Virtually Home

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...

When Conor Oberst goes on tour during the frog season, I suffer major internal conflicts about what to do. On the one hand, I should be doing science. But on the other hand, I'm pathologically incapable of passing up Conor in concert. And by "passing up" I actually mean "not driving hundreds of miles in order to see". So when, for the second year running, Conor announced a Minneapolis show in June...I felt really guilty, but I bought a ticket to see him. Conor played the first day of the two-day event Rock the Garden, in which the Walker Art Center's sculpture garden is turned into a one-stage music festival and all the Minnesotans complain that it's too hot at 82F. It's tradition. I would have liked to go to both days, but the frogs had other ideas. I worked until 5 and then high-tailed it to the show. I caught most of Courtney Barnett's set. She's a pretty badass Aussie guitarist, and was backed by a bassist and a drummer. I...

Christine Fink of High Up Until recently, Conor Oberst was on a strange split tour, playing solo dates (supported at various times by the Felice Brothers and Larkin Poe) interspersed with Desaparecidos shows. Unfortunately, he was forced to cancel the remainder of both tours after a hospitalization for anxiety, exhaustion, and laryngitis. Hopefully he feels better soon. He was talking about a persistent cold during this Madison show. Jacob and I drove to Madison to see the show with my brother and various friends I've met at previous shows. We left after noon, and got stuck in I-94 construction traffic, so we showed up right as the doors opened. The Barrymore is a converted movie theatre with turquoise paint on the floor and twinkle lights in the ceiling (Conor was a big fan of the twinkle lights -- "That is my favorite thing I've ever seen, maybe"). The sound was great. There was no railing in front of the stage, and they had reusable beer cups you could bring ...

Stephen Brodsky and John Darnielle cover Guns'n'Roses Stephen Brodsky opened. I liked his voice and his guitar style -- lots of distortion and low end, played on an acoustic guitar. He played a lot of covers, though. Songs by Neil Young, Willie Nelson, PJ Harvey, and others. A few songs by an old band of his, too. He seemed to have a large repertoire, but wasn't playing it all. I think maybe he had collaborators who didn't want him to play their catalog on a solo tour. I may check out  his recordings and find out if his own music is as good as his covers. John Darnielle came out and played a Guns'n'Roses tune with him, but it wasn't planned or rehearsed and they weren't consistently in the right key. It was delightful all the same. John Darnielle never disappoints me. I'd seen him twice before, unless you count the time I was stuck in the entrance line to Austin City Limits and had to listen to his show drifting across the festival grounds and...

From theymightbegiants.com A little over 10 years ago, my brother bought me a ticket to see They Might Be Giants with him in Tulsa. I got really excited about it. I was super into Flood, and I was going to get to hang out with my brother at one of my favorite places. Except it turned out the show was 18+, and so I didn't get to go after all. Ever since then, it's like there's been a cosmic curse. Every time TMBG plays somewhere near me, I find out about it too late, have an unavoidable conflict, or can't get a ticket. Not this time, gosh darn it. The Mountain Goats these days are John Flansburgh, John Linnell, Dan Miller, Danny Weinkauf, and Marty Beller. It's largely the John and John show, with John Flansburgh playing lefty electric guitar and joke interludes, pretending to call John Linnell under the guise of Mom and Pop They Might Be Giants. John Linnell plays keyboards and accordion. They both sing. The light show was pretty intense. There were came...

Kishi Bashi is a guy with a violin, a loop pedal, and some weird poems. He does some beatboxing to make background rhythms for his violin, and one of his songs was an epic poem about a Genesis-style Creation...? It was a weird experience. Very interesting, but I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed it. I hadn't seen Guster play in years. In high school, I photographed a concert at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa for the student section of the city paper -- my friend Sarah wrote a review. My photos are mysteriously uncredited in the Tulsa World archive, but I was particularly proud of the title of the article, which was " Guster: Four-Man Wrecking Machine ". Guster is great to see live. Their songs are often upbeat in tempo, even when sad. They write an excellent pop song. Three guitarists trade instruments and switch off covering the bass. Brian Rosenworcel plays the drums with his hands most of the time, and sometimes the keyboardist plays a second set with sticks to ...