Rock and roll is complicated. But the Homegrown Music Festival made it back after two years of online events during the pandemic. I took a bunch of photos and tossed the best of them into a slideshow. I made it to 58 acts, but that means I missed 131.
The song featured here is by Cars & Trucks from the 2013 album Theatre Stardusk. The band returned from a lengthy hiatus to perform a surprise popup at this year’s festival.
Select Instagram images from day eight of the Homegrown Music Festival and the annual Run, Smelt, Run! Parade and Party.
Select Instagram images from day seven of the Homegrown Music Festival.
In an Instagram and TikTok world, it’s hard to ask anyone to edit and crop their photos during the hubbub of Homegrown. But now that things are winding down, if you’ve got any great shots that would fit that weird horizontal space at the top of PDD, send ’em our way, we’ll add them to the collection for next year.
The chant is heard sporadically throughout the annual Homegrown Music Festival Kickball Classic. “MVP. MVP. MVP.”
Select Instagram images from day six of the Homegrown Music Festival.
Select Instagram images from day five of the Homegrown Music Festival.
I played my first Homegrown when I was seventeen. My high school band opened for Coyote at Teatro Zuccone. It was the first sold out show of my music career. I got to share a green room with THE Jerree Small. I got an artist pass on a cool lanyard that let me into any all-ages show (and a few 21+ shows too). I felt like I was on the edge of something. I felt grown up and I felt seen. At the time, it seemed like that feeling was coming from my artist pass, free T-shirt, and (maybe) $50 cheque. Looking back, I understand that what I actually experienced was membership and pride in a community of practice for the first time in my young life. Homegrown gave me an invaluable jumping off point as an artist in this city. It made me proud to be from Duluth and proud of my peers and mentors for choosing to make music here. It opened Duluth to me and deepened my relationship to community and to music. That experience kept me coming back through the years and and through my development as an artist. I’m grateful for it and I always will be, but like many artists in this town my relationship to the festival has become a bit complicated.
Select Instagram images from day four of the Homegrown Music Festival.
Select Instagram images from day three of the Homegrown Music Festival.
Select Instagram images from day two of the Homegrown Music Festival.
Select Instagram images from opening day of the Homegrown Music Festival.
The Homegrown Music Festival is back in person, May 1-8. There’s a 100-page Field Guide available as usual, with all the specifics about the 195ish bands performing at 45 venues in the Twin Ports, but what are the hot updates? Well, that’s why PDD always kicks out a primer.
Sam Tuthill put together this documentary from select performances during the 2017 Homegrown Music Festival.
The Homegrown Music Festival returns to in-person concerts this year, running May 1-8. WDSE-TV‘s Almanac North program reports on what the Twin Ports has been missing the past two years.
