A Favorite Local Band
I spent my first year living in Minnesota doing tourist-type activities, experiencing the new community as an outsider. As I neared the end of those first twelve months, I began to seek out activities and events to connect with the community and become an insider.
One of the first moves I made in my effort to assimilate was to begin volunteering for The Current/Minnesota Public Radio. I signed up to be a volunteer, attended a volunteer orientation session in late-fall of 2013 and began scouring the shift board for volunteer shifts. My first volunteer shift with The Current was an interactive shift near the end of February, 2014. I worked a merchandise table handing out free schwag, for the Southern Theater Sessions: Act I (night two) at the Southern Theater. The shift provided an opportunity to visit the Seven Corners district for the first time, and to see several bands I was not familiar with at the time (batteryboy, The Farewell Circuit, Nick Costa and The Ericksons). The volunteer shift met my criteria for volunteering in the first place--experiencing new places and sounds.
I arrived at the Southern Theater an hour before the show began, set up a display table for The Current, met Coby Rouse (batteryboy founder/singer, and organizer of the event) and waited for the show to begin. During performances, the lobby was empty and I was able to sneak into the theater and watch a portion of the opening sets. My shift was scheduled to end at the same time the headliners--The Ericksons--took the stage. When the time arrived, I tore down the merchandise table, accepted the free beer offer my flirting with the bartender had produced and climbed the stairs to the second floor foyer. I opened the door leading into the theater and walked into the auditorium, looking down on the stage to see The Ericksons playing for the first time.
Their sound, beautiful guitar and vocal harmonies, immediately took me to a place I often seek to be. I compare this place to the feeling of runner’s high, where I feel euphoric, my anxieties melt away and I find a sense of serenity. After all of the struggles of 2013--the homesickness, loneliness, loss of a job, loss at love--discovering a band able to take me to this place of refuge was fortuitous. As I have learned more about the band, I have learned a lot of their music seems to have been written in an effort to reach a similar place.
I made two more important decisions in early-2014. I quit smoking and I started taking Improv classes. Removing a steady source of calm from my life while adding the anxiety-inducing activity of standing in front of an audience performing improv was intense. However, I started listening to The Ericksons’ album, The Wild, before classes and found a sense of calm. (In my brief tenure as an Improv performer--seven shows--I would listen to the first three tracks of The Wild and then My Morning Jacket’s One Big Holiday to put myself in a perfect mindset before taking the stage.)
The Ericksons took a break from performing live in 2015 and I filled my time pursuing the long-shot goal of attending 125 shows in 2015 (I failed). I did not give The Ericksons much thought until it was announced they would be opening for Mason Jennings at First Avenue on my birthday, in early December. (First Avenue lets you in for free on your birthday and many of us First Avenue fans check the calendar frequently in the months leading up to our birthday to determine which bands we will be seeing for free.) I was ecstatic upon discovering The Ericksons would be playing at First Avenue on my birthday.
Opening bands at First Avenue can sound different if you have heard them at other venues (particularly as a headliner), and The Ericksons sounded different to me in their opening slot last December. I was with a friend and we were having a good time at the show, so I did not think much of the difference in sound at the time. A few weeks later, I saw The Ericksons perform for the Loud at the Library series at Saint Paul’s Central Library. I attended the show alone and had time to contemplate the difference I thought I heard in The Ericksons’ live performance.
The sisters sound more liberated. They still play a tight set, but a new sense of freedom has crept into their performance. It feels different.
Then again, perhaps I am projecting. I have found myself in a more liberated place since last summer, enjoying a new sense of freedom in my experiences and interactions. My soul exhaled as the summer of 2015 came to an end.
Maybe it is a little bit of both. Bands and their fans can evolve together and, two years after discovering the Ericksons, I find I have evolved a great degree. Still, when I listen to The Ericksons I find myself going to that place--the place of serenity I treasure.
I wrote this piece three weeks ago, in mid-February, and then two life-pausing events occurred the first week of March. Last Friday night I went to First Avenue to see a few bands play for the Are You Local? 2016 event. The Ericksons were playing the same night, at the Aster Cafe and as I watched the first two bands perform on First Avenue’s main stage I felt a pull northward. I ended up responding to the pull, biking across the river and arriving at Aster Cafe a few minutes into The Ericksons’ set. A few minutes after arriving they played my favorite song, Gone Blind, and I started going to my place. The next song was my second-favorite, Simple As This. The opening lines, I’ve been dreamin of you/deep in the dead of night/I’ve been following through/on all kinds of things that just ain’t right, spoke to me in the moment and I spent the rest of the song fighting tears and finding needed serenity. By the end of the set, I found I was where I was supposed to be.