“This is really easy to do,” sound engineer Ryan Mach remembers his colleague Alex Proctor telling him during training at Icehouse. “Over to your left here, press record on every single show.” Since the Minneapolis venue opened in 2012, Icehouse engineers have captured thousands (“probably in the ten thousands”) of hours of multi-tracked music recordings. […]
“Hey man,” Steve Brantseg remembers saying to Curtiss A in the mid-1980s. “I know all those Beatles songs. If you’ve got space for another guitar player, I’d love to do it.” Three and a half decades later, and 40 years since Curtiss A’s spontaneous original tribute concert on the day John Lennon died, Brantseg (also […]
The Mississippi River is a magical place. So says bassist Liz Draper, and she should know. On July 20, Draper, along with fiddler Clancy Ward and multi-instrumentalist Kyle Ollah, set out for an adventure down the river for a six-day series of socially distanced pop-up performances known as the Mississippi River PonTour. Aboard their trusty […]
One of the Twin Cities’ most influential rock bands, The Suburbs, will be releasing a new album this fall, entitled Tell Me All You Can About Your Broken Heart. This will be the third record the group has recorded since reuniting in 2013, having called it quits back in 1987. Chan Poling, the band’s jovial […]
“It takes me ten minutes to drive to school, right?” said André Cymone, referring to the approximate amount of time former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck. “That’s how my kids understand, how I understand it. Ten minutes to get in the car, start to drive, get on the freeway, drive […]
From the time he first appeared on the Minnesota music scene as Jay Smart, the artist now known as J.S. Ondara has captivated listeners both here and, increasingly, around the world. A native of Kenya, Ondara’s always had a global view — but his musical sights were set on the United States, and the Recording […]
Michael Stipe just released his first single as a solo artist. You might remember when Stipe was the singer for R.E.M. — but Craig Franklin remembers when he wasn’t a singer at all. “His hair was all curly, like Roger Daltrey. That was the main reason, when we needed a singer I asked him to […]
Over the course of his career, Prince worked with many talented musicians, but one of the closest relationships he had with any of his musicians was with Sheila E. An iconic drummer, singer songwriter and performer Sheila E., short for Escovedo, has had an incredible career with Prince and on her own. Born and raised […]
At the tail end of my recent interview with Dua Saleh, I pulled up a Ness Nite tweet making the rounds: We can drop genre-defying now since everyone is at this point — ness nite (@nessnite) January 7, 2019 “Yes!” Saleh exclaimed upon reading it, and I got the feeling they hear “genre-defying” often. As […]
Bobby Z knew Prince for 43 years. The two spent time together growing up in Minneapolis and played with each other for years in the Revolution. Stopping by The Current’s studio, Z shared some of the memories he made with Prince. One of his most memorable ones was working on the essential Prince album, 1999. […]
