Virtually Home

Female cricket at my field site. January started in the back lot of a Lutheran Church in Hilo, Hawaii. I recorded and captured crickets with my colleagues, counted invasive cane toads, and collapsed into bed sometime after midnight Hawaii time (hours after my friends in Europe and the continental US had finished celebrating). I spent as much time as possible on that trip snorkeling and reveling in the warm weather. Grand Canyon is Grand February was pretty quiet, but we saw the Wild play the Islanders in Saint Paul, and the Gopher men's gymnastics team take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Minneapolis. I caught Josh Ritter and Guster on tour. I tried not to freeze to death. My life as a lab rat in the spring In March, Jacob and I took a massive trip to Arizona. We visited his family in Phoenix, camped for three nights on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, and roadtripped to Canyon de Chelly, Walnut Canyon, and other places. We saw a lot of amazing Pueblo dwe...

Miwi La Lupa's opening set Phoebe Bridgers is a singer-songwriter out of Los Angeles, whose first single, "Killer" was released on a 7" she cut on Ryan Adams' label, PAX AM. She's been working with Mike Mogis in Omaha, presumably on recording her first full length. Her songs are beautiful - she has an incredible voice and a unique delivery. Her guitar work is great, and her songwriting is sad. Basically she's everything I want in a musician. Conor evidently agreed, saying that her being in town was the inspiration for this show. He wanted us to hear her. I was stopping through Omaha on the way to my cousin's memorial service in Tulsa, and I needed something to lift my spirits. Paradoxically, it was a night in a dark bar, listening to sad music that did it. The world just melts away, right? The night was pretty magical because of the setting. Pageturners is one of my favorite bars in the world, in part because of the ambiance. It has dark wood ...

Miwi La Lupa's opening set Phoebe Bridgers is a singer-songwriter out of Los Angeles, whose first single, "Killer" was released on a 7" she cut on Ryan Adams' label, PAX AM. She's been working with Mike Mogis in Omaha, presumably on recording her first full length. Her songs are beautiful - she has an incredible voice and a unique delivery. Her guitar work is great, and her songwriting is sad. Basically she's everything I want in a musician. Conor evidently agreed, saying that her being in town was the inspiration for this show. He wanted us to hear her. I was stopping through Omaha on the way to my cousin's memorial service in Tulsa, and I needed something to lift my spirits. Paradoxically, it was a night in a dark bar, listening to sad music that did it. The world just melts away, right? The night was pretty magical because of the setting. Pageturners is one of my favorite bars in the world, in part because of the ambiance. It has dark wood ...

Miwi La Lupa's opening set Phoebe Bridgers is a singer-songwriter out of Los Angeles, whose first single, "Killer" was released on a 7" she cut on Ryan Adams' label, PAX AM. She's been working with Mike Mogis in Omaha, presumably on recording her first full length. Her songs are beautiful - she has an incredible voice and a unique delivery. Her guitar work is great, and her songwriting is sad. Basically she's everything I want in a musician. Conor evidently agreed, saying that her being in town was the inspiration for this show. He wanted us to hear her. I was stopping through Omaha on the way to my cousin's memorial service in Tulsa, and I needed something to lift my spirits. Paradoxically, it was a night in a dark bar, listening to sad music that did it. The world just melts away, right? The night was pretty magical because of the setting. Pageturners is one of my favorite bars in the world, in part because of the ambiance. It has dark wood ...

Gang of Four I was very tired on September 29. I had spent the preceding 24 hours frantically getting work done, driving the ~4.5 hours to Madison, seeing the Mountain Goats, snatching a few hours of sleep, and driving home, only to cram in another partial work day. I wasn't sure I had another show in me, especially one as high-energy as I knew the Faint's show would be. But I also couldn't talk myself out of it. The first time I heard the Faint was the week I turned 16. Bright Eyes was playing with them at Cain's Ballroom, the legendary Tulsa music venue of my youth, and my mother bought a half dozen tickets for my birthday. I invited some friends, and we made our way to the show in the cars of people that had driver's licenses. It was a pretty transformative show. I got hooked on the Faint, first and foremost, and it was my first Bright Eyes show. But arguably, this was the show that made me fall in love with shows. Tired or not, I dragged myself to the ve...

John and company never let me down. The shows are always a breathtaking moment of escapism provided by a band that somehow never takes itself too seriously while also upholding a ridiculous level of professionalism. Darnielle has written so many songs , but still can and will play just about any of them on request. I get the sense it's sort of a matter of pride. I once roadtripped from Norman, OK to Denton, TX (not only because I wanted to hear "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton"), where John claimed out loud that the last truly rock'n'roll thing about these shows was spontaneity. Seeing the Mountain Goats has always seemed a nearly holy experience for both the band and the fans. I realize that's probably immensely burdensome for the musicians...but. You can imagine how bummed I was that they weren't coming to Saint Paul on this most recent tour. I wasn't dissuaded. I bought tickets to the Madison, Wisconsin show, even though it was more tha...

The stage and the basilica, early in the day. I've been thinking about this show for a long time. Some shows just stick with you, and this was one. I had never seen Ryan Adams live. During middle school, I spent a lot of time listening to Whiskeytown's Pneumonia and Adams' Gold in the car on my way to guitar lessons out in Sand Springs. I got really attached to those albums, but I never really explored his catalog any further. When I heard, the week of the festival, that Ryan Adams and Death Cab were headlining their respective nights, I decided to go. Game changer. Craig Finn I arrived in time to hear Craig Finn open. After almost a decade of barely missing Craig and/or the Hold Steady, I was pleased to catch him. His set was what I expected: somehow impassioned and aloof at the same time. His stage personality oozes out in the recordings, apparently. Craig is from the Twin Cities, which I never really appreciated until I moved to Saint Paul, and suddenly under...

DCFC, with Minneapolis skyline At the beginning of July, the dust was still settling from my treefrog field season, and I didn't feel up to much of anything besides reading novels on my back porch and playing a little guitar. One of my high school friends, Cierra, told me she'd be in Saint Paul and was going to this music festival. I hadn't even heard it was happening -- that was the size of the rock I was living under. I bought a ticket, naturally. The Basilica Block Party takes place at the Basilica of Saint Mary, which is this beautiful old church a stone's throw from I-94. I'd never had reason to go. They close a several block radius around the church and set up four stages for concurrent shows. It was crowded. Closer quarters than any festival I'd been to before. We milled around for awhile, between shows, until the Cold War Kids set in the early evening on Friday. I've never heard a recording by this band, but somehow have seen them in concert ...

Christopher the Conquered (left), with jingle bell guests For the second year in a row, Jake Bellows played the Slowdown on December 23. In 2014, it was a rare show with Neva Dinova. This time, it was solo. Both opened again, just like last year. I think they sound pretty good, but they spent a lot more time talking than performing, and experienced some distracting technical difficulties and had to beg members of the audience for AA batteries. Morgan (left) and Jake as Supermoon Christopher the Conquered was up next, for the last night of his 4-show December residency at the Slowdown. He's a pianist from Iowa who demanded a lot of audience participation. He has a very powerful voice, but I can't say I connected with his style of music very much. He was off to a European tour to start the new year. To get in the Christmas spirit, he was operating a sort of challenge, where anyone who wanted to could come on stage and, in exchange for doing some kind of performance wi...