What About Soups With Chicken?
It’s going. The City Cast Twin Cities podcast is going. Music is going. Parenthood is going. Ever since daylight savings time ended it feels like the holidays already. I feel the wintery energy. I am also running frequently. Just a mile, but I’m doing it most days available unless I’m doing something else physical. After some hard stressful transition months it’s going. It’s really going.
Why is this post called “What About Soups With Chicken?”. Well, it’s because I told one of my absolute favorite “Sean’s an idiot on the radio” stories and I hope you’ll give it a listen on the Trivia Mafia podcast No Brains No Lightbulbs. Here’s the spot it’s at, five minutes into the episode!
I love the story and I love knowing that it makes Chuck laugh. Chuck has been an absolute gem in the past couple weeks as I’ve been swamped with City Cast Twin Cities stuff and he’s been shouldering a lot of the duties for No Brains, No Lightbulbs.
City Cast Twin Cities is now heading into our third week of making daily episodes and it’s exhilarating and also blinding. I don’t even know what to highlight because I’m so excited about all of it. But I think the post election episodes hold up better since before that we were talking so much about politics.
So on top of all that yapping into microphones. I’m also getting ready to play some bass with Big Trouble and Crescent Moon on Saturday, November 22 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. You can grab tickets for that one now, and you’d be well served to do so. BLB is so small that even some schlubs like us could sell it out. Here’s the ticket link.
After all that babbling, here’s some actual writing.
Top fifty night of my life on Thursday. It was the City Cast Twin Cities launch party at Berlin in Minneapolis. The room was full of the writers, influencers and others who work a lot of the media in the Twin Cities. It was a lot of great people, some who I was meeting for the first time, some who I’ve been sending press releases to since I was seventeen years old.
I’ve been in this kind of world for decades now. I know that comes with some level of baggage. . .I’m certainly not the shiny new object but on the other hand. . .I’m no fluke. I played vita.mn’s launch party as the bassist for Heiruspecs. And now I’m hosting the City Cast Twin Cities launch party. I want to do great work in the world and have that work be valued by my community. And being around a bunch of other human beings who fit that bill for me reminded me of my goals. Marianne Combs, who is the arts reporter of this century was in the house. She’s the first person whoever let me in to MPR. She interviewed me back when I was a freshman in college about Heiruspecs. I have learned so much about trust, integrity and all the other shit from Marianne Combs. Marianne Combs did her job right and when she couldn’t do her job right because of bullshit above her, she bolted fast. The morning that she Keyser Soze’d her career at MPR she said on Twitter that she was leaving because there was troubling accusations against a male member of the Current’s staff and that she was being limited in what she could report. THAT WAS A SPICY MEATBALL. Next time I saw her, Marianne said “sorry I had to put you out there like that. . .folks could thought it was any man on the staff.” But she was sweet about it. She did what she had to and she risked her livelihood cause she knew she wouldn’t be worth a damn if she stayed and pretended shit was cool. To be sitting with a woman I met 25 years ago and she’s toasting me on the new gig. It was beautiful. I also got to spend some time with my old co-worker Nina Moini from MPR. We did a show called “The Warming House” together and I’m positive that if that hadn’t been such an awesome experience I’d have a lot more worries stepping in to my new role at City Cast.
It was a happy hour situation at Berlin. Soon, an awesome saxophonist would be stepping on stage and she probably didn’t want to play her heart out to a room of stragglers from an industry happy hour. So the crew made our way to Cuzzy’s and it was an absolute delight. Cuzzy’s is one of comparatively few places that belongs to the Warehouse District. Sure, now the neighborhood is called the North Loop, but it used to be the Warehouse District and I bet there are still bottles of Heinz 57 available at Cuzzy’s from that era. It’s a well-run popular as shit dive bar. I sat at a table with some old MPR and MPR adjacent friends plus the absolute power thrupple of Minnesota writers: Keith Harris from Racket, Cecilia Johnson from freelance vibes and formerly MPR and Andrea Swensson from everywhere. I was chatting with both crews and just feeling so wonderful to be in a world with these talented people who care about what we are up to at City Cast. Steve Nelson was at the table. He’s audio royalty in this town and I believe that maybs 4 out of 9 people at the table had been rejected for jobs by Steve. What a treat. But Steve knows some old radio people from my world and I was sharing! I recalled a Cuzzy’s meet up I had maybe nine years ago with BT, a radio legend in this town who wanted to meet with me for Trivia Mafia related stuff. I’m rambling cause I’m trying to tell you that while I was in this booth I felt connected to my whole career trajectory, my late night drop offs at City Pages’ weird 24 hour dropbox in the pre-email days, my moments trying to get trivia up and running at Darby’s in the same building as City Pages, my weird cigar hang with BT and now my night at Cuzzy’s with this crew.
Three tables away the producers and a couple contributors from City Cast Twin Cities were having drinks with fellow recent journalism school graduates making their way at different spots. Maybe twelve years from now I’ll be the BT in one of their stories as they find a table at Cuzzy’s to celebrate a new, new venture. If print journalism is dead it seems to me you can resuscitate it with a pretty modest spend on drink tickets and on Thursday we did just that.
Toward the end of the night Tiffany and Adam, the two City Cast producers, walked up to my table with a couple whiskey shots and pickle backs for us to share. I hadn’t been drinking much and I wasn’t driving. I was in prime shape to accept a shot even though god dammit it has been awhile since I’ve had a shot and I figured I might never have another. But what a nice gesture, just pulling up a shot on the first night that we can celebrate this thing we’re building. I took the shot and I felt it all. I felt the way that this new adventure fits in my journey, I think I even felt the way it might fit in to Tiffany or Adam’s journey. I felt the journey and I felt grateful for the Cuzzy’s, functioning as this glue for memories, this backdrop for life developments. We lingered outside. . .my friend Amy would be back to drive us back to Saint Paul in a minute. But as we were there on the corner, checking texts, calling rides, saying goodbye I felt grateful. Grateful for every press release I dropped in that stupid mailbox, every show I went to where the opener went on two hours late and the headliner never even showed, every trivia night I ran where it was the bartender vs. the one team that always comes no matter what. All these things aren’t pretext to this night at Berlin. But so many things have turned out alright, I am in the zone to do some great work and offer what I think will be a beloved podcast and newsletter. But for that night, I was just glad to get into Amy’s car and chat, and laugh, and toast to our years together, trying to tell great stories and make great experiences. Cheers.
photos by James Napoli for City Cast.