The Night Went Great
A long week, a perfect ending. Rachel made Swedish meatballs. Yes there was the lingonberry jelly. And bedtime was great. Last night I was eating popcorn and Sadie, 5 yrs, said “do you like that popcorn, Dows it taste like it was made by a professional?? Cause, I made that popcorn.”
Tonight didn’t have the same one liners but it still was beautiful. And Martin said he would pick me up for a couple drinks at Burger Dive.
Walking in, perfect amount of people. Twenty-four people. Table of olds, table of charming young women who are living it up at karaoke and instagramming the whole thing. One ruggedly attractive dude out with them on girls night. A couple couples at the bar, a couple groups of three of four. Wolves on the TV, don’t have to ask for it. no tv showing the Wild even though it’s a hockey town in a hockey state.
One really good singer delivering the goods on Daniel Caesar, Bobby Caldwell, a sad song and Digital Underground. He knew his audience I’ll say that. The girls were singing along with every word. A West 7th celebrity.
We ran into Mona Quinones because of course we did. Because it’s the first cold bar night of the new winter. There’s something graceful about the new winter. Everyone is pretending like it’s cold when in three months this won’t constitute shorts weather per se, but there’s no way you’re wearing a jacket and a hoodie. Newwinter lays down its strictures:
whatever the fuck is in your car now stays unless you need it
The hoodie isn’t changing, so it’s up to the wearer if the shirt beneath it is, and how can you check anyway you can’t do leave me alone
Yes of course you’re going in the store while your gas pumps, there is no alternative
What a treat.
3:33⅓ with Etta James
If I made a list of the ten most important days in my musical life I think the day I saw Elvin Bishop, Etta James and B.B. King in one sitting at Tanglewood in Massachusetts would make it. Etta James was probably the first musician I ever saw “work over” a crowd. She was sassy, she chatted, she flirted with all the band members she wasn’t related to. She was stately, charming and raunchy all at the same time. I love Etta James and I’m so glad I got to see her live.
The Record.
The Artwork.
3:33⅓ with Leo Nocentelli
Leo Nocentelli is a funk icon, his guitar work with the Meters is the blueprint for funk guitar. So it was astounding to find out that when Leo went into the studio on his own accord he brought a much more acoustic, singer-songwritery palette in. But it makes sense to some extent, if your dayjob is playing in the greatest funk band on planet earth maybe you want to do something else with your time off. I’m so glad this music got committed to magnetic tape. He delivers the good as a songwriter and the music still grooves like crazy. Enjoy it!
The Record.
The Artwork.
The Manifesto
I don’t want the world in my pocket. I don’t want access to everything on my phone.
Podcasts are amazing. Social media is here to stay but that doesn’t mean anyone of us have to personally stay. When you make it work for you, great. I feel better when I spend less time on Twitter. I feel good when I offer up experiences or content that brings people off of social media.
Social media makes me feel seen, celebrated, popular, funny. I prefer almost every other path to those feelings over the social media path. Take the paths of making music, of writing, of connecting. Since I’ve started this here blog some really cool people have come up to talk to me about reading it. That feels better. That feels more rewarding
I feel even better when events I present get people out of their house, with people they haven’t met before. People will remember a show, a trip, a trivia competition in the daytime.
Today Facebook laid off 13% of their employees. This is bad news for those people who are probably not all universally rich. It sucks for people to lose their jobs. But I hope those talented people go find work that might be better for the universe. Facebook shouldn’t be one of the biggest companies on earth. There needs to be more great experiences aided by social media but not arriving within social media.
Magazines are a great way to understand the world. They are more timely than books, less immediate than newspaper websites. You get some distillation.
Exercise is excellent. Getting to lift weights, exhausting your body, experiencing challenges, growing.
Spending time with your family and being happy with your job are important. Believing that is all you have time for is family and work is wrong. There’s time to volunteer, to spend time with friends, to serve your community. You should make the world a better place through your efforts.
Most people want to hang out. If you ask a couple people to hang out someone will say yes. Someone wants to hang out with you.
Am I Emotional?
Working with the therapist on unlocking some parts of me that I might’ve never let blossom because it wasn’t good business to let them blossom in the house I grew up in. I was born into a very brainy house, smart people who lead with their smartness. I knew I was different from this, I was told I was different from this. My brother had shown a lot of early aptitude in school, I did not. But, the brain was always what was worshipped in my family. Our mom used to say “put on your bike helmets, cause you damn sure won’t make a living off of your brains” all the time. In my tender moments I wish she had taught me how to protect my heart and my spirit, cause that needed a lot of protection it didn’t get.
But I export being emotional. I write songs. I cry. I feel things. I empathize. But I’m worried it’s this unexamined side of my life. I don’t know myself emotionally. And when I come off as emotional I’m not certain that’s pure me as much as it is a performance of being emotional. And can I be a very emotional person while still having very simple emotions? Do we just say people are emotional if they aren’t muted, if they aren’t flat? I’m strong-tempered, I’m sensitive, I’m vulnerable. I’m not sure I’m emotional. My therapist thinks (and I agree) that I consider myself a manager of three people: an achievement oriented score keeper, an intellectual brain person filling every moment of silence with brain stuff and a burning emotional lump that I know is very important but I don’t understand. This feels like a very close self-portrait to me. I am trying to figure out how to know that emotional lump. But if I think about the scorekeeper is in charge, if I talk about it the brain person is in charge. So I do go into something without talking or thinking into it. How do I get to know the lump?
I believe more so than most people I am who I am because it’s who I thought my family wanted. I’m sure a lot of youngest kids can relate, but in deep ways my identity, my passions, my interests, they are all linked to what my dad and my brother liked. And I like the me I became, but I don’t know what relationship that has to the clay I was born able to shape. I’m not sure what parts of me I deactivated cause it wasn’t helpful for me to survive and thrive in my house. And I have no idea if I can find those parts of me, nor do I know if I will like them. Don’t know if my wife will like them. Don’t know if my family will like them. But I think I have to explore it, because I think the contentment, happiness and presence I can bring to life right now is at a diminished level cause I’m not all here. I want to limit the scorekeeper’s role in my life, support the intellectual brain person and let the emotional lump have a seat at the table. Am I emotional? I don’t even know if that’s a useful question, but I think when I dig more, I’ll have a useful answer.
Do you wish your favorite music was more popular?
I’ve been around a lot more popular music than I have been for awhile. I’ve been hearing the big hits of the day at the new office and I think that music is fine but I’m so in love with the weird corners of music. I’m giving Can a big listen for the first time. And I’m kind of glad this song “Bel-Air” doesn’t air on big corporate radio. I love that there are still bands that aren’t household names but are absolutely part of the fabric. There are legit big bands that comparatively very few know about. You might think everyone knows who Spoon is. No, that’s cause you have a bunch of friends who know who Spoon is.
Embrace that level of intimacy. Embrace that level of it being okay to be what only two out of ten dentists agree on.
The Can song “Bel-Air” is only in epic in therm of how many intimate moments it strings together.
Enjoy it and imagine a world where everyone likes this song, where no one questions it, where it is supposedly on every playlist. Imagine a world where you could never play Can for an adult who had never heard of it. Imagine if Can was something everything grew up hearing? Like ABBA levels of everyone.
I don’t think it’s quite as fun. You want to share this music with others, but you’re glad not everyone messes with it. There’s some things you’re glad are kind of an acquired taste. The secret community of smaller bands with weirder stories. It’s special. So if this is your first introduction to Can, welcome aboard.
Another great way to get introduced to music that I hope still happens, the kitchen intro. Somebody has a kitchen job and one of the chefs is super into this or that band. I feel like Atmosphere first traveled the world through mix tapes by kitchen employees. That’s this way to introduce someone to a group without the pressure of forcing yourself to not talk over the music. It’s like a stationary road trip. Stationary road trip, that sounds like a great idea!
Pistachio Muffins Who What Where When Can You Have One
The greatest muffin in the history of muffins is a pistachio muffin. This is a small time muffin. I would wager there are probably 500 blueberry muffins for every one pistachio muffin. But, the joy of a pistachio muffin is unparalleled. It’s green, that’s cool. Also, I think the pistachio makes the whole affair a bit oily. I’ve never had a dry pistachio muffin and I’ve bet you’ve never had one at all. They used to have them at the Minnesota Historical Society. And I used to live across the street from the Minnesota Historical Society. And I used to eat those muffins and love it. Then they switched caterers and they lost it. A good option, but clearly a second best is the pistachio muffins from most Dunn Bros. Pretty good, not as oily and not as break-off-able-into-aesthetically-pleasing chunks able. But, I randomly came across a world class pistachio muffin. I say its random, but actually I needed a serious bit of good energy in my life that day and I think that’s why the universe but a pistachio muffin in front of me. If you drive from North High to the new temporary studios for Jazz88 you’ll drive right past Bryn Mawr. There are only two neighborhoods in the Twin Cities that make me think of specific people. If I drive past the Marcy area of Minneapolis right near Northeast I think about an ex-girlfriend that lived over there and I only think of her. And if I drive past that intersection of Penn and Cedar Lake Rd. with the Mobil I only think of Alexei Casselle from Oddjobs, Kill the Vultures et cetera. His mom used to live over there and it was the only time I went to said neighborhood. But there’s a little coffee shop over there that I’ve ever been to but I parked to grab a quick coffee. When I saw the pistachio muffin I knew it was on. I exerted the self-control necessary to not eat it in the car and come into the new offices looking like a leprechaun had dry heaved on my hoodie. But the minute I got to my new desk I went to town on captain pistach and my god was it good. GO TO CUPPA JAVA AND GET A PISTACHIO MUFFIN. See? Reading this is as fun as twitter isn’t it?
Rest in Peace to Mimi Parker and How Sean Got Her Groove Back and I’m Pro Choice
You may have heard the news but the amazing Mimi Parker from Low has passed away. My friend Martin Devaney told me the news this morning at our coffee hang. For about four years Heiruspecs shared a manager with Low and the entire time I felt so absolutely amazing to be sharing any sort of relationship with this band I’ve always admired. As Martin and I both realized, Low is one of the few bands that have been an absolute constant in our musical life. I have always had profound respect for Low, both musically and for how they run their business. And somehow, running their business is exactly the right term to me. They were a critically acclaimed mom + pop show that delivered uncompromising music and experiences for their listeners. They were the band that from note one to the last chord they played, they interrupted and exceeded expectations. I was never close personally to anyone in Low, a couple backstage hellos with Al and even fewer with Mimi, but from a far I felt there was a mutual respect for what my group’s were up to and what they were up to. Obviously in regards to significance, they eclipsed what my bands have been up to, but I felt respected and supported. And like everyone who ever heard them, I knew the key to the recipe was the way Mimi and Al sang together. I have no idea if their harmonic relationship was intuitive, but it sure sounded intuitive by the time it got to me. Mimi spent her life on the road while also raising kids and bringing her amazing energy and sound to people around the world. It is a life well lived and I am honored to have shared some stages with her in my career. Rest in peace to Mim and love to her family.
I’ve been off energy wise for a couple weeks. Stressful times at the day job, stressful times at home. Largely these stresses are temporary, remodels and moves being the primary culprit at work and at home. But your body doesn’t necessarily know that these things are temporary. Your body just knows about the stress. And, though those were the big stressors, I had plenty of small super difficult things that kept on popping up week after week. Somehow, between yesterday and today I got some energy moving in the right direction. I worked so hard on Friday and utilized a tremendously diverse set of skills to manage a bunch of technical breakdowns at the job that I believe I was just exhausted beyond comprehension on Saturday morning. Thankfully, Saturday was a slow and social day with generally positive energy the whole time. I got enough sleep on Saturday night and I was able to get in and exercise today and visit with my friend Martin. This all set me in the right place, I’m in a better place and I can feel it in every second of my existence. I just feel a little more planted. I’m glad for that because the rest of this year is going to be an ass kicker. Heiruspecs is releasing a record, it’s Hannukah, it’s my first time doing holiday music as a music director. There’s going to be a lot coming my way, so I’m really glad to be on a good spot. And I’ve been centered today, not a lot of time wasted thumbing through the internet.
I hope you vote on or before Tuesday. I’m a pro-choice human being and I got the opportunity to use my silky voice for a pro-choice campaign aimed at dad’s.
Vote, and listen to jazz, and get enough sleep.
Two a days
I hated Twitter in 2010 or more accurately was neutral about it. I didn’t get it and didn’t get how to interact on it. I was playing bass for dessa at the time and she said I should just go on there twice a day and say something, it could be a help for my career. I did it and I fell in love with it. I found out that a lot of my most exciting friends were on there. I had fun conversations.
now I love Twitter. It’s the one social media that I felt a personal draw to. It’s the one that I liked playing on. But they’re firing a lot of the people that I think made it great and also, a lot of the people are caring about are leaving the site.
I know a broadcast blog is very different than Twitter but I’m gonna try to hit this twice a day and see if it can scratch an itch that right now I only get from Twitter.
3:33⅓ - The Giants of Jazz
I can’t say much about this record yet, I only know the tracks I’ve played on the radio. But on this one, “Everything Happens to Me” I get more of an idea why everyone is so gah gah about Sonny Stitt. There’s something really muscular and emotional about his playing, and that’s a hard combination to push out of a saxophone.
Otis Spann album cover.
History Won’t be Written by the Winners
When they said history is written by the winners that was before podcasts. This is a beautiful thing, the platforms might be of a different size, but committing stories to the record is no longer the sole domain of the dominant player in each situation and conflict.
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Lou Donaldson on Occasion of His Birthday
Applause Music was the Jazz/Classical side of Cheapo when they basically owned both sides of the block over at Snelling and Saratoga. I worked at Applause for a holiday season with an absolute jazz snob who taught me so much and only made me feel slightly like an idiot for not knowing everything yet by the time I was 17 years old. I bought a Lou Donaldson record during my run there and I fell in love with it. It was funky, it was easier to enjoy than some of the stuff I was trying to turn myself on to. It was exciting, it was enthralling and it was the first time I realized a non-vocalist, non-rhythm section member could themselves be funky. Today is his 96th birthday and he’s still with us. Thanks for showing me more sides of the funk Lou!
Otis Spann album cover.
The Worst Spices
1. Bay leaf - you don’t do anything besides for slow me down
2. Tarragon - you do almost nothing
3. Thyme - I don’t like what you do very much
4. Anise - never liked ya
5. Fennel - see number 7 but more
6. Celery Seed - no one has ever ran out of celery seed
7. Not Smoked Paprika - what are we doing here, does your smoker work?
8. Cumin seed - why don’t you just grind it for me, thanks bye!
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Otis Spann - Happy Halloween
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins takes up a lot of the bluesy real estate for Halloween offerings but that’s not all there is in the genre. Grabbed a tune “It Must Have Been the Devil” from Otis Spann. Otis Spann is my favorite blues piano player of all time and he is really under-appreciated as a vocalist. Enjoy!
Otis Spann album cover.
The best you get
The best it gets in this world
is a couple days with your children next to the lake
A couple miles with the music too loud to shout out the directions
A few times in a sauna where you fall asleep awake
Life is long, life is short, the good times aren’t distributed evenly, but you never know when another good time will sneak up on you.
A couple scenes from movies you can remember line for line
A couple records that sound so good you just start them again when they finish.
Go See Big Trouble
I play in a spectacular instrumental band. We are called Big Trouble. Here’s our most recent bio:
Big TRouble Blurb: Big Trouble is the instrumental arm of the mighty Heiruspecs crew. Featuring Josh Peterson, Sean McPherson and Peter Leggett from Heiruspecs alongside Steve McPherson, the group specializes in intriguing covers of songs you know, in ways you never imagined them. There's a lot of groove, some spectacular moments of beauty and every thirty-five gigs, there's even a drum solo. Have they been together for 15 years? Yes. Do they have a record? That’s a no.
This Saturday we’re playing at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul. The show is from 6-8pm, great hours to have some fun, take in some music and still have it together when your kids wake up at 6:44am on Sunday morning. So come enjoy the show on Saturday!
Stay Optimistic
I listened to a podcast from Vox today that asked some questions about what an experience like the pandemic is doing for all of us mentally. TLDR: Bad things mostly!
The pandemic has brought a lot of terrible things into my life. So many close friends lost family members, a lot of my friends have gotten really sick. It turned one Heiruspecs record into a five year email chain (new album coming soon!). It derailed one of the company’s I own. It exposed so much that is wrong and that is right about the world. The pandemic has let us sometimes find out the truth about each other and it has often been terrible. Somebody’s got a big sign in their window on Randolph that reads “We’ll All Get Through This Together” and sometimes it rings so empty to me. We have cheated each other out of money, we’ve stolen food out of hungry kids mouths, we’ve killed each other at startling rates, we’ve screamed down school board members doing their best in a difficult situation. I think it’s possible the pandemic has pushed the country beyond the brink. You hear people decry all the time how divided our country is now. And folks point out that Republicans and Democrats used to be so much more civil. I don’t hear as often the clarification that there is not much civil in what many leaders aspire to do. Am I supposed to remain civil to white supremacists because they share a name with a party from fifty years ago? That’s a joke. That’s a taunt. I will be civil towards people who are civil.
Terrible things are going to keep on happening, sometimes they won’t for a couple days, but right now we seem to be in a cycle of school shootings, horrendous news from Iran and the war in Ukraine, a tremendous loss of reproductive freedoms for women across our country. I don’t let these things pass me by. I read Washington Post on my iphone when I poop just like you. But I don’t resign myself to a world where these things keep happening. I aspire to make incremental changes for the good both as an employee, a human, a citizen and more. I fooled myself into thinking that I didn’t have time to contribute my time to a lot of “make the world” better efforts but I think that’s wrong. I thought I could send a check. For a long time I fooled myself into thinking that all the cool benefit shows that Heiruspecs played and donated our time to functioned as my service in the world of volunteering. And just to be clear, we did a bunch of benefits and when it works for us, we continue to do that. We’ve been a part of raising money for the Philando Castile Scholarship, we run our own scholarship and in our young days we got behind a lot of causes. But we don’t play as often anymore, and we don’t play nearly as many benefits. I find myself really busy being a positive part of my family, doing a kick ass job at Jazz88, supporting Trivia Mafia and running the still active parts of my musical career. It’s a good laundry list.
A year ago I thought that if COVID came down and plucked me from the Earth I would feel really good about what I did on this earth. Now I feel a different responsibility. This country has been a democracy for such a criminally short period of it’s history. We aren’t a democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If you are old like me your parents might’ve voted at a time when black people were strategically kept from voting. We still live in a time where the potency of the black vote is willfully and openly diluted. I believe in our life time there is going to be a white supremacist candidate for President who will say “this is the last election where the outcome will be decided in any significant way by the white vote. Vote for me and I’ll make sure that white votes keep on making the difference in who is elected, pluralities be damned.” That is truly not far off from the rhetoric we hear currently. And I believe that that campaign would gather steam. I can’t sit on my hands until that happens. I need to work from my position, from my privilege, from my pseudo-level of influence to point out how lazy, bankrupt and corrupt that point of view is. But beyond just sending checks and writing blogs I need for myself and my family to see me set aside our most valuable asset, our time, to fight against this and to fight for the opposite, a healthy democracy where votes are trusted and we live not just up to the best ambitions of the founders but beyond them.
My wife and I are reading the book “Bowling Alone”. The book establishes a decline in civic participation in the 1970s. I’ve already received some gems from the book and I’m just about half way through. But I am starting to believe that though I am busy everyday, I am not seeing some of the pockets of time that I could dedicate to my community, to community involvement. I wonder if some of that energy will come with me being more closely connected with the Temple we are members of. I’m not Jewish but the rest of my family is and I’ve been really impressed with Temple Israel in almost every capacity since we became members over there and I believe getting involved in there might check a lot of boxes for what I’m looking for. In the parlance of “Bowling Alone” I am more of a schmoozer than a macher. I like having people over, I am unafraid to initiate a conversation with a stranger, I reach out, I start events, I make fun things happen. But I haven’t done a lot in my personal life to organize for the greater good or to harness my schmoozosity into a concerted effort to improve the world I live in.
But I’m not giving up. I’m not positive that society is terminally screwed. We face horrible facts, milestones and stories every single day. My impression being born white and upper middle class in 1981 was that the worst of it was behind us. Part of my college degree was in African-American studies and I graduated right around 2007, I read most of the material about the Civil Rights era with the underlying spirit that the worst of it was behind us. This was short-sighted on my part. At age 25, one wants to think that the world is on a straight path towards being a spectacular place. I’ve grown to understand that we are living in turbulent times where drastic measures are on the table from the good guys and the bad guys. The bad times are behind us, ahead of us and they are right now. We are living in the moment where we can make thirty years of change in five years. And if it doesn’t work I want to die trying, I don’t want to die resigned to think that stuff is shit. Even when I go to a hotel for a two day stay I empty my whole bag into the dressers. I stick my foot into things and I go the whole way. I want to know that between the things that bring me joy, the things that bring me money and the duties I have to my family I contributed to helping the world, to helping my community. I’m optimistic about all of this. I think we can all find some of that optimism. I know a lot of people already have. The pandemic changed to me what I think success can look like, the pandemic made me value the people most immediately in my life more. The pandemic made me realize that I need to enjoy where I am more, but I am responsible to make where I am better. I have had a really beautiful life so far, I get paid a living wage for playing jazz music. My backup plan to being a bassist was being a radio host. These are pipe dreams and I get to do that. And I am the co-owner of a beautiful company called Trivia Mafia*. I have amazing children, an amazing wife. I have so much to be thankful for and so much reason to hope that more people can have things to be thankful for. I have so much reason to hope that people can keep the freedoms, the joys, the pleasures they are thankful for. We are in turbulent times, but I am not standing by. I am optimistic and I know that amazing things come out of hard times.
*In fact I was lucky to have a meeting with one of our employees this morning and unsolicited she said that it was a great company to work for, like truly great. She is not one to give out praise willy-nilly, I knew she meant that shit and it made me very happy. I can’t claim much credit for the current Trivia Mafia culture, but I helped plant the seeds when I was working the day to day so I’ll take it!
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Leo Nocentelli
I’ve never pre-ordered a record faster than when I saw that there was a recently discovered record by Leo Nocentelli from the 1970s. What an absolute treat. The record is gold, the music is gold, the vibe is excellent. Enjoyed it and it gets a lot of spins back home.