Friday's show at Dunn Bros in Linden Hills

After my family moved to our new home this past year I really wanted to book more neighborhood gigs, in family friendly environments. It's worked out really well for me to play a nearby coffeehouse, the Dunn Bros in the lovely Linden Hills neighborhood in SW Minneapolis. The shows I've played here have been Friday nights at 7PM, with lots of pre-schoolers and their parents, no cover charge, and a great musical vibe. It feels the way live music SHOULD be: children dancing, everyone paying attention and enjoying themselves, no pressure, no hipster attitude. Just friendly folks and the joy of music and community.

My usual rhythm section had other committments that evening so I jumped on the chance to play a show with local drummer Jimmy Olson. Jimmy and I had lived in Chicago at the same time and had both played gigs with the brilliant band Dolly Varden, but we'd never done a show with one another until Friday. We didn't bother to rehearse the songs, and we didn't need to, 'cause Jimmy is such a great percussionist...it was one of those cool and loose communications between musicians that results in a fun and exciting live performance.

Here's a rough approximation of our set list:

Falling Down
List of things to do
Park River Bridge
747s
Tape
Late in the Evening (Paul Simon cover)
Cuban Missile Crisis
Hey Hey Samuel (featuring guest musician Joel Setterholm on melodica)
The Serious Kind (featuring guest musician Joel Setterholm on melodica)
Caught Up In Your Snare (an old song that will be resurrected on my upcoming "20th Century" CD)
The Bass Guitar Song (a song from 1995 that I had never performed before...this too will be on the "20th Century" album)
Nobody Knows (Rainmakers cover)
I Shook His Hand (Peter Case cover)

At this point my friend Michael Morris (who was in the audience) jumped up on stage and we played a few of Michael's songs that we've been doing on Tuesdays at the 400 Bar. Michael played my guitar and I jumped over to mandolin, Jimmy rocked the house on drums.

After Michael's excellent set I did a few more tunes:

The Princess Wants to Spend Her Time With Me
Heart of Gold (Neil Young cover)
Librarian

and then at the end we invited Joel (on melodica) and Michael (on mandolin) to come back on stage for our grand finale, a cover of the U2 song "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" played in a Buck Owens Bakersfield arrangement. Pretty cool.

Thanks to everybody (especially the pre-schoolers) for coming out to the show. I look forward to playing at Dunn Bros again soon!