Month: September 2003

I’ve stopped idealizing world travel. Sure, I’d love to believe that some day I’ll set foot on every continent. I’ve even overcome an odd, inherited prejudice against the Deep South, and started fantasizing about a road trip through the cornbread belt. Still, more and more, lately, I realize the place for me is my own couch, nodding off with the Twins at home-run volume and a can of cheap local brew tipping into my lap. The sunsets are pretty, the folks are agreeable, the politics are relatively progressive. It’s not much, but it’s home.

I think we Midwesterners are predisposed to this inner struggle—a desire to travel to more glamorous places, but a suspicion that where we really belong is at home, right here among the cornfields and pig farms. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we have moved, years ago, like everyone else, to L.A. or New York? We may lust after the big city and the open road, but we have instincts for home. There is no shame in this. In fact, there may even be some art in it.

Two wonderful new disc sets illustrate this; they feature new albums by two of our very best singer-songwriters, along with a documentary film about each. Greg Brown’s If I Had Known: Essential Recordings 1980-1996 comes with a DVD of the 1993 documentary Hacklebarney Tunes: The Music of Greg Brown. Paul Westerberg’s Come and Feel Me Tremble is both a new album and a separately sold DVD documentary of his most recent tour and studio sessions.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of Greg Brown, but time is beginning to confess it. If there’s an artist who needs no other explanation than his own recordings, it’s the Iowan musician. And yet this is precisely the kind of person you want to see at the center of a documentary. Brown would surely chafe to hear it, but he represents a modern romantic ideal—the poet philosopher as farmer and folkie.

Hacklebarney Tunes confirms most of what you know and believe about the artist. Greg Brown has a home, or at least a spiritual home base, and it’s everything you’d expect: a seedy little brush farm in the rolling driftless of Iowa, nestled next to a trout stream and a blackberry patch. His actual life is considerably more complicated than this suggests, of course; he collects art, he travels and tours incessantly, he hangs with folks like Garrison Keillor, he’s in Europe as often as Iowa, and he runs a record label, if not a new-folk revolution. Whether he likes it or not, though, his music and his person evince a simple American ideal: The love of a humble home in the heartland, and all that implies—baking bread, walking beans, singing along.

Brown may never be a rock star like Bob Dylan or Van Morrison—or even Paul Westerberg, for that matter. Even so, you can feel a slow process of grassroots lionization going on, almost in spite of him. It began, especially, with Going Driftless, last year’s album that was touted as “an artists’ tribute to the songs of Greg Brown.” That disc featured a dozen women from the A-list of folk and roots playing his greatest hits; Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco, Iris DeMent, and so on. (Yes, all women. Proceeds were donated to the Breast Cancer Fund.) To my mind, that CD left little doubt that a song like “The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home” will outlive its author as folk standards. And the documentary, though made a decade ago, has grown into its clothes as a biopic of Someone Who Really Matters.

Judged by his own standards, though, I’d guess the albums Brown himself loves best are Dream Café and Poet Game—his most personal, least folkie records from the latter period. These are urbane albums that get inside the head of a modern man who has played through the clichés of folk music long enough to get itchy for new turf. Yet he’s too smart to abandon his roots. Brown knows that the folk idiom is full of sleeping dogs, rusty trucks, and swimming holes because these homey icons point beyond themselves to transcendental things.

Still, I am convinced that the best recording of a Greg Brown song isn’t by Greg Brown. It’s by his three daughters, singing “Ella Mae” on Going Driftless. What a haunting, spare, and gorgeous tribute to their father’s grandmother. Dad’s only recorded version, included here on If I Had Known, and originally appearing on the 1983 album One Night, is oddly perfunctory. But in the mouths of his daughters, it is a thing of intense beauty that makes my throat catch every time I hear it. “Ella Mae” captures the essence of what makes Brown so compelling—a folkie modest and timeless. He’s a man whose music grounds generations in their common humanity. For reasons that I’m sure are connected to deep spiritual things, the daughters are the best evidence of what the father is.

Paul Westerberg doesn’t have a home, artistically speaking. He’s not even comfortable in his own skin. Which is, in its own way, fitting for his area of specialization. Midtempo garage rock never had a better agoraphobic champion, and fans of the older, trashier Replacements catalog have been gratified to learn that, even though you can’t go home again, you can dial up something new on your CD player that sounds pretty damn familiar.

Most American punk rock was disingenuous, and it remains so. To the extent that punk was an urban form of folk music, produced by and for regular people who happened to live in flophouses instead of farmhouses, its American version has come mostly from artless, well-off suburban kids whose idea of alienation was no more complicated than it ever was for the leisure class: Dad worked too much, Mom was imperious, and there were never enough ski trips to Colorado. In other words, the overwhelming injustice of life in these privileged precincts could only be that it’s so frickin’ boring.

Luckily, we bumpkins in flyover country were chronically, genetically earnest when we got punk. The Suburbs were prep-school new-wavers who never pretended to be anything else, and they rocked the harder for it. The ’Mats, though, were as close to the genuine homegrown article as we’d ever have—city kids, working class if you like, smart enough to know they weren’t that smart, and they didn’t mind. Tommy Stinson will still tell anyone who’ll listen: They honestly were never aiming any higher than the next show, never more forward-looking than last week’s City Pages. In a sense, they accidentally embodied the bleeding edge of what became a whole argot and morality of “the genuine”—jeans and flannel shirts, Converse high-tops, bed-heads, too drunk to play, I hate music, got too many notes. Some people say that’s what killed Kurt Cobain. But punk-rock credibility doesn’t kill people. Guns kill people.

Like Westerberg’s previous record, Tremble is willfully ragged, presumably recorded live off the studio floor. For the better part of this album, he’s turned the amps up and the vocals down. It’s “Answering Machine” guitars with “Hootenanny” vocals; he’s mixed himself, self-effacingly, almost off the record—and where you can hear him, he sounds astonishingly unconfident and vulnerable, for all his accolades as a “critics’ darling.” There is plenty of succor, though: Other tunes are cut from the melancholy fabric of “Here Comes a Regular” (“Meet Me Down the Alley”) and the twisted, Brill Building chintz of “Swinging Party” (“Knockin’ Em Back”).

Over the years, Westerberg has sounded as if he believes what’s written about him. This may be why he prudently stopped talking to people. And it may have given him the space and the perspective to give it up a little bit with this new DVD. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s said to be a real revelation, a doorway into the headspace he’s been occupying for the last five or six years, which about ten thousand rabid fans are dying to see. If the last thing he read was that he didn’t rock hard enough, and that he worried too much about getting his hall-of-fame reservations
right next to Alex Chilton’s, and that he should just be himself, then we hope he’s still not reading. If he is reading, though, we hope he skipped to the end: You used to live at home, Paul, and now you stay at the house. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you peer off the north side of the Lake Street Bridge this time of year, you’ll often spot a dark blue, double-masted sailboat anchored on the Mississippi. For most of the past seventeen years, Captain John V. Caola has sailed from points south—Key West, Miami, and the Bahamas—to beat the heat and visit his family (which now includes eight grandchildren) in the Twin Cities.

He is turning into a seasonal sight himself. Sporting a blue Hawaiian shirt, Panama hat, and a salt-and-pepper beard, Caola resembles a slimmed-down Hemingway, a guy who at first strikes you as just the kind of carefree and footloose soul you would imagine choosing to live out his retirement on a sailboat. Talk to him for a while, though, and you soon discover a surprisingly conscientious and meticulous individual, one who reels off the details and specs of his thirty-three-foot boat—which, he informs me, is really a motorsailer rather than a sailboat—and the routes he has sailed.

Since the end of January, Caola and his friend Monique, a newcomer to the live-aboard life, have sailed or motored 2,400 statute miles. They began in Miami, sailed north on the Atlantic, and traversed the width of Florida via the Okeechobee waterway. On the Gulf coast, they followed a route of commercial waterways and open sea that eventually brought them to Mobile, Alabama, where they began an inland journey up the Mobile, Tombigbee, Tennessee, and Ohio rivers. And then, at Cairo, Illinois, they embarked on old muddy itself—the Mississippi River.

The early days of fall are an ideal time to be on the upper Mississippi, Caola says. Even in a dry year like this one, the view of the changing leaves is spectacular from the river, as is the setting sun reflecting off the steel skin of the Weisman Museum, a short sail up the river. Soon Caola and Monique will turn the MS Beluga around and sail back south, this time down the entire length of the Mississippi to New Orleans.

Over the years, Caola has been pleased to see the water quality and boating facilities on the Mississippi improve. Although the boat traffic has also increased, the river is still a remarkable refuge. “It is amazing,” he says, as we gaze up at the busy bridge from the west bank of the river, “that you can be right in the heart of the hustle and bustle of a big city and down here it is all peace and quiet.”
—Dan Gilchrist

Tea is a crop we could grow in Minnesota, but the end product would be so foul that no one with working taste buds would go near it. The mountainous soils of Nepal, though, produce some damn fine chai, as they call it. Swadesh Shrestha and his brother Saujanya serve it at their Uptown Minneapolis shop, Himalayan Chai. The black, green, and ayurvedic teas are robust and flavorful. They are typically steeped loose, in the cup, and they are actually quite toothsome. You find yourself enjoying the sensation of leaves in your mouth—like steamed greens. The practiced customer will discreetly give the gums a whirl of the tongue before grinning in pleasure.

But there’s more in that cup than just edible dregs. Drinking at Himalayan Chai is an inherently political act. Here’s why: The tea shop is owned by Nepal Natural Tea Industry, a company that was started twenty-five years ago by the Shresthas’ father, Saumendra. Already a tea grower and exporter, and very well-to-do by Nepalese standards (he owned both the first truck and the first printing press in their hometown of Phidim), Saumendra decided he wanted to do something for the people of his native country. He enlisted a handful of families to launch a tea garden cooperative. Each family contributed some land and set to work cultivating the crop that grows so well at the village’s seven-thousand-foot elevation. Today, there are nearly two hundred families in the cooperative. Phidim now has a school and a bridge. Life is good.

The Shresthas tell me that everything that can be done by the cooperative is kept within the country. Instead of importing tea boxes from China or India, the Shresthas employ a Nepalese family to handcraft their unadorned but elegant boxes from recycled sawdust. The teas are grown organically. Cooperative members handpick the tea three times a year, and hand-deliver it to the processor in the valley. Large quantities of tea are exported to Germany, and smaller shipments go to Australia, Japan, and the United States. In Minneapolis, the Shrestha brothers are enthusiastically hoping to turn people on to chai. Swadesh went so far as to give away all tea drinks, no charge, during the first two weeks the shop was open.

Inside the tiny, marigold-colored shop at 713 W. Franklin Ave., there is the familiar hum and twang of Eastern music. The slight, 32-year-old Swadesh is eager to please and such a detail-oriented capitalist that it’s tempting to think this kindhearted cooperative is all a front. Maybe the brothers plan to take the money and run. Nope. Almost every business transaction conducted in the shop benefits the people of the tea cooperative. The profits from the brightly colored wool sweaters for sale go to a group of women living in stone huts on a Himalayan mountainside. Profits from tea sales go directly to the producers. Even the tips the Shresthas gather are sent home. The $100 collected each month is enough to send two more Nepalese children to school. This collision of good works with Western consumerism has been such a success that the Shrestha brothers are now opening a second shop, at 25th and Hennepin. —Katie Quirk

The Hamm’s Club brewery show this past September was pretty much what one would expect: a few dozen vendors in the parking lot of a defunct brewery hawking beer collectibles to each other. Some sold genuine antiques, some had kitsch, some not-yet-kitsch, and some never-would-be-kitsch. A guy named Jerry from Fort Worth offered Styrofoam Hamm’s bear statues for $495. A carved wood Leinenkugel’s oar could be had for $45. In this unpredictable market, the table doing the most business was selling hot dogs, chips, and soda.

Business was also brisk at the Hamm’s Club tent. What looked like a thin crowd was, in fact, “a great turnout,” said Jon Morphew, Hamm’s Club chief counsel. The Hamm’s Club has controversial opposition to thank for some extra attention. After raising $12,000 for a six-foot granite monument to the beloved Hamm’s bear, and after securing Park Board approval to place it in Como Zoo, the Hamm’s Club took a slap in the face when the St. Paul City Council voted to table final approval, offering little by way of explanation beyond church-lady mumblings about “indirect promotion of alcohol” from council member Jay Benanav.

Morphew showed me the monument design as he speculated about prospects for its future. It’s a carved headstone, essentially, designed by Bill Kelley, the “Michelangelo of the Hamm’s art world,” according to the club website. The club will gladly accommodate the city and remove the word “beer” from the monument. Morphew also said they would consider placement at the defunct Stroh’s brewery site on the East Side, assuming redevelopment leaves something more than a warehouse or a crater there. If the city does not come up with a placement that satisfies the club, he said, “the bear becomes a free agent.”

Hamm’s Clubbers at the show seemed disappointed but undeterred by this setback. Mary Penning of Inver Grove Heights understands the current of cultural disapproval against which the bear is swimming. She was buying shirts featuring the Hamm’s bear playing hockey. “My kids can’t even wear these to school,” she noted stoically. “We’re so politically correct,” groused a guy called Pat who declined to give his last name. “It started with Joe Camel.”

“They probably don’t even remember who paid for Hamm’s Falls in Como Park,” accused clubber John Husnik.

Jay Benanav wasn’t taking the anti-beer bait anymore when I spoke to him, pointing out that, at age 52, he certainly has “something to show” for his time in the pints. He also seems mindful of the 856 liquor licenses currently held in the St. Paul city limits. But Como Park is in his ward, and he just doesn’t want a headstone there. “It doesn’t have anything to do with being afraid of beer,” he said. “The overriding factor is that it’s a gravestone. Como Park is not an appropriate place for a grave marker. If we don’t have some standards, what’s next? A gravestone to the Cootie Bug?”

Council member Chris Coleman also declined to take an anti-beer stance. He just hates the bear. “This bear has a white belly. What kind of bear has a white belly? We just don’t need schmaltz art in our center park. Now, that little oven mitt that’s advertising for Arby’s is pretty cute. Maybe I’ll see if we can get one of those for the park. Actually, I’d like to have giant statues of the Simpsons all over town, the way we have the Peanuts now.” Coleman was clearly not seeking reelection when I reminded him of the deep feelings many in the Hamm’s Club have for the bear. “Can any of them see their toes?” he asked.

At the brewery show, Kevin Burke had choice words for the City Council. Burke’s uncle was a Hamm’s distributor. He couldn’t say for sure whether the bear will become an endorsement issue in Benanav’s next campaign, but he made the following promise: “I’m gonna jump him like a dime-store pony.”—Joe Pastoor

A yellow electric scooter lies on its side in the middle of 38th Street and Park Avenue. It’s just past 2 a.m. (hooray, new bar time!), and I swerve my Mazda into construction to keep from running it over. The scooter lies among flashing orange-and-white traffic horses and chunks of broken pavement, like a glowing offering from the street gods. I stop in the middle of the road and get out to inspect it as if it were an injured kitten I need to swoop up and rescue. There are no scraps of mangled metal. There’s no evidence it was involved in a collision with another vehicle or wayward street sign. Instead, the poor thing is just abandoned. Alone and dejected. Like a culprit in a recent crime spree, left behind to defend itself.

If the murmured rumors around my Powderhorn neighborhood are to be believed, this little motorized scooter is an awesome new tool for petty crime, a mode of transportation that’s quick (maximum speed: twenty-two miles per hour) and untraceable (it doesn’t require a motor-vehicle registration). They’re cheap, easy to get, and—apparently—easily ditched.

My interest was piqued: Why have these vehicles suddenly appeared all over the city? Why don’t their drivers need to be licensed? Where can I get one? Like any informed and cost-conscious Twin Citizen, I assumed I could find answers at Target. Making my semi-regular visit for Frappuccinos, refrigerator magnets, and overdue wedding gifts, I saw a crowd gathering around rows of boxes the size of a guitar case. There it was: The “E-Scooter,” ready to unfold, charge up, and take on a crime-free joyride. Yes, enviro-friendly transportation now comes in a box for the bargain-basement price of $199.99. Battery included!

Leoch, the makers of the E-Scooter, began licensing their product to Target earlier this year. According to the China-based company’s sales manager, a friendly woman named Anne Daisy, Leoch’s sales have increased by fifty percent during the last year. “Our scooter keeps gaining popularity because of its convenience and fashionable style,” Daisy said. And what about its effectiveness as a getaway vehicle? “I haven’t heard anything until now,” she said. “People mostly use it for amusement and shopping.” The Minneapolis police couldn’t confirm the crime rumors, either. “I haven’t heard anything,” said a Third Precinct officer. “If someone hasn’t figured out how to do it yet, I’m sure they will soon,” he said, with a tone of world-weary resignation. He didn’t thank me for introducing the idea. —Molly Priesmeyer

Scientists argue about a lot of things that most of us don’t care about. But the researchers who observed about ten years back that sperm counts were falling—nationally, about one and a half percent per year—found themselves in the news. Naturally, the average guy on the street worries about his sperm being headed for extinction. Since then, there has been a lot of scientific squabbling, and Minnesota sperm have figured prominently in the controversy. As it turns out, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected sperm banks is located in Roseville. The latest information issuing from such places could gestate for hours at your next dinner party.

Where you live seems to matter. Minnesota men have sperm counts sixty percent higher than men in Missouri. Minnesota also beats California hands (tails?) down. Not only are our sperm more numerous than in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s adoptive home state, but they also appear to be healthier swimmers than California’s microscopic surfers. Though the research is cloudy, Minnesota sperm counts may be going up; at worst, they are holding steady.

It seems that Minnesota is a sperm-friendly place to live. Dr. Bruce Redmon is a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He teaches urologic surgery and is a Minnesota sperm specialist. “Men in Minnesota, at least those living in the Twin Cities area, appear to have good semen quality compared to other urban areas in the U.S.,” he told me the other day. Perhaps we’ve stumbled on a new angle for the local tourism board: Impaired sperm of the world, come to the Twin Cities!

Why exactly is the Twin Cities such a sperm-friendly environment? Dr. Redmon’s studies suggest that environmental factors like pollution “raise a red flag.” One theory is that the especially toxic herbicides and pesticides used to grow fruit in California may have some nasty side effects on male fertility.

Alternatively, Minnesota winters may have something to do with it. Sperm are one of the few living organisms that thrive in winter. Some of the highest sperm counts on the planet are in frigid Finland. Researchers know that sperm counts tend to fall in warmer summer temperatures—which might explain why California, the land of endless summer, has such a lethargic sperm population. One researcher at Columbia University has correlated hard winters in Minnesota with higher sperm counts—and subsequent baby booms. In other words, if this year’s winter is especially harsh, we can expect a bumper crop of new Minnesotans next year. There is no guarantee that they won’t grow up to complain about the weather, though.—Debora Geary