Crescent Moon is in Big Trouble

Saturday September 30 - Crescent Moon is in Big Trouble is in a small venue. We are playing at the White Squirrel and I demand you attend. We make awesome music. 6-8p. Thanks in advance.

The Rejuvenating Powers of Superior Lake

First off my daughter calls it Superior Lake, not Lake Superior and I love it.
Second, for six summers the family and I have been getting up to Lake Superior. Usually about three nights. A stop in Duluth. Maybe a stop at the Delta Diner (get the pancakes with the jalapenos). But the destination is Bayfield. We stay right in town. We hit the ferry to Madeline Island maybe once, maybe twice. There are two beaches we like in town. One is called the Ferry Beach. One is called the Edge of Town Beach. Swimming in Lake Superior is a very physical experience. You might be giving me the same face as my wife when I say that. . .”obviously it’s a physical experience you jackass, you are doing it physically”. What I mean is that it is physically impactful. I can feel it in my skin, I can feel it deep in my body. And it’s not purely physical, it’s emotional as well. When I am in Lake Superior I feel like I am stepping into something more connected to the Earth, more deeply of this world than the majority of things I touch and feel. On top of that, I get to swim in Lake Superior one weekend a year. It’s a chance for a snapshot with my soul, with my body, with my family, with my wife. This year felt magical. I feel like the therapy I’ve been deeply involved in (couples and one on one) has helped change my character. I love myself more easily, I forgive myself more easily, I am less of an asshole* to my wife during hard times, I am more gentle with my children. It’s a beautiful thing to witness, it’s slow and it’s not every transformation I wanted to see. Some of the things I struggle with in my life are in my estimation here to stay for the long haul. But it’s about managing them, interrogating them and also just identifying them, having a word for them, having a space to understand these things as a part of me. And as that cold lake water is surrounding my body, so still, so frigid, so powerful, I feel strong, I feel proud, I feel loved and I love the world back.

Night one I am jonesing to get to the beach. It’s cold, but the lake has a draw where I want to get to it as many times as I can. Me and my eldest go to the water and tip toe in the water but it is just painfully cold. Slowly I convince myself to get all the way in. The nuts, the belly button, the nipples, they are all stages of good pain. I’m reminding immediately of how powerfully cold the water can be. Sadie focuses mainly on the sand situation and a rando momma and kid help build her up into a sand mermaid. Her excitement, her curiosity, her joy it’s all beautiful. The mom we are hanging with is smoking cigarettes and my daughter is always just so confused by that process. I don’t even know if kid’s her age will go through a smoking phase. I did. But we are thirty years apart. It’s beautiful to think of her never smoking. Maybe she’ll make a different decision, but she seems legit just confused by it.

On the first morning me and the daughters wake up earlier than Rachel, but still later than usual. One of the best things about a vacation for young parents is the return to BREAKFAST OUT. It just isn’t really sensible or sustainable in regular life. It’s expensive and the real pain in the ass is you still have to have breakfast at home before you leave because kids can’t handle a twenty-five minute wait unexpectedly. Let’s be honest, neither can Rachel. So I only eat breakfast out on weekdays with friends or business associates. But a breakfast out on vacation is. . .magical great easy. For the first morning me and the girls decide to go to Gruenke’s across the street. We arrive at 6:52am and the restaurant doesn’t open til seven. I love the about to open energy. I can see there are workers in there getting ready for the day. I am not the asshole who will knock on the door at 7:01. I’ve worked just enough “open up the shop” jobs in my life to know that me getting in there before they are ready is only slowing down my breakfast. So we play on the grassy area in front of the restaurant. I am playing tag in flip flops desperately nervous I am going to twist an ankle. As we approach the restaurant my three year old elects to vomit on the stairs leading up to the restaurant. This is one of those “not to worry and not too gross” vominos, just a lot of snot to be gross and honest with you. We walk her back to the two bedroom rental we have and Rachel watches after her. The vomit toddler is feeling fine. Me and the six year old head back with paper towel to clean up the throw up and to build up an appetite for BREAKFAST. I love Gruenke’s. They’ve got record sleeves stapled up all over the ceiling. Sadie notices the cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” out of the hundred fifty or so we can see. “Daddy, look at that man pointing his hand next to the woman”. I just can’t bring myself to dive into the complicated discussion of the fact that Joni “One of My All Time Favorites” Mitchell sported blackface for the cover of that album. Maybe next summer we’ll get into it. We talk about serious stuff, and we discuss race. But I don’t know if I’m ready to explain what is wrong about a white woman coloring her face to appear black this morning. The speaker is playing some kind of Sirius Rock Station with a lot of Beatles in the mix. Anytime they come on it’s clear that it’s only the right channel located in our dining area. We are getting served all kinds of George Harrison guitar and John Lennon vocals. I imagine some other room where they are only getting Paul and Ringo. What a treat. But the music is enjoyable and the food is great. An older gentleman sits next to us and tells us that Jimmy Buffett died. We agree that the man created an empire but neither of us are big time parrotheads. He says there’s a record of Jimmy’s up on the wall. There’s not. We talk about the area, he recommends a walking path in Ashland. A young waitress comes in to get some breakfast before her shift. 10th grade. First day of class was on Friday. She gets the omelette and I can’t hear what’s inside of it. Our server is named Corey. We had him as a server last year. He works during the year at Kwik Trip and then picks this up for the summer. I told him that my wife and I just joined the loyalty program at Kwik Trip. He could give a shit. I could give a shit. Nobody gives a shit. But it’s classic Sean to bring it up. There is a wall in Gruenke’s devoted to a single visit that JFK Jr. made to Bayfield. Yes he ate at Gruenke’s. He even rented a room. Yes he tipped. Yes the lady that owned it back then still owns it. I miss reading the old newspaper article format that was basically “a famous person did something in our little ass town”. Classic, the details. You always get what they ordered, and you get the server with the single quote of something like “he asked for an extra glass of ice”. It’s all so dumb and great. The heartfelt coverage of the non-viral, local story is sorely missing in our modern era.

Day one we get out to Madeline Island. Riding on a ferry is a beautiful thing, and everywhere I’ve taken them they all feel kind of the same. The water is different, the views are different. But it’s a combination of working people, tourist people and commerce related travel. A plumbers truck next to a Harley Davidson next to a $1500 mountain bike. Everyone making their way to this island that we adore. We bring our car out, we want to get to the State Park, which we’ve never been to before. The water is beautiful. This is my first real long swim of the trip and it doesn’t feel nice, it feels epic. The water stays cold. It gets better, but it doesn’t get tolerable. But there’s something epic about that. We head back into town to go to the restaurant we both hate. But guess what, we hate it cause it’s full and cause ordering is stressful. But if you walk in there prepped, and the kids have something to do, the food is actually good. The food is actually legit good ass basket food. Even if you’ve never heard the term “basket food” you know exactly what I mean. I had a black bean burger with onion rings. Onion rings are amazing. And god bless a black bean burger. I don’t need my veggie burger to bleed. I don’t need it to taste just like beef. That’s great technology, it’s important. But I’ve been rocking veggie burgers long before they were impossible.
We went back to the State Park after lunch and found an amazing part of Lake Superior. I can’t tell you why but I have millionaire feet. My feet can't stand the rocks in the lake. I can’t handle it. I handle a little of it, but I really struggle, it hurts bad. But my sweet daughter saw a spot with no rocks when we were out on the big boardwalk walk and it was just magical. Hot sun, frigid lake, quiet, beautiful, epic. Lingering out there. Loving life. Back to town, one margarita at the world’s greatest bar, Tom’s Burned Down Cafe. And in the same way that I communicate with Lake Superior every summer, taking some kind of inventory of myself in those cold waters, I do a version of that at Tom’s. How do I relate to the servers? To the customers? Who do I feel connected to? What are the new stickers, what are the vibes? This year both of my visits were rushed. Now you might say that if your wife watches two kids while you get to suck down a SINGLE MARGARITA you should be thankful. And indeed I am thankful for that. But you have to admit that you get the feeling for the bar on maybe that second drink. You start to recognize the voices, understand the playlist, use the bathroom, ask the bartender a stupid question, notice something you hadn’t noticed before. I didn’t get quite there, but regardless, it was so nice to be at this bar I have such warm feelings about.
We catch the ferry back and we make the strong executive decision to just pick up pizza and to not try to pull of a whole dinner out situation. Sometimes you are just aware that the universe would be better if you and your family stayed home and kept it all inside and that’s exactly what we did. Good pizza, frankly unnecessarily good pizza. Also, my family doesn’t eat pork at our own home and that sort of has led us to not eat much pork elsewhere. And that lets me embrace one of my favorite pizza toppings: hamburger. Not meatball, not sausage. . .hamburger. I don’t know, I just dig it. Hamburger, green pepper. That’s a good dish. Sausage can be a lot. Pepperoni is great, but again, we aren’t going to be bringing any pepperoni home. I bought a six pack of Finland’s national malted beverage, Long Drink. Why this shit has not caught on in the US is one of history’s mysteries.

We still had enough gas in the tank for me and my oldest to get a little extra night swim and we went out to our favorite beach, the Edge of Town beach. It’s so wonderful. There’s something very industrial about it. It’s around a number of boat yards and it feels like a boat on a working lake. Which of course, is what it is. It’s wonderful. The water is cold but it’s been hot all day and the water retains that heat. I’m swimming, I’m overjoyed. My daughter is in her own world shaping sand, trying projects. But we are in our own worlds together and it’s a quiet magic I can’t duplicate with the larger family unit. But just me and her, some silence, some peace, the great feelings that come with that. A walk home after dusk, asking and answering questions, exploring things briefly. It’s one of my favorite moments of the trip, I’ve already decided that.

The next morning the kids stage a strong mutiny and say they want to “explore Bayfield” and don’t want to go back to Madeline Island. You know what? Fine! I love Bayfield and the best vacations are not about sticking blindly to a plan. We explored Bayfield. We walked to a playground up away from the Lake. It was beautiful. There was a swing that was sturdy and wide enough for me to swing on and I was reminded what a beautiful action it is to move your body in a swing. Exhausting, but beautiful. We ran into a mom from North Carolina who had bought land up in the area for the climate crisis. I didn’t realize people are doing that. Or rather, I didn’t realize people who rented Honda CRVs and didn’t appear to be bajillionaires are doing that. Okay, so everyone is going to come to Lake Superior and make it an even more impossible spot to live in if you aren’t loaded with money. We’re fucked. The lady was nice. She found some basil and put it into the water her kid was drinking. That sounds good, have to try it. We eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and carrots with dip next to a fountain and it’s some of the best food I’ve had. Food is sometimes all about location.

We did end up going to Madeline Island that afternoon and it was a special one as a trip to Madeline Island always is. We didn’t bring the car, so no easy way to get to the parks. But we went to the town beach. I carried our three year old multiple blocks to get her there cause she wasn’t tolerating the stroller. That was hot as hell, so by the time we actually got to the water, it felt just amazing. It was a hot day, the water was easy to get into and it was easy to stay there. Just playing and laughing with the kids. Exploring, swimming, laughing. I am communing with the water and with my family. I am communing with who I was one year ago, two years ago all the way back to when we started coming here. If things go as planned I will spend one weekend of every year of my life here, as me and my family age and change and evolve. Superior Lake our aquatic journal, taking our stories, and so many other stories, and keeping them cold until we get the next round.

*I am still often quite an asshole.

The Era of An Ending/Life is Blurry

Two redbreast whiskeys and three lagunitas hop waters in I find myself unloading and reloading the dishwasher listening to the back half of the 2002 Heiruspecs album “Small Steps” after witnessing the second to last Sunday trivia at 331 Club ever. It’s Sunday August 27, 2023. I’m forty three years old. Eight hundred sixty six weeks ago I started a weekly trivia at the 331 Club with Chuck Terhark. Next week it’s cancelled. Tonight some of the old gang comes back out. Chuck, the CEO of Trivia Mafia, the company that was born out of Sunday at the 331, comes down tonight. My wife, who met me her husband and her best friends at the 331 comes down. The old gang is there, and we’re older. The big to-do was one year ago when Chuck and I called it quits. Couldn’t do the weekly trivia, didn’t want to drive to NE Minneapolis every Sunday to ask questions on the mic. But the real last call swan song one year later, it’s different. The whole day was sort of a reckoning on the business of trivia and of trivia mafia. Can a reckoning be good? Can it be neutral? Spent my dinner with Rachel talking about my relationship with my dad. And we talked about my relationship with career goals, with privilege, with the fact that I feel like a triumphant sexy God when I unload the dishwasher in my home but I feel like a nobody, a flat note, a footnote, when I’m around fancy coastals who use summer as a verb. FUN STUFF. Got the quesadilla at Maya.

But as these Heiruspecs songs that we worked so desperately hard on in 2002 come on now, I’m just reminded of the sweat, of the arguments, of the fact that Heiruspecs built this career and this command with a level of aspiration and ambition that actually proved to help. What do I hear in Small Steps? Effort, hunger and a desire to put it in a package. Also, why am I listening to music I made twenty plus years ago? Well, the barback at 331 put it on after trivia was over and it brought me such a ding of complicated joy. It felt like an awesome funeral. But he put it on cause he loves the jams, and the bass player from the band, who has been M.I.A. from the bar for a year is back there. It’s cool. But it’s weird. And the record is old. I can’t carry on a conversation, I’m listening to bass fills, I’m remembering what song is next, I’m listening to us rip off Thelonious Monk, and then rip off the Spin Doctors and then listening to P.O.S. being a full octave above where his voice would ultimately land.

And as the music plays I keep on thinking about what Trivia Mafia is and was. We are a company that wants to get it right? People always say “businesses exist to make shareholders money”. Fair, public companies, and maybe shitty companies. I’m glad to make money off of Trivia Mafia. And it is necessary to make money to keep going. But that’s not the center. That’s true of a lot of small companies. They want to do right and make some money doing right? Do you get that? We want to meet the moment with questions, with extra content, with joy. That started with how we did at the 331. There’s no doubt that the 331 Club is the bar I will have spent the most time in in my entire life. I couldn’t break that record if I slept in a bar every night for my entire fifties. We are talking five hours minimum a week for decades. And me and Chuck worked to make something so cool that it could broadcast further. We have 160 odd nights and some other trivia adventures as well. But it started on that stage 16 years ago and it ends for me tonight. I’ll never bundle those 331 cables, I’ll never make sure the mic works. I’m closing this chapter. Or rather, the bar is closing it. Now the trivia loyals sit around and we say our goodbyes to a soundtrack of an album I made at age 21.

I grew up wanting to be a writer. I am a writer. I love this blog. You do too. I want to celebrate these moments. You do too. I want to share my view of the world, my view of my world and my view of the scene I am a part of. I didn’t know trivia would become a big part of my life when me and Chuck dialed up a Myspace page in early 2007 and started promoting. I didn’t know I would meet my wife there. I didn’t know I would serendipitously get a start in my radio career through trivia. I knew it felt good to ask these questions, to invite my friends out, to drink pints of vodka diet cokes and party. To be at a bar scene where I wasn’t the weirdo. To be at a bar scene where we were all the weirdos. It was magic. Sitting out there correcting sheets, sometimes smoking a Camel Light, always talking and ribbing Chuck and talking with the players and the regulars. Working the bar on nights where it was packed to the gills and working on nights where we wondered if it was all over. It was magic, it was special. It’s a way I spent part of my life. It was time to be done. There was going to be more mundanity and less magic if we kept on going. We were going to start punching the clock. But a weekly event is a magical thing and I think the 331 Sunday trivias was a truly special one. It’s all wrapped up in Heiruspecs too. What is my mission? What have I contributed? Why am I concerned with that? Is there a dude just like me in Phoenix wondering what his life is all about? Does he have a blog? How does his record sound? Who has heard this record? Anyone super famous? Who has played his trivia? One time K.T. Tunstall played our trivia. What do you think of that Phoenix Sean? Does that count? One time Dave Chappelle sent his assistant to buy a couple copies of Small Steps from our merch table in Denver. Did he like it? Did you like the song Meters, Dave? Do you like vocal trumpet Dave? Do you play trivia Dave? Have you ever balanced your self-worth on a hot laptop on a Sunday night after saying goodbye to something you did for 16 years with a $30 gift certificate to a bar you’re not sure when you’ll come back to Dave? Is this how things end Dave? Jagged and smooth. Bitter and joyous, nostalgic and dry.

Do You Know About Mischke?

I was just talking with Sarah Lemaczyk from Radio K who is one of many folks I look up to in the world of radio. She is also my neighbor for just a couple more weeks before she moves to Minneapolis like a real asshole. She is immensely fun to talk to about radio and recorded media. She is a person who has thought it about it so much that she is simple. . .do you get what I’m talking about. Sometimes someone who has worked very hard at something for ten years is just too deep into nomenclature, and terms, and ideas and it’s all swirling and if you try to get an idea from them you are drowned in terminology. Switch that to someone who has been in it for thirty years and they are full of well-seasoned information that is digestible and you can actually bring it back into what you’re doing. Pretty incredible. So I love talking to her and she’s often hanging out when I’m walking my dog. I was telling Sarah how much I’ve been loving Mischke, who is a celebrated radio personality turned podcaster. I’ve been hearing ABOUT him for years. My friend Martin Devaney is an enthusiast. But I read about him in the Star Tribune recently and so I dove in. Wow. These podcasts are well-crafted, they are engaging, and I’m gonna say it, they are world-class. I know he has a dedicated fan base, enough of one for him to pay his bills doing a podcast, but I am a bit confused why he isn’t even more of a household name. The work is high quality. The performance of it. The art of it. Part of what you do behind a mic is entertainment. Unless you are simply sharing the amazing songs you wrote and now are disseminating for your fans sake, or perhaps if you have been asked to simply read the news with no flavor. Part of what broadcasting is is entertainment. Mischke seems to get that. He makes an art of the ad reads he does, he makes an art of the traffic breaks he used to have to do. The man has figured out how to put personality into everything. AND MOST PEOPLE WHO PUT PERSONALITY INTO EVERYTHING ARE UNDYINGLY ANNOYING. They are the type of people who have many color markers and who like the musical group The Capitol Steps and love horrible vegan food from the town they went to college in. But Mischke has this personality that his work drips with, without him being extra. He trusts his audience, he is efficient with them, he is a master.

When I told Sarah about this she pointed out that no matter where you are in your career, it’s important to have dads. It’s important to have folks you look up to, folks you study, folks you learn from. I’m learning a boatload from turning on these Mischke podcasts. Check out these episodes and see what you think.

Enjoy these. I hope you love them.

BIG TROUBLE AUGUST 26 WHITE SQUIRREL

It is happening again. These Big Trouble shows have been a joy. The fun of exploring some of the same material once a month but adding something on, tacking something on. Throwing in a challenge. And also frankly something just attacking the beautiful, but existent, monotony of Saturdays with the family. Saturdays with the family are beautiful but days with children fall into a weird rhythm that feels kind of like an unbalanced song. It’s a long intro, a short chorus, an absurdly long bridge, a weird short solo. Things start too early, things end when they are just starting to get good. And a gig forces a little bit of adulthood into the mix. I play music from 6-8 and through some EASY conversations I’ve established with my wife that I can’t make it back for any of the bedtime which generally wraps by 8:45. So I get to sometimes see my family at the gig but I then move into a bit of a night with less commitments. That generally ends up with me eating Shamrocks with some members of Big Trouble and coming home full of energy at 10:45pm and finding out that no one on my block wants to hang out. Man, forties are weird. I’ll tell you that right now. We have an obligation to obey social norms that so clearly don’t work for us anymore. It was clear they didn’t work before the pandemic but now it is painfully clear they don’t work. I thought I was making a Big Trouble post and then I’d do my real blog, but it’s just becoming one thing I suppose. Okay, please do come see Big Trouble on Saturday at 6pm.

Enjoy the music of Big Trouble with special guest you.

A BIG NEW TITLE CAUSE THIS IS NO LONGER JUST A FLYER: DIVORCE SOCIAL FROM MEDIA AGAIN

I love social things. I love media. I pretend to hate social media but I love it, I just know it’s bad for me.
I’ve spent the last six weeks trying to make myself unflinchingly available for any opportunity to draw more people to the Heiruspecs Summer Classic. Even though it was 100 degrees out it actually still turned out really good for attendance. But my gosh, interviews, go to a new coffee shop to put up posters, share what Maria Isa said, share what Unknown Prophets said, write an article, text people to invite them to the show, got a podcast? I’ll appear on it. I used to have an un-fillable capacity to talk about myself, my projects and all of that. And my capacity was so deep that I thought it couldn’t stop. But actually, I’ve told a lot of my stories to the media folks who want to talk to about Heiruspecs. There are always new angles, I appreciate what Chris from the Star Tribune did, I appreciate what Ali from the Current did. It serves a purpose for the world. Media is wonderful. I like reading about bands, I support organizations that write about the arts. I have spent some of the best hours of my life deep in websites or magazines consuming content about artists. But it serves a delicious poison for me. I love the feeling, I know the feeling is valuable and it’s one of the first ways I could bring value to a project. I’ve had a gift at presenting the music I make in a way where it might get written about. I had good mentors for such things, and on top of that, my brother was a music writer, I’ve felt a connection to writer culture probably as strong as my connection to music culture. But for coverage of me it’s empty calories. It’s begging the town crier to talk about you, and then announcing to the same town that the town crier is talking about you. So I am doing a break from it. I’m not making the post about taking a break cause that curses the break. And I bet you I’m gonna put up that Big Trouble flyer. But I’m not scrolling. I can’t take it. I can’t take the ways people are shining, I can’t take the ways people aren’t shining. I’m full up on cool ideas for my job, for my band, for my fall, for my recipes book, for my erections, for my weightlifting routine, for my t-shirts that don’t fit right, for my friends recording perfect drum takes with musicians all over the globe who all film themselves playing small keyboards in well lit rooms with a smiley face while they play a perfect sound. It’s a parade of too much. I’m not getting it in the doses I want. It’s wrong-sized. I took all the shit off my phone. But now I just hop on instagram on chrome. And when I was going hard on Heiruspecs I was getting on twitter on my phone as well. Wasn’t there for my kids the way I’d like to be. So I got back to the grind I was on about a year ago of really letting the scroll go. That means not scrolling when I’m doing work for Jazz88 on social media either. Just get in and post and get out. Check the comments but keep it moving. Don’t scroll. Don’t live your life through the screen. Live your life.
And that’s good energy. That’s what I’m even following today and it feels good. 20+ alerts for Heiruspecs. Surely mostly people saying positive supportive things about our recent show. But it’s filling the wrong hole in my soul to look at those right now. My heart isn’t open for those things right now. It’ll reopen, but I have to find a different thing for awhile. I have to see what that silence gives me back.

I listened to a nice podcast today. The Gray Area with Sean Illing on Utopia. Isn’t it great to think about the world becoming better in the future? I spent so much of my life thinking the world was getting better, it was refreshing to imagine it was possible. And this isn’t one of those: the future is in the children’s hands, they know what to do tirades. This is more of a respond/react. It is abundantly clear that pointing my ire at national and international politics is absolutely justified and totally fucking pointless. But there are better ways that I can live in 55105. There are better ways that I can relate to my world. And they aren’t all about municipal impact. They aren’t even all virtuous. I’d like to eat more meals with larger groups of people. I’d like to have a more relaxed attitude towards parenting other people’s kids. I’d like other adults to do some more serious parenting of my kid. You ever got a volleyball game size party? When I was a kid Dad would often bring us to parties I don’t even fully understand. I think it was faculty at Williams College with a bunch of college students at the party. And it wasn’t at someone’s house, it was at a dorm like thing. If you’re at a party big enough to have a volleyball going on, that’s a nice big ass party. And kids would just be off fucking off doing whatever and getting into the small little trouble, the joyous trouble of childhoods spun free at an event designed for adults. I want that. I got that Trevor McSpadden dude in my life. Also a Jewish family, three kids, ping pong table, house that feels kind of like you could spread out over there. Trevor, I know you read this blog. I’m thinking about bringing my entire family to your house close to once a week and just inconveniencing you in every imaginable way except it’s not actually an inconvenience. THERE’S A BULK DISCOUNT WITH SOME KID ORIENTED SHIT IT’S JUST TRUE. These years of trying to make it happen with me and my wife mainly raising the kids. . .it’s hard on my schedule, my body, my spirit, my mind. It’s rewarding, but I’m not exercising the autonomy I want to over sleep, over what I eat, over my social time, over my career. No, I’ve got my head down cause the modern language is that with young children. . .just hold the fuck on to your hat. Does it definitionally have to be like that? Do we have to white knuckle the hardest years of our life with the smallest circle possible? I don’t think so. There’s a better path to find and this podcast made me think I can find it. And turning off social media made me think I can find it. Last night when I wanted to give my daughter some tub time I didn’t just pull out my phone and see if anyone still liked Heiruspecs. I read a weird book review in New York Times. I can’t remember a thing about it now, but it felt better at the time than scrolling. When I watched the Twins game last night and drank Busch Light I read the New York Times magazine during commercials. I coulda fast forwarded it, I was watching it late, but it was nice to watch the ads, and read, and absorb and reflect. I slept like a baby. And now my wife is back in town and I’m excited to read with her. And when I finish this blog I won’t spend fifteen minutes fucking around on FB, IG, Twitter. I’ll walk the dog and start reading the third chapter of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”? It’s all a journey and finishing that particular Heiruspecs show is turning a little page for Sean towards something that feels a bit healthier for the coming months.

Heiruspecs Got Some Coverage in the Twin Cities

It’s a big week for old Sean. Heiruspecs is playing at Keg and Case on Saturday and we are covering most every element of getting the show running, promoted, stage managed et cetera. A lot of that is falling on my shoulders and I’m feeling the stress. That’s okay. It’s going well. We’ve done a boat load of press for it. First off, this whole show on Saturday wouldn’t be happening without the support of Joe Alton. Heiruspecs has known Joe for years and he’s not only an absolute organizing force, he also understands music and creatives better than most anyone I’ve dealt with. He pointed us to Mary at Field Guide to get our press release out to the right people. Thank you Mary. Since then we’ve had the chance to connect with a couple of the great writers/media folks from the Twin Cities in advance of this show.

Thanks to my old colleague Brian Oake for having me on his podcast to discuss Heiruspecs and more.

Thanks to my new colleague Davide Rasso who serves as the engineer for Dave Lee’s podcast for sliding me in.

We also just got a write up in the Star Tribune from Chris Riemenschneider. Chris has been covering Heiruspecs since about 2001 when we were getting our first shot at playing the State Fair when Nate Dungan booked us over there. Chris has been supportive of us and has featured us frequently in his columns. Certainly appreciate the coverage for this and the angle. The angle is that both Heiruspecs and the Unknown Prophets were getting started in the early 2000s in the Twin Cities and now we’ve both returned to the fold with high quality new records. I’ll take it. Here’s the link to the article.

Fun Photo Dump

My wife bought some very abusable cameras for the girls to explore with and I promptly demanded one of my own. I get to capture some photos of my life. Hanging out with my daughters, my neighbors and my bestie Martin and his wife. What a treat. Long live looking through a photo book and this is getting me a little bit closer to that lost art.

The Storm Before the Quiet: A Lizzo Memory

This is not the spot to find MPLS-era Lizzo slander, nor it is the spot to find some shining endorsement of Lizzo delivered with some certainty that she isn’t guilty of some of the things she has been accused of lately. I actually have some faith that the accusations against Lizzo will be aired out and resolved in a more even-handed manner than most accusations are. I believe because these lawsuits will deal largely with employment law that we will see better and more thorough treatment of the accused and the accuser. No, I am writing about Lizzo because hearing about the accusations of her former dancers had me thinking about the handful of years when Lizzo was absolutely ascendant and though the industry was listening nationwide, we were the only city that was actually rocking with her. We were the petri dish. I booked Lizzo’s MPLS group the Chalice for a summer camp residency at McNally Smith probably summer of 2012 I’m gonna guess?? I think the pay was $1200 for two performances and two come-here-and-meet-students things. Lizzo is now a Brazilianaire. But the first couple of those years of growth in MPLS wasn’t exponential growth. It was just well managed growth. Sell out the Triple Rock. Sell out the Mainroom. Play that place Myth for a New Years show. The shows were getting rave reviews. She was getting played on the Current and a handful of other stations. But she was still broke. Remember the Boston Bombing? April 15, 2013. I was taping a video thing for Dessa and Caroline Smith was practicing next door. Lizzo’s car, or maybe her friend’s car died, I had the Triple AAA card to get it jumped. I was around Lizzo but not in her sphere. She sang back up with Dessa once when I was with Dessa. We played a cover of PM Dawn at a Cedar Cultural Center thing. Lizzo absolutely tore down a version of “The Beautiful Ones” with Heiruspecs at the Fitzgerald. When I was at the Current my co-host Sani and I got to interview her in 2019 here.

Recently, when Lizzo’s dancers came out with a laundry list of grievances and ill-treatment it had me thinking about this one particular moment I had in the summer of 2014 related to the Lizzo world. Quinn Wilson, a brilliant creative director and video producer who was in Lizzo’s sphere for quite some time stood in solidarity with the dancers who started this lawsuit, though Wilson herself is not part of the lawsuit. You can see her post summarized here.

But look, in 2014 I decided I wanted some extra nice ass coffee and everyone had been talking about Dogwood. At the time they had a spot in Calhoun Square in Uptown. Calhoun Square no longer exists in Uptown. But I went down there early on a Saturday, presumably to write trivia questions or promote a Heiruspecs show, the two primary things I did on a laptop at the time. And while I was working in my comfy little chair I could see a young woman working away in Illustrator on a Lizzo/Caroline Smith poster.

And let me tell you, I was just impressed with everything about this situation. At the time Lizzo and Caroline Smith were smoking hot in the local music scene. I believe this show turned into two shows and I believe they both sold out with crowd to spare. And I remember looking at this incredibly dedicated young woman who I would learn was Quinn Wilson working away at the poster. I guessed that she was probably coming out of MCAD given our proximity to the MCAD campus and I just got excited about these young movers and shakers in the scene, working hard to make everything look right. I don’t know shit about graphic design, but Quinn was trying all sorts of different shit to make the flyer look right, color balances, tints, logo placements. And the show probably would’ve sold out if they had printed one poster that said “Lizzo and Caroline Smith at First Ave” in Times New Roman size 22. But the whole package was inspiring. I was jealous because no young up and coming designer was waking up early on a Saturday to knock out a poster for one of my upcoming sure to be sold out shows at First Avenue. I could feel the energy and I was jealous, but I was also inspired. Look at this crew of people, rallying behind a couple talented artists and delivering the goods. Seeing Quinn layer away on that computer, I wanted to walk up and introduce myself but I had no idea what to really chime in with. “I jumped Lizzo’s car last year”. I just had no entry point, and the reality is, a laptop at a coffeeshop should be correctly read as “leave me the fuck alone unless whatever you are bringing is very useful”. I didn’t see the angle so I just admired the attention to detail in making this flyer and I remember thinking what a beautiful team I was witnessing. Go forward a couple years and Quinn Wilson is out in Los Angeles, making it happen, doing the video for Juice and presumably lots of other awesome stuff for Lizzo. That’s basically five years from when I saw Wilson working away on a coffeeshop in Minneapolis to her producing the video for a Billboard charting tune. And now we flash forward five more years and she’s doubling down on Lizzo’s problematic behavior and standing in solidarity with these singers.

What a journey, from the come up, to the top of the world, to a falling out on the level where you aren’t trying to be in Lizzo’s world at all. These women have seen things on their journey that I haven’t navigated in my career. Some tangible, recorded highs, and also clearly some lows that are truly concerning. But that day when Quinn Wilson was working away on that computer just sticks in my brain. The commitment you need to put in to do your craft, the need for your to ride the waves that will take you out of your current situation and into the station you belong to be at in life. It’s a journey, it’s amazing and I was thankful to watch Quinn Wilson on part of her journey. I hope that the parties involved in this set of Lizzo accusations get to something resembling justice. And I hope Quinn Wilson keeps on shining in her current pursuits, because she’s been making cool shit for a long ass time.

The Chickens Are Coming Home To Boil

The abstract thought of leaving this planet in worse condition than it was on the day I was born is difficult. I’ve confronted that abstract feeling for years. It hasn’t been hard to even articulate that in clearer detail as terrible things happen all over the Earth. There are places I’ve been that will be underwater by the time my daughters are old enough to get a learner’s permit. There is a tacit acceptance of how bad it is gonna get even if we fix our behavior tomorrow. And I think that tacit acceptance means we are hard pressed to find a reason to do it TODAY. The buck doesn’t stop anywhere anymore. No one feels they are to blame for global warming. Or they feel that whatever blame lands on them, there are people to blame more. “I’m not driving a Prius, I bet the the Koch brother who is still alive pours gasoline into wild poultry while he lowers minimum wage while wearing alligator boots.” We are all aware that a moment will come with our children where they will ask “what did you do”. My kids will ask what I did to make Minnesota better when George Floyd was murdered, when a man was slowly killed by a band of tax funded employees in the city next door. I’ll tell them I put em in a stroller and took em to one count ‘em one protest. I probably said some stuff on twitter. I bought a Black Lives Matter sign, I argued with people. But I know I didn’t do enough. I was and am a young dad. I thought the arc of the moral universe was inarguably bending in the right direction at that time. I’m not so dim this time. I know we are not doing what it takes to make the world hospitable for future generations. I hear the positive stories too, we compost, I take the bus a hilariously small amount but I do take it. I get it. But I also know there is too much money in doing the wrong thing. And the buck stops nowhere. Or more accurately, we believe the buck will stop somewhere after we die.

My oldest daughter has been to Jewish camp for the past two weeks. Living it up, loving it. Learning songs, playing games, playing tricks, laughing with her friends, swimming, acting, crafting. Got that email that this week on Wednesday and Thursday all the activities were going to be at the Temple. It’s the right call. It was not safe to be outside. And kids don’t know when they’re safe. They can’t find shade easy, they’ll forget to drink water. It was the right call. But for the real me, not the academic me, this was that first clear cut example of the following: you’re giving your kid something worse. I remember inside days at summer camp, it was for rain, it was for something temporary, necessary and unavoidable. But here we are in a different thing. My daughter misses the swimming, the camp ass shit that makes camp different than school, makes camp different than hanging out with your friends. The swims, the suns, the games, the just OUTSIDENESS of the whole thing. Two days gone. She’ll be fine. She had fun, they played games, it was good. But it was that first stark relief of what the worsening of the world is at home. She might not notice, she might not notice when her kid has four days of their summer camp cancelled. Or when there are summer camps where you only do outdoor stuff from 7am-10am or something. But collectively, between our generations, we are losing something and this July, it’s countable, it’s measurable for me. There are larger tragedies from global warming every nanosecond on planet earth, but I am looking at this mini-tragedy right here in my home. I don’t believe in God, that’s a big part of why I didn’t convert to Judaism when I married my Jewish wife. But I do feel this cosmic alignment the past couple years where it feels like we are conspiring to prove to the Gods we aren’t worth it. To prove to the Gods that we don’t have a vision beyond our comfort, or even beyond our own salvation, beyond the problems we can see. I encourage the Gods to laugh at me too, I see the world boiling and I pick out jazz records, I load the dishwasher, I take the dog for a walk. The planet is boiling and I’m blogging.

Big Trouble with Bill Caperton this Saturday

Believe it or not I play music. I love it. And I get to play it with Bill Caperton and Big Trouble on Saturday. I hope you’ll swing through to the White Squirrel. It’s from 6-8pm. We are playing with Bill right around 7. We’ve got some world class sounds going on and I hope you’ll be there. It’s free and at that time of day it’s ALL AGES so come on down. First set is a solid playground for the kids with those bartenders stirring up Shirley Temples on the regular while mom and dad have a THC bevvy and feel like they have it under control briefly.

I Am Good at This

Many of the things I get paid for are not particularly hard to do. And certainly they are learnable. I am going to guess you could learn much of my job faster than I could learn yours. Especially if your job involves backing up a trailer. I’m fucked. I quit. But, setting that aside. I’m good at this. This is radio, music, blogging, being charming, capturing positive spirits. I do work I’m really proud of. I wanted to have the opportunity to do a bunch more hosting and a bunch more interviews and that is exactly what I’m getting at this job. I probably average 1.5 interviews a week. So we are talking about maybe a hundred interviews in the can. Not all of them total gems, but some really good stuff. I’ve gotten compliments about creating a relaxed environment to talk about art and work. I care about great radio. I believe in working hard at knowing the music you’re playing, learning the stories, making the connections. I believe in self-critique and I believe in trying my ass off. To me, it shows. We do some great stuff. So does Heiruspecs. So does Trivia Mafia. Big Trouble too. I’m proud of all of this. I’m proud of this work. It can be trying, it can be thankless. Most of it pays pretty poorly. But me and my friends have added some excellence into the universe. I’m good at this. I’m not good at backing up a trailer.

The Heiruspecs Show is on Saturday at Icehouse

It’s been awhile since Heiruspecs has played live and I’m pretty excited about. We are still quite good. And we will have vinyl for sale at the show. I guess what I’m saying is you should come to this show because it will make you happy. You should buy tickets for the show in advance here.

You should look at the poster for the show right now.

I’m at War with the Commenter Class

I’m a good leader, I’m a good follower. I can be a worker bee. I can hold the clipboard. I can grab the coffee. I can “write that down for next week”. I can “put together the plan”. I can “sketch out what that will look like if things go well”. I’ve done some great assisting work in my life. I’ve done some great leading in my life. I love a great leader, I love a great follower. And when I say great follower I don’t mean some human carbon copy situation where the person just rubber stamps the thoughts of the leader. No, a follower is someone who helps reach POINT B with innovation and ingenuity, but in collaboration with the leader. In fact, that’s what a leader is too. Here’s what I’m not about, the ever budding, ever growing and utterly useless COMMENTER CLASS.

I mainly see the Comment Class in the Star Tribune comment section. There are a handful of good people in the comment sections in general, but they are mostly outgunned by the laptop mafia who shout out directions and misspelled missives to people who most likely don’t read the god damn comment section anyway. If you’ve made a comment on an article in your life you are not immediately placed into my detested group of the commenter class. If you have a clever commenting name that doesn’t easily connect someone with your given name. . .you are in the commenter class. If that name is vaguely sexist, racist or just kind of. . . .gross. . .you are in the commenter class. There’s been a recalibration during my lifetime where suddenly the commenter class. . .matters? They don’t. It’s a fiction that deserves correcting. They are the 2023 version of the town mutterer. I don’t mean the commenters don’t matter cause their life stories don’t matter, or that they don’t deserve love and a positive home life. What I mean is that you should derive very little credit or clout from just jumping on what someone else wrote and repeating your stump speech over and over again. Naw, that’s not right. If you are just the peanut gallery and you don’t campaign, you just shoot out ideas with no sweat equity, no effort. If it’s easy, it’s usually pointless. These comments are pointless. You think you’re a leader in waiting, you think you’re a follower just waiting for the right leader. Nope, you’re a Commenter and your life is a bummer.

I also think the phenomenon of the Commenter Class is related to some of where we are struggling as a planet at the moment. There’s an epidemic of people who think the most important thing they can do is “chime in with their thoughts”. What a crock. Your thoughts matter, but if you aren’t leading, and you aren’t following, I don’t know what to do with those thoughts. Period. Can I show them to the OZONE Layer? Can I show them to folks struggling without strong schools in their zip codes? No. And again, thoughts matter. Inarguably, thoughts are the centerpiece of progress. BUT COMMENTS? Comments can kiss my ass. If what you think you are bringing to this world is a skeptical tone of judgment to articles you had not part in making, can you at least admit that it is making no difference? You might as well enjoy something else. Try gardening. Why are you fake helping? Probably cause gardening takes effort, takes forethought, takes responsibility. You stick to commenting.

There is work to be done, and we all have to play a role. But I don’t think anyone is recruiting for the role of “prime commenter”. Start a conversation, bring your thoughts, borrow a work ethic, study leaders, start following, start leading, stop commenting. It’s not productive.

Rethinking the Best Song I’ve Ever Been a Part Of

I’m very proud of the music I’ve made in my 42 years on planet earth. Not all of it equally, but I’ve been a part of some amazing musical moments. I just did a little Spotify spin snooping and for a song where I played a significant role the most successful song is Heiruspecs’ Heartsprings. Dessa, sit the fuck down with your Dixon’s Girl spins, Heiruspecs rules. But, the magic of that song has so much to do with the majesty of Muad’dib’s lyrical offerings. The band serves a purpose, and I was proud to write the music and help with some of the second verse, but that magic is really on Muad’dib. For me, though I had much less writing involved with the Ela song “I Don’t Know If It’s Helping” it for a long time has been the song I am most proud to have been a part of. I framed it like this this morning while fighting about this song with my instrumental group Big Trouble: if God or Questlove called me and said “I heard your talented, what is the best shit you’ve done?” I’d play em this song. It’s just amazing. Some history.

Bill Caperton is the nucleus of this song. Bill Caperton is not only a dear friend, he’s an amazing writer who delivered amazing musical moments, but maybe didn’t have the fucked up DNA you have to have to want to play challenging forward thinking music for a rock career. But, I played in Bill’s band Ela with Peter from Heiruspecs and we made an amazing record together in 2004 called “Stapled to Air”. It’s a painful break up record, it’s a quarter life crisis record and it’s the sound of a set of musicians reluctant to do cliche rock band tricks, but enthusiastic to contribute great rock performances. Bill was my roommate, and I still remember waking up from the squalor I slept in and him with a humorously small cup of coffee at the dining room and saying to me “I’ve got a great riff”. He played me the verse riff to “I Don’t Know If It’s Helping” and I remember thinking the band was all set. If you like Pedro the Lion and Death Cab for Cutie than you immediately know it’s a great riff.

Me and Peter had just learned a lot of tricks. I had been making my way for a long time in the world of live band hip-hop with Heiruspecs and lot of that journey had included Peter behind the drum kit. But, it took working with Atmosphere for me to learn a lot of production tricks that are more often delivered either by DJs live or by producers in the studio. Before working as a backing group for Atmosphere I had never dropped a one, and had never gone with “quiet snares on the 2s and 4s”. Now that you have read these two tricks you will listen to a lot of hip-hop music differently. If you’d like to hear the best set of production tricks rolled into an amazing song just check out Nas’s Street Dreams. This tune also features tricks such as “extra measure to breathe before and after verses”, “single quiet hit on the 4” “random double hit on the snare” and more. Even though I knew this production technique as a listener, I didn’t have a language for it until we worked with Atmosphere. We started packing too many of these tricks into a lot of our songs, but I believe the beautiful non-negotiable power of Bill’s writing had me and Peter using the right amount of magic.

Knol Tate gets the best drum sounds. We recorded this whole album across a couple days in 2003. We recorded it above the spot that was known as 4th Street Station or Ryan’s at the time. I think Mint Condition had a spot up there. Dave King used to give lessons up there. Our engineer/producer Knol Tate had a great scene up there. No mixing room, Knol right in there with the band. But holy shit, we just sat in this room with huge windows, smoked so many cigarettes that my fingers turned yellow and listened to the greatest drum sounds I’ve ever heard. I did a particular session when mixing this record where for whatever reason it was briefly just me and Knol and when we got to the section where it’s just Peter on the drums and the pad guitar sound sitting on the root I thought I was going to die I was so happy. I was humbled by the magic.

I Don’t Know if It’s Helping. Who the fuck hasn’t felt this sentiment just the way Bill does in this song? My brother, who has a gift for capturing the thesis of words that just feel good to me, mentioned that this song is some sort of ultimate portrait of that transition from lamenting the feeling of not knowing if it’s helping to raging at the certainty of your ignorance of if it’s helping. I also know this wasn’t a fucking prompt for Bill. I believe his heart had abeen scissored from his soul and then dropped back in about five months before this song came to. I remember him listening to Roberta Flack for days straight while growing a beard. I remember him going non-verbal up north when the pain was too much. He knew it wasn’t helping. But he was able to do that autopsy on the final death knell of a relationship. Thank you Bill. There is blood on the tracks and that’s how it got to be.

So Why Write about this now Sean, just to gratify yourself? No. I was sitting with Bill a couple nights ago at the White Squirrel sorting it all out and I told him how I was going to play this song for Questlove or God and he said “I really wish I had taken that vocal again”. We had a fancy friend, a guy who could play in elite cover bands, a real guitar slinger, who heard a rough of this record in 2003 and told Bill he should take the vocal again. Kept on saying “you only make your first record once”. And for just a couple days the shit that has snuck into Bill’s head for 19 years snuck into mine for 4 days. Maybe you should’ve taken it again. The first half. The part where you’re tender. The part where the relationship hangs in the balance. But Bill, it’s perfect. Bill, you took a Polaroid of your shit when a lot of us would’ve just kept on growing our beard. Bill you took a Polaroid of your pain and gave the world something. Peter had huge hi-hats and a boomy bass drum. We had just learned how to drop the 1. And we dropped the 1. And I played a xylophone. And Knol Tate understands something about drums that no one else does. And it’s magical. And it’s been twenty years and you’ll still find eleven people in Minnesota who understand that this is some really great shit. Really great shit. Bill, I’m so glad you didn’t do another take.

Not Every Song Deserves a Diva. Delivering a song is a strange art. You don’t always want the best singer, it’s not always about the performance, sometimes it’s a bout the portrait. Sometimes it’s better for the writer to sing it. Sometimes it’s better for the singer to write it on the mic. Sometimes it’s better for the note to shake cause the guitar is shaking too.

Today in my basement, on a morning when I needed it I played “I Don’t Know if It’s Helping” a couple times to get it together. No Bill. Just Big Trouble. But we’re playing it at White Squirrel in a couple weeks. And it’s magic. And it will be magic. I’m putting God and Questlove on the guest list. I bet the last time I played this song was probably 2009 or 2010. I can’t wait. I know it’s helping. And I need it right now.

A Blues on the Fourth of July

It’s not a simple holiday. I don’t know how to tell my six year old while we sit outside of the Lunds in Eagan, up later than she’s ever been, what that complexity is. We are a country worth celebrating. I am a patriot. But, the capital P patriots who have staked out the word at best want stasis, at worst want backtracking. Many leaders of the Republican party, including Trump, have perversely made the present so bad that I now too want to make America great again.

Holidays invite you to remember that holiday from years past. I don’t remember much about the fourth from my early childhood. I more remember high school and early college, driving up to the West Side of St. Paul to park with Kevin and Meghan and get a good look at the 1st National Bank building, and see the fireworks. It wasn’t a simple holiday then, but my logic for America was haltingly simple: we were getting better, in fits and starts, but the arc of the moral universe. . .the bend. . . .the changes. . .the improving statistics. The steady march of humanity towards an honest, deep and abiding equality. An agreement to atone for sins, distant and in the present moment that were unforgivable. And fireworks ever year while we work toward that more perfect union.

People are quick to say Donald Trump is the worst President of all time. Not so fast. Andrew Johnson. Worth reading about. Dismantled so much progress, so much reconstruction. He’s in the running. George W. Bush is in the running too. You’ve got people in your life who aren’t here anymore, dead, from a war Bush started under false pretenses. My friend back in Massachusetts, her man has a big ass astronaut looking boot on his right leg for life because of Bush. For life. From a landmine. If he’s driving to Albany to see a concert, big ass boot. Kids got a soccer game, daddy’s in that boot. First dance at that kid’s wedding. Boot. And that is a drop in the bucket compared to what our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan have, families, whole towns, gone, dead. On Bush’s watch and for what? For what? Here’s a grievance for me with Trump. I find many of Trump’s actions to be inarguably racist. Claiming you don’t want a Mexican judge on your case, calling a set of countries with primarily Black residents shithole countries. These are racist actions. Growing up, the Republican Party wasn’t lead by an out and out racist during my lifetime. Not on this level. Maybe if I understand Reagan more intimately I’d put him there, but he always seemed to me to be elusive with his evil. That doesn’t make it better, but it makes it less indelible.

Throughout my life, I thought the racists were the sideshow, the racists were the distraction, the racists were ultimately reprimanded. But I sit here, daughter on my lap, Midwest imperfection, 4th of July. 9:12pm, grass by the Lunds. One family tossing the Nerf football, one family in a vigorous and multifaceted game of tag. Everyone else waiting for the fireworks, talking, playing on their phone. My grassy neighbors: I know there’s plenty we have in common but I know there is shit we differ about severely. . .things we differ about on an existential level. I don’t presume camaraderie, I don’t know which weay the moral arc is bending anymore. I don’t know which way my neighbors are rooting for it to bend. Cause it’s bending a lot, and it’s not exclusively bending towards justice.

I’m sending her into a worse world. I’m sending her into a world with worst prospects for the environment, worst chances for wrongs to be righted, for my daughters to get a sound education and do something that matters to them and the universe. I want them to beat those odds, but I wish she didn’t have to beat the odds to exist. They start the tester fireworks, I remember seeing the fireworks at Disney World when I was a kid. It wasn’t the Fourth of July. But humor me. It was magical, I had my whole life ahead of me, lights splashing, loving my family, feeling good about life. Thinking that things were just getting better. I was young, Disney World was amazing, the fireworks were amazing.

Now it’s 20 plus years later. My legs hurt. My legs hurt when my daughter bumps into them. They hurt cause the veins aren’t all good. Every time they hurt I think about what I could’ve done in my life to not have my legs be hurting at 42 years old. But they hurt. They don’t hurt all the time. I tell my daughter that we are completing some circle, that I remember going to some place to sit outside with my parents to watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. I am lying, I don’t really remember that. I remember driving past a bridge as a kid with fireworks, but I remember thinking “I don’t think my family would do that”. My daughter asks me to tell her the story of my mom dying because she “loves that story”. I tell the story about my mom dying in the way a six year old might understand. She needed new knees, she rested for awhile after she got her new knees, she stood up, all the blood went to her chest, she died. My legs hurt. I think how much my mother’s legs must’ve hurt for those thirty minutes before the blood killed her. I cry. My daughter sees my cry. She tells me that Oma, the affectionate German term for my dad’s new wife, is “just as good”. My daughter doesn’t know it’s vicious to say that, and it’s not vicious to her, just hard for me to digest. My daughter her loves her Oma and her Oma is all she’ll know. I cry more. What does my daughter know? What do I know? I know my legs hurt. I know that our country is not at a crossroads. There’s a moment we didn’t meet. There’s a crossroads that we elected to ignore, going to down some path of split differences and false promises. I remember seeing all those Minneapolis City Council people in front of the 5 foot tall letters spelling out “DEFUND POLICE” and I remember thinking, “fuck it’s happening”. I didn’t think it was purely good, I certainly didn’t think it was purely bad. But I thought it was happening and I thought it was necessary. Did you see how big those letters were? It must be happening. Why was massive change a fever dream when massive problems were far from a dream? Where do the “Black Lives Matter” signs that used to be up on my neighbors yards sit? What does it really matter that I still have mine out? My wife still has mulch out from three years ago. Are we down or do we just not take shit down? And what are we down with? What is the goal now? Cancel student debt. Redistribute wealth. Put MPD under a consent decree. Reparations. My neighbors tonight, as we await this ritual, are they worried? Do they think it’s worse for their kids? Do they remember it differently? Did Lisa and Sam on the blanket think they were gonna defund the police? Do they believe the trajectory of the world is heading the wrong way? Or do they love fireworks, are they happy to talk their kids through the finer points. My legs hurt and I’m not gonna get the care I need. When I told the doctor that my left leg had hurt in one spot on and off for ten years he told me the right one looked bad, that was the one insurance would pay for. They fixed the leg that never hurts. I won’t get the care I need partially because I’ll get the care all fat people get which is the care you need tucked inside a big “fuck you fatty” sandwich they serve up at the beginning and end of every visit. Do any of my neighbors legs hurt? Any of them get charged for a colonoscopy they thought would be covered? “Lisa, are you worried we won’t get too many more 4th of Julys like this? Do you remember checking smoke conditions in your yesteryear summers?”

I had some working years on 4ths of July. I ran high school music summer camps at McNally Smith. Final concert almost always on July 2 or 3. Most of the kids gone quick. But one kid is getting the flight on July 4. And sometimes that flight isn’t until maybe 2. And you get the kid there by who knows, 12:15 or 12:30. Get back to downtown St. Paul. The weather is so hot the streets are wavy with heat, you have to take the bus home, summer camps are over and you’re back to driving your own car. And even though Ted, the guy in charge of signing out the vans, could give two shits if I keep it on the 4th, I just want to be done with it, I’ll take the bus. Downtown St. Paul was on a real ghost town vibe everyday. That was magnified on the 4th of July. No one around, empty mainly. Maybe a drink at Amsterdam, but probably just waiting in that air-bending heat, thinking about getting home, wondering if the camp was good for the attendees. Happy Fourth. No fireworks, just lots of work to finish up that last day. And I think the moral arc is turning. Maybe the camps are part of the moral arc. We are offering good education. The camps were good.

Did my family owe me more or less adulthood in my childhood? Did they tell me too much about how fucked this world is or too little? Can I give my daughter the simple enthusiasm to love the fireworks, to wave a flag, to feel patriotic? Should I tell her how my feelings about patriotism are complicated not only by our past, but by our present actions? Should I wait til she’s the age that Ron DeSantis wants kids to be before they talk about race? Was it good I was treated like an adult when I was a child? Should I copy that, or is the best correction to bring in more of that parental figure energy?

I type these blues down. Cause I don’t know what we’re aiming at as a country, so I don’t know what we’re celebrating. I know my leg hurts. I know today hurts. But I know it’s something to stay up til 10:26pm and go home thinking about the colors you saw in the sky.

I Had an Excellent Sandwich Today

This is one of those days where a fair amount of people have the day off, and a fair amount of people are working. I took my kids to daycare with the other assholes and heroes who didn’t/couldn’t take the day off. I had a bunch of shopping to do for the house and I knew I would be at work late because we are doing a special live event. But, I had a little extra time for lunch and I went and had a beautiful sandwich. I love mock duck. I love Bánh mì. I like the ones from Lu’s on Nicollet. The bread is so good. So delicious. So cavernous. So containing. And that cilantro, that blast of flavor, the sliced jalapenos, not too hot, cilantro, cucumbers, carrots. The shit is perfect. Get the large, it’s a great ass lunch.

Heiruspecs’ Magical Block Party on August 19

For decades Heiruspecs has been on the bill on summer block party type shows. Almost always in Minneapolis, and about 23% of the time with Mark Mallman also on the bill. I remember doing the Barbette Bastille Day show in probably 2002. That’s 21 years ago. Mostly these have been beautiful shows. I feel all the energy of Irving and Lagoon, loading the gear. Seeing which band brought their tour van. Seeing Foxy Tann looking like a million and a half bucks guiding the crowds energy between sets and then hearing Heiruspecs get introduced. We start playing a loud loose slightly inebriated 55 minute set to a big ass crowd of people enjoying a great day of summer. After the show I’m trying to use my food tickets right as everything is closing up and hopefully trying to flirt with some women who just saw me looking all awesome up on stage. These are great memories, but these events are curated and risked on other people’s dime. Maybe it’s Kim Bartmann or Anne Saxton from the Barbette/BLB Universe, Corey from Pizza Luce, someone else launching one of these parties. No matter how cool someone else’s taste is, you don’t really have control over a situation unless you’re putting it together, taking the risk, making the event happen on your terms. I will happily cede some of that control over for the ease of just being told “here’s your load in time, send your stage plot, rock your show, here’s your money”. But as Heiruspecs makes the slow transition from working band to venerated institution we want to plant more seeds into events that we control, that we curate. We’ve got a good ass thing going with our Holiday Classic shows which goes down in December. We’ve been doing those since about 2003. (I can’t 100% confirm this but I actually think it was Patrick Costello from D4 who named those events Holiday Classic when he was booking at Triple Rock Social Club, if you see Patty, ask him about it). We control that, we book awesome bands and we have an amazing time. Wolf Lords, MaLLy, Carnage, Black Blondie, I-Self Devine, Guardians of Balance, DJ Dan Speak, Nakara Forje, Christian Fritz, Lady Midnight, Juice Lord, Hey Arlo - that’s just some of the artists who have played with us on these Holiday Classics. The joy I feel thinking about all the people who for years have been a part of these shows. It brings me joy.

Okay, I can talk for as long as I want cause this is my blog so here’s an aside. My overriding desire in my young twenties was to make a contribution to the world of music in the Twin Cities. To offer up songs, events, experiences that would be loved, remembered and celebrated. Walking in to a venue, saying hello to the sound person, making sure they have the stage plot, getting everyone paid, smoking a joint with the weed smokers in Heiruspecs plus our friends after the show around an unexplainable amount of shoe-boxes because everyone has to bring cool shoes for a winter show. It all feels special to me. I love our scene. I love the scene surrounding Heiruspecs in particular. And I love that we have put stamps on things, carved out spots for other great musicians, for great events. And the next chapter in that is the Summer Classic.

We started hunting around for a spot to bring the Summer Classic together right after the Holiday Classic. Peter Leggett, our drummer, cooked up the idea really simply and I started emailing around. It had to be in St. Paul. It had to be outside. First Ave didn’t have the capacity to take on an outdoor show. And let’s be clear, the economics of an outdoor show really work for significantly more popular acts. If you can get 3500 people to pay a serious ticket price, you can handle a lot of the infrastructure of an outdoor show. But we couldn’t get 3500 people to watch us if we paid THEM! But guess what? Free block party shows are the shit. You get folks who are iffy about your band but 100% in for a good time. You can spend your money on food and merch. You can take in that energy. There’s a certain pressure when you spend $50 on a show. . .”this better really be a good time”. It can choke the fun out of something.

There’s a dude in town who really gets Heiruspecs, gets our ethic, gets our music, gets the vibe. His name is Joe Alton, he booked us at a bunch of Beer Dabbler things back when he was a part of that organization, and he always treated us well. He went to Central, he understands the city, he knows everyone, he knows a lot about beer. And every time you see Joe Alton you’re glad you did. A couple winter meetings between Joe and Heiruspecs helped us sort out what might work for the event and he put is in contact with Clutch Brewing. Now I know Clutch, they’ve been using Trivia Mafia for a long time for their Thursday night trivia. But I don’t know them personally, I just know that if you choose to use Trivia Mafia, you’re probably an amazing brewery. But Joe put us together and we felt the good energy. The opportunity to put on something cool in Saint Paul. You shouldn’t have to leave Saint Paul to party during the day. These block parties shouldn’t all happen across the river.

I put out the calls to try and lock down great artists for our first Summer Classic. AND WE DID! Some folks who would’ve been a great fit on the bill simply had to say no because of travel or other gigs et cetera. Some people said no cause people say no. But the groups that said yes. . . .are you kidding me? I’ve been loving Maria Isa since I saw her at the First Ave Mainroom for best new band nights with Leroy Smokes backing her up probably like 2002? I just remember being floored by everything about her. That night did I think she would be en route to being a State Representative? No, but I believed in her. Her old manager used to give out cards and say “we’re gonna change the world” and I absolutely believed her. And when I think about where Maria has gotten, that manager was right. Seeing someone like Maria still delivering the goods as an emcee (and one of the best freestylers in MN) and being involved in the political process. And not just involved. . .elected. It’s big. And I’ve never been disappointed by Maria Isa live because she gets live performance in a way that a lot of equally talented emcees don’t get. Live performance is a different muscle and Maria has those muscles. When I asked Unknown Prophets if they would entertain an offer for the show Big Jess basically said “no”. They got a new record out, but they haven’t blessed a stage in years. But I bet maybe seeing that it’s St. Paul, it’s outdoors, it’s with their brothers from Saint Paul, it all fit. I don’t know, I’m just touched that they would come back onto stage for our thing. Man, that’s amazing. They also still have it. The new music is the best they’ve made. They are actually more in their lane than they’ve been. They are such a fundamentally sound group. And then St. Paul Slim just tossed us the quick “yup” when we asked if he would host. We’ve known Slim since high school. We were all in the same program. To have him in the fold, it’s just perfect, it’s just the cherry. Seriously.

So at this moment on June 27 when the Star Tribune is saying nice things about our new record, the announce is out for our summer shows, it’s just a nice moment. I know there will be a million headaches, a million texts, a bunch of rehearsals, some weird trips to rental stores, a bunch of growing pains. But look, it takes work to do something magical. And it’s worth it. I’m really looking forward to this show, and to the show at Icehouse on Saturday July 22. I hope you come to both. I hope you drag your friends to the shows. I hope you make this summer magical. What is the other option? There isn’t one. Let’s just be magical.

Things You Don’t Want to Have to Clarify

There are certain things on planet earth where if I have to clarify that it’s not what you meant, you are probably already screwed. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin has done such a thing. When you are clarifying to the media that he wasn’t actually trying to storm Moscow and overthrow the government you are basically saying “I’ll be poisoned or thrown out of a window before the baseball season is over”. If you have to clarify that, contrary to appearances, you weren’t in fact trying to overthrow a sovereign state, you are in a shit ton of trouble.
Additionally, I’ve heard people claim that their sporting of blackface was “actually a tribute, like a celebration or an honor”. You’re an idiot one but two, you just need to shut up and take the hate. Because there is no one who was outraged at you for wearing blackface who now totally gets it, it was a tribute. That Venn diagram doesn’t overlap.

The Twin Cities Restaurant Graveyard

Q: Sean, in light of the tragic recent closing of Ethiopian food heaven Fasika, if you could bring five other out of business Twin Cities restaurants back to life which five would you choose.


A:

1. Sunny Side Up Cafe on Lyndale and 28th. Best French toast of my life easy. Best biscuits and gravy easy. Only cactus paddles. And just a great scene.

2. Figlio on Hennepin and Lake. Best calamari of my life. Best Bacon Cheeseburger of my life (they used this strachino cheese that was creamy like a mayonnaise spread, but it wasn’t mayonnaise). The bacon was insane. And they wrapped your to go food up into a tinfoil goose which at the time we thought was cool.

3. Original Little Tijuana’s on Nicollet and 26th - I like this place now, but it serves a different purpose. Little Tijuana’s was a no liquor license Mexican restaurant with an undying commitment to black olives, crayons and tatted up servers. But holy shit I liked that food. Including fish nachos. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

4. Porky’s - on Fairview and University - Best strawberry shake of my life, best onion rings of my life. Also was parked there once in the afternoon, was pretty high, was enjoying a milkshake, was listening to the Current long before I worked there and Mary Lucia was playing this Santana song with an incredibly long organ solo. I was sort of freaking out feeling like the world knew I was high cause why is there a ten minute organ solo on the Current at like 5:30 on a weekday. When Looch got back on the mic she said “don’t worry, that was a REALLY long organ solo”. It calmed me and weirded me out even more. It was one of the best radio experiences of my listening career.

5. Village Wok - Stadium Village - Iconic spot with late night Asian food that I used to go to and sit in the smoking section. Mountains of green tea, long arguments with Tasha Baron and Szechuan bean curd for the win. Miss it, want it. Stadium Village used to be a very different spot. Kids these days.

Blind Melon are My Most Over-Indexed Band

I co-own a trivia company. Chuck, the other guy I own it with introduced the term “over-indexed” too me. He says that Trivia Mafia over indexes on rivers. You grab 1500 trivia question from some other joe-schmo trivia company and maybe they’ll have four questions about rivers. We’ll have seventeen. We love rivers. And I’m the same way with Blind Melon. You ask for my top five bands, it looks a lot like yours. But Blind Melon is on there, and I bet they’re not on your list. Here’s some things:
Blind Melon combine the groove of southern rock like The Allman Brothers and the Band with the lyrical content of Sylvia Plath. I listened to Blind Melon a lot in middle school. I remember listening to Blind Melon on a Walkman while my Dad was driving my brother to a guitar lesson in Albany, New York. ‘Bout an hour drive each way for Steve to get a guitar lesson and for me to look at a bunch of Champion sweatshirts in the store next door. But, I never wore headphones on that drive. I wanted to hear what my brother was playing and picking to put on the stereo. But there was time’s where I just needed Blind Melon. I remember holding that Walkman like I was afraid it was going to leave me. I needed those words, I needed that spirit. I felt out of place so much in middle school. I felt artsy, ambitious and humorous in a school that counted all those as strikes. I knew there was a world of music. . .but it wasn’t where I was. Remember, we were driving an hour just to get a guitar lesson from a musician who was really out there gigging. In that first album from Blind Melon I found a kindred spirit in Shannon Hoon. He hit me in a way my other potential heroes, Vedder and Cobain, just didn’t. In Shannon Hoon’s lyrics I found this self-assuredness against a harsh, unforgiving environment. It comforted me. Throw on the song “Change” by Blind Melon.

I found something in this song.

I don't feel the sun's comin' out today
It's stayin' in, it's gonna find another way, yeah
As I sit here in this misery
I don't think I'll ever know, Lord
See the sun from here

And oh, as I fade away
They'll all look at me and say
And they'll say, "Hey, look at him"
"I'll never live that way"
And that's ok, they're just afraid to change

When you feel life ain't worth living
You've got to stand up
Take a look around, look up way to the sky,
And when your deepest thoughts are broken
Keep on dreamin' boy, 'cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die

And as we all play parts of tomorrow, Lord no
Some ways we'll work, and other ways we'll play, yeah
But I know we can't all stay here forever
So I wanna write my words on the face of today
And then they'll paint it

And oh, as I fade away
They'll all look at me and say
They'll say, "Hey look at him"
"And where he is these days?"
When life is hard, you have to change
When life is hard, you have to change, mmm

This song is both about the validity and durability of your own way of doing things, and the fact that you’ll have to pivot from those values. What helped me in the tune was that combination: trust yourself, change is constant.

I also was really connected to the Blind Melon song “Drive”. This was a rare 90s song for me that was basically a third person story. It’s a song about a lovable guy who is slipping away into the dark side of the drug life. It’s harder still to know that just a handful of years later it’s drugs that would kill Shannon himself.

But the music actually having a Southern groove to it, so important. The band is mostly from Mississippi with Shannon Hoon coming from Indiana. Brad Smith and Glen Graham are a hell of a rhythm section. Glen Graham gives me strong LeVon Helm vibes all over this record. And I’ve never loved the Rock with a Capital R experience. I’m not falling hard for The Foo Fighters or Aerosmith. But rock with some syncopation, some sass and some focus on prioritizing groove over bombast. . .I’m in. Man, just writing Aerosmith reminds me how much I don’t enjoy Aerosmith.

That music that you get at the beginning of your journey. . .I’ve spent so much time with this record, with these drum fills, with these grooves. Take some time with Blind Melon today and see what you find.