Crew Jones is a trio of white guys who met while living in a Grand Marais hippy commune. Named after a character in the 1986 BMX movie Rad, the Joneses call themselves “Minnesota’s Northernmost Rap Band” and the “inventors of Forest-Rap.” They also claim to be “holding it down as kingpins of the cutthroat Twin Ports rap scene.” Despite the foolery, the group is no joke; Crew Jones’ beats are tight, its rhymes impressionistic, and its sound unique—the result of soaking up equal parts Bob Dylan, Atmosphere, and National Public Radio.
Not long ago, in a dim Duluth basement, the group performed for about twenty-five white kids, one dark-skinned black guy, and a mixed dude whose shoulder-length dreads matched the powdered cocoa color of his skin. Rolled-up carpet scraps, defunct stereo gear, and cardboard boxes with crushed corners were piled along two walls. At the foot of a steep wooden stairway, hipsters crowded onto sagging couches were steadily adding butts to an overflowing ashtray. Sweat and mostly legal smoke made the air murky and moist. A keg of flat Lake Superior Special Ale was nearly fried.
Crew Jones is smart enough to understand that the only scene in Duluth-Superior that could remotely be considered “cutthroat” is composed mostly of latter-day hippy chicks, coeds from suburbs like Eden Prairie and Minnetonka who try to out-patchouli each other during bluegrass night at Pizza Lucé on Superior Street. The crew takes music seriously; themselves—not so much.
In the basement, Mic Trout (né Sean Elmquist) was crammed into a corner, behind his Fender Rhodes electric piano. At the start of each song, he punched up staccato drum-machine beats, then he and two other guys—one with a six-string, the other on a bass—added understated funk. Out front, Burly Burlesque (Ben Larson) and Ray Wolf (Rain Elfvin) gripped microphones and alternated verses.
“Oh, livin’ in the city is fine / if you’re outta your mind /gettin’ giddy over overpopulation and crime,” Burlesque rapped on “Banjones,” which actually does feature a banjo, on the group’s album Who’s Beach. (They know how to use apostrophes; near Grand Marais there’s a beach that bears the name of someone—possibly a first baseman—named Who.) Later in the song, Wolf said, “till the day that I die I’m reppin’ Northeastern Minnesota / from the Range to the Shore / you can claim that you’re bored / the trains hold the iron ore.” He’s the lyrical literalist of the group, with a resonant voice and a delivery that almost sounds like he’s putting on East Coast hip-hop airs.
Burly Burlesque is the most compelling of the Joneses. He affects a vocal style that conjures Shane McGowan honoring the memory of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but it comes off smoothly, naturally. His lyrics include abstract references to fantasy art, Antietam, a few forms of recreational drugs, Sisyphus, and masturbation (unless I misunderstand his story about bathing in the Brule River with a bar of Dr. Bronner’s soap). Burly’s manic stage presence is the antithesis of Larson’s shy intellectualism.
Mic Trout, the group’s poet, didn’t rap during the basement show, but on Who’s Beach, he weaves a cautionary tale about substance abuse to his younger brother, and raps about ice fishing and cliff diving into North Shore rivers. On “Memory of Me” he says, “We’ll say we caught our limit / they’ll never know the difference / we’ll make this a tradition for whenever winter visits / think of the shiny fishes / under the water frigid / like ghosts from our memory / our history revisited.”
As Trout bounced and bobbed in his chair, a handful of twentysomething girls attempted dance moves that most Duluthians have seen only on TV. A few guys pogoed arhythmically, like they would have to any other kind of music. Everyone else just nodded their heads to the big Superior beat.—Chris Godsey
Leave a Reply Cancel reply