The Friend Vortex
I spend a lot of my tangibly finite adult life longing for the infinite expanse of my childhood. Just today I texted my neighbors and asked them if they would agree to never see a movie in a theater again for $8,000. Some said yes, some said no. Depressingly I started thinking about how many more movies I would see in a movie theater before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I’m probably averaging a movie in a theater every year and a half. I assume that number will shoot way the fuck up when my kids are a little older. I would happily watch a movie a month if it didn’t involve a babysitter or taking the day off of work. But even at say six a year for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s forty more years. It’s a countable amount of movies.
I don’t have many friends outside of Minnesota. I think it’s maybe about ten close ones, five super close ones. Betsy, Izzy, Afi, Conor, Steph. How many more times do I see each of them? Everything is countable, everything is finite. Every time I hang with a friend someone has to work in the morning, someone has to relieve the babysitter. My life is a calendar. But my life used to be a wide open field; a bowling ball rolling on a street like the Breeders video for Cannonball. I’d spend days at Conor’s house. Multiple day sleepovers. I’d spend hours doing nothing with my dumb, beautiful friends. Lucky/stunting for me. . .the rhythms of a too-long sleepover became my office for my 20s and 30s as a touring musician. It extended my childhood.
Heiruspecs would just get to a town five hours early and post up at a Barnes and Noble and read magazines. And bullshit. And fight. And buy a drink. And me and Peter would smoke cigarettes. And we’d listen to records. Or go swim at a hotel, if we had a hotel. Or just sit in the van with the windows rolled down waiting for the first staff person from the bar to show up. An infiniteness. An adult childhood. A sleepover with performances. And there was no gaggle. No one tagging along. One time two dudes followed us and came to like three shows in a row in the Southwest. One time a friend named Jenny from Chicago traveled with us for two weeks. But basically it was just five dudes sleeping over, drinking, sitting around, begging to get a late check out so we could see both episodes of Dawson’s Creek.
Heiruspecs’ serious touring days ended in December of 2006. Since then we’ve played shows outside of Minnesota but almost always just one and then back home. Finite. Back home for the job. Back home for another gig. Back home for kids. Finite.
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My final group of childhood friends is the Dessa band. Dessa is a singer/rapper/poet who has a thriving career and has a new set of musicians who are the Dessa band of now. But when I talk about Dessa band I’m talking 2010-2016 me, Dustin, Joey, Aby, Dessa. The old Dessa band. Last Monday me and the old Dessa band got together for our semi-annual get together and have drinks and talk. This one was probably less drinks than ever and certainly heavier talks than ever. Our parents getting older. People getting divorced. Bands taking breaks. Our own kids getting older. Our country going to shit.
The forties are a period of great struggle. They can often be the lowest levels of satisfaction that you’ll feel in your adult life. Weighed down with children or with the stress of not having children. Mid-career. Midlife crisis. There is a lot to worry about. And all around the table we worried; we shared the triumphs and the struggles. The struggles outweighed by a factor of 2 to 1. But we also laughed. And we laughed with the intimacy of childhood friends.
I’ve spent more time with Aby Wolf than I’ll likely spend with any new friend I’ll make for the rest of my life. Was it quality time? FUCK NO. It was staring at the back of her headphoned head bored out of my mind, annoyed that the Subway sandwich she’d take a bite out of every twenty-five minutes smelled like it was an onion sandwich made on onion bread with onion mayonnaise and with extra onions on it. But it was all day. And it was brazenly smoking bowls with the van doors open at 10:30am at a gas station in Missouri. It was seeing Joey’s child like love of getting a number of adults to aqua-jog around the perimeter of a pool to ever so briefly turn it into a vortex.
——
I don’t know what depth of friendships will be available to me when I am out of the years of deep ass hands-on-all-the-time-parenting. People grow up. They don’t like to stay out as late. They don’t like to watch one more thing on YouTube. They don’t want to drive to Rochester from Saint Paul just to eat at the Golden Corral cause that’s the closest one. I don’t know that I want to do that. But I know there is this special depth that only comes from this quantity of hang, this infinite hang, this forever talk. And I make new friends. I actively make new friends. I love it. And I got just a little taste of the infinite again during COVID. I hung heavy with the neighbors. Long hangs, long talks. Fires. Questions. Inside jokes. Peeing in the yard. It was magical, but it was fleeting. And fleeting is okay. The last real time the old Dessa band played a gig was July 16, 2017 in Rochester. I understood it was the last one. No completely clear articulation, but there weren’t more gigs on the books and there wasn’t much appetite to keep it going just like this from Dessa. I remember breathing in the fun, the crowd, the music, the quality of the band. We had gotten really good. And we had become magical friends. Close like childhood friends. And I knew it would be a bond that wouldn’t break up even if the band did. And that was all true. I didn’t realize it’d be the last group of friends I’d make that felt like that. And I’m grateful for that. A summer night - a group of friends turning it into a vortex one last time.
I Played Bass on a Bunch of Tracks on Brother Ali’s New Record
I got a great text a couple months ago from my guy Joe Mabbott. Joe Mabbott is one of the great producers and engineers in the Minnesota scene and in my reckoning the best mix engineer I’ve ever collaborated with. He runs The Hideaway Studios. But he’s also truly a super great friend of mine. If he texts me it’s usually to play racquetball or to play the card game Deuces with our friends Rachel and DeVon. But recently I got the text to play bass for some new recordings for Brother Ali. What an honor.
I’ve known Ali since I guess 1998? I remember him calling my parents house when I was in high school before I had a cell phone. I think it was before anyone had cell phones really. And I’ve had the honor of playing bass on a lot of his big records. It’s been a special relationship for me and I hope for him, ANT and BK-One too, but probably about nine years ago I thought that relationship had come to an end. No real stress but a lot of the Rhymesayers artists had started using a musician named G Koop for most of their live musician needs. All good. But I wasn’t getting the calls. Life goes on.
So it was an unexpected text that I was glad to get. I got to head over to Joe Mabbott’s studio The Hideaway. This is a space where some of the most magical moments of my life have happened. Recorded A Tiger Dancing and the Heiruspecs 2008 Self-titled album there. Played bass for Eyedea and Abilities there. Hung out with Stage One for the first time there. Spent a lot of time just partying there. So to be back there playing with old friends was great. That night it was just Ant and Joe. Ali lives in Turkey and is mainly just coming back for shows at this point. Anywho. I think the songs turned out really well and I believe the chemistry between Ant and Ali is undeniable. Here are the tunes I played on all lined up for you to check out and enjoy.
Performing with Big Trouble on Saturday February 23 at White Squirrel
Big Trouble is back at it with new material at our monthly gig. I can’t tell you how grateful I am get to play with this group every month. We’ve got a rhythm dialed in and we are adding great material. When ever I’ve been in a band that plays for 2 hours we have always had maximum an hour and forty five minutes of material. It’s always either been playing a song we don’t quite know or sewing a couple extra long solos onto arrangements. But Big Trouble probably has a solid 3 hours and fifteen minutes of shit we really know how to play. So to hit two fifty minute sets? We can be picky! We can follow the vibe. We can call audibles. We can make it happen. We are making great music up there. I hope you come through and check us out! Family Friendly 6-8pm situation.
Deerfield Dispatch
I am changing my mind right now. The Atlantic Ocean is to my left or straight ahead depending on how I have the chair position. I am in pain in paradise. Charles Mingus is playing too loud or too quiet, depending upon what instrument is soloing. A Florida breeze is hitting the glass and an obituary for a neighbor’s dad sings out from behind the glass of my iPhone. I think about Shawn Smith and Andrew Wood. Two Seattle musicians I love who died young. Shawn Smith died in 2019. . .torn aorta, high blood pressure. He made songs that escorted me through the hardest times I’ve faced in my easy ass life. Play the Satchel song “Suffering” while you are trying to turn your dad’s whiskey in your glass into the joint you wish you had. Listen to it when it shows up in the movie Beautiful Girls while you are watching it in the theater in Middletown, CT and you have a mercilessly real crush on your brother’s college friend and you’re in high school and there is no feasible universe where you ever date her. There is no feasible universe where you share a moment with her. Now look at that whiskey and remember that there is a Beautiful Girls poster sitting by the door to your basement that your wife bought you but it’s not on a wall cause you can’t frame anything, literally and figuratively. An active God, an involved God, a meddling God would take down Shawn Smith’s systolic by 25 and say “I’ve got you covered Shawn. You took care of another one of my children, Sean McPherson, with that song Suffering, so I’m going to make sure you live a long life.” We don’t have a meddling God. We don’t have a meddling God. There is a code that this universe sits on. It can never be written all the way down. But if someone all powerful is enforcing that code Smith’s aorta is not torn.
Andrew Wood died because he did heroin. He was the leader of Mother Love Bone. He and his groundbreaking spirit laid the groundwork for the juggernaut that is Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder is in the crowd this weekend for SNL turning fifty. Maybe he even played some uke before I turned the TV on. But Andrew Wood, and the movie about his band Mother Love Bone, taught me that it was okay to be a freak who wears make up and believes in making up silly songs and he lived with Chris Cornell, and maybe if the code you can’t read is enforced, they’re both alive today. Stone Gossard said Wood had a tragic flaw. But there’s no tragic. Your suffering isn’t for a purpose. Your non-suffering isn’t for a purpose. You are purpose. Plain, simple and unadulterated. Your flaws aren’t tragic. Your flaws aren’t flaws. Charles Mingus made music that touches me. It probably touches you. But if Charles Mingus decides to watch baseball games every night in the summer instead of make some of the world’s greatest music it’s not a tragedy. No one put Donald Trump on this Earth to make it worse. No one put the people who make the world better on Earth to make it better. We seek out what we can do. We do the best we can.
My neighbor, his dad died last week. It reads like the man did the best he could. It’s an obituary you’ll remember forever. He worked too much. Most of us do. But he raised a family. He liked to cross-country ski. He died young. His son is still in his thirties. It hits me, that hits me, that cuts close. My mom died when I was in my twenties. God didn’t take my mom. God didn’t give my mom. God didn’t take my neighbor’s dad.
There are breezes. There are courtyards. There is music. There are war crimes. There are children. There are shots at the buzzer. There are divorces. There is pure evil. There is toast with egg yolk on it. There is good. There is Mother Love Bone. There is the ocean. There is high blood pressure. There are tantrums. There is being in a hot tub on a windy day when your nipples are hard from the cold and your legs are melting into the bench. There are wounds that never heal. There is suffering and there is joy. There is a code but there is no enforcement and there is no appeal.
New Weapons For an Old Fight
In the last ten years I’ve learned two competing truths: social media is wildly powerful; social media is useless.
It’s a lever problem. I am the product. I am not the customer. The product is not always wrong, but it is always pliable. It is always a secondary concern to the customer.
I scream into an abyss on social media and the medium is designed for the disagreers to yell back. It is designed to sew foment.
Previous political mediums may not have been designed to do the opposite, but I feel they did the opposite.
They leaned toward building alliance, they leaned away from gridlock. They made gridlock costly. Social media makes gridlock vastly more profitable than consensus.
There is advertising to be sold to how I feel now. BLVGARI or someone else is buying ads on the New York Times so that when I look to find my outrage for the day I consider buying a medium sweater from a bearded man from Europe with a fine lady on his arm.
Social media doesn’t just feel futile, it feels warping. It warps some other me that could exist. I want none of it. Except I want to see my friends play music, I want to see the best musicians on earth shed in the studio, I want to see great dunks, I want to see friends like Desdamona talk about what is going on in their life in a low-impact way. I want MN music drama to be played out on Facebook and I want to eat my popcorn and watch and never comment. I want a lot of what social media offers. But it warps me. It has already warped me. How do I fight without it? How do I protest without telling you I protested and sharing a photo? Maybe that is part of my duty. I’m not without followers on these social media channels. Is it my duty to fight or to win? Am I the arbiter of what fighting is and what winning is? Is the mob on social media the arbiter?
But how is a weapon designed and consistently controlled by someone like Elon Musk a weapon I can wield to stop someone like Elon Musk?
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Social media killed many hierarchies in our world. There was a week in 1991 where Nielsen and Billboard changed how they tracked the Billboard 200 and overnight artists like Skid Row, N.W.A. and Garth Brooks were sitting shoulder to shoulder with who we thought were the biggest pop icons on planet earth because we switched to data, not anecdotal reporting. The gatekeepers before June 1991 were record store managers and other intermediaries who thought they had a sense of what actually moved units out of their stores. But they were wrong. Rap, country and heavy metal were profoundly under-indexed by record store managers. But when they started actually keeping track, they realized that those genres were wildly popular.
There are mainstream parts of our culture that I believed were on the absolute fringes before social media. The alt-right comes to mind. That’s the big one. But, so many micro-movements, so many things I didn’t read about in the paper, or in the magazines. So many things I believed were small were actually the N.W.A. of the 2010s. Fandoms built up in muted unison and then rejoicing when it is confirmed that the tribe is huge, the voice is strong, the movement is real.
Social media has made dreams and nightmares come true. And some of my dreams are some of your nightmares and vice versa. Social media will get us into problems it can’t get us out of.
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You are not going to be shocked that old Sean McPherson thinks that Donald Trump’s second term is already a huge problem. He is denying the humanity of so much of humanity. He is firing throngs people in cruel ways. He is investigating and deporting law-abiding humans in cruel ways. He is cruel. He is cruel to the world in a way the world has never been cruel to him. I have harbored some guarded optimism about a path forward in Palestine and Israel in the past two months. Trump seems to be unnecessarily derailing these potentials sby denying Palestinians a right to their homes and asserting Americans right to their land. Shame on you Trump. In an article about couples therapy in the New York Times I found this quote by Daniel Oppenheimer:
Epiphanies are real, but they’re fragile. They are a one-leafed seedling, pushing up through the crust of the ground, or a blind hatchling waiting, naked and alone, for its mother to return with a worm. They are easily crushed under foot or done in by harsh weather. If they’re not protected and nurtured, they will crumble and blow away in the wind, as though they never existed.
I immediately thought of the very shaky ground our world is built upon. The recently built alliances, the threadbare string tying two parties previously at odds together, ever so precariously. I feel conservative Anna. I want the changes to come slowly, purposefully, legally, humanely, carefully.
The changes are not coming this way. The speed of the changes is itself one of the changes.
——
What are the new weapons for the old fight? Are they the old weapons we had eschewed in favor of more efficient ones? I listen to Brother Ali’s podcast. He talks about the network of street team people across the country that he and his team let atrophy when they thought it could all be done on social media. Fuck a poster. Share it on Facebook, let the message spread that way. Ali now laments losing that network you could touch, that network you could email, that network you could put on the guest list and say thank you face to face to. That network you didn’t pay a third party to reach.
At a dinner on Monday a friend asked how you learn of protests without searching on social media. The table had no legitimate suggestions for how to do that. Has that network atrophied? The political bookshop that used to be at 25th and Lyndale. Posters up for protests. I don’t know if the network has atrophied. My access to the network has atrophied. The muscles I used to know of these protests has atrophied. They have been replaced with full-time jobs, little children, musings on text about favorite movies and early bedtimes.
What are the new weapons for the old fight? What do you stop first when the sky is falling? Do you stay local when the problems are national? Have folks you’ve had conflicts with before part of the same team for a greater good? Are you fighting to fight are you fighting to win? The winning message is never “fuck no, not this stuff.” The winning message is a message, not a counter-message. What is our message? Don’t be cruel. It’s nebulous, it’s reactive. It is what I feel. I just don’t want my country to wield cruelty at home and abroad against disenfranchised people. I don’t want my country to trample on the progress that has been made toward a more equitable world.
What are the new weapons for the old fight? I’m sure it’s not a blog with a peach background. I’m sure it’s not a Facebook post. What is the message? What is the medium? Where is the protest? The most optimistic and organized in my network are working on it. I get the emails, I read the google docs. When are the least optimistic and least organized like myself going to join? When I am going to start sacrificing for the movement? I’m typing cause I’m asking. I’m typing cause I believe it will push me to do more than type. And I’m publishing cause I think it might do the same for you.
Hosting Best New Bands at First Ave on Friday January 31
Friday night I’ll be hanging at First Ave for Best New Bands of 2024. I had a great time last year and I’m looking forward to this year. This is a great way to see a bunch of great bands from the scene all at once. I hope to see you there.
Flyer for a show at First Ave!
L to R: Sean McPherson, Jill Riley, DJ Horse Girl, Krista Wax
Romans and Reconstructions
I write a trivia question everyday for the Afternoon Cruise on Jazz88. I read it at 4:30 and I have a nice little crew of maybe 10-25 people who take the time to write in their answers. My favorite trivia to write at this point in my life is “on this day in history.” I enjoy going to the Wikipedia page about whatever calendar day we are in and finding a point of departure for trivia questions. This means that most days I read about some absolutely insane shit that happened during the Roman Empire era: An 8 year old becomes co-emperor of the Empire, an emperor designates the next emperor from his deathbed, an emperor who bought the emperorship on auction from the Praetorian Guard. The Roman Empire is chock full of absolutely wild, unfathomably wild leadership. My modern mind imagines some citizens of the Empire coming up to the capital and saying “this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. We are going to look wild on wikipedia. It is going to be obvious to everyone reading our history that we are currently heading in the wrong direction.” But nothing of the sort can be done. There is no button to press to stop decline. I think about this as I feel the country moving in a wrong direction for me. I think about large corporations both saying “we are going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership” and four years later saying “We aren’t. We aren’t going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership.” Saying both things within some non-generational period seems categorically more insane than saying either thing. I am learning that things I thought were lines in the sand for our country were just trends, reasonable and fashionable only at the time. Does it turn your stomach to think of that? I ask this of you even if we stand on a different side of an issue. If you think prioritizing better recruitment for Black leaders does it bug the shit out of you that Target was front and center on that issue for a couple seasons? Does it bother you that it was just a trend, just the wind blowing a certain direction and bringing many corporate policies along with it?
Reconstruction is a heartbreaking and fascinating period of our country’s history. I believe Andrew Johnson is our worst President. He’s our worst President because at a moment when so much was pliable and enforceable with military force, he found a path back to fortifying institutional racism. He never believed in the cause of the Civil War. He didn’t believe in reconstructing our society with a seat at the table for Black people. When he had the opportunity to put his thumb on the scale to favor slaveowners or slaves he chose slaveowners. Garbage. But I hear Reconstruction echoes right now. There is an obsession with undoing the policies of the Biden administration. But this is not an orderly undoing with an eye toward decency. This is an aggressive yanking, stripping and deriding of policies that sought to reconstruct our society with more seats at the table for more people. Are these policies being removed because they worked? Are they being removed because they didn’t work? Around MLK Day I realized for the first time that the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Alabama took place weeks after the “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington. August 1963 for the March for Freedom and September 1963 for the bombing. The Civil Rights era tells a story of resistance. It tells the story of America hearing Dr. King and other leaders and not changing minds but instead buying detonators and dynamite. Will 2020-2024 be looked at as a period of Reconstruction? Will the policies aimed at changing policing policies, renter’s rights, clean energy, diversity and equity commitments be looked at with the shock of how truly radical Reconstruction was? If you spend a lot of time writing trivia you will often hear of a Black person landing an elected position and being recognized as the first Black person to hold said office since the 1870s or 1880s. One at a time these asterisks can be looked at as an outlier. But they are not; the gains that Blacks made in the 15 years after the Civil War were clawed back violently around the country.
Gains are being clawed back right now. A new, indecent, vindictive America is not being born, it is coming of age. 8 year-olds will be Emperors. Money will be printed with our current king on the obverse. I want to walk out and tell the leaders “this isn’t decent, this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. When they read about this part in the 2070 edition of Wikipedia, they’ll wonder why it wasn’t stopped.” But I don’t have faith it will be stopped. In fact I have faith it won’t be.
Big Trouble Performs the Twin Peaks Theme Song at White Squirrel
Big Trouble has been covering the Twin Peaks theme song (Falling by Angelo Badalamenti) for years. This was our first rendition since the passing of director David Lynch. Recorded live at the White Squirrel Saturday January 25, 2025.
On Holiday Parties
The 9 bus line is comically long and meandering. From my house in Saint Paul I took the 74 to the 9 to St. Louis Park to work at Jazz88 yesterday because immediately after work I’d be going to a holiday party for Trivia Mafia. I imagined I’d have some alcoholic drinks and some THC drinks and Amy, my date for the night, agreed we’d Lyft there separately and then Lyft together back to Saint Paul. I rode past 82 stops on the 9. 50 minutes. Saw things in South Minneapolis I hadn’t seen in years. Saw things in South Minneapolis I had never seen. Wonderful. Joyous. I love a long bus ride.
I am the co-owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck is the other owner. I am the louder person, but I am the quieter owner of Trivia Mafia. Chuck does it for his full time job. Many, many people do it for their full time job. I do not. My signature says I am the assistant owner. If an employee suffers a loss like a death in the family, a pet that really mattered to them, a medical situation for them or a loved one, I order the flowers. Otherwise, for the past two years I just root for Trivia Mafia and stay friends with the team, but I don’t do anything direct. I did make the introduction between Cory Cove from KFAN and Initials and Trivia Mafia. That led us to starting Initials Game Live which has proven to be an absolute slam dunk for Trivia Mafia. So I don’t do much, but I did do one important thing that got something started right before I retired from actually working for Trivia Mafia.
Riding in the Lyft over I reflected on Trivia Mafia. We started Trivia Mafia as a weekly at 331 Club in January of 2007. Chuck and I were introduced by the staff at the 331 Club and we started gelling as a trivia duo. We were good, but I didn’t know that 18 years later we’d be at a holiday party with 140 attendees who work for us sending love to our employees who work out of the state like Greg in Omaha, Aaron in Denver and Michelle in wherever she lives. . .I think Colorado now. It’s become bigger than I can truly understand. I am on the company Slack and I feel out of my league in a league I started. People are setting automations to remind writers to generate content for theme nights that have been scheduled by a bar via an app. I used to be able to put my arms all the way around the project. I knew how to do everything. I did everything. I saw the guts get built. I fucked up things routinely. So did Chuck. He fixed my shit. I fixed his shit. My arms could wrap all the way around this thing. And now they can’t. I can never get to every restaurant that uses us. I can never meet every person that works for us. We have a thriving business in New Mexico. I can’t put my arms around New Mexico. It’s a scale I just never thought Trivia Mafia would be. If it got big I thought it would get big from my sweat, from my effort. I can’t put my arms around it so I just go to the standard playbook of owner platitudes: “thanks for working so hard” “I’ve seen what you’re doing by following along on Slack and it is really impressive” “I keep on hearing great things about our social media presence”. These things are all true, these things all matter. I appreciate all of these people more than I can express. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. There is no denying that Trivia Mafia is a business. It is an LLC that generates a profit or a loss. Chuck and I are the owners. But I cared about all these people and all these events and all this content long before it was a capital “B” business. It is a factory of fun people doing special things that bring players joy. Brenna, the saint who has been running Trivia Mafia with us for 10+ years said we have 199 active locations at the moment. This is a big factory. This is a special adventure. And I have a special role in it. But I can’t wrap my arms around it. But I can wrap my arms around Christopher (Brenna’s husband), Brenna, Amy Woo, the Shoobs, Danno, Marcus, Keith, Martha, Meghan, Eyeball and so many other amazing people who give part of their life to this factory. I can wrap my arms around that. We are a big ass business designed to create fun experiences for players, hosts and venues.
The scene is great. We are at La Dona Cerveceria. I’ve been here a number of times. Name tags. Hellos. There is a picture of Chuck and me on the image round and many many many people have no idea who we are. The factory is bigger than the boss. The factory is bigger than the history. There are people working for Trivia Mafia who understand it in a completely different way than I do. But they understand it. They love trivia. They love how we do trivia. They are flashing their wristband and enjoying a beer tonight. We are celebrating. The joy is not pointed towards anyone. At a good holiday party the joy should be pointing in every direction.
After a short game of Lotteria (from Mexico, similar to bingo) and an obligatory round of trivia the night settles into karaoke. Karaoke has been a centerpiece of Trivia Mafia holiday parties for a long time. We always use Sharon as a host. She’s the best. The list fills up quick and people start singing. Trivia hosts make for amazing karaoke singers. The best hosts have a comfort with being the center of attention without an obsession with being the center of attention. I enjoy the karaoke and also make my way around party introducing myself to some and reconnecting with people I’ve known for years. Matt Schubbe sings a Cranberries song. I’m 75% sure it’s “Dreams.” He sings the whole thing in O’Riordan’s register. He is absolutely understated, just delivering the goods and wowing the crowd and me. The moment is right for a joint outside by myself. It’s frosty cold. No one is smoking cigarettes outside. That’s great news. No one is smoking weed. If people want weed they are probably drinking it. But I was born in 1981, I miss smoking cigarettes and I enjoy a marijuana cigarette from time to time. The air is cold as shit but I’m enjoying myself and the break from socializing. I return to my date Amy Woo singing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” It’s incredible. People are singing along. Many songs being sung go completely over my head. I don’t really know My Chemical Romance, Sum41 and many other bands that click just right for people younger than me. I look around to see a crowd of folks connecting with these songs and I have no idea. I’m gravitating towards hanging with a host Colin and his wife Elise. I trained in Colin in 2015. He is now a married father of two and I think none of that was in the mix when he started working with us. We have always had a good vibe. For many years Elise would call up the Current and request C+C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat” and every week I’d say “no fucking way.” I did play it for them once. . .on their wedding night. Their wedding planner brought them outside, they flipped on the stream and they heard the request. Isn’t that great? Isn’t life great? Aren’t you glad you smoked that joint? You are. Colin delivers an amazing performance of a Chapell Roan song called Pink Pony Club. It’s in a high register and Colin delivers the entire thing in his head voice. It is a show stopper. Colin at that moment is every woman in the spot’s favorite man. He is the man.
At some point a man named John steps up for karaoke and does something insane that I absolutely did not understand. The music begins and it is Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and the News. There is no question. The title of the song has flashed, the words are starting to flash. John begins to sing “Enter Sandman.” I don’t know what the shit he is doing. But I start to sense that he has locked this thing in perfectly. Kind of like when Kevin Hunt figured out that restarting a song on the Dodge Caravan took exactly a quarter note at the tempo of “Never No More” by Souls of Mischief. Thus, with a well timed tap on beat 4 of bar 8 one could freestyle forever in the car over that Hieroglyphics beat. When the groove drops out and Huey should be saying “it’s hip to be square” John death rattle squeals “off to never never land” and I believe I have urinated in my pants and also fallen in love with this dude. The phenomenon sort of cycles through the room. People start to hone in. It doesn’t need to be explained nor can it be. People are just nudging their friends or stopping mid-sentence and taking in the splendor of a karaoke take over. Sharon doesn’t know what to do. And then John air sax solos and then grabs the last half of “Hip to be Square.” I know that this will be the apex of the night. If Amy Winehouse came back to life and sang Valerie that would be second place. This “Hip to Be the Sandman” thing is a known gag and it is brilliant. Check it out.
The party goes on. I know I will do some amount of work at the end of the party. Put some shit away. Move some tables. I look forward to this. It will make me feel better about being an owner of a profitable company who doesn’t get his hands dirty anymore. I move some tables. Bring some empties up. Move a table or two. A plan is coalescing. We will got to Otter’s Saloon where we will sing more karaoke. Colin and Elise offer to drive me. They say they will move the baby seats. I know in my soul I wouldn’t move baby seats for them unless it was the last option. I feel a bit like a turd, but I also want a ride.
Otter’s Saloon is perfect. Weird, gruff and eccentric door guy wearing a cowboy hat. Kind of full. PBS News unexplainably on one of the TVs. Full bar but not too full. There’s no karaoke stage. It’s just two screens and two mics. This is ideal. Karaoke is the people’s entertainment. I run into an old acquaintance and make the mistake of the “how is your husband” and she says “we’re getting a divorce.” I am a connector so I always want to establish the ways we know each other and pursue those connections. . .but I feel like such a shit. She is chill about it and we are catching up. The crew is getting an elite seating situation and starting to get a little love from the regulars. At one point the door guy comes right up to me and playfully squares up with me. I look him straight in the eye to see where we are headed. He puts his arms on me, not a fan of that, and then he kind of half hugs me. Weird but I see he sort of this he’s part of the entertainment. I know I am part of the entertainment. There are some I-guarantee-you-these-white-girls-are-from-Columbia Heights-girls and they are singing Destiny’s Child and deeper r&b. The vibes are going from good to great. A strange older man who looks a little like Mystery Man from Mulholland Drive sings me a Billy Joel song directly to me face. It’s strange but at this point the weed is happening and I’m all the way in.
The night at this point is better than the magic nights I spend too much of my life trying to recreate. This is the best Trivia Mafia holiday party. This is a great night. I am in the bar. I am dancing a little bit. I am dressed spectacularly. I am a magnificent person in a magnificent moment. I’m with probably about seven or eight people. There’s always a watch the karaoke option. There’s also usually conversation available. Amy sings a weird song about Arkansas I don’t understand. There are layers of communication happening tonight. We have made mini karaoke friendships with a group of four girls next to us. We aren’t having big talks, they aren’t sitting with us. But we are commenting on the quality of the singers and the songs. We are making room for each other. ONE OF THESE FUCKING GIRLS TRIES TO UPDOG ME. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME KARINA. I’M 43 YEARS OLD. Here’s how it happens. Elise is going up to sing a song and she talks to Karina. I ask Karina if she’s singing with Elise. Karina says “I’m just hyping for her.” After the song gets going I say to Karina “she’s doing good” and I EXCREMENT YOU NOT Karina says “SHE’S GOT THAT UPDOG.” This is unbelievable. She should be arrested, or at least cut off, or at least she should be critiqued. Not this time Karina. I don’t fall for it. Of course I don’t fall for it. I’m 43 years old. YOU CAN’T UPDOG ME.
Amy’s friend Meghan shows up and we go deeper than we ever have which is still not that deep. I can’t remember the details but I realize she has a depth of spirit and relation to the world that I just didn’t know she had. You spend years talking about bullshit between drinks at large hangs and bars and maybe you get to thinking that’s all there is to somebody. You don’t think it’s bad. You just think that’s it to her. And then suddenly some corner of her day opens up in conversation and you realize her soul goes all the places yours does and places yours doesn’t. You want to have a coffee with her for the first time in your life. And more than what you might find out over the coffee, more than the layers you peel back together, you just enjoy the coffee more knowing there’s layers to her. We can talk about bullshit over beers for another fifteen years but every moment will feel different now that I imagine the layers.
That’s it. That’s the night. I make it home. I am overwhelmed with this joy. I make my way home and hit the hay so I can have my shit together tomorrow. A part of life is being a part of a thing you don’t understand. I don’t understand Trivia Mafia. But I am a part of it. I’ll see you at the holiday party next year.
Big Trouble on Saturday at White Squirrel
Big Trouble at White Squirrel on Saturday January 25 6-8pm. Plying a new tune I wrote called “67 Ways to Leave Your Easel”. The bass solo should take up the majority of set 1. I’ve got a lot of scales I’ve been slapping and I’d like to share them with you slowly.
Location, Location, Locations
God damn it it’s important to be in places designed to be about the things you love. My 20s were parked firmly in the area where it was most efficient to go to where the shit you loved was. I love movies. Go to Home Video. I love instruments. Go to Willie’s American Guitars. I love recorded music. Go to a record store. I love making music. Go to your space and practice and write.
Now a lot of times you decide you love something and you search for a home for it on the web. Or you just hope that the thing you love comes across the identity-seeking graze of scrolling. I have gotten plenty of good experiences from that grazing, but no great ones. I fell back in love with things I used to love today by being in their physical presence.
I needed that affirmation of love. Staying creative, ambitious and enthusiastic about creative pursuits as futile as the ones I’m in requires recharging, requires fortification. When all you do is tell your dog “it” matters while you sit on your couch trying to finish up some piece of writing and you keep on dozing off I admit I get to wondering if it does actually matter. But today, I know “it” matters. The “it” is a life that is not a complete surrender to the algorithms, to the momentum towards doing what is easiest for your family and your immediate satisfaction. The “it” is purposely crafting a life that produces art, that fosters community, that helps things be better. I, like you, am surrounding by people who never gave a shit about “it”, stopped giving a shit about “it”, or harbor some bit of negative judgment for anyone who still cares about “it”. It’s a worthwhile fight.
This morning, after I made my signature pancakes and struggled through a walk with our rebellious pit bull foster Flex, the boys from Big Trouble came over for a rehearsal. Big Trouble plays once a month at White Squirrel (last Saturday of the month 6-8p). Big Trouble has been on a creative run that involves making new music almost every month. One rehearsal, one gig. New charts, charts we struggled with, songs we just want to revisit for whatever reason. Everyone sounds nice at rehearsal today. The guitars are brilliant, filled with clarity and tube warmth. Peter has his best snare on my house kit. The riveted secondary ride sounds beautiful. My bass amp hasn’t moved in years and it’s set up just perfect. I have new roundwounds on. There is an aesthetic joy in this band. There is a beauty to the sound. We dust off the Elliott Smith song Angeles. We finally find an arrangement that works for the bridge. We’ve been trying to make this song work for maybe a year and a half. Next up we work on a new original I wrote called 67 Ways to Leave Your Easel. Here’s the chart in case you want to play along at the next gig on January 24.
It turns out great. Tasty solos. Then we work on Waxahatchee’s Ruby Falls. This one has been a struggle spot. I transcribed the melody. My brother Steve got it more closer to the record. But me and my fingers were stuck in our ways and I struggled to make the transition. Her beautiful melody at times leaves some rhythmic uncertainty. Steve, who has been giving lessons and playing a bunch of music as of late, falls in and adjusts rapidly. Faster than I can. I figure it’s hopeless to make the decisions about the melody and firm them up in this one rehearsal. But here we are, getting it together. I love music and I am around fellow musicians. The room is filled with music, the room is filled with musicians. This is one of the ways I spend my life. This is one of the ways I fill my cup. This is one of the ways Peter, Steve and Josh also fill their cup. We wrap up the rehearsal and I rejoin my family.
My four year old N. took a risk on a toot in the tub and dropped a deuce. My wife Rachel is not super excited about the whole situation. I clean N. up while Rachel cleans the tub. A trade I’m happy to make. We play Mount Sean. It’s a game where N. steps across my spread out legs in a sitting position on her bed in order to “climb Mount Sean.” Then we head off to guitar lessons. I don’t want the guitar teacher to my house. I want to get guitar lessons at a spot where other kids get lessons. Location. Location. Locations. My seven year old S. drops down into a basement room filled with Beatles posters and peppered with Gary Clark Jr. posters and keeps on learning how to sight-read on the G, B and E strings. N. and I play upstairs, look at weird instruments, play around on the carpet and kill time. We join S. for the last ten minutes of her lesson and I love seeing her play with the teacher, laughing, learning. This is one of the ways we spend our Saturdays. During the lesson N. asks me to push my finger into her forehead. I am transported back to a video store from my childhood in Pownal, VT. I have one of the worst headaches of my life. My mom takes her hands and pushes my forehead and the back of my skull together. She then pushes the sides of my head together. I have never felt better. Better than Tylenol. Better than a cold glass of water on a hungover morning. I wonder if I am making N.’s head feel better than it ever will. I hope I am.
We drive to Caydence on the East Side of Saint Paul. Coffee, vinyl, live music. I am at a physical location for music lovers, for coffee lovers, for people who don’t want to do their things differently. S. looks at the impossible to sound out pastry kouign amann. You and me both. She orders one of those. N. gets a hot chocolate with whipped cream. Peter Goggin, Sophia Kaufmann, Nate Baker and some jazz musicians I don’t know are playing All of Me. No drummer. The percussion is a tap dancer. Rhythm is a dancer. Ashley Gonzalez.
I am in a city with jazz musicians who troop into the back of a record store and make beautiful music on a Saturday in January. I am here to consign records for Heiruspecs with my friend Niqui who I’ve known for years. She’s hung posters for Trivia Mafia. She’s been to a bunch of Heiruspecs shows. She’s worked hard for her community and she is a fixture here at Caydence. I drink a coffee, fill out consignment forms and put some records into the universe that I hope someone will buy and spend time with and enjoy and play for their friends.
I’m about to leave and I see Chris. I don’t know Chris’s last name. He played percussion in a band my friends were in in their early 20s called Latona’s Thirst. Chris is driving around putting up posters for his new band the Stone Arch Rivals. He is too old for this shit. I am too old for this shit. But we are here together, spending our Saturdays spreading the word about our art. Buying a coffee. Hanging a poster. Hearing a band. Browsing through records. Talking to a sax player. Fighting the algorithms. Visiting the locations. Filling our cup. The posters look good. They’re almost ready to put out a record. I return home, turn on Radio K. The genius DJ plays They Might Be Giants, Nirvana, Journey and Modest Mouse in one set. They rattle off all the famous Steve Smith’s in addition to Journey drummer Steve Smith. It is amazing radio. It is funny. Modest Mouse sounds amazing. My cup is brimming. I had to tell you about it.
Photo Dump
Photos of me holding containers of pancakes. Photos of my friends. Photos of jazz musicians. Photo of my old mailman. What a treat.
Scenes from the Holidays
Walking out of the Midway YMCA I saw an older man in a jacket struggling mightily with the big ass pole that holds up the big ass US flag that waves across the parking lot. I can tell he works for the Y; he’s wearing a big ass winter jacket but I can see the telltale signs of the YMCA blue polo by his neck and belt. All around the country and presumably beyond that, people of all ages are struggling with big ass poles bringing big ass US flags down to mark the death of Jimmy Carter. Grunts, mumbles and youtube videos being dialed up to pay tribute to a man who struggled as a President and flourished as a human. I only knew him as an ex-President. He had a spine and a moral compass which seemed to be his undoing and his doing. Is the man trying to half-mast the Ross thinking about Jimmy Carter or is he just thinking about the mechanics of the flag? I’m thinking about both.
——
Everything points to the reality that my friend Seth has blow-dried his testicles, perhaps in a locker room setting.
Years ago I used to go to LA Fitness. I say this with all of my heart: fuck LA Fitness. Ending my relationship with them was more complicated than breaking a lease with a dickhead landlord. But the sauna at the LA Fitness was good. My high school friend Bryan Jameson was in there sometimes and it was always hot. My guess is it’s 2017 and the sauna is full. You’ll have to remember, if you can, that as recently as 2017 earbuds were way less common. At that time people either just sat in the sauna or they held their iPhone in a plastic bag like a fucking idiot and scrolled a loud ass Facebook page sans headphones. But, on this particular evening a young man walked into the sauna with earbuds in and started his sweat. An old man managed to tap young guy on his shoulder and proceeded to give a weirdly calm tirade with the thesis “what the fuck is wrong with this young generation? Plugging in at every possible moment and never just enjoying the moment! Why don’t you take out those headphones and just chill in the sauna?”. The young guy basically just said “I don’t know what’s wrong with my generation, leave me alone, I’m listening to my music”.
Flash forward to ten minutes later I see the same old man 108% naked over by the rarely used counter with mirrors, stools and blow dryers. Old man has his left foot up on a stool and in his left hand he is blowing air with a vigorous focus upon his previously saunad testicles. For me this negates any validity his point about the “young generation” possessed previously. What’s weirder: sporting ear buds in a sauna or blasting your nuts with a public use CONAIR? Don’t answer that. I know you think the air bath for the family jewels is weirder. NOT SO FOR SETH.
I told this story at his family’s Hanukkah party (the kids were downstairs playing) and Seth real quietly, just to me, goes “was it a steam room or a sauna?” It was a sauna Seth, but the point stands. Seth speaks up, “just enjoy the sauna, you don’t need earbuds. And in a steam room I certainly wouldn’t wear earbuds.” Are we doing this Seth? Are we re-litigating the headphone thing or are we laughing about an old guy doing a dong dry? And Seth says “the blow dryer thing seems more reasonable.” Also, what problem are you solving by air drying the family cashews? I don’t blow dry but I think it’s to bring your hair quicker to its preferred appearance. Is that what we’re doing with your nuts Seth? Are you making sure the hair dries in your preferred part?
——
Humans are so obviously better than computers. As I’m shopping for food, for gifts, for books. As I’m giving my credit card I want to give it to a human. I want a human to lower the flagstaff. I want a human to dry his testicles at the LA Fitness in the Midway. I don’t want the robots to do everything. A couple days off from the radio job brings me to different businesses at different times. I see different humans doing different things, reading different things, laughing differently. Just in Saint Paul there are so many great people that I never want replaced by computers. I don’t want everything to be efficient. I want to buy my groceries from Michelle at Oxendale’s. I want to buy my records from Mike at Barely Brothers. I want to ask if Rainer re-dyed his hair while I buy my medium medium with room for cream. I don’t need convincing. I want humans.
——
I spent one fantastic New Year’s Eve in Duluth playing at the Norshor Theater with Heiruspecs. 2003 into 2004 I bet. Rest in peace to Rick Boo, the promoter who brought us there. He probably lost his shirt that night. There was a radio station doing announcements, there were bartenders, there were sound people. But there wasn’t really an audience. Maybe seventy five people? Maybe. The famous music writer Jessica Hopper was there. Big Quarters had traveled with us and I believed they opened the show. Heiruspecs drank heavily but we were in healthy playing shape and put on an awesome show to that small crowd. I remember having so much fun and thinking building the crowd wasn’t our problem, at least on the actual day of the show it wasn’t anymore. There was a party afterwards, primarily curated by a woman I had kissed a couple times when I was in Duluth. Never more than kissing and not much more than kissing that night. A really fun party. A lot of people. And her house, I think her mother’s house, was out on Park Point. Her backyard was Lake Superior and it was a pretty modest house. And it was New Year’s. Cold, windy and majestic beyond all imagination. We kissed a lot and I don’t know a classier way to say this, I felt on her booty a lot. A lot. Everything about the moment, very much including her butt, felt just like the greatest possible situation. I was glad for the small crowd. I was glad this famous writer Jessica Hopper had seen us perform. I was glad to party and I was glad to be kissing with a beautiful girl whose mother lived on the peninsula at the end of the world. Her bedroom was the top floor. The sun came in and it felt late even though I bet it was early. 2004 had started. The band went to Pizza Luce for brunch.
Something Else Works
We need a way to bring problems to a wider awareness without murder and terrorism. We are overloaded with information but that’s been true for a long time. We spend a lot of time on platforms that focus in on conflicts, on anger, on division. Social media might be supercharging that mission, but foregrounding tension and conflict has been part of the media landscape for a century plus.
I learned of the events of October 7 in Israel with a quickly sickening stomach. The purposeful slaughter of civilians sickens me. Young people, babies. Old people. Murdered. No good should come of it. These actions should be an absolute dead end. They are reprehensible. What did happen though is that the journalists I listen to and read starting covering Israel and Palestine with a focus and intensity I haven’t witnessed in the past decade. This focus and intensity brought me voices from many sides of the conflict. I learned of veterans of the IDF who believe Israel is on the absolute wrong path. I heard from centrist thinkers who critique Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas inside of Gaza at the corners but generally support it. I heard from Palestinians, both from the West Bank, Gaza and from the larger diaspora who offered tragic first person narratives of their lives in war and also offered ideas for the future. Why do these conversations sprout from murder? Where was the appetite and offerings of these conversations beforehand? It existed. But I didn’t put my eyes on it. I didn’t hear about Jewish Currents, I didn’t see these episodes in my feed from the NYT, from Plain English, from The Gray Area. I didn’t read articles about Palestine in The Atlantic, NYT and the other places I read. My media diet is full of blind spots and it would be arrogant to simply say “the conversations started after October 7”. But it became impossible for me to ignore after October 7. I didn’t digest the Great March of Return protests happening in 2018-2019. What made the journalists I read and myself turn my head was October 7. I feel guilty about that. A reprehensible slaughter brought me to look at issues I had willfully ignored, issues I misunderstood, injustices I muted without realizing I had. The March of Return protests were largely peaceful. This news of peaceful protest didn’t reach my feeds. I am reminded of the folks in my Facebook feed 2013-2020 who seemed to think that the very first think any Black Lives Matters protesters decided to do was to block a highway, the Mall of America, the marathon. As someone who followed the developments of individual chapters of Black Lives Matter more closely I wanted to shout out “they’re trying all sorts of shit, this is not a one approach movement, it wasn’t a block the highways on day one situation. Read more! Learn more!”
It can’t be murder. Cause when it’s murder I can’t remove the cause or the righteousness from the murderous actions. And it can’t be murder cause someone else chose murder. Apartheid is repugnant. You can’t justify it. There isn’t a set of circumstances that will make me think “obviously you had to resort to apartheid, obviously you had to resort to 2,000 lb bombs in crowded areas with children, obviously you shouldn’t do everything in your power to feed starving people”. These go against my moral fiber. These are actions I won’t be forced into. These are actions that you must acknowledge weaken your moral fiber, weaken the potential for you to be regarded as a moral actor. And maybe being regarded as a moral actor doesn’t matter to you anymore. And if that’s the case you’ve lost already. And when you murder to push your agenda, when you murder indiscriminately and viciously, I can’t remove those actions from your cause. Your cause is stained.
Flash forward to Luigi Mangione presumably killing Brian Thompson from United Health Care. Thompson was a father, a husband, a human. He’s gone. The kids don’t have a daddy anymore. It’s reprehensible. It can’t be defended. But here I am again, hearing podcasts that haven’t said shit about healthcare in months dedicating multiple episodes to the topic. And they’re telling me about new ideas. Talking about ways in which health insurance companies might be the easiest entity to point a finger at, but not being the only party culpable for the horrendous health care offerings in the US. I’m hearing talk of solutions, of some of these companies changing their behavior, the government taking a more concerted effort to limit some of the BS these companies offer. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Derek Thompson from Plain English to have two health care economists on his podcast. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Ezra Klein to do the same. But, it’s clear that it is Brian Thompson’s killing that has put these issues on the front page. Murder is sticky, we look at it, we read about it. I contemplate a murder in a way I don’t contemplate a protest. The protests don’t rise to that level. They don’t stick.
It’s terrible. These murders are a stain, a tragedy, an act that hurts everyone, not just the murdered. But I stand back and wonder what else rises above? What can get the podcasters to not just talk about efficient work habits and micro-dosing and re-litigating our election? What can get us in our easily distracted world to not be distracted? To not keep on scrolling, to not let the status quo win. It can’t be murder. It won’t be murder. What will it be?
Day Off
I have the day off from Jazz88 and I always want the days off to be simple, joyous, fancy free. Occasionally they are. Mostly they are a parade of errands, fun and otherwise. I owe the United States Treasury a little bit of money. They wanted it by December 2. I am sending the check today hoping that they will call it even. (they will not). I finished the book my wife Rachel and I agreed to read this summer. It is Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones.
I want to read more books but I am pulled in every night to magazines and sometimes even to news on my phone though I’ve really cut down on that. Reading at nighttime is really no substitute for a long daytime session of reading. I imagine I probably get three long daytime sessions of reading in a good year. A flight, a vacation, maybe a long repair job at a mechanic where I elect to wait for some reason. As a person who has never been a truly capable sight-reader of music, I still imagine that the reading I do in the middle of the day is how it feels when the great readers in town sit in front of a piece of music. I know the characters, the references and the general outline. I predict what is coming, I navigate my feelings while the plot rolls on.
When I get the five or six odd pages in during a session of nighttime reading it is barely the same sensation. I am flipping back, I am remembering character names, I am feeling the left side of the book hit my nose as I am dozing off. It is altogether a different sensation to try to cram a little bit of the book into my head before I sleep. Maybe those sessions are better suited for magazine reading. Something digestible. Books are digestible too, but not on the same timetable. I will be digesting Salvage the Bones for a handful of days, a couple talks with Rachel, a couple moments of reflection.
A Farewell/Pause to the Performance Career of Haley
Minnesota-based singer-songwriter just announced her “last live performance for a while” and it hit me in a very intense way. I am an agemate of Haley’s and though we are far from close friends our careers have consistently crossed paths for over twenty years. For years I’ve thought of her as one of the great writers in our scene. I’ve probably really spoken to Haley maybe ten times in my life. But the amount of times I feel shoulder to shoulder with Haley in making music, in crafting a life, in pursuing a balance between family duties and music duties are countless. She’s made songs like Kismet Kill, Hometown and Last War that I think are some of the finest music to ever come out of the Twin Cities. She’s lived a beautiful life sharing music with her fans, eschewing much of the social media game (I onetime told her I said something nice about her online and she said “I will never see that ever”), and generally charting her own path. There’s a time where Haley moving to Portland got a fair amount of coverage in the Star Tribune, Vita.mn and City Pages. But we’re in a different era where the end of her performing career doesn’t come with big fanfare. When I heard an announcer mispronounce her name on the radio as “Hallie” I felt compelled to put down just how important Haley and her path are to me.
I remember hearing about Haley from Bill Caperton. He described a young woman signed to Low’s label Chairkickers Union and making waves in Duluth. She had moved to Duluth from her hometown of Rapid City. This was 2003 I bet. And then she starts working with Vickie Gilmer. Vickie is managing my band Heiruspecs at the time as well as her primary bread-winning client Mason Jennings. I’m barely 23 years old, shocked I am in a band that has a manager. Everything is new, everything is amazing. I see a tour poster for Haley (at the time performing as Haley Bonar) that says “Save a horse, ride a cowboy”. I hear her music around then and it’s just simply stunning. It seems patently obvious why Chairkickers would be involved with her. Her writing is pure and intimate. That’s kind of the Low formula but frankly Haley has always gone for the visceral in a more convincing way lyrically than Low has. There’s something sort of just straight forward about Haley. That straight forwardness brings her closer to the visceral than grand imagery or poetic statements can every get you. Her songs are amazing and she performs them well. She will toss off an absolutely amazing line into the third verse of a song where most writers are hiding their third-rate material.
I don’t know the ins and outs but Haley didn’t work with Vickie for long. But Haley seemed to keep on getting the right calls and opportunities. Opening tours, opening sets. Everyone else in the world of music was older and Haley was my age. We weren’t friends, I can’t even remember necessarily “meeting” her during these years, but we were on a lot of bills together. She was friends with Martin Devaney and Joanna James and I was playing music with both of them at the time. We ended up together at a small apartment party on Grand Ave and I learned that Haley is absolutely hilarious. She made one of the funniest jokes I ever heard that night. I still probably think about it once or twice a week.
At this time Haley is the talk of the town in a way that seemed mega significant to me at the time. Shows are full. City Pages is writing about her. She’s opening for bands. The best players in town are playing with her. And her records keep on getting better and better. I feel this kindredness with her at these moments, not cause the same things are happening for my band, but because we are in the same universe, pursuing what I think are the same goals. And every time I hear her music I think, what an amazingly great song. Even if I don’t like the guitar tone, or the drum part, or the mix. . .the song is always bulletproof. Haley signs with Afternoon Records, which at the time seemed like a really big deal. The rumor was that Afternoon footed a 10k bill for big deal guy Tchad Blake to mix her record. I don’t know if it’s true but holy shit that record sounds great. It’s shortly after that that Haley moves to Portland for a time and I was wildly confused. Haley! How could you leave this? People come to your shows! You’re writing amazing songs! Everything must be perfect right?
I saw Haley when she came back from Portland at a great short-lived restaurant in Saint Paul called the Strip Club. I was there with my now wife Rachel and Haley was there with a couple people and a. . .BABY! I didn’t know many people with babies at the time. I didn’t know many musicians with babies. I think I knew no women musicians with babies in my age cohort. I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t understand how she could do it. Live the life maybe we’re both still aiming at and having this beautiful child to care for at the same time. I didn’t know how brunch with a kid was supposed to work. I still sort of don’t. We talked as long as you can really talk when someone is holding a baby and everyone is trying to have a brunch.
The records kept on coming and they kept on being amazing. Seemed like a miracle to me given how much the music business is designed to kick everyone who isn’t a single, white 17-25 year old male out of the fame. Some friends of mine joined her band and they seemed to be doing these things that I knew were hard to navigate period, and harder still to navigate while raising a child. I was so impressed. More than impressed I was in utter belief of Haley. She means this. She means this music and she will do what it takes to share it.
Haley came back from Portland quick and I ran into her again at a Duluth show with Gramma’s Boyfriend (her awesome sideproject), P.O.S, Heiruspecs and maybe one other act. This might’ve been the mid 2010s. We talked backstage and she said something that always stuck with me. She said “I heard that Peter (Heiruspecs’ drummer) is working for the city or something?” (Peter was and still is working for Mayor Carter’s office). I confirmed that yes and Haley just said “and here the rest of us are, just still doing the same stupid music stuff.” It stuck with me cause I know, and she knows, the music stuff isn’t stupid. The music stuff is magical. The times I’ve seen her on stage or heard her on record and it’s changed me. And I’m not the only one. When she announced she was taking a break the fans came out of the woodwork to celebrate her and her music. It’s great music. It’s hit me. It’s struck me. That isn’t stupid. But the world thinks it’s stupid if you aren’t famous enough to be widely recognized.
Maybe in 2019 or so Jade from the Current had Haley on for an interview. I do not know exactly what they were talking about. But I was struck by how absolutely real and transparent Haley was. Haley told a story about getting in a bad fender bender on her way to a show at the Walker and what hit me was how much she sounded like a human talking to another human about a little car accident. No artifice. No returning it to talk of her album, no shoehorning in references to her upcoming shows. Just talking. It was so refreshing.
And when I thumbed across Haley saying she was stepping back from playing just a couple weeks ago I couldn’t help but think about how well she has lived her life. The big record never hit for Haley but she has fans, sells records, makes an impact and has given countless people mountains of joy, hours of music to deploy for the hard times. I think it’s easy to wonder what the hell you’re doing if your career is music. I am pretty confident Haley knows she hasn’t done “stupid music stuff” for her professional life. But I just had to type it into existence that Haley is one of the greats from our town, and she decided to press pause on a portion of her career on a random Wednesday in November at the Dakota. And more power to her, but she’s spectacular, I appreciate her and I hope you’ll take some time to listen to her work today.
Maybe You Should Play Rapscallion
I struggle to play with my kids. Do you?
Sometimes play is boring to me. Sometimes Legos are small. I want to do the dishes. I want to talk to Rachel. I want to look at my stupid phone and read about another terrible act of violence that has happened in the Twin Cities metro area. I do play with the kids. But I struggle to play, I struggle to stay in it. But across maybe the last two and a half years a very elaborate game has evolved between me and my two daughters called Rapscallion. I love it. And you’ll love it too. And you can play it. BUT, there are tons of rules.
HISTORY: One time my oldest daughter, who at the time was probably five, grabbed my hat and I told her she was a rapscallion. I tried to get the hat back and she refused. We wrestled. This was on the couch downstairs. We laughed and I’d get the hat back and she’d take it back. Then she started adding “freeze” to the lexicon. She would freeze me and position me like I was picking my nose. I started to complain that she was not only a rapscallion but the largest rapscallion in North America by quite a fair clip. She would then permit me to call different dignitaries by using her foot as a phone. I frequently called Joe Biden, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and many others. I would say “hello Joe Biden, I’m Sean McPherson in the 55105 zip code and I have the largest rapscallion in human history here in my home and I need your help”. My daughter would then go “SQUAWK! I can’t hear you, I’m with my chickens.” I would then go “President Biden, can you please step away from the chickens?” My daughter would say “SQUAWK, SQUAWK, I can’t hear you, it’s the chickens.” At one point at a family get together I probably put eight different feet to my ear and pretended to talk to the sitting President Joe Biden.
My younger daughter soon wanted in on the game nightly and we started having spirited rounds of rapscallion. A couple firm hits to the couch during the rough-housing inspired us to decamp to my bed upstairs and things have been much safer since then. We’ve still had accidents, kids fall off the bed, hit something, but the main playing field is soft and comfortable.
THE PROCESS: Rapscallion starts with my two daughters on the bed, the oldest usually wielding a pillow. Once I am armed with a pillow she is then able to hit me with the pillow. I work my way down to the bed while taking body blows from the pillow wielder and making sure to not fall on top of the youngest. From there we enter into a set of loose rituals as part of rapscallion:
Snack Time - This is where the girls eat at my fingers and wrists. They understand I hate this. But me hating it is an important aspect of the game. If I resign myself to getting my hands licked and surrender they say “daddy, you hate this right?”
Mrs. Whobewubba - For Mrs. Whobewubba I lay on my back and my oldest daughter sits on me down by the small of my back. Then my younger daughter sits on my shoulders and they refer to her as Mrs. Whobewubba. The oldest is known as the safety belt and the safety belt holds Mrs. Whobewubba in place. They then ask me start driving and I start moving. My eldest smacks my side and says “does this thing go any faster??” Then my youngest hits my side and says “yeah! does this thing go any faster??” After I pick up speed the oldest tells the youngest “don’t you dare say this is the life.” After a second long pause the youngest says “this is the life.”
Secret Weapon - My youngest’s secret weapon in her reckoning is her ability to jump from one side of me to the other. She asks to use her secret weapon and we clear out so she can execute a couple jumps. My oldest is disqualified from jumping across me cause if she falls on me it cracks my back and hurts like hell and I have to say “oh fuck, fuck me oh my god” and I try not to talk like that in front of my kids.
Balance of Power and Secret Alliances - In this game my kids are the rapscallions and as someone trying to destroy the rapscallions I am referred to as a rapscallander. But frequently my youngest will start as a rapscallender. She will hide under a blanket and hand me different “powers” that she has. When she gives me her final power, the strongest power which contains all other powers within it, she then joins forces with my other daughter and becomes a rapscallion.
THE OFFICIAL RIDES: After our period of loose playing I then inform the girls as to whether they get one ride a piece or two rides a piece on this particular night. They then pick from an ever-expanding set of games.
Volcano - the kids lay on top of me and say “I hope this volcano doesn’t eru. . .” and as they say erupt I jump up and start imitating a volcano and trying to knock them off me.
Pizza Pie - I grab my oldest daughter and hold her upside down. I say “upside down pizza pie, she’s a pizza pie, but she’s upside down.” I then turn her right side up and in a very faux Italian accent I say “Tony, Giuseppe, grab the sausage, grab the spinach, grab the Mozzarella we’ve got a pizza pie” and then I throw her on the bed.
Laundry - I remove all the laundry from a full laundry basket and then my youngest climbs into to the laundry basket. I return all the clothes to the basket. I pick up the basket and say “this is so heavy, why is this clothes basket so heavy?” My daughter says “it’s Momma’s winter clothes.” I then empty all the clothes in the basket and when I get to my daughter I say “this isn’t a shirt, this is a whole person, what are you doing in here?” and she says “I’m a laundry person!”
Weights - With my youngest daughter who I can still easily pick up this involves doing ten chest presses. Sometimes while lifting her up she kicks her feet out and attempts to leave. Those ones are called escape weights and she’s only allowed to do a couple of those. With my oldest daughter she sits on top of me and we hold each others hands. I try to push her up off of my chest and for 14 reps she lets me do this. On the fifteenth she pushes back incredibly hard and I suffer and grumble. She then says “daddy, was the fifteenth one harder than all the others put together” and I say yes.
Rocket - I hold my oldest daughter in my arms and then launch her like a rocket onto the bed.
X - In this game one daughter gets on top of me horizontal and the other one vertical and then they hit me and say “does this thing go any faster?” Sometimes the youngest says slow down but I only listen to whoever picked “X” for their ride.
Hit Daddy - This is a theoretical game because when they say they want to play “hit daddy” I say no.
Fight - This is a real game that is effectively just hit daddy but for some reason I let it happen.
CONCLUSION: I think that just covers it. I hope you’ll consider getting a black belt in rapscallion with your kids. It’s truly changed my life to have a game I love to play with my kids.
Big Trouble Is Playing Saturday at the White Squirrel YES it’s TRUE
Big Trouble is back at it. As we get closer to the end of 2024 I realize that Big Trouble is one of the favorite things happening in my life right now. We get in a rehearsal once a month almost like clockwork. We play the monthly at White Squirrel. People like us and Peter, our drummer, was commenting that he’s pretty sure there are some people coming out repeatedly who we don’t know personally. The technical term for that is a fan. . .but Big Trouble has never really been a big fan group. We’ve more been a spot for a couple degrees of separations of friends and family to join together. But I think our 15 years of medium work has finally paid off. We’ve got some people who like us. I like us. You’d like us. I’m sure of it. 6-8pm this Saturday at White Squirrel. Flyer by my brother Steve McPherson.
I’m Presenting at the Minneapolis Music Census Report Launch
I'll be involved and presenting at the Minneapolis Music Census reports launch at the Women's Club of Minneapolis. Come on down if your schedule permits. I care about the scene here and I hope to share some meaningful insights and to get info from my fellow panelists.
Here’s a huge photo of me I bet that’s helpful.
