CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the wrong venue for Jon Wayne & the Pain and Feed the Dog’s show in Mankato, which has been moved to Mankato Brewery.
It’s another busy week for live music in Minnesota.
I’m going to lead off with a band that is very dear to me: Feed the Dog.
Last Saturday, fellow taper Tommy the Beard and I drove four hours back and forth to catch them play at Oshkosh’s Bare Bones Brewery, which has named a Scottish ale after the band.
Feed the Dog opens for reggae-jam mainstays Jon Wayne & the Pain at Mankato Brewery in Mankato on Friday and the Green Room in Minneapolis on Saturday.
I highly recommend catching one of these shows if you can.
I consider the four guys in Feed the Dog friends, especially guitarist Jon Miller, who I’ve assisted the last three years in putting on Twin Ports Music Festival in Superior, Wis., and Duluth.
But that friendship has zero influence on me saying that Feed the Dog is a deeply talented band with impressive song-writing and live performance chops.
The band has gone through several personnel changes over the years but has remained talented as ever. They continue to write good songs and straddle the line between grass and rock.
While they were started up in Fox Cities region of Wisconsin, the band’s members are now evenly divided between Wisconsin and Minneapolis. Fiddler Timmy McIlree and drummer Erik Juvonen still reside in Wisconsin, but Miller and bassist Nick Spielman both live in the Twin Cities area.
As I mentioned, though, there’s a lot going on this week.
Blues Traveler hits First Avenue tonight.
Trumpeter Marquis Hill plays the Dakota at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. “His music encompasses contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house and Neo-soul,” the Dakota’s notes say about Hill, who hails from Chicago’s South Side and has “worked tirelessly to break down the barriers that divide musical genres.”
Another writeup I found, at www.baltimorejazz.com, caught my eye for the names it mentioned: “His sound is now somehow both deeply distinctive and a tour through jazz-trumpet history, evoking the high-drama stillness and space of Miles; the undeniable virtuosity of Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard; the groove- savvy phrasing of Lee Morgan and Donald Byrd; and much more.”
I’m hoping to catch Hill and then head over to The Cabooze, for the second week of TWINE’s residency. Their show last week, which marked the grand re-opening of The Cabooze, was well played. I plan on hitting as many Wednesdays as I can.
Will Effertz, who fronts TWINE, also has a gig under his WE Collective banner at 56 Brewing in Northeast Minneapolis on Thursday. That’s a free show at 56, and it starts at 6:30 p.m.
It’s a busy week for Effertz, who also has TWINE opening for national touring act Honey Island Swamp Band at the Hook & Ladder Friday. HISB formed in San Francisco originally after the members were displaced from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
One other option on Saturday is Brewgrass at 56 Brewing. The event starts at 2 p.m. and ends at 10. It includes sets from Turn Turn Turn, Pert Near Sandstone, Adam Greuel & the Space Burritos, The Roe Family Singers, and The Pistol Whippin’ Party Penguins.
OK, lastly, I’ll mention a few shows I’ve recently added to Jam in the Stream’s Minnesota music calendar.
The first being that of Orions Belte, the badass instrumental trio from Norway. They come to 7th Street Entry on March 12. I did a short writeup on their North American tour that they announced last year. Check out that story here.
And lastly, I was pleased to add Charlie Parr’s four residency shows to my calendar for the month of January at Turf Club. Parr has done that January residency for years, but took a year off this past January.