Friday nights always start out innocently enough. You say to yourself, "I've had a long, productive week at work. I need to relax."

For me, relaxation takes many forms, not the least of which is finding the plugged in poets of our fair town. To quote one such poet:

Last I heard was that he was just keeping on. Sounds like Jack. Every once in a while I do see signs that "ol' Jack was here." I see them in the eyes of the elite, the simple; in women like pistols, and men with stories they measure in miles. If you haven't seen an evening filled with lonely believers, not meaning believers in the one, but believers all the same, stop reading my thoughts. You don't deserve them. This is for all thick headed fools who have been brought to their knees by hell, and though they now stand, weariness nonetheless is upon them. Yet the effect of Jack's presence has strengthened them, and this is where the signs become clear. These people know in the end, they won't be hurt again. They won't let it be.

What?

When I talk, that's what I'm talking about. I've driven through Chisago County at dawn with a 50 year old 12 gauge shotgun in the passenger seat of my truck. True, the murder in my heart was being built up for the avian members of the food chain, but it was murder all the same.

If you're down at the Nomad tonight, you'll hate yourself for liking The Goddamned Gleam. But, it will come over you like a flash what thoroughly misguided hillbillies these men are. You'll realize that North Korea having the bomb is nowhere near as scarey as places like North Branch, Ramsey and Stacy getting it. Who the fuck let these people drive south? There will be some band called The Rockford Mules there with them. Who cares? Travis Moon is selling you the idea that country boys like to put gel in their hair and wear untucked silk shirts with the sleeves unbuttoned and sing about puppy dogs. If you listen to Rascall Flatts on purpose, you're a pussy. I read some article in the Strib about how Gary Louris got backstage at the State Fair to talk to their "guitarist," because he was going to write some songs with him, and I gave up hope. I guess Gary's gotta eat, but I'll miss him now that his soul is burning in Hell.

A lot of people misunderstood the Top 100 I posted back a few months ago. They took umbridge with some of the selections, especially ones like "Sober," by Tool. If you know anything, you know that Ry Cooder helped the Stones understand and learn to use honky-tonk guitar, especially little tricks like tuning the Low E string down to a D and lettin' her rip. This launched them into Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. If you strip this song down, you'll find two things: 1) a desperate song about a drunk, and 2) that tuning style.

What separates me from Travis Moon is that I see Country Music as an organic product of its regional surroundings, thoroughly squeezed from an American tradition of presenting the conflict when Urban innovation and artifice meet Rural simplicity and honesty; Travis sees it as something to get women between the ages of 25 and 45 with household purchasing power to listen to commercials. As such, my view allows me to recognize Chris Cornell as one of Americas best living Country songwriters. If you don't think "Burden in My Hand" and "Original Fire" are country songs, you're probably 5 feet tall, sitting on a boat in the Caribbean somewhere, scratching your bald head, trying to figure out how you can make senorita rhyme with Margarita for the tenth time. Shooting your love and leaving her lying beneath the sand while you drown in alcohol, all to the driving strum of a dobro? Are you kidding me? Whenever I meet someone new and explain this little side gig of mine, I'm invariably asked what all this means. Well this is it campers: if you're honest with yourself, the American songwriter most in tune with the grass roots of who somebody like Johnny Cash was, and where he was going, is Chris Cornell.

My wife is going to choke me to death one day because I'm not a very organized person; but, I was sifting through some old sound clips of my radio show the other day, looking for something else, and I came across a recording of a day when Darin Wald and Brian O'Neill of Big Ditch Road were on the gig and talking about one of their disks. Darin's not going to cake on some makeup and hit the floor boards of the Met and sing an aria for anybody, but he does have a talent for writing songs. Back then, I would get roughly 20 disks a week, so I wasn't always the best detailed listener; I'd try to listen to something 3 or 4 times before giving it airtime, but I always proceeded thinking I knew what the song was about in my own warped melon. In this particular soundclip, Darin explained to me that he was writing the song from the viewpoint of a Country girl that had gone to the city, and then comeback home to some despair and disappointment. It's a song called "City Girls," and it's a pretty fantastic little bit of work. If Travis ever listened to anything that didn't come from some promoter in Nashville, he'd know that it contains most of the stuff that fits it into his boss's famous P1 Demographic, but he won't. Having grown up around Wilmar (I think) somewhere, Darin's broken voice lends a kind of raspy tenderness to the thought of a woman butting up against the little farmgirl image they had of her when she left. This shit sells itself.

Anywho, the kids in Big Ditch Road will be doing an EP Release over at the Hexagon Bar tonight if you're into that sort of thing. Just remember to dress appropriately.

NEW YORK (AP) - Yoko Ono sued music company EMI Group PLC and a subsidiary for $10 million Wednesday, claiming she was cheated out of royalties due from the sale of music recordings by her late husband, John Lennon.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, accuses EMI and Capitol Records Inc. of violating a half-dozen agreements by "willfully and knowingly underreporting royalties" by hiding the "true use and disposition of Lennon's recordings."

Ono's lawyer, John LiCalsi, refused to comment on the lawsuit, which asks for at least $10 million plus interest.

Years of artistic, and specifically musical, evolution have led us to this: lawyers representing widows in battles over royalties. Ten million dollars compounded annually at 5% for 26 years (just for the sake of argument) actually equals $35,556,726.88

Well th' next thing ya know
Ol' Yoko's a millionaire
Kinfolks said, "Yoko, get some purple hair,
"Buy yerself a Porsche
"And a Maserati
"Then strike a coupla poses
"For the papparazzi"

Royalties, that is
Free money
Did nothin'

I subscribe heavily to the Denis Leary theory of kharmic injustice...John Lennon, 5 bullets to his chest, Yoko Ono, not a scratch on her.

Sean's (fill in the blank) habit must be out of control. Somebody ought to ask Julian if he's a party to the suit, because, on every other planet not inhabited by Yoko Ono, it's his money too, isn't it?

The older I get, the more I'm convinced my old college buddy Doug Dorst was right, back circa 1989, 1990:

Me: What do you think Hendrix would be doing if he were alive today?
Doug: Keyboards

Finally, cogent words on digesting local music; even if they are the mad ravings of a confirmed lunatic. If you're going to pursue music as a profession or hobby, it's important to maintain perspective. The Business of Music is never just numbers, and the Music Business is never just art. Just ask Mick Anselmo.

Jon Bream wrote some article a year or two ago when the CMA's were in New York or going to New York, complete with his sister's pom pom's and the cookies his mom made for the whole squad. In it, he went into great detail about how all the "Country" stars just loved Anselmo for his good nature and natural twang genius, focusing specifically on a scene where Sara Evans ran up to Mick and told him she loved him. I wonder out loud right now whether Mick knew at the time that all of Sara's crash diets and rhinoplasty had her nefarious husband's extreme appetites behind them? I remember calling it during a CMA Awards rant blog...Sara was much hotter, her music so much more interesting when she had her Dirty Dancing nose (nobody backs Baby into a corner).

A point buried deep in Zellar's screed is the drooling sugary coma power of music. When you're at that Vortex of freedom, tied to the scene, that he describes, it produces a real high. You don't even have to be looking for it. For a moment, music makes you feel better, music helps you make your day make sense...not in some creepy stalker way...it just mellows you out against the storms of life, and pulls up your boots amidst the floods of despair.

That high, like all highs, is ruined by bureaucracy and economics. Mick Anselmo hugged Sara Evans back when she ran up to him, but throughout the hug, he thought to himself how much easier it would be to sell her to his audience if she'd cut 10 pounds and do something with her nose. It's not his fault, he's a survivor.

During the summer between my freshman and soph years in college, my friend Waldo and I pushed forward to the stage in Arrowhead Stadium on a scorching July afternoon and got up close and personal with the Monsters of Rock Tour...the original one. Being a natural hillbilly, given to moments of pantsless firearm play, I enjoy a few days and/or hours of headbanging thoughtlessness. Never moreso than in my morning commute where I tune in to 93X for whatever reason. About every fourth day, for some reason, the DOUCHEBAG music director of this station forces his morning show to play the Disturbed cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion," or whatever the fuck that song with the puppets in the video was called. Let me explain music to you. Anyone who spent a significant amount of adolescent/adult time in the 80's and remembers it would KILL Phil Collins if they saw him walking down the street right now. The members of Disturbed are the single biggest collection of no-talent, mindless, scaredy-cat, pussy, dickwads for covering this song. What? "Red Skies At Night" or "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" were too risky? If the song was so poignant when it was originally released, why did they creep everybody out with the fucking puppets and turn it into a sideshow? The answer? Mick Anselmo. Or somebody like him. Some jagoff who ran a radio station or a tv station or a magazine or a record company (there's really no difference whatsoever) told them...over about 3 lines of cocaine..."don't worry, it'll be great, the kids'll dig it."

I challenge 93X to not only stop playing this song, but to also ceremoniously throw it in the fucking garbage can. Next thing you know, Audioslave will cover "Sussudio."

Dierks Bentley is pulling into town. He'd be great if it weren't for his hair. I guarantee you that in the last two years, Dierks has wanted to cut his hair differently, but some jagoff named Jules who is part of his management team from the major label won't let him. Dierks Bentley is going to be 60, playing Branson, wistfully signing old posters with his fancy DB symbol thing, and he'll still have a weird curly gray wig thing that the shit heels in Nashville make him wear, a la Whispering Bill Anderson. It will look like a dead raccoon on his head that's been doused in Jheri Curl activator, but he'll wear it, there's too much money involved. Why? Mick Anselmo.

I challenge K102 to start playing "A Little Rain" by Bellwether off of their Stinging Nettles album which they'll be pimping down at the 400 Bar later this month. It's a song written and sung by a stay at home Dad about how cozy his homelife is with the woman he loves and it's LOCAL. It's filled with some of the most beautiful pedal steel fills Jim Johnson has ever played, and the lightest, airiest mandolin part anybody's ever heard. It not only fits the P1 Demographic that Gregg Swedberg guards like the M&M jar in his office, it fills it with the metaphorical equivalent of Ron Jeremy's throbbing twang unit. I challenge K102 to play it at 2pm, daily, for two weeks.

The reason they won't do it? Mick Anselmo.

Someday, all the suits will die and PepperLand will be free again, but until then, all we can do is shoot with our pants around our ankles.

City fishin'.

What I've done in this space in the past few years is roughly the equivalent of catching a 32 inch Northern Pike within 300 yards of major urban interstate. As we loaded the boat back on the trailer at the Long Lake launch at 4pm, we could hear the afternoon 694 rush howling over the "soundproof" wall. A mechanic, recently released from his employer's grasp, stood on the fishing pier, reeling slowly with his greasy paws, not really angling as much as decompressing.

More often than not, if you're going to fish, you want to go somewhere rural and wild, and fish big water, maybe at midnight, exposing a middle finger to the Sun God, and yanking Moby Dick himself from the dark water as a testament to your superiority on the world's food chain:

But that's banjo picking in a relative sense, with a full jug at the foot of your rocking chair and "a loaded burglar alarm" leaned up against the load-bearing pillar of your front porch.

If your cursed with a city job, you gotta find twang where it hides, growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, in defiance of mainstream pop herbicide.

I like Martin Devaney's music because I know all of the honesty and earnestness behind it. He's a man so driven to make music that if he saw a roach banging on a pop can with a matchstick, howling at a half eaten crust of garlic bread, he'd set up an eight track board and tell the roach one more time, with a little more feeling. Someday, all the suits will die and Pepperland will be free again,* but until that day comes, there are outfits like Eclectone Records, where folks who want to make music out of self defense can do so. I'm through "arguing" about the future of Americana, Alt-Twang-Pop, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. The thing is, people get out of bed every morning in every city in this country and put pick to acoustic guitar, pedal to steel, and foot to ass, and it comes out slightly hillbilly lost in the red brick jungle, moaning about unique shit that doesn't always involve senoritas, margaritas and fucking angels.

Two (2) songs on Letters Never Sent do wonders for my little hipster doofus heart: "An Open Letter (song 2)" and "Drought (song 3)."

I got blood in my eyes
and there's chaos on the wall
and the spider now has 9 legs
when I see him crawl
and the little sun is settin'
on the streets of old St. Paul
and I don't know how I fell this far

Queue the fucking saxophones. Sean Hoffman's driving beat is the "Folsom Prison" train, moved to town, screeching to a halt every 3 minutes to pick up 15 more zombies on their way to the next shit hole in their lives. This is songwriting boys and girls, and it's what separates Minneapolis from Omaha, Nebraska, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Megargle, Texas.

well she was a cast iron beauty too
so sturdy and true
and she had come along always
spun a dime store fable
a touch beneath the table
burned out and becoming amazed

and when the kiss was over
the more i missed her shoulder
the more the flame fled from red to blue
and when the drought came down
i guess i always knew

Queue the foot tapping. This is city fishing. This is jerking a wild animal out of the asphalt and taking a photo to juxtapose the feral and the urban. You gotta dig it when somebody knows how to put pen to paper, wheat to sidewalk, BobCat to metaphorical dirt pile of self pity.

My pet song on the record is "Blessing and the Blame (song 8)," but only because I'm a sucker for ghostly steel guitar and growling about chicks.

*--quoting Jimmy Thudpucker from a Doonesbury strip

(Author's note: all fish in this story were photographed and returned to the water to eat smaller fish and fuck and make more fish)