Duluth Homegrown Music Festival 2015: Saying “No” isn’t Happening
With work, death, and marriage.
The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival grows every year. For the previous year’s festival, I worked with 19 artists and documented phenomenal groups, such as The Social Disaster, Wolf Blood, and American Rebels. Although Duluth has a diverse music scene, causal spectators stereotype it as merely singer/songwriters, strumming along to folk standards. Even MPR is slightly guilty of this.
The new gold standard emerged: showcase not only the folk side of Duluth, but also the other genres that are not being recognized. On the surface, maintaining this standard appeared easy. On the inside, I had to drive over 900 miles round trip, interview 10 groups, and go to a funeral – all within 4 days. Nothing is as easy as it appears.
Laura Sneller was the first person I interviewed and the first artist profiled. Under the alias Superior Siren, her moody almost bluesy-macabre style of folk develops an image in my mind of a young woman, sad and sullen. She, almost like the town she lives in, is a contradiction of this image: a young, polite person whose charm carries over the conversation.
Feeding Leroy was born in the wrong generation. From long hair to lush vocal harmonies, the group’s sound reminds listeners of summer road trips through the Mojave Desert. Like many Duluth groups, the members are open about their experiences on the road, their music, and their thoughts about the future. When bassist Adam Staupe says, “We’re going to see the world doing this,” the group’s plan is well under way.
“We all kind of push each other to do something out of our comfort zones,” said Rachel Phenoix, a singer and lyricist for Black Diary. Consisting of three lead female singers and a male guitarist, the group pushes itself as it pushes the audience. A minimalist angle forces the band to approach each song with care and an understanding for fundamentals. I coined the tag “grrl soul” for this reason: it’s in your face as it reaches into your soul.
The Clover St. Cronies are stuck between the Chumbawamba and Woody Guthrie. 
Singer Kyle Ollah has this Grapes of Wrath quality about himself which is odd since he showed me his collection of Page 99 seven inches. His grounding in punk has been the driving force and attraction to American roots music: a person going against the grain in order to speak up in front of the masses.
Ire Wolves is an antithesis of the Duluth stereotype. The group’s oceanic guitar, fluid 
bass, and pumping rhythms isn’t your folk-friendly neighbor that you introduce to your cool parents. Ire Wolves’ debut album The Ascetic centers around an ascetic monk who journeys through a wilderness while rejecting the influences of society. Coming from a land of banjos and sing-along choruses, the band’s intellectual and sonic attack compares to Isis and other seminal post-metal bands. Even after several listens, people still find new voices in Ire Wolves’ work.
That party you missed in college that everyone talks about, that had the girl who 
turned you down, and that amazing band you ever saw – this sums up The Farsights. Lead singer and lyricist Phil Jents was a self-described recovering “guy with an acoustic guitar.” When he teamed up with Ryan Nelson (drums) and Brynn Sias (bass), he dropped that angle and turned up the volume. During the interview, Ryan and Brynn joked as if they saved him from a future of empty coffee houses and lonely nights with his cat. Phil laughed and thanked them for their hard work.
For the land that “came wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Jamaican ska rhythms 
shouldn’t happen. But, Jason Wussow (guitar) and Veikko Lepisto (bass) aren’t your average Duluthians. While Wussow ran Beaners Central Coffee House, Lepisto ran with the Royal Crown Revue and appeared on albums with Bruce Springsteen and Bette Middler. During Lepisto’s family visits to Duluth, he and Wussow would discuss their mutual admiration for The Specials, The English Beat, and other seminal 2 Tone and ska groups. When Lepisto returned to Duluth, Wood Blind took wings and set its course for distant lands and peaceful grooves. Lepisto was kind enough to tell he how he got his bass sound on Mike Ness’s Cheating at Solitaire: a compressor. Obvious.
Gin Street‘s fabled sense of male camaraderie bleaches through the group’s music. 
From the moment I met the band to long after we spoke, Gin Street bound itself to the unity of DIY punk, playing in basements, and giving away their music for free Like some midwest punk bands, band members wear their hearts on their sleeves, without an annoying, nihilistic tendency found in other groups.
Adam Sippola is a theatre nerd and proud of it. His debut Rising Point is a concept 
album about the influence of the military industrial complex on society with acid splashes of Peter Gabriel’s Passion thrown throughout. With a highly ambitious debut, one could assume that Adam could be, in a limited sense, patronizing the audience with his ambition. But far from it; he made me coffee, and if I would have asked him, he probably would have given me voice lessons and a set of vocal drills.
Leaving the the small town for the big city actually happens. Christine Hoberg‘s story 
isn’t about merely moving out of her parents’ house; it’s about literally moving from the emptiness of Northern Wisconsin to the congested corners of New York City. Her latest album World Within blends the oceanic of the North Woods with the modern techniques of NYC. Throughout the album, the struggle between floating or falling invites listeners in and they can’t wait to stay.
