Duluth Homegrown 2012 - Trampled By Turtles & Saturday Shenannigans...TOMTEN TOO!

Holy Shit.. been a long, long time since the Wrenshack Blog fired up its engine...

She's back on the street and ready to rumble.

So in early May it was the big Duluth Homegrown Festival...

A week long event of well in excess of 100+ bands playing live and some always-crazy

full-on shenanigans.

Carrie Ann, DellMarie and I hit it hard on Wednesday, May 2nd for the big

Trampled By Turtles

show at Clyde Iron.

Now Clyde Iron absolutely SUCKS for live music... concrete and glass...

you don't need to be a veteran sound tech for Winger to know that loud sound and the above mentioned is a mixture like OJ and milk in one glass. 

Anyway, there was enough bodies to soak up lots of sound and it's wasn't as horrible as it could have been. 

With the sound issues aside, TBT was OUTSTANDING... played a nice mix of old and new... and

did it up D-town style for  the big hometown show.

Carrie has a major banjo-boner for the TBT banjo player... so after he was interviewed by the local news hack I asked the nice man to pose for a picture with my sister that loves you and would like to move off to Banjoville, MN and live happily ever after. Obviously he agreed... to the picture at least.

BEARDWATCH 2012...

Wayne and the TBT Fiddle player... I kinda felt like a pee-wee up against a pro here... but something to shoot for.

Something of note... watched TBT at  Bonnaroo and I see that the dude shaved and cut his hair... so I'm suddenly in the lead!?!

 

Father Hennipen - a Duluth band of the recent past with a cult following... played straight up old skool country ala Dwight Yokum and such... and hey Sid that is indeed the legendary

Bob Olson on bass there...

Either Duluth is living up to their name as the armpit of the world or TBT is still humble as hell - even with their increased success... why?

Because they basically set up all their shit by themselves... not suckin' roadies or nuthin'

Some hot chicks... who took the picture?

A crazy picture of the action.

Second Homegrown in a row that we managed a picture with Duluth Mayor Donny Ness!

I failed to pay for a few drinks and had to haul pizza flour to pay for them... it was a late night.

We also hit the Homegrown festivities on Saturday - checked out some crazy Rawk at RT Quinlins and then off to Roscoe's to see Dirty Horse and finally to Pizza Luce to catch the big Two Many Banjos set... Carrie's Banjo Boyfriend plays with those cats so she was walking around with a boner all night.

DellMarie claims she was bored out of her skull since we left RT's.

Above is the trolly that shuffled the drunks and stoners from bar to bar... wonder if the driver had to clean any puke up at the end of his or her shift... crazy.

I managed to capture a few vids... check them out.

Did you notice the guy with the middle finger the entire song? Hilarious.

Lastly... the big Tomten 2012 bash is set... going to be a full night of good folks, food, drink and music... lookin' forward to it!

THANKS FOR CHECKIN' IN....

Ed Fitz, Plants and Hunger Games Beard Watch

If you're reading this you are one dedicated Wrenshack Rambler... to be checking in still after months of inactivity... 10,000 bonus points for you!! ta

So what's been up?
Well...

In February I became the 7th winner of the Ed Fitz Trivia Challenge... a pic of my Norwegian Captained Laker full of taconite and a pic of the rowdy goings on... it was a wild ride this year... some big comebacks and some big falls... but a great time....THANKS CARRIE ANN!!

The other big thing that is taking up my free time is plants... lots and lots of plants... starting lots of stuff from seed this year rather than buying it from some high-priced greenhouse... I'm all about self-sufficency!

Check it...



Lastly... BeardWATCH 2012..,

So we went to see the Hunger Games this weekend.... good movie.... worth checking out.

Since I'm starting my "Beards of Signifigance" series... I'm going with Donald Sutherland as President Coriolanus Snow.

Music for the week:

The one and only Jim Savre covering Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic... subscribe to this guy's channel would ya!

I'm Back with A Beard Attack!

Hey dudes... been a while.
Dealing with DellMarie's health issues...which are improving thankfully! S-L-O-W-L-Y but they are!

So on to the issues of the day... Superbowl was a bit boring... glad the G's won.
We had the big Diane Retirement Party this weekend... Props to Nick for making the trip with the Aunts and Robert... appreciate it. No pics... Carrie has them... Diane was pissed and getting more pissed the more she thinks about why anyone would have a party for her?!?!??! DAMN KIDS!

So.... a kid a school comes up to me and says... "why don't you grow out your beard?" and I say, "Hey there little one, I am... I swear I am!" and they say, "It's been that length, like, forever."

So in an attempt to debunk that theory... here we go with BEARD WATCH 2012....

This is last years beard peak:

So this year started off in September... the first pic I have is from late December... with my sweet-ass silvery dog sled hat... going on about 2 months growth I would say.... (cuz I was trimming for about a month or so!!)

o

And a super-bowl-special beard-o-rama pic...just taken tonight... at about 3 & 1/4 months

Had a vid ready to go... won't load...next time AMERICA!

We're not going anywhere!

Yo!
We're still alive.
Just wanted you to know that.
Check back for a post soon!

Helping with a White Winter?

Hey folks -
It's a short one but that doesn't mean there isn't a handful to explore...






Please check the new music selections to your right----------->

And one of my favorites... a beautiful song that hopefully, if you all play it at the same time, will bring northern Minnesota some SNOW in the new year of 2012!



Hope you all have a new year filled with peace and happiness.

Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for BEARDwatch2012.... it's going to be FunTastic!

3 Finds of the Week - Boner Dollar, Sled Dog Trucker Hat & a 1974 Alvarez 12 String Acoustic Guitar!

Hey folks -
Last week was one of those special string of days where you can't help but get lucky... mine went a bit like this....
A student at work comes to me and says "hey, do you have change for a five?" I say, "Why yes, I think I do." And so he proceeds to count out five dollar bills, and says, "Hey, look at THIS!", the dollar had been defaced - from reading "ONE" on the back to this....

Needless to say, I kept this dollar and still have it today... careful not to spend it... I have to pick a good place to pass this baby along... certainly not at WalMart or in a soda machine...

Second nice find was a new sweet trucker hat that came to me at Goodwill... yeah, I frequent Goodwill... they have some nice stuff - like dogsled trucker hats... and cheap-ass stuffed animals that work great for dog toys among other things... need a can opener - go to Goodwill... it'll cost you 50 cents rather than 8.99.
Anyway this is the kind of hat you just don't find ANYWHERE else...

It's all silvery too.

And the BIG FIND OF THE WEEK goes to the vintage 1974 Alvarez 12 string guitar I scored off of Craigslist from Jim in Superior for a ROCK BOTTOM price of just  $100... that's right $100. She plays like a dream, has a straight-as-an-arrow neck, beautiful finish with nearly 40 years of patina and even came with a case! I'll try to get some audio/video up here soon so you can hear the chorus of angels that come out of the thing when you pluck a string!
Check it out...

Hope all is well with everyone reading this... Keep DellMarie in your thoughts - she's going through yet some more crappy medical stuff... as if the gall bladder and hysterectomy within a few months last year wasn't enough... she's a tropper though - battling through.

Alright... hope you all get a few good finds come your way soon!

Meanwhile you can rock out to some Wild Flag from a recent Letterman broadcast... some interesting rock n roll...

~peace~

Dave Van Ronk & Drive By Truckers

Music Post # 113
Two tunes I've listened to about 47 times in the last week.
Thought they were worthy of a blog post.
Hope you enjoy.
Dave Van Ronk - you MUST check this one out... some great growls in here.... and when you're done dial up Charlie Parr's version on the 12 string resonator guitar live from Terrapin Station on YouTube... dare I say it's better???


And Drive By Truckers doing their tune "Used to be a Cop"... the vid is nothing to look at so if you're at work hit play and go about your bidness... and let it rock... it's a 7+ minute jam... love the bass line...


It's mid December in Minnesota and we don't have any snow on the ground... all you folks out there reading... run outside tonight at midnight in your underwear and do a snow dance under the full moon! You ROCK!

COMING SOON!
MONTHLY BEARD-A-THON...Stay tuned!

So You Wanna Play Drums Like Pepe eh?

Hey people.
Sorry for the blog inactivity - DellMarie hasn't been feeling well and we've been back and forth to the docs trying to get her pointed in the right direction... so that's what has been occupying our time as of late.

Hey... check out what's diggin musically over in the side bar... you can click on them to bring you to a YouTube vid of that music selection! ------------------------->>>>>>>>
Anyway, have you ever wondered what it would be like if you could play the shit out of a dusty old drum set that has been laying around in a storage trailer for a few years? Probably thinking to yourself that you could make that baby ring and pop and bang! And then when you run into your buddy on the street you could say something like "Hey man... WANNA PLAY DRUMS!?!"
Well check this out... None other than Mark "Pepe" Macham rockin' it...


Didn't that rock your socks off...

The other news is that Chris "Sid" has the home studio set up and rarin' to go... so all you music types that might want to record something for an alien life form to find in the year 2412... if your cd or digital file survives that long.... dial him up - or me and we'll get ya goin. Hopefully I'll have a sample of the crispy clean recordings he's capable of here in the next few days.

Keep on rockin'!

Bigfoot or Sasquatch in Carlton County - Finding Bigfoot with Ranae Holland & Buddy Knox

So apparently Carlton County - where we live - is a hotbed of Bigfoot - or Sasquatch - activity. So much so it has attracted the Animal Planet show "Finding Bigfoot" to little ole Carlton County. They conducted a town-hall meeting regarding Bigfoot sightings/experiences -filmed an episode and were quoted as saying the town hall meeting drew the largest crowd they had ever seen with well over 100 folks attending - including many first-hand accounts of Bigfoot experiences. Kind of make you Tomten campers a little on edge eh?

All this went down in late August... here is a link to the local articles posted on the Finding Bigfoot blog...
http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2011/08/finding-bigfoot-minnesota-town-hall.html

So to go right along with that like bacon and eggs... here is a tune called "I STILL BELIEVE IN BIGFOOT"


I just couldn't pass this one up... seems to be the original of any of the Bigfoot songs out there...
By Buddy Knox... Bigfoot Song - even though it says copyright 2009 - I'm pretty sure that's a load of bullshit.
Enjoy - and keep an eye out for the Sasquatch!

David Mayfield's mom had sex with Jimi Hendrix, Zach Galifianakis and Jim Croce

David Mayfield... Schizophrenic Folk-a-fatized music... I found it.. had to post it... don't know what else to say but WOW!

Occupy American People with Pete Seeger and Social Justice!

So... after having a session at the Gopher Lounge down in West Duluth for a "work meeting" we - meaning the hardcore folks that we left after induldging for 5+ hours came to the conclusion that "THE REVOLUTION IS HERE".   That bears repeating... "THE REVOLUTION IS HERE"... the class revolution that has taken form in of "Occypy ______". There was spirited talk of protest and solidarity... WHO'S WITH ME?
Even Duluth - less than 100,000 folks have had week long protests - Occupy Duluth - who would have thought? I think it says a whole lot if you ask me.

So I'll provide you with some solid facts in case you aren't hip to the revolution...

The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet's wealth, according to the largest study yet of wealth distribution. The report also finds that those in financial services and the internet sectors predominate among the super rich.
Europe, the US and some Asia Pacific nations account for most of the extremely wealthy. More than a third live in the US. Japan accounts for 27% of the total, the UK for 6% and France for 5%.
The report found the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total of global assets. Half the world's adult population, however, owned barely 1% of global wealth.
 

 
And one misconception that NEEDS to be cleared up is the idea that Obama can wave a magic wand and "create" jobs. Sorry folks, doesn't happen that way. The companies that control the money in this economy - dare I mention the bailed out bastards - are sitting on a huge pile of cash that they aren't investing  - ie. JOBS... not to mention they still pay the CEO's a heafty ?? million dollar salary and bonus every year since...so in the meantime the American public whiles away the hours wondering why our president isn't making jobs for everyone to go work at!?!

And so we have ridiculous statements by presidential candidates like "if you're not a millionaire the only one you have to blame is yourself". And we need to give tax breaks to the richest people in this country because if we don't they won't create jobs and we'll all be screwed! Yeah that trickle down economics is certain to work one of these decades!

Misinformed, sound-bite american public zombies that don't understand how this system works and how corrupt it is... Millions, if not Billions of lobbyist money sleazing up our government... given the cost of living and inflation the average wages in this country hasn't moved since the 70's.... do some research! 

WHEN DO YOU STAND UP AND SAY BULLSHIT... I'VE HAD ENOUGH? 
 
Off my soapbox... 
But I will end with the grandfather of protest songwriters... Mr. Pete Seeger fighting for justice...
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
 
M

Richard Simmons and/or Bob Ross Halloween Costume Tutorial

RICHARD SIMMONS and BOB ROSS!

Obiously for the Richard Simmons you need some sort of bedazzled tank top, a sweat band, some short shorts (running shorts work great - especially if you bedazzle them with sparkly sequenes and such), wrist sweat bands, athletic shoes of some sort and a flammer attitude.... good to go.

Bob Ross - a blue button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a painters pallete, paint brushes, blue or black jeans, a beard and again, an afro wig. Talk about friendly trees and happy accidents and it's all up to you what lives in your world... and you're good to go. When you leave the party say... Good night my friends... and God bless as you tinkle your fingers at them. Make sure you bring a brush that you "beat the devil out of" on everything you encounter.

Hope you have a great Halloween... get out there and dress it up!

Halloween Costumes... Bob Ross, Richard Simmons and Freddy Mercury!

Hey dudes...
With Halloween fast approaching, I have been doing some searching for Halloween costume ideas. I'm a bit limited to ones with beards since DellMarie threatens divorce if I shave... and I've already done that once so twice would spell disaster!
Anyway, we have been going to our friend's tattoo shop - INK - for their annual Halloween Party - lots of fun costumes every year.  This year should be no different.

This year I'm debating between Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard and Papa Smurf.... and the outside possiblility of the Gordon's Fisherman - ya know.... fish sticks guy... but a big yellow rain slicker and hat might be tough to come by.

Here are some pics from last year....

Kenny as Richard Simmons, Jill as the Bearded Lady and me as Bob Ross.

 Jacob as Freddy Mercury - with the nasty teeth even!

A Chilean Miner, a dead sailor and a hot dog... now just imagine having a few drinks and getting a little sideways with a Chilean miner, Richard Simmons, Freddy Mercury, a bearded lady and a hot dog!

Good times! 

DellMarie as Otis from House of 1000 Corpses, Bob Ross again and Carrie Ann as the Bride of Frankenstien.

In keeping with the Halloween theme...

Here we go with Frankenstein from the Edgar Winter Group...

Prepare for a MONSTER jam!



Broken Dog Leg, External Fixator and Rodrigo y Gabriela

So the big news of last week was that our youngest doggy - Poppy - who broke her leg in early June - not sure how??? ask us later.... she got the 4 pins in her broken leg taken out on Tuesday... it has been a LONG, LONG 3 months of wrapping, taping, cleaning, vet visits.. etc. etc. But... she's running around minus any fixator or support and is doing great... still not 100% but getting there.
Just for shock value.. here is her initial x-ray... broke her leg clean in half... pretty it aint...

Now on to the good stuff...
Rodrigo y Gabriela... a duo of guitarist that play the holy shit out of their guitars... espcially Gabriela - she has some ridiculous strumming patterns. It's spanish-guitar with a big dash of attitude... they cover Metallica tunes,... and not lame ones.. like Ride The Lightning tunes!
Anyway, check them out....

PALEFACE + AVETT BROTHERS + MUSTACHE = MUSIC DELICIOUSNESS

Mid week bracer comin' at ya... well a little past mid week but what the hell it's the Wrenshackian Blogger 200th post! FRICKIN' YA!

2 music selections by one of my recent new discoveries - PALEFACE.

First... a tune called ROCK AND ROLL... it's explained well in the beginning of the video...



And secondly...
a tune called New York featuring the one and only AVETT Bros. Really diggin Seth's (the dude on the furthest left) 1. Trucker hat on the tilt and 2. His ultimate mustache-fighter mustache.
I wish I could play on a pier or a boat and sound that good on a one shot dingwop... damn.


HEY.... COMMING NEXT! POPPY BROKEN LEG RECOVERY NEWS! GOOD TIMES!

From Englund with Love from Barry Gibb

Hey folks...

A gem from this summer... Kurt Englund from Esko-town doing a Springsteen tune at Al and Phoebe's big backyard bash down in the furthest west reaches of D-town... 

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Mark Macham - drummer extrordinaire - was sitting in with Kurt on most of his set and obviously this tune.

As Kurt said... this recording is "NO JOKE!" thanks to Jim Randall... I'm 93% sure that was his name... he mixed the sound at Al's... did a great job on Sid's PA no doubt.

 

And some comedy for ya... anyone hip to BARRY GIBB and the Bee Gees?

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake do the Barry Gibb Talkshow on Saturday Night Live from

time to time... I think there are about 4 or 5 "episodes" out there...Enjoy the fall season out there!

~peace~

Kilgour, Crooked Still, and Ole Hippie Dude's Daughter or probably Grand Daughter

HEY hey HEY... What's Happenin'?

Not much here.. just posting a couple quick music nuggets I'm diggin'....
Please... check 'em out!

We'll start out with the most controversial of the three.... Racheal Kilgour from Duluthtown with a thought-provoking tune about organized religion.... great song - well written....



Then we have CROOKED STILL doing "Darling Corey".... heard it on my way home today on the one and only KUMD 103.3
If you dig Allison Krause and Union Station you'll dig this... and the chello player is... as Mel Torme would say... "THE TOPS!"  It's just a black screen and the tune so close your eyes and enjoy!


Finally... I stumbled across this while searching out a David Bromberg tune... OleHippeDude of Youtube posted it... I think it's beautiful. Hope you do too. Sounds like the Cicadas dig it too!
~peace brothers and sisters!~

I Aint No Fortunate Son!

Hey party people...

Not making excuses here... well maybe I am... but only played this one about 3 times but I think it has some nice potential...and I promised a tune this week... so didn't have much choice. Hope you dig it.

Sorry for the coughs at the end... I was trying to choke them back... remnents of that damn cold!

THis goes out to all those peace-lovin', anti-war folks... support your soldiers but HATE the war!

I'm a poet and I live in a compound defended by polygamist haikus

Heard this on NPR years ago and for some strange reason I kept it in the back of my mind for recall later.... well today has officially become later. I'm sharing this gem with you... Poet Andrei Codrescu entertains you with a great commentary on the bailout a couple years back... Hey... if you check this... write a poem tonight! ANd if you're REALLY cool you'll share that poem with us on the comments!

Back At The Salt Mines

Hey folks... Not much big news here... just spent last week back at the grind in PROCTOR town.... went well. Shakin' off the cold... 95% gone. I'm making a deal right now that I will post some sort of music dingwop of my own this week... so stay tuned... couldn't breathe much less attempt to sing anything last week... but we'll have something in a few days here. IN the meantime check out this new tune by Ben Harper... heard it on the one and only 103.3 KUMD on the way to work the other day and really dug it.... Waitin' On A Sign.... absolutely LOVE the guitar solo....great sound. ROCK!