Music
Selective Focus: Homegrown 2024 (The First Five Days)
Select images via Instagram from the first five days of the Homegrown Music Festival. (more…)
Dirty Knobs – “Sticks on Skins”
Duluth’s auditory atmospherist Zac Bentz has a new Dirty Knobs album, Songs About Everything Dying Around Us, Including Us, set for release on May 31. The first visualizer is for the track “Sticks on Skins.” Bentz says the “hypnotic, looping visuals are meant as an aid to clear the mind, at least for a few moments, even if the music conjures visions of doom.”
R. I. P. Florian Chmielewski
Florian Chmielewski, leader of the Chmielewski Funtime Band and a Minnesota state senator from 1971 to 1976, died last week at his home in Sturgeon Lake at the age of 97. (more…)
Homegrown Music Festival 2024 Primer
Every year the Homegrown Music Festival publishes a Field Guide with all the intricate details of the eight-day extravaganza. And every year Perfect Duluth Day kicks out a little rundown of updates, sidebar details and notes about peripheral, unsanctioned or otherwise-related items of interest at party time. This year there is just one official schedule change (so far), but plenty of sidebar updates. (more…)
Connection
There is no space up here. Ian needs some room to move, but he’s pulled his drums around him as close as he can. John’s bass tilts up a bit. Looks awkward, but he’ll make it work. Jim’s keyboard takes up a lot of real estate, but it is what it is: he doesn’t own a keytar and I’m not sure he’d use it even if he did. The horns, Dale, Jess and I, are in a line, backs to the side wall, which is a bummer because I love jumping around with my saxophone while we play. Leon’s in the middle of the nest, and though he’s in his fifties, he somehow also brings the energy of the newly hatched, his baby blue Gretsch 2127 an appendage. He taps one of the guitar pedals with the toe of his checkered shoe. His pedal board is a skateboard.
“I dunno,” he says to us, swinging his body around, back to the crowd. “Should we get going?”
“Not much else to do,” I volunteer, and though it’s a bad rejoinder, Leon crows.
“Okay then! ‘Go if You Wanna Go’?” It’s not a question, really. Ian counts us in, and we’re off again, a bunch of middle-aged friends making the people dance. (more…)
Selective Focus: Aaron Reichow’s Duluth Music Scene Photos
Self portrait of Aaron Reichow, shot in a mirror at the Blush nightclub in 2022.
Aaron Reichow started taking photos of the Duluth music scene around 2014 when one of his favorite bands, Low, was doing a residency at Fitger’s Brewhouse. The band’s music got him through “a lot of periods of my life,” Reichow said. Low was set to play all of their songs in a random order across several Thursdays around the same time Reichow’s youngest child was starting to sleep through the night. “In my marriage, I did most of the child care, all the bedtimes,” he described. “And when they started to get older, I thought ‘well, I can go out again without feeling guilty.’” A practice in photography helped him reclaim the intention of going out again. And with time, his hobby turned into a professional art form. Read more about his work in the interview below. (more…)
Big Into – “Good as Gold”
From the shores of the Mississippi River, Iron Range natives Curtis Kraft Mattson and Jozef Conaway ask, “If a journey’s reward is the journey itself … then who pays?” Their band Big Into is releasing a music video every month for each new track off their upcoming EP. “Good as Gold” is the sixth in the series.
PDD Geoguessr Challenge #16: Homegrown 2024 Venues
Homegrown Music Festival starts next week with acts performing in venues across Duluth and Superior. You can read a detailed history of the festival on its website. And you can test your knowledge of this year’s festival by taking the PDD Quiz. And here you can test your knowledge of this year’s Homegrown venues by playing one of this week’s three Geoguessr challenges. (more…)
Duluth Album Releases in 2024
Grant Glad
One Man’s Story
(Jan. 1)
Available on grantgladmusic.com
Pond Scum
Self titled
(Jan. 18)
Available on multiple platforms
Ashe Berton
Pick a Daisy EP
(Feb. 2)
Available on Bandcamp
Galleon
Self-titled EP
(Feb. 9)
Available on multiple platforms
PDD Quiz: Homegrown 2024
Grab your field guide and study up for this week’s PDD quiz, which previews the upcoming 2024 Homegrown Music Festival.
A PDD current events quiz comes your way on April 28. Submit question ideas to Alison Moffat [email protected] by April 24. (more…)
Sadkin – “Saints of Catalina”
The new video for Sadkin‘s “Saints of Catalina” is a collaborative endeavor helmed by Henriette Blade, who conscripted a group of Duluth artists from a myriad of arts disciplines — actors, visual artists, ballet dancers and, of course, members of the band.
With this small legion of creators she directed, edited and produced a concept video loosely based on the classic dance performance and film Ballet of the Red Shoes, swathing it loosely to the song’s lyrics, which deal with unseen consciousness, the human experience and a struggling social morality all-but begging for a guiding light.
Alan Sparhawk announces solo album in New Yorker article
The New Yorker published an article today on Duluth musician Alan Sparhawk, chronicling his career in the seminal indie-rock band Low and concluding with news about his latest recordings. “The fruits of this work will be released this fall under his own name, as a record called White Roses, My God,” reads the article’s final sentence.
Emerging Artist Showcase: Nolen Sellwood
The Current’s Emerging Artists Showcase at the Duluth Masonic Temple in January brought together musicians from communities across the region to showcase and develop the next generation of songwriters and performers.
On the bill was folk musician Nolen Sellwood, a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His full performance is in the embedded video above.
Nolen Sellwood – “Lavender”
Nolen Sellwood‘s 2024 NPR Tiny Desk Contest submission is a video for the song “Lavender,” a track from his upcoming album Cadence to the Flame, scheduled for release June 7. The video was shot by Tanner Miller.
The Slice: KEBS Records
Tim “Edwards” Verthein and his daughter Stacia Rom operate what is believed to be the smallest record store in the world. KEBS Radio and Records is located at 311 Second St. in Bovey, about 80 miles northwest of Duluth. It opened in 2017.
In its series The Slice, PBS North presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
Indecent Proposal – “Behind Her Eyes”
The music video for Duluth band Indecent Proposal‘s romantic tragedy “Behind Her Eyes” was shot in the historic auditorium at Denfeld High School. It was released in November and has since amassed more then 195,000 views. (more…)
Live from Studio A: Charlie Parr
Charlie Parr‘s 18th album, Little Sun, is out today on the Smithsonian Folkways record label. The Minnesota native and longtime Duluthian stopped into Studio A at WDSE FM 103.3 “The North” on Feb. 28 to talk with Katelyn Brinza about the new record and play a few songs. (more…)
Alan Sparhawk Live at Le Guess Who?
Alan Sparhawk, backed by a trio of fellow Duluthians, played six European Union shows in November 2023. The first was at Jacobikerk, a Protestant church in Utrecht, Netherlands, as part of the Le Guess Who? music festival. The embedded video above is from that performance. (more…)
Nolen Sellwood’s imaginative songs have arrived in Duluth
Nolen Sellwood brings his creative spark to the Northland.
Nolen Sellwood hit the music scene in January as part of a live event produced by Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Current.” His performance delivered a fresh, new sound to the Duluth audience. (more…)
JamesG – “Be Nice”
The latest track from former Duluth hip-hop artist JamesG asks the lyrical question, “Why can’t you be nice?”
I can only assume your mean streak matches the one up in your undies.
Probably live in the past like Al Bundy.
Poking around, tryna start shit cause you think it’s funny.
Crossing lines without remorse, Pam Beesly at the Dundies.
Austin Castle and the Northern Pines – “Saratoga”
Austin Castle and the Northern Pines perform “Saratoga” in this video shot at Castle Danger Brewery in Two Harbors. The footage was recorded by Jose Leon of KTWH Two Harbors Community Radio and edited by Castle.
Austin Castle and the Northern Pines have a string of sporadic Saturday gigs at Castle Danger beginning March 30. Castle also performs monthly “Sunday Strumday” shows with bassist Ashe Burton at the Cedar Lounge; the next one is March 17.
MPR Archive: Crew Jones in 2004
As Duluth mourns the loss of Ben Larson, aka Burly Burlesque of the bands Crew Jones and Southwire, we point to a nearly 20-year-old Minnesota Public Radio piece that introduced listeners to the hot new “north woods rap” group. The segment was produced by Chris Julin and features Chris Godsey interviewing Crew Jones.