Chris Koza and Rogue Valley asked Geoff Herbach and I to pick up our narrative where we left off last spring. Chris and Rogue Valley have been writing and recording four albums in one year, based on the cycle of seasons. We helped launch the first album at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul with love letters from a set of star-crossed lovers that wrapped into the music, and we helped them come full circle again with the winter album at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis.
Koza is a wonderfully true artist—and by that I mean that he has great personal and great creative integrity; you can believe in what he does because he believes in it. It is a joy to be around him and the band, doing what people like us love to do—make beautiful things.
I just got back from a four-hour bar fight. Not kidding.
My friend Phil Harder is shooting a movie about my friend Karl Raschke's dad. Karl's pop is none other than Baron Von Raschke, the professional wrestler villain whose signature move was "The Claw." The film is one-third documentary, one-third vintage footage, and one-third narrative. To my delight, Phil asked myself and my partner Geoff Herbach to participate in a scene in which a waiter at Mancini's (a well-known professional wrestler hangout) angers a wrestler named Mad Dog Vachon, inciting a massive bar fight.
Geoff was the obnoxious waiter. I came in at "bar fight." (Ha! Don't I always?) Actually, it was the perfect place for me. At six feet tall and an unmentionable weight we can graciously call "Rubenesque," I was big enough to hold my own against Minnesota Independent Wrestlers Mitch Paradise and DOS, and The Crusher (played by Mark Har of the Bill Patten Trio).
Judging by the tales the wrestlers both new and legendary told (the Mancini's bar fight is a legendary true story), and the bruises all over my body, I can say this to you with certainty: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING IS REAL.
Geoff—with Phil Harder, Mitch Paradise, and other bar fighters—as an obnoxious German waiter at a classy Italian restaurant in St. Paul. Photo by Patrick Pierson. Amazing ambience provided by Mancini's Char House and Lounge, at which we only broke one lone glass Christmas ornament, and which was also the venue for a party Molly Priesmeyer of Good Work Group once held in honor of Geoff and myself.
John Akre from Sloppy Films animated a sketch we did based on a character I invented for PowderKeg Live!. She's called Urban Agrarian Woman and she's a farm girl in an urban setting with amazing agricultural and building superpowers. And you can watch the trailer here. (It debuted this fall at the Riverview Theater, and will be shown again on December 3rd at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as part of the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival.
Mr. Akre also made a video from a song from the original musical I co-wrote called Don't Crush Our Heart!—it's called "I Feel Tight".
Oh, it is lovely to be collaborative artist and share your work with people who can do things you could never do. Bliss!
Just delighted to be a part of such a wonderfully executed evening. Chris Koza and Rogue Valley were stellar, and (as this review points out) so was Larissa Anderson's production at the Fitzgerald Theater for 89.3 The Current.
Geoff Herbach and I wrote and performed a linked set of fictitious love letters detailing how our wanderlust has torn our charters' love apart. You can see us in the far corner, between the gorgeous Joanna James and the talented Sam Totten, keeping company with the hottest smarties in our city.
Recently had the pleasure of hosting the Sheridan Neighborhood's Annual fancy-pants fundraiser: The SNOBall.Andy Sturdevant and I wrote a twenty minute radio play that included a finale musical number I wrote with Dave Salmela called "Urban Planning School", sung by Joel Liestman. (You can catch some of it on the Sheridan website.) Geoff Herbach and I ran the live auction afterwards (with help from the Modern Café's Jim Grell) and in the end we raised $7,000 in a live auction for the Sheridan Neighborhood lighting project. It's a very nice life.
Talking obnoxiously about songwriting again at Lightsey Darst's series The Works at Bryant Lake Bowl, again with the fabulous Chris Koza. (He's got four albums coming out at once, under a new identity—Rogue Valley—and I'll be performing at his big party at the Fitzgerald on April 10. Listen here.) This time, we added singer-songwriters Mary Everest and Brian Laidlaw to our crew. Most important lessons: Unlike poetry, pop songs need to be clearly understood immediately. And you can't sing consonants.
My creative partners over at Electric Arc Productions (including the fabulous Geoff Herbach, Dave Salmela, and Jenny Adams) have launched a three-show run at the Ritz Theater of an afternoon variety show. It's called PowderKeg Live! and yes, Virginia, there is free childcare. Best part? Writing songs for John Munson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic, The New Standards, Twilight Hours). In our band, the PowderKeg Men's Glee Club, Munson is the bad boy. (Not so in real life.) In our next show, April 3, John will relay his parking ticket tale of woe as part of the larger theme: REDEMPTION. PowderKeg Live! is the evolution of a previous project called The Second Half. It's all part of a continuous effort to make intellectually interesting, and commercial, work for grownups and families.
I gave a small talk to fellow writers and poets recently at the Bryant Lake Bowl as part of Lightsey Darst’s fab writer’s salon, The Works. I did it with a creative collaborator of mine, the fab singer-songwriter Chris Koza.
Here’s what we did: A few days prior we wrote a song together based on some characters in my novel-in-progress. We used our talk time at The Works to talk about the process of writing a song based on a novel’s characters, how two artists in different disciplines can help each other, and, of course, the beauty of Bruce Willis’s Seagram’s Wine Cooler commercials.
Then, Chris performed the song we wrote. And wow. It was awesome. If you can’t play a guitar and sing, the next best thing is writing for someone who really really can.
Can’t wait to work with Mr. Koza again in any possible way. How lucky I am to know such a beautiful dude. Mwah to you, Koza. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah.
When I see something I like in musical theater, I try to write about it. The dudes over at the Power Balladz show are really on to something, and I'm not just saying that because I know all the words, having been raised in rural America in the 80s and early 90s.
My interview with star Dieter Bierbrauer for the Decider (the regional A&E web presence of The Onion) includes our talk of the operatic stylings of Meat Loaf, the genius of Steve Perry, and the difficulties of wearing skin-tight unitard pants.
Creative partners Geoff Herbach, Andy Sturdevant, Dave Salmela, and I wrote Don't Crush Our Heart!together in the fall of 2008. (As with other projects, Jenny Adams, Kurt Froehlich, Sam Osterhout, and Brady Bergeson rounded out the talent.)
Based on Sturdevant's popular Armitage Heights Clarion blog, the musical centers on the naive-but-talented local twee-pop duo Moon Island (hear a little here), made up of innocents Jessica and Joshua Moon. Popular in their hometown, they catch the eye of city alderman Sherman Larson through his superfan administrative assistant Marisha. Alderman Sherman sees expensive coffee shops, I-pod billboards, and true urban renewal in Moon Island's popularity. But when the band declares intent to move to Brooklyn (yup, Williamsburg), Alderman Sherman fears for his town's future… and he files a legal injunction to keep Moon Island put.
It's a pop musical-slash-courtroom farce with a full score and eight principal characters, and my first creative endeavor post-Electric Arc Radio Show. In revisions now, I'll let you know when it's up for viewing next, unless you're a producer interested in such a project, or other musical theater projects, then by all means email me.
In the meantime, here's Mike Peiken from 3-Minute Egg talking to Andy Sturdevant and I about the first production, and EARS in general. (We did four productions of this musical total. Two were self-produced, two were in conjunction with the Nautilus Music Theater Rough Cuts series.)
