted. ROASTED. Chappelle, you have a point, you have a point that’s worth exploring. And you’ve crossed out the punchlines in previous specials when you had something to get across, why do you have to keep on throwing in this hateful, non-insightful shit?

And that’s where John McWhorter comes in. Briefly: McWhorter is on the short list of thinkers who get called up to provide a counter-narrative to the anti-racism positions of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. There’s plenty more to his work than that, but it is that work that is making the rounds right now. McWhorter is black and he speaks with more care than I often see in this space about the welfare of black people. A lot of anti-racist material is marketed, discussed and consumed by a white audience. I consider that in some ways a positive example of white people having an appetite to understand racism in a way that many of us don’t naturally gain an understanding of from our everyday actions. But McWhorter seems asks whether some of the cut and dry metrics that Kendi proposes for moving forward towards an anti-racist society will have negative impacts on the very populations it aims to support. GREAT JOHN. I enjoyed your points and I took a lot from it. Namely, I’ve always felt profoundly more upset about a police officer killing a black person than a civilian of any race killing a black person. I think some of that is reasonable, civilians don’t receive their income from my tax dollars. Civilians don’t kill people and have me pick up the cost of civil lawsuits. Civilians don’t kill people wearing a uniform emblazoned with municipal and county authority. I feel I have more control over the police than I do over civilians, so their misdeeds not only worry me more, they feel more changeable. But, if as a whole country we direct all of our ire, concern and protest against police killing black men are we doing a disservice to the black men and women who are killed by civilians or who will be killed by civilians in the coming years if nothing is done? I believe we can do both, but I do feel recalibrated by John McWhorter. But I wish McWhorter would stop making ticky-tacky little takedowns of writers and thinkers like Kendi and DiAngelo. I don’t expect McWhorter to be funny, it’s not in his job description but when he says things like “now I don’t have X for a middle name” he seems to just be attacking a person for fun, for kicks. But it’s also racialized right. He’s cutting down Kendi for having a tangibly righteous middle name. Come on John, it’s his middle name, keep rolling and keeping arguing for real. And why should you keep arguing? You’ve got a vital point against some of Kendi’s most fundamental arguments, why water them down with that BS? If you think it’s because it’s funny, you need a bigger circle.

McWhorter and Chapelle both seem to be establishing that there are new groups ascending to power and they both question their authority and their methods. For Chapelle he feels that influencers within America have prevailed in creating a protected class for trans people in media spaces in record time relative to black people. For McWhorter he feels that the new wave of anti-racist thinkers has created a singular view about race in America and it has become predominate not because it is right but because people fear speaking out against it. At their best both of these thinkers could be speaking truth to power. But by engaging in potshots and dehumanizing minimizations I fear they are watering down the validity of their most defensible points.

*This is not an out and out indictment of The Chappelle Show. I enjoyed that show when it was released, it formed a lot of my understanding of comedy and of Dave Chappelle. But I believe that it’s important to remember that Chappelle has pushed out controversial content in the past.

What Makes it Magical

I think about breathing magic into my work almost daily. At my favorite moments in life I’ve taken in something magical from a spot that could be mundane. The grand majority of my working life has been dedicated towards music and we’ve all had a moment where a drive between point A and point B becomes a thesis statement in your life because of how J. Mascis played guitar, or how Bernard Purdie hit a fill or because of what Aretha Franklin sang.

With my job as a radio host I have the opportunity to share those magic moments with the audience. I can’t be there for them, I haven’t had that many a magic moment with someone reading underwriting about a new brewery opening in Minneapolis. But, the mundane glue that holds together a moment where a song sneaks up on you is an absolutely essential part of the magic. There’s little magic in a replay of a homerun. Just like in the movie Beautiful Girls when Michael Rappaport’s character tells Dillon’s that you can’t tape “Rich Man, Poor Man”, you gotta watch it with the commercials like everybody else.

Packaging the magic. Packaging the magic on bass. Packaging the magic on the radio. Packaging the magic with trivia. It’s not a science, it’s not easy and it is simple.

Getting Coverage

ARE YOU PLANNING ON RELEASING MUSIC AND HOPING TO GET COVERAGE, TRACTION AND ATTENTION? Here are some specific tips.

Make music that spreads far.
If you share your tune with ten people who you trust to actually listen to it and ten days later it’s got under 30 views/listens, you’ve likely created something you’re pleased with, but it doesn’t spread far. You’ve made a song that doesn’t drive listeners to share with their spouse, their co-worker, their neighbor. If your sound doesn’t spread at that small organic level of uptake there is little that a media organization will be able to help you with. If your music doesn’t make at least a modest spread when you share with a decent size cross section of people it’s time to go back to the drawing board; it’s not time to write a press release.

Make your story easy to tell.
Read/listen through the articles, interviews, reviews that prompted you to take that next step and listen to the artist. What did you read/see/hear that made you want to take that next step. Was it a photo? Was it a story? Was it a quote? Was it a description? Review your own media offerings (your press release, your press kit, your social media presence, your photography) and see where you are coming up short. You will come off false if you carbon copy your heroes. But look at the fundamentals, was their story specific or universal? Was their photo strange in regards to background, attire or more. When you’ve had an artist you’ve shared with your friends, what did you tell them before you pressed play? What would you hope someone would say about your work? Now say that in your materials.

Take interest in the publications you hope to be covered in.
I understand that there are artists who don’t listen/read/review the media they are covered in. I never got there as an artist. I believe that being aware of a host, editor, music director’s personal preferences, idiosyncrasies and favorites can help you pitch your music. Your interest in coverage is likely a career oriented view. There is nothing wrong with that, that’s how it should be. But getting there will involve becoming personally aware and connected with the spots you are angling on for coverage. This knowledge will save you time, you’ll know who to pitch what to. Be strategic in what you pursue. There is an ecosystem to this. There are likely 10,000+ aspiring artists pursuing the ears of the most elite writers/hosts/bloggers in the music space. Look for the outlets with the emptier inboxes, the more animated ears and with pre-existing coverage on new artists.

Trap, don’t hunt.
Stole this one from Dessa. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And don’t yell at that basket if they don’t cover what you’ve shared. Make your way by finding a number of outlets that might have interest. When one comes back with nothing, you still have other irons in the fire. Don’t let your publicity plan to bang really hard on one inbox of one major media voice and hope that they will for sure listen. Diversify your pursuits, treat each with a sober awareness that they won’t all turn into great coverage for your next project.

Maintain a good email list and don’t act like that’s all that matters.
Keep track of who should be receiving your information. . .if someone’s new position suggests they don’t need to receive music press releases anymore, cut em off of the distribution list. Keep this all up, do some of the housekeeping directly with them i.e., “I see you leveled up to being a food editor, loved your most recent piece and farm to table. . .do you still want my press releases coming to your inbox?” Your email list helps for rare blanket announcements. . .your coverage will come from more pointed pitches.

Be Easy to Write/Talk About
This is different to me than “make your story easy to tell”. If someone needs a radio edit, send that de-shitted track over fast. If someone needs a photo in a different size, fix that up and check the attachment before you send it. If you can control your schedule such that you can be available on relatively short notice. . .do that. Get a nice chain of command going if possible with your full group so that you can say yes or no quickly to opportunities (and try to say yes when it is a fit for you).

Be Easy to be a Fan Of
When someone digs one of your songs, make sure that they can find more of your songs, invites to your shows, videos and a well curated social media presence. If I dig your song, go hunting for you and the most recent posts/announcements are from 2020 I’m going to figure you’ve cooled off of the music thing, taken your talents to Miami et cetera. Make sure that when your potential fans want to go deeper, they have a place to go.

Find Places You and Few Others Fit
Be imaginative about where your take off could start. It could start from a sports magazine, from a cooking blog, from an article in one of those magazines in airplanes. Imagine why you might be a fit there and pitch (that doesn’t mean boiler plate press releases).

Make Your Shows Something People Won’t Forget
The likely way you’ll first see any kind of money in the music game is from a live show. If you can fill shows long after you’ve stopped begging your best friends to come, most of the other things on this list are immaterial. Develop a live show that can be enjoyed without knowing your music beforehand. Develop a live show that might get people 50% of where they need to be to feel like they had a good night out. You aren’t going to hit right away with a solid 45 minutes. But video tape yourself performing at home or your space: are you entertained, are you distracted, are you bored, are you engaged visually?

Do It All Over Again
Don’t believe that an absence of coverage, of interest of fans is a nail in the coffin. It’s an invitation back to the drawing board. And if you don’t like sitting at the drawing board you aren’t necessarily built for this anyway. Going back and creating something else, and tweaking your musical work and your promotional efforts should be a welcome invite to a lifelong creative, if it feels like a step backwards you don’t have your priorities placed in the proper order.

Over Under NBA

My NBA over under picks:

Nets = 56.5 - Under
Bucks - 53.5 - Over
Lakers - 52.5 - Over
Jazz 52.5 - Under
Suns 50.5 - Over
76ers - 50.5 - Under
Heat - 48.5 - Under
Warriors - 48.5 - Under
Mavericks - 47.5 - Over
Nuggets - 47.5 - Over
Hawks - 47.5 - Over
Celtics - 46.5 - Under
Trailblazers - 45.5 - Under
Clippers - 44.5 - Under
Bulls 43.5 - Over
Pacers 43.5 - Under
Knicks - 42.5 - Over
Grizzlies - 41.5 - Under
Pelicans - 38.5 - Over
Hornets - 38.5 - Under
Raptors - 36.5 - Over
Kings - 35.5 - Under
Timberwolves 35.5 - Over
Wizards - 34.5 - Under
Spurs - 29.5 - Over
Cavaliers - 26.5 - Under
Rockets - 26.5 - Over
Pistons - 25.5 - Over
Thunder - 23.5 - Over
Magic - 22.5 - Over

Filing Taxes So Late

I filed for an extension on my taxes in 2020 cause everything was so stressful and difficult to navigate in the summer, making plans for Trivia Mafia, dealing with a young kid, being on the radio, all of it. And now I’m taking a ten minute break from my frantic document finding and hunting. Even after all this work, we will still work with a tax preparer to help us actually file. Why? Well, all the businesses, Trivia Mafia LLC and even a sleepy one like Heiruspecs. . .they are a lot to navigate. Also I just need to be 100% transparent here, child care is outrageously expensive and bakes in inequities from day one. Child care is an essential service, the saints who do it deserve to be paid more, I also don’t think the owners of these spots are lining their pockets in the best of times, nor in the worst of times. But, because my family has means we are paying the equivalent of in-state tuition (it’s inexact since one kid wasn’t in daycare til July of 2020, but the full bill for 2020 is 20k. 20k. There’s some logic to daycare being expensive. It’s hours intensive, you want quality trained professionals doing it, there are tremendous amounts of licensure expenses that go with doing it. But, can we not recognize that of all the places where the financial station of your parents shouldn’t have a bearing on your upbringing this is number one? Give all the children clean classrooms, delicious food, awesome projects, time outside, engaged parents. It’s not happening. And by the time the kids are five, my daughter has a different level of nutrition, of reading comprehension, of so many things than a kindergartner who has been getting catch as catch can child care through informal networks and supports. Quality daycare shouldn’t just be something for the wealthy. Also, it seems to me that most daycares feel very little mandate (and perhaps a lack of finances) to do anything progressive with making their services available on a sliding scale or to otherwise support their care going to a greater cross section of the community they serve. I know there are things on the table that will help make some of the changes permanent in regards to caring for young children and I sincerely hope they do.

Rocking on the Radio/Rocking at Home

Man I’m having a nice ass day. Ran a bags tournament in the front yard this morning. I don’t care for bags too much but I sure care for hanging out with friends and laughing. The older kids on the block are starting to take care of the younger kids and I love that. I told a nine year old to “shove it” on his birthday and I feel great about it.

Now I’m spending a couple hours pitching with Bill DeVille and Mac Wilson on the Current. Got the audio cranked and I’m listening to Aurora singing her tune in the Current’s studio, one of my favorite goosebumping in-studios.

Damn. And tonight a bunch of the people on the block myself included are trying out different chilis. I’m going with a white chicken chili and I’m all in. Plus there’s a new neighbor named Tyler who described his chili as thin and soupy and I am curious if he’s just downplaying it to step back in and deliver serious flavor. But if it’s legit thin and soupy what exactly are you doing.

Working Saturday nights for now about five years it is just such a gift when I get the night off. So I’m going to chill and enjoy my night. Now Mac is playing that tune “California” by Phantom Planet and I’m turning it up even louder. What a treat.

Who Does She Hope To Be?

Today I’m putting on “Who Does She Hope to Be” by Sonny Sharrock. This is music I grew up with cause of my brother’s influence. This to me is ultimate Record Store music. It comes on and you have to know everything about it. The song is mysterious, it’s collaborative and it doesn’t work like many jazz songs. The melody is short and it comes in frequently. It’s more like a bookend than a melody. It’s all legends on here with the leader perhaps being the least well-known. But Sonny is no joke and I hope you can enjoy this song.

I had a moment of pure simple joy last night climbing into bed. I ran trivia at the 331 Club and like so many Sundays in the last fifteen years that I’ve been doing that gig, I was ho-hum about doing it until I got there. But upon arrival I ran into a couple of friends and I put a funk playlist that I enjoy on to the speakers. The energy felt good and trivia was good. We are trying out the new app for Trivia Mafia and it is going well. It has been a tremendous uphill to get it going good and I give credit to Chuck Terhark from Trivia Mafia and the team from Code of the North for their work. After I ran trivia I spent a seemingly unimportant 5 minutes talking to a couple friends outside the bar. That included Benjamin from the 331 (bartender who also likes jazz, here’s one of his playlists). Mainly I talked to a woman whose name I don’t know who plays on a good team from 331 and I found out used to work at Gigi’s Cafe and now works at Pat’s Tap. She said she might make me a lb of the tuna salad from Gigi’s just as a gift which warmed my heart. She had a really warm energy about her (I know that sounds hippy dippy but I do mean it). She told me stop by Pat’s Tap and it had me realizing it’s been maybe a year plus since I’ve just gone into a bar to go into a bar, not to run trivia or do something else. The idea sounds incredibly intriguing to me. On the way home I listened to the podcast Ezra Klein did with the dude who will most likely be the next mayor of NYC, Eric Adams. He mainly talked about how becoming vegan helped him put his diabetes into remission cause he’s got a book on the topic. But he also talked about how to meet and fix problems at their root as opposed to just addressing the symptoms. By most accounts Eric Adams gathered a cross-section of NYC to support him at a time when a former cop who is firmly centrist on many points of view might not have locked the nomination. I enjoyed it.

The pure moment of joy was after getting home, doing my small set of night exercises, making the coffee for today and doing the littlest bit of cleaning. I climbed into bed and before I did my reading I thought about laying next to my spectacular wife, being about 15 feet from two daughters and being exactly 1/8 of an inch away from my punk ass dog Warren. I live in a home with the people I love, I do things I enjoy for work and magical things happen where I get to connect with heroes and interview them. I’ve gotten to interview Chuck D, Stone Gossard, Naughty by Nature, Michael Bland. I slept well last night and woke up with a good spirit.

Give this Sonny Sharrock album a try and see if it puts you in a good place too.

The Late Night Hype

My last hour on the air on Saturday nights I stop taking requests and customarily I spend my time listening to great music very loudly and mindlessly scanning twitter. I like loud music, I don’t really like scanning mindlessly on twitter. Saturday is the best time to be on twitter. People talk about the sports they like, the events they are at. People make funny observations. But I scan it, hungry for some zeitgeist I don’t always get. Maybe I’m looking for the perfect song to play on the radio. Maybe I’m looking for something magical about the night.

But running some thoughts on here might bring a different feel. God I love a good Saturday. Today I woke up a touch more hungover than I expected. Why? I drank Scotch and stayed up with my awesome neighbors. I also connected with my friends Rachel and John. We talked about the minor struggles in my life, the major struggles in hers and the difficulty of feeling like you are on solid ground in 2021. That wrapped up and I went across to my neighbors for last call. Found out my neighbor across the street’s grandfather is 100 years old. HE WAS IN WORLD WAR II. He was a veterinarian for Patton’s bulldog and a bunch of the pigeons they were using to send messages. Yes, that means he is a vet vet. But on top of that, the man has been around for so long. I was born in 1981, I was born into the arrogant post-history view of baby boomers. My dad told me Reagan was garbage but his influence wouldn’t last. He told me we’d run out of fossil fuels in my lifetime and he told me racism was slowly but methodically and consistently becoming less of a force in America. But, maybe somebody born in 1920 would’ve been told some variety of all of that pre the Depression, and then the world cuts open, Hitler and the Nazis walk in and we have one of the ugliest wars in history. Does a little boy or girl born in 1921 actually have something in common with 1981? Was it “morning in America” in both of those years? Remember when we acted like we were coming into the Roaring 20s? Remember July? Remember before DELTA? Not really, the memories just slip away. We are living somewhere new, we have to do something new. Do you know more Americans have died of COVID19 than died in World War II? Do you know that more people have died in this pandemic than in 1918? Do you know people keep dying everyday? Do you know a lot of them wouldn’t die if they took a vaccine? This shit is no joke. We are in the shit. We will be in the shit. I know a handful of people who point out we were meant to be born into this time, to do what needs to be done for these times. I am trying to feel called to a higher action, to step up and do more cause the world is worse. You try to find it and it slips away in the busy run of the days. I have two kids, I work two jobs, I play in a band that is still active. These are all fake excuses. I feel called to work to make my city better, to make my state better. My god there is room for improvement. It’s carving out that time not in huge unimaginable chunks, but find it in a free hour and more. Make it happen.

I was going to talk about how great today was. But I got sidetracked. The Current (me DJing tonight) is playing the song “Galacticana” by Strand of Oaks.

There’s something about this writer. Timothy Showalter. He makes a perfect song every two years. He’s been doing it for ten years. He’s not real famous, he’s not selling out big ass theaters, but he is making music that punches you in the heart and the people who need to hear it get to hear it. He’s the dream. Music is the dream.

Playing records for you on Saturdays is the dream. Here’s why the Saturday was good. I wake up, Rachel lets me sleep for maybe a short 10 minutes after the kids want breakfast. This is after probably twenty plus minutes of them being up but not demanding to go downstairs. This is kind. Rachel doesn’t know it, but I feel pretty tired. I make breakfast every morning for the family, but on Saturdays I make pancakes. Cottage cheese supported pancakes for the rest of the family and some paleo cakes for me based on advice from my nutritionist (I don’t do paleo in general, she just pointed out that regular pancakes is a hard way for me to start a Saturday). I made the pancakes, we ate. Rachel let me sneak in a shower which is such a hangover diminisher for me. We walked to Mattocks Park. This is my happy place when it comes to kids. I see my kids play and laugh and walk around. We ran into a neighbor I don’t know too well named Tyler. Nice. Just a great start to a morning. We got home and we had to eat early cause Sadie and I had a swimming appointment (dear future reader of this blog, for some amount of time after COVID19 became endemic you had to make appointments at swimming pools).

I warmed up pizza from the night before. (My neighbors and I determined the best thin crust pizza in 55105, it’s Italian Pie Shoppe first, Davanni’s second, Carbone’s third and Skinner’s fourth). We had leftovers of Skinner’s so I warmed that up for lunch. BTW, Skinner’s came in last, pizza is still amazing. Especially the next day. Simple lunch. Took Sadie swimming. Four and half year olds are magical. Sadie has some logic, her meltdowns have some cohesion to them and they are rarer. What they have been replaced with is just this joyous curiosity that explodes out of her mouth, her eyes, her arms. She is just wrapping herself around the world. It’s breathtaking. So at the pool she is discovering how independent she can be in the pool with a swim noodle. And the hour just goes by. AN HOUR. WITH A KID! It feels like ten minutes. She just swims around the pool, talks to bigger kids, laughs, grabs a ball, throws it, swims more. Climbs out, jumps in. And the whole time I am just glowing. My daughter is swimming. I love swimming. I loved swim team. I have no idea where she will land but this hour is magic. It’s not a lesson, it’s not practice. It’s me and my daughter in a pool. God damn it. Then we jump into the shower and Sadie can get so clean that she won’t have to take a bath tonight. She likes to use “daddy shampoo” and then she’ll ask for “Y soap”. This is all so magical to me.

I try to go get an Oil Change with Sadie in the back of the car and the good people at Valvoline told me my oil was fine. I tipped $5 for their trouble and headed back home. I made a big ass restaurant style Caesar salad. And there is nothing redeeming or “salady” about a Caesar salad with croutons, parmesan cheese and dressing, but friends, I bought the perfect kind of croutons. My god, what a treat. Caesar down, we decide to go visit Ida, the new baby our friends Anna and Amy just had. I’ve known and loved Anna in one way or another for 24 years of my forty years on this Earth. This is her first child and to see her and her wife Amy smiling, feeding and interacting with this little bundle of joy. It’s too much. We are in that part of life where friends are raising children, bringing new spirits into our Earth. My kids want to play on a hammock that is guaranteed to throw them off at the slightest alteration of their position. So Rachel and I take turns catching up with Amy, Anna and their new baby. I can’t hold this baby, I can’t hug Amy, I can’t hug Anna. I think of it as just part of the territory, but it’s just terrible. It’s so sad, there’s a distance this disease demands of us, a distance we aren’t designed to maintain. I want to hold that baby. I also skipped out on holding babies for so much of my life. We don’t expect young men without their own children to hold babies. Why? It’s magical, it’s special, and the only way you learn is doing it. I’m holding every baby the universe will let me for the rest of my years on this rotating rock.

Somewhere into this hang I realize that I have forgotten that my best friend Martin is holding a small get together and he kind of started it early so that I could be there for it before I had to go into work. I forget about these things cause I’ve changed my relationship with Facebook and with social media. I don’t know about it. And I don’t read all the texts between me and my friends. The pros: I’m present with my kids, I sleep better, I’m a better husband. The cons: shit that is important to my community sometimes blows right past me. Change plans and we order thai food instead of cook it. We get it together and end of grabbing Coconut Thai on Grand Avenue. I make off with my pad thai and egg rolls and head to Martin’s house. It’s just him and his wife at the party and it’s beautiful. We just sit and talk. It’s actually what you want out of a party. Friends show up as I leave to go to my shift at the Current.

The Current is wonderful on Saturdays. It’s a stressful time to be a part of this radio station but on Saturday I connect with magic. The classical jocks are running around making sure their stuff is lined up for their shifts. Mac is sitting in darkness playing jams on the Current and I prepare to go live on The Current’s FB page. Tonight we’re gonna rock out and play rock songs. The Current is largely a rock station, I enjoy some rock but ultimately, I don’t gravitate towards straight ahead rock. Alt country rock? Great. Fancy yacht rock rock? I’m in. Rock that has a ton of blues to it? Bring it on. But just straight up rocking, I usually like to have an ambassador to bring me into that, my brother or somebody. So it’s a really fun area to take requests in. I know the hits, I know the jams, but it’s like rediscovering them cause I don’t go back to this style all that often. So the shift has been a joy. I had a big printer problem up at the top of the shift but after that, smooth ass sailing. Beautiful, turn up the speakers and hear songs from The Walkmen, The Velvet Underground, Muse, Leon Bridges, Heart, Chastity Brown. It’s heaven. You don’t understand the speakers they put into studios. I think these speakers cost maybe $15,000. Could be so wrong about that. It could be more. But listen, they sound like a recording studio, I am basically in a recording studio. Musicians, you know how your shit sounds in the studio? That’s how I get to listen to all this music. And on Saturdays I get calls from kiddos who want to hear a song on the radio, lonely friends who want their shift to move just a little bit faster, people who want a little more community than Spotify can give them but maybe a little less community than being at a gathering will give them. We do this magic thing together and we’ve done it every Saturday. We didn’t miss one during COVID19, we don’t pre-tape, we can’t pre-tape. The show is the hours, the particular night, the moment. You can’t plan a Saturday night, why would you want to. And now I’m about six minutes past my shift and I feel this magic thing leaving my body. It feels like when you walk out of a movie where you forgot about yourself, it’s like waking up from a nap where someone stole your brain and gave it back just a little different. There are DJs who don’t realize how magical this thing can be, how special it can be. These DJs might even be better than me, in many ways, but when I get on this station and do this you can tell I know it’s magical and you can tell I know it doesn’t have shit to do with me. It has everything to do with the amplifiers, drumkits, voices, turntables and emotions that comes out of these $15,000 speakers but more importantly head into headphones all over the world, into coffee shops, into cars, into homes, into card games, into awkward first dates, into snack shopping at a grocery store. Today a couple times I popped out of my studio and coordinated a little bit of exercise with Scott Blankenship at classical. We did a plank. We did 20 squats, we did 20 jumping jacks. It was cool. Today was magical, tonight was magical. Life is good, the world is not ruined. We are all here for a reason, we can all play our part in helping the world out of this pandemic, out of this incessant racism, out of climate change. We are on a ruinous path. We are not ruined. And it’s not just the next generations responsibility. I counted on the forty year old to get shit right when I was a little kid. They didn’t do it. That doesn’t mean we have to do the same. Nobody expects us to do the same anymore. There’s space to change.

New Thoughts

For a long time there was a clear pull (particularly in Minnesota) towards media coverage and attention going towards white artists performing music that was started by and more associated with black artists in general. I believe there may be a bit of a switch happening where now black artists who are performing music more associated with white artists are getting the media attention. I HAVE TWO VERY IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT THIS:

When it comes to American music, black people made it. You might hear country music now and think about white people, and some of the vanguard contributors of almost every genre are white, but the building blocks artists and the most elite and most successful performers and writers of American music in all genres are predominately black people.
Secondly, I don’t aspire to be in the business of telling anyone what their music sounds like racially. I don’t listen to a black rapper and say “you sound white on that verse”, I don’t listen to a white singer and say “you sound black on that chorus”. It’s a stupid way to listen to music and a really strange way to compliment or insult someone’s artistry. So what I am bringing up is that I am hearing black artists use sounds, compositional styles et cetera that are frequently more associated with white artists. Is the foundation of these sounds still rooted firmly in black music? Yes. Is the reason these sounds are more often associated with white artists related to an unwillingness to give black artists full access to the highway and instead encourage them to stay in “their” lane? Yes.

I have been struggling with staying focused and one of the reasons I’m here and not on twitter is because today I am winning. I have been getting more sleep, I have been trying to do something to mark the end of the working day so as to feel disinterested in checking the computer again. I have a bunch of work waiting for me, but this demarcation is helping me come into the mornings with better spirit.

This weekend was magical. My dad and his wife came into town to watch my kid’s starting Thursday afternoon. It took about 100 emails to sort out all the details, share all the routines, the insurance cards, the whole nine. But it was worth it to take a couple days away from my girls. Sadie is 4 and a half, Naomi is 1 and a half. They’re great but shit if they don’t take everything out of my soul on a daily basis. So, to spend Thursday evening eating an expensive shrimp cocktail in a shirt that didn’t have stains on it felt pretty marvelous. Got to see Honeybutter and King Pari at the Entry for King Pari’s EP release show. That was so fun. Ran into a lot of great friends, was completely blown away by King Pari and the band they had assembled. It was amazing.

Got to hit my favorite YMCA on Friday morning (if you haven’t been to the downtown MPLS YMCA find a way to do it, it’s such a treat). I also got to play pool in the lobby of Rachel’s fancy ass work building and it was fun. I would like to play more pool. Dear universe, make that happen and start adding back pool tables to my favorite bars. Friday night I saw Martin Devaney’s new band at the White Squirrel, was a treat, would recommend.

I spent Saturday morning alone. PARENTS OF AMERICA: when is the last time you spent some time legit alone. I mean alone. I sat and read in a courtyard. I took a super long shower. I walked around downtown. ALONE! It is so necessary. I spent the rest of the weekend with two of my best friends, Martin and Kevin up at a cabin in Princeton. Two nights at a cabin is not enough to get all the way cabinned up, but I got to sit around and listen to great records, take a nature walk through a county park and eat some great food. I was thankful to get to relax and take it all in.

I have to work on finishing the Heiruspecs record. I’m hitting some block where I don’t want to do the last five things I need to do to finish the record and it’s stupid. But even writing this is reminding me it is stupid and I know I can grind and get through it. The record is really good, I’m excited to share it with the world.

Year Long Goals

It’s goal setting time at MPR and I just completed my work goals with my supervisor on Friday. I don’t love everything about the process of making goals (who does), but it does have me thinking about setting goals in my personal life as well. So here’s some goals for MCPHERSON.CLUB FY 69!

I COMFORTABLY PUT SHIT ON MY WALLS
I’ve hung probably 15 photos total in my life on walls. I’m scared shitless that I will hang them badly. I have some of my basses on wall stands downstairs in the basement, one looks fine, one is falling off and I only put the back up P-Bass on that one cause a) it’s not a great instrument and b) it can 100% sustain a fall. I want hooks on my walls, I want shelves, I want all of that. And it is so intimidating. While I started going over my personal goals it was while our superstar neighbor was helping put up shelves in our house cause Rachel had hit her limit for figuring it out. That’s where I am. We have two stud finders, I still struggle. I watch some youtube videos but I never do it enough times in a row to get that mastery. My solution? Practice a bunch out in the garage cause I need all sorts of hooks out there and I don’t think anyone cares if I put a bunch of marks on the walls in my garage.

I GO TO BED BEFORE 11PM UNLESS I’M WORKING OR AM WITH FRIENDS
Sleep is one of the missing ingredients to my overall health. But I struggle to not “crashturbate” as my friend Cahak describes it. You finish your day and you spend about 1 hour to 1.5 hours thumbing through your phone or your computer checking on things. And it’s not good leisure time. I’m not diving into an exciting article, I’m not watching a great program. I’m reading the first two paragraphs of a bunch of articles and looking at peers who are more successful than me. I’m updating the Star Tribune and mindlessly looking to see if someone has said something to me on twitter. My solution? When I complete the work I do that theoretically generates money (this does include writing trivia, playing bass, writing on bass et cetera) I say goodbye to my computer Cal Newport style. (I enjoy the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport).

I PLAY BASKETBALL COMPETITIVELY IN ST. PAUL
I used to play basketball every Wednesday in Northeast Minneapolis and I felt a burn, release and camaraderie that I don’t get from other sporting events. I connected with old friends, made a couple new friends and generally just had a bunch of fun running my ass off and getting schooled by better players who were still supportive of my work. Getting to Minneapolis weekly is just not happening on Wednesday nights. Period. It’s too hard to pull off timeline wise. My solution? I’m looking at JCC, Mac-Groveland, The Y and finding something that works for me.

OUR HOUSE IS CLEANER
I had the worst fight of my life with my dad over how clean my house except he doesn’t know it because we are adults so about 98% of it was just me talking to myself. The reason it’s a fight in my head is because the little shit other people say gets right under my skin and finds my very deep anguish about this. I grew up in a messy house. I gained a lot of good practices while living with roommates but nothing spectacular. I’ve had oases of clean but the default has been clutter. The hard part is the organization. Cleaning is much more doable. Rachel and I are making progress but it is a very hard thing to add to your identity. I’ve gotten comfortable with my living situation, but of course not all the way comfortable cause I can feel tension rising over this. Happy there’s been progress, there’s a lot more waiting for me. My solution? I do one thing a weekend that leaves a visible impact on some area of the house. Garage, bedroom, sport porch. I’ve been knocking these things out. The house is slowly less of a mess. I keep going and it starts to really be a different place.

Everyone Back in the Office Day!

It’s not lost on me that today was supposed to be the day that offices were supposed to be full again all over the United States. The Tuesday after Labor Day! We can start hugging again! Let’s go take in a concert, when do work happy hours start again. Instead my work morning starts with me walking into a studio at MPR that is supposed to be empty to do trivia on the Current’s show. Jade (our midday host and music director) is in there working hard thinking that it’s a Monday cause we all know today feels like the most Monday ass Monday in the world even though it is Tuesday. So, she throws on her mask and makes way for me to do trivia and all I can think is. . .it’s still fucking like this? We are still wearing masks, we are still broadcasting from different studios, people still aren’t going in to their offices.

Now here’s a silver lining friends. Maybe right now we are making the right decision by prioritizing schools. It’s more important that schools are open than offices. Hard stop period that’s it no question. So, if we are to choose one, we choose schools. How nervous am I that over 50% of Minnesota schools will be back on distance learning by October 1? I am really nervous. I think that ultimately a lot of individual classrooms will shut down, a lot of people will get sick, but I do think that school will prevail.

If we describe “here” as a place where so many Americans have founded fears of public health and of the medical industry. And if we describe “here” as a place where many Americans consume information that is crafted to radicalize them and to push them away from better choices I want to tell you a little bit of why I think we got here and a lot more about how to get to a better place.

Short run answers for increasing vaccination numbers are hard to come by. My first advice: don’t identify people who haven’t gotten the vaccine as idiots. There are idiots who have gotten the vaccine, and idiots who haven’t. But there are people who primarily make reasonable choices and in my opinion have made the unreasonable choice of forgoing a vaccine that will help their health and the community’s health. My biggest take on vaccine encouragement: if you swing some amount of institutional power. . .push it towards vaccine requirements. I co-own a trivia company, we just added a vaccine mandate. If you run a business, a theater, a community organization. . .if you have an institutional lever to pull to encourage vaccination. . .do it. If you have the plausible opportunity to support people who see obstacles to getting the vaccine and help them get over those do it. If you don’t have that institutional power. . .kill everyone with kindness. Thank people for getting the vaccine, support people who get the vaccine. Don’t dance on the grave of anti-vacc folks who are leaving their family to put together the pieces. Do I find it jarring or somehow poetic when one of these people dies? Perhaps some portion of me does, but a much larger portion thinks about the tremendous load a family will have to bear without a dad, a mom et cetera. I lead with that.

Long run, if our health system was more transparent our vaccine numbers would be better. There’s a lot of people who have a distrust, healthy or otherwise, of the government. Most of those folks still get driver’s licenses, still seek permits for rebuilding projects. Public health needs to be an unimpeachable good that receives wide latitude and high levels of support. It can’t be hollowed out financially, it can’t be rudely paternal towards people. There is also ground to recover. I am tired of folks footnoting on the Tuskegee experiments when discussing vaccine hesitancy. All that footnote does is treat medical racism like a historical relic which is criminally undereducated. Medical inequities and racism can be found yesterday, today and tomorrow. And I see some of the same “thin blue line” nonsense happening in the medical sector as I do in public safety. Call out bad actors, call out bad behaviors, call out bad outcomes. As a chorus of public health officials sound the alarm about the shortcomings of the system that chorus can push us to a different place. But if medical professionals are asking “treat us like an unimpeachably good service and respect us flat out with no regard for our track record” we’re screwed. We’re screwed because I believe it creates a disconnect and a disbelief that no one is willing to brook. And I ultimately believe that it is the institute’s responsibility to share it’s shortcomings, to address those shortcomings and to change the conversation. I don’t believe we can just demand it of individuals who can’t speak as a chorus. But I believe that if some statistically insignificant group of health professionals continued to routinely talk about this, some tides could change.

There’s a moment now where we need the public to trust the health care industry. We can only fix that with persuasion and persistence. There’s a moment coming in the future where we’ll need the public to trust the health care industry. We can do that by acknowledging shortcomings, addressing fears, righting wrongs and bringing a new level of discourse to how we talk about public health.

I Went to a Famous Fat Camp

Bloomberg just published a big article about the end of one of the titans of the weight loss summer camp world, Camp Shane.

I went to Camp Shane for three summers. After 6th, after 7th and after 8th. You lose a lot of weight, you get attention from girls for the first time, you starve, you come home. You field compliments, you start to eat like a normal person, you field questions, you gain the weight back and you go back for another summer. When I think about the destructive information I put into my body and my skin across those summers of binge and purge I shudder.

I always valued the experience from a social point of view. I ended up feeling a level of confidence that I believe has suited me well for the rest of my life. I learned how to make friends, I learned how to make girl friends and girlfriends for the first time really since early elementary school too. I had my first kiss there, a girl named Nikki who told me I was horrible at kissing and made me practice on her neck. I still have a couple pictures of my time from Camp Shane and to me I look happy. I’m losing weight, I’m getting to second base, I’m discovering new music.

This article doesn’t really change my memories of the camp, I am not shocked that horrible things happened there, I’m not shocked the family tore each other apart, avarice combined with money can do that. But it is one of those moments where everything I thought about Camp Shane is thrown a bit more into question. Is what I learned about romantic relationships from going to Camp Shane right? Are the friends I still wonder about maybe secretive about having gone to a fat camp? Are most of them still fat?

A lot of parents forced their kids to go to fat camp. Not mine. My parents didn’t force much of anything on me. That was sometimes good, sometimes bad. But it was my idea, looking in the back of the New York Times magazine and seeing a kid pulling at a drawstring with a foot long gap between his current size and what his pants could hold.

You can’t really write without a thesis but here I am, I loved fat camp, I have so many great memories, I lived more dangerously, more socially and more youthfully than I ever did at home. I felt something magical all the time in those summers. And I loved spending weeks not being singled out for being fat. If a girl liked me or she didn’t, cool, but the dealbreaker wasn’t my size. If my team lost or won at basketball, cool, but the dealbreaker wasn’t my size. That’s really how the world should be. But also in reading this article it’s clear that the world shouldn’t be like Camp Shane.

Live From Trader Joe’s

You’re loading your two bags of Trader Joe’s into the back of your Ford Taurus and just getting started with getting your youngest daughter (1.5 years) into the backseat of your car. A nice grandma age lady pushing a grocery looking lady comes up near your car (but not weird near). She is giving off that Grandma energy too. Talks to my daughter Naomi with that voice and says “are we sleepy? did we help daddy with the shopping*?”. I smile and make that noise that says “I have no problem with anything you’ve done but I have no interest in continuing this interaction you’ve started beyond that noise you just heard”. She walks away, puts “the shopping” in her sensible Mitsubishi. She is out of my mind but before I am already in my car I just hear her quietly say “oh fuck me” while looking at her cell phone.

*The term “the shopping” is also very Grandma vernac.

Can’t Handle this Part

When the pandemic was no one’s fault, I could handle it. Shit happens. Shit that kills hundreds of thousands of people happens.
When the handling of the pandemic was the Federal Government’s fault with a heavy load landing on Trump I could handle it. I considered that White House’s management skills to be an aberration. Now it was an aberration that killed grandpas and grandmas all across the country, but an aberration all the same.
Now it’s our fault. Now it’s the fault of my friend who says he’s waiting to get the vaccine because he wants to make sure we won’t turn into zombies lol. My friend’s zombie fear has me crying in the car worrying about my daughter’s health. My other friend’s need to do his own research before getting the shot has my wife whispering to me this morning “she (our daughter) is scared about wearing the mask at school, we have to tell her it’s okay, we have to act like it’s a fun thing”. I have very few friends who haven’t gotten the vaccine. But they have lots of company. Millions of people across the country, with real fear, with real distrust, with real schedules, with an inability to prepare for a bad response to the vaccine. I don’t know how to change these fears. I have people in my life who will try a pill they’re handed at a party who are nervous to take the vaccine. So this one is our fault. This one is the fault of our friends, our neighbors, our partners.

I can’t forgive us. We could be relaxing right now, we could be working on new problems. We could be picking out new outfits for our kids for school without finding matching masks. But we can’t. Instead we are staying up, sweating bullets, thinking about our relatives, our babies, our selves. I can’t forgive us for this. This pandemic will define this decade, this pandemic will define my adulthood, it will define my kids childhood. And it didn’t have to. Straight up, it didn’t have to.