The trouble always begins when someone from Kansas City shows up. Usually, that's me; but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Jon and Chad from Drag The River were from St. Joe and Winnetonka, respectively. These are northern suburbs of KC, places where the mafia goes to hide, old folks go to die, and young musicians flee for the rare air of Colorado. After years of pursuing the shaved-head punk pop circuit at full volume, the two teamed up to create a little roots, Americana, alt-countryish kinda thing that has taken on a life of its own.

As I explained to a few people leading up to last night's gig, there are about 4 bands that I get all schoolgirl around and Drag the River is one of them. Now it all makes sense. Max Floyd's Rock N Roll Army, John Wagner: Sky Spy, and the twisted pervert, Uncle Ed Muscone's Tree House. These were our childhood realities. There's a kinship derived from sharing experiences like dodging cops on the north end of the river, late-night, lights-off, high speed runs to Lawrence aross Highway 24, and kicking some Pem Day ass down in Westport on a Friday night.

Useless, useless gibberish. Drag the River is really good, they don't think it, and they don't know it, which makes their shows the kind of old school happening where, even if they sing about getting drunk and fighting with their girfriends, it makes people smile. They're not singing at you so much as singing with you, about you. There's no "look at me, I'm a rock star..." to their act; it's more like, "dude, i hear ya, i'm fuckin' with ya on that..."

I honestly hope these guys are never big huge stars, because you can't put a premium on the value of intimate roots gigs like theirs...just a buncha guys pickin' their guitars for a buncha people who just wanna hang out and smile.

A working food critic's weekend always begins on Thursday. There's rarely time to eat and write between Thursday and Sunday, so the best thing to do is go pro early, and keep your diet restricted to the necessary liquids and vitamin supplements that prevent long-term medical treatment. Many marketing wizards and MBA types from the Village Voice put in 60 hour weeks to concoct an alias for me in this magazine, and their finest calculations came up with Dara Moskowitz, a beautiful young urban woman from Minneapolis with a taste for dry wines and crispy tempura; they even gave me a boyfriend. The sad truth is that I'm really a slothful white male in my mid-30's with a taste for Mexican beer and greasy fried chicken. I pride myself on my ability to write at length on handmade bread and musty runny cheeses, but I really prefer grilled cheese sandwiches made from Kraft American singles and Cub split top wheat...dipped in ketchup.

My true pleasure in life is late night music. I often run into my friend Paul Demko at these shows. To date, his life has been one of fame and fortune as America's foremost authority on the Blaine soccer scene, but he's about to achieve international stardom when it's revealed that he's been toiling in secret as C.J., the queen of gossip for the Minneapolis Star/Tribune. It's hard to imagine how difficult it has been for Demko to keep this under wraps, but words are words, and he agrees with all of us who are close to him that it's best for him to get the recognition and byline he so richly deserves.

Friday morning, you'll probably wake up to read how my boyfriend and I were flummoxed by the chef's use of balsamic vinegar with chilean seabass at Red Fish Blue Fish in St. Paul; additionally, Demko/C.J. will probably regale you with some sordid tale of Symbolina being spotted at Rudolph's with a missed dab of B-B-Q sauce on his majesty's chin(Demko loves bolded italics).

The truth is, smelly white men who like good live music tend to congregate, especially when the people playing that live music are smelly white men. Like the How Was the Show guy, I like to get out and see some bands, but I only have a handful of bands that I'd step over my own mother to see. One of those gigs is Drag The River out of Fort Collins, Colorado. They'll be playing Thursday, April 29th, at Louie's Lee's Liquor Lounge at the end of 11th St. in Downtown Minneapolis. It's hard to put into words how much the music of this group speaks to me, but the chief thing about them is the bedrock honesty of what they do. They look tired and dirty, but you get the feeling they like to hang out and talk politics, sports, and food. Their musicianship is of the road-tested, bloody-fingered variety, and their songs are about girls, booze, travelling, and travelling with girls and booze. As you can imagine, this is the perfect environment for men like me and Demko, and our only real issues between now and then are making sure that we eat a proper lunch on Thursday afternoon to lay the necessary foundation for the damages of the evening.

SURE, you could waste your evening in front of the TV, believing that Survivor: All Stars isn't rigged. Or, you could while away the hours next to your radio listening to Jason Nagel of Cities97, not knowing that he is in fact the infamous D.B. Cooper, prosthetic leg and all. But the unshaven, unholy, unwashed will be gripping the bar, leering at the lost daughters of Brooten, who thought it would be fun to go to a "real downtown bar" on a weeknight (when it's safe), sashaying in true hippie-girl fashion to the bouncy acoustic twang of Chad and Jon's songs.

When the phone rings at 2:30AM on a Sunday morning (Saturday night) and it's from the 254 area code, you answer it. Two-five-four is centered in Waco, Texas, but, more importantly, it's the code for Crawford; and, no one but Fagelson could be calling at that leaky hour from that godforsaken part of America.

"I just need to see," he said. "I need proof."

Heady academics from towns like Austin, New Haven, and Palo Alto are always in search of proof. But proof is measured in dashes, not cups or even tablespoons.

"Get away from there you fool!" I shouted into his ear. "The western White House is no place for a marginalized five o'clock shadow like yours. They put the clamps on people like you, and the next thing you know, you're draining swamps in Brazil for McDonald's."

What Bill, and so many other people in this world have failed to grasp is that the capital of the earth is no longer Washington, D.C. At least, not until January of 2005; but even then, Vegas is taking bets at -850/750 that something so apocalyptic will happen on one of the two seaboards that the President's dusty ranch will be instantly converted into a vast compound with Rummy standing on a turret in amateur wrestling headgear painted camouflage, barking orders at generals on the ground below, muttering things under their breath like, "6 years at Westpoint for this?"

We can beat up the boy President--whose last "press conference," incidentally, proved once and for all that he's dumber than a broken speakerbox, dangling from its cord, at an abandoned drive-in movie theatre--for his adminstration's hubris in recreating an atmosphere not unlike that of good ol' Ike, who moved the capital of the earth to Augusta, Georgia, and the Butler cabin for 8 years. Or we can borrow a page, and attempt a similar maneuver.

Being the self-annointed King of Country Theory in America, I propose we feed Kenny Chesney to the swine and move the capital of Country Music out of Nashville--a city so corrupt that Nero would never fiddle there, regardless of conflagration or tumescence--to somewhere more fitting. But where?

There was a time, Nixon was President I think, when the capital of Country music was a loose radius of about 500 miles in California, stretching between Buck Owens' fabulous estate near Bakersfield, and the Palomino Club in LA. A strange consortium of downhome migrants from Oklahoma and stone broke freaks who told their dads to fuck off and moved to Los Angeles were making vital twang music, and whipping the milk and cookies crowd into a frenzy of homesickness for dandelion wine and driving home under the stars with the headlights off.

After that, Country took up residence in Austin, Texas, when Tompall convinced Waylon, who convinced Willie, that Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill were full of shit. How quickly life's lessons are forgotten. The only constructive thing about the Outlaw movement was that the beards were rebelling against the Vitalis crowd, but they were ALL music men.

Today's problem is that Country music is run by burr-headed pencil-pushing accountants at radio stations like the terrible one here in Minneapolis, and record labels like Sony and Mercury Nashville. Half of these people don't even know who Willie Nelson is, let alone what he might be rebelling against, assimilating, or smoking on the back of the bus. He's a line on a ledger sheet to them.

So, load up the trucks I say. Better yet, fuck the trucks. Just abandon the property. Anyone who hangs around better learn to eat what they can kill, or develop a healthy taste for cat meat, otherwise they're going to starve.

But back to the question. What should the new capital be? If anyone is still reading this blog, you should vote. We'll send the results to all sorts of people who think they matter, and after that, we'll ignore the steaming pile of shit that is being shovelled upon our heads from the 615 area code.

If you're standing in a bar and your friend walks in, orders a drink, winces and displays a pained expression with his first sip, you know there's a problem beyond the normal aversion to alcohol. There's no need to panic, but all the same, you should be prepared to dial 911 when the internal bleeding manifests itself in a fine trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. Too often, we're taught to mind our own goddamned business in this world, and we miss God's little traffic signs that say "Dangerous Curve," "Be Prepared To Stop," and "Slippery When Wet." Your friend's crooked smile, bloodshot eyes, and tattered clothes aren't quaint, they're a sign; and if the bar's regular hooker spends every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night telling him he's handsome and charming, it's neither a compliment, nor the truth.

Denial strikes like lightning around the world, but it's truly an American disease. We call it cute names like perspective and spin, but it's all twisted code for mendacity. Take the anomalous "recording industry":

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Global music sales fell 7.6 percent in 2003 to $32 billion, the steepest decline since the advent of the compact disc, the trade body representing the world's largest music companies said on Wednesday.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) blamed the slump in retail music sales -- now in its fourth consecutive year -- on rampant piracy, poor economic conditions and competition from video games and DVDs.

However, a strong second-half recovery in the United States, Britain and Australia, boosted by top-selling acts such as Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and rapper 50 Cent, has raised hopes that the worst is behind the beleaguered industry.

"I think the long-term secular decline has just about come to a conclusion. Is it over? I don't know the answer to that yet," said IFPI Chairman Jay Berman. He predicted 2004 music sales in unit terms would decline "by about four percent."

Sometime after his 19th birthday, Van Gogh threw all of his fine hair brushes in the trash; the decline in record sales is such an obvious mushroom cloud of shit that it can only be the result of one of two things: A) piracy or B) the music that big record companies are producing sucks so much ass that no one wants to waste 3 days worth of fucking McDonald's money on 12 songs about drinking rum on a beach by likes of the massively talentless Kenny Fucking Chesney, who's the only type of shit-heel getting production and distribution deals these days.

If a pundit has one function in life, it is to brush away the dust, get on his hands and knees, and physically put his ear to the ground listening for buffalo, trains, and the sounds of "progress" coming across the prairie. What seems like a calendar piece in the metro section of the Bemidji Pioneer, might actually be an omen no less important than the undigested carcass of a brook trout in the entrails of one of the King's hinds.

Witness, if you will, the schedule of the Minneapolis Theatre District. On May 5th, three west Texas gentlemen who have devoted their lives to serious musical and personal exploration will perform as The Flatlanders, a group ahead of its time, crushed in the 70's by the fools in Nashville, only to be thankfully resurrected in the NPR 90's to deserved praise and adulation. You can catch this gig for $27, which, in Downtown Dollars is both reasonable and defendable. BUT, you don't have to go far either way on this schedule to understand why the morons who run record companies, concert production companies, and massively bloated radio corporations, are holding their collective breath on the success of pissants like Justin Timberlake. Just repeat these two FACTS to yourself:

You can see "The Doors of the 21st Century" for either $58 or $103 (that's right, a keyboard player who knew chopsticks and a black-eyed guitarist with Ian Astbury from The Cult, for only $103 a head)

You can see "Dennis Deyoung: The Music of Styx with Symphony Orchestra" for either $31.50 or $51.50. That's right, Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto, with fucking oboes...

There are a lot of otherwise sensible music writers, culture writers, and just plain old people who have been giving the recording industry a pass for about 15 years now, but I fucking refuse from now on. If you come up with a cogent argument for why Shania Twain is actually important to country music, you're nothing but a no good fucking rank apologist, and you should be forced to apply chapstick to your butt kissing lips everytime you sit down to write another "feature" on some shit head from the Nashville recording industry who is "different from the rest."

The "country" radio station K102 sucks. It's not country, and the guy who runs it is personally, directly, and primarily responsible for the decline in the quality of twang recordings that get produced, promoted, and played for the general American public. SINCE he never allowed, does not allow, and never will allow his DJ's to play Johnny Cash regularly; AND SINCE Johnny Cash is almost certainly in Heaven; it's easy for all of us to do the math on this man's ultimate fate.

The major record lables, Sony, BMG, EMI, Columbia, Mercury, etc., suck. You've colluded with radio to break things down into so many cute and stifled demographics that you forgot that music is a mostly spontaneous art, designed to stir reactions in the loins and cockles of the American soul. Fuck your videos, set designs, and production values. Give me Stevie Ray Vaughn with a little cocaine dissolved in a shot of whiskey, transposing solos that Justin Timberlake could never understand (no matter how many times he makes Cameron Diaz bark like a dog) on only five strings at 2am in some El Paso shit hole.

As Clemenza told Michael in the basement, "they should have stopped Hitler at Munich." Just because a bunch of people move in one direction, doesn't make it right.

Why Don't You Own These Records Yet Top 5

1. Joe West, "South Dakota Hairdo"
2. Old Crow Medicine Show, "O.C.M.S."
3. Eric Athey, "Open House"
4. Allison Moorer, "The Duel"
5. BR5-49, "Tangled in the Pines"

Chesney feels as if he has turned a corner.

"Before I was just in a big bowl of guys," he said. "You've got to find your avenue, your way out to separate you. I think for the first time in my career, I was able to pull myself out of that ditch and be known as more than just a country hat act who was singing the same old songs everybody else was singing."

No Kenny, you ARE just another country hat act who's singing the same old songs everybody else is singing.