MYSPACE  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  TWITTER

FACEBOOK

Over the last 20 years I've done just about everything you can possibly do to avoid having a successful career in music including: backing out of shows at the last possible second, bringing tons and tons of gear to extremely small clubs, signing deals with people who are insane, not reading the fine print, talking about how drunk i am on stage, dating people i was in a band with, waiting 10 years between releases, kicking people out of bands only to invite them back in and have to kick them out a second time. you know... that kind of stuff.

SUSSTONES  ::  TWITTER  ::  BLOG  ::  FACEBOOK

She’ll put a spell on you. Sweet as molasses and woodsmoke, clear and burning as summer sun, Chastity Brown casts magic. Her voice brings you to the crossroads with every turn, warms, comforts and challenges you. She is the inheritor of Leadbelly, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt and Roberta Flack. She is past, present and future. She is fire, earth, air and water. She’s a natural. Throw all the genres and hyphenates together you want to describe her – gospel, roots & soul, jazz, blues & country – they are all right, and also not enough. Chastity channels songs that are borne deep in the American bone, the hunger, desperation and confidence that runs through our times. Coming from Tennessee to Minnesota, touring the country, she has had half her own lifetime and million lifetimes gone before to concoct her powerful sound. Ignite it all with love, and the rest is rapture.

OFFICIAL  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  TWITTER  ::  MYSPACE  ::  BANDCAMP

With her fourth full-length record, Back-Road Highways, Chastity pushes her own natural talent even farther, to stunning effect. Back-Road Highways was recorded at the venerable Helsinki South studios in Nashville, Tennessee with the support of her new label C & D Music Network, giving Chastity a return to Southern warmth and a roster of heavyweight studio musicians with credits such as Mavis Staples, Garth Brooks and BeBe & CeCe Winans to lay down tracks. Also on Back-Road Highways is guitarist Robert Mulrennan of No Bird Sing, who plays with Chastity in her live band. Chastity pulls from a diverse cross-section of talent for her live shows, playing with percussionist Michael X, keyboardist deVon Gray (Heiruspecs) and bass player Jef Sundquist (Hildur Victoria), resulting in restless, electrifying and completely enveloping performances that never want to stop and linger long after the last note has quieted.

Back-Road Highways is the best yet from Chastity. She opens with the slow, pulsing insistence of “House Been Burnin”, a cry out for our needs, then follows it up with the rocking blues of “When We Get There” and the plaintive, moving roots of “Solely”. Chastity turns it all around and brings out the joys and sorrows of love with the enormous, pleading, “Say It”, and throughout Back-Road Highways, Chastity sings it all out, gives us all a reason to keep on going one more day. A talent like this doesn’t appear overnight. It takes travel, it takes guts. It takes chance, work and luck. It takes love. Get ready to love Chastity Brown.

Venus DeMars and All The Pretty Horses  ::  Dark-Glam Band  ::  Minneapolis, MN

OFFICIAL SITE  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  MYSPACE

Dan Israel’s not your average rock star. Or maybe he’s a little too average. Or maybe he’s not really a rock star at all. A lot of people just know him as that kid from St. Louis Park, Minnesota, who grew up to be a husband, parent of two, and state worker. He rarely goes out, doesn’t keep up on the latest trends, barely knows how to burn a CD on a computer, and is hardly on the cutting edge of anything. And yet, the dude can flat-out write a song. They certainly thought so in Austin, Texas, where he was named one of that music mecca’s Top 15 songwriters (along with heavyweights like Alejandro Escovedo) in 1995 during Israel’s brief tenure there. They certainly think so in his home state of Minnesota, where he was named Songwriter of the Year in the 2006 Minnesota Music Awards.

OFFICIAL  ::  MYSPACE  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  TWITTER  ::  BANDCAMP

Backed by his new band the Cultivators, Israel released a string of critically-acclaimed albums in the late ‘90s and ‘00’s, with 2000’s painfully-honest solo acoustic outing Dan Who? stirring up serious buzz after St. Paul Pioneer Press music critic Jim Walsh raved “Somebody buy a billboard, hire a blimp and give this guy his due already. His name is Dan Israel, one of the mad ones, one of the strugglers, and he just made the record of his life.”Drawing comparisons to Freedy Johnston, Tom Petty, Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, and Wilco, the songs and discs kept coming, and so did the praise, if not the sales. Lauded by national publications like No Depression, Paste, and Performing Songwriter, and even receiving a 4-star review in the UK’s Uncut, Israel continued to cement his reputation, as he garnered opening spots for the likes of Morrissey, the Tragically Hip, Loudon Wainwright III, Iris Dement, Todd Snider, Marshall Crenshaw, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and yes, Foghat, Rick Springfield, and Blue Oyster Cult (true!).

He has fans all over the world, gets airplay in 32 sovereign countries recognized by the United Nations, has toured the UK and all over the U.S. of A., has showcased numerous times at SXSW and other industry conferences, has members of the Jayhawks, Son Volt, the Honeydogs, and many other notable bands play on his albums, and yet Dan Israel is just, well, an ordinary guy. Sort of. But now this “ordinary guy” returns with his 11th album, Crosstown Traveler, which demonstrates once again why Dan Israel is anything but ordinary. The songs virtually bleed over with pain, joy, frustration, wonder, and heartache, all backed by shimmering roots-pop production and set to indelible melodies that set up shop in your subconscious and resist attempts at eviction. Featuring ten songs that range from joyous odes to his young daughter (“I’d Never Make it Through” and “Second to None”) to staring-through-the-looking-glass takes on depression and mortality (“Up to You” and “No Closer to Home”), “Crosstown Traveler” is alternately downbeat and uplifting, soaring and crashing, and finding Dan Israel to be, at the ripe old age of 40, just now finding his stride.

I grew up (but didn't grow up) in Madison, Wisconsin. I was a high school cheerleader and choir jock but went off the party deep-end at the University of Wisconsin (as one is wont to do in Madison). Moving to Minneapolis in the mid-'80's, my girlfriends and I formed the band Zuzu's Petals. We sucked for three years or so (depending on who you ask), and got our act together around 1991 (vans, tours, recording contracts). I hooked up with musician Paul Westerberg and got the nesting urge in a major way. After the band, I went from songwriting to prose writing. A house, parenthood, and an MFA in Creative Writing followed. When not parenting or writing, I teach Memoir in local schools as a resident writer through a non-profit arts organization.

OFFICIAL SITE  ::  MYSPACE  ::  FACEBOOK

IDLE HANDS  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  TWITTER

FIRST COMMUNION AFTERPARTY  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  MYSPACE

FACEBOOK  ::  GOONDAS

Has performed on stages around the country... from the Guthrie Theater - to Carnegie Hall - to a U.S.O. tour entertaining the troops stationed in Panama and the Caribbean. In 1991 Leslie returned to Minneapolis and launched BALLS Cabaret, an experimental stage for performers of any discipline or level of experience. It's the longest running weekly midnight cabaret in history – and was featured in the New York Times as a "must-see" in the Twin Cities.

FACEBOOK  ::  BALLS CABARET

Leslie also facilitates a Sunday evening worship service at Hennepin Church, and leads Sunday morning worship at the Minnesota State Fair – Prayer at the Fair complete with trademark bulletin-on-a-stick. She composed the score for her partner Ochen Kaylan's State Fair art film Midwest Brigadoon. In addition to her work as a musician, Leslie also works as an actress, director, educator, and served as the Poet Laureate for the Chautauqua Festival. Her poetry from the fair was a featured summer series on MPR's All Things Considered. Leslie was honored with the Hawkinson Peace and Justice Award for her work as an artist and activist. She is also the recipient of a number of MN Music Academy awards, including best female songwriter. She earned her MFA at New York University, and her Master of Divinity Degree at United Theological Seminary.

ARTIST DIRECT  ::  BUTANES

Former Radio K, REV 105, NPR alum and present host on 89.3 the Current, Jake's been voted "best DJ" in the Twin Cities by the readers & critics of City Pages magazine ten years running (2003-2012) and one of Star Tribune's "Artists of the Year" (2012).  His long-running "Transmission" dance night has been a weekly staple on the Minneapolis scene bringing a mixture of mod, glam & punk to post-punk, new wave, synth & indie rock for over a decade.

WEBSITE  ::  FACEBOOK  ::  TWITTER  ::  CURRENT

"Where Jake Rudh goes, dance floors follow. The DJ brought his retro sounds (and love of TV's Mad Men) to parties everywhere -- museums, libraries, restaurants, neighborhood bars, rock clubs. He started the year off with a bang, celebrating 10 years of Transmission, his weekly New Wave dance night at tiny Clubhouse Jäger, by bringing it to First Avenue, where he blew the roof off that storied club. Gigs just blossomed from there, turning Rudh into a true tastemaker. Not surprisingly, the Current offered him a weekly radio slot. Now even more people can groove to his love of Britpop, post-punk and the ilk." [Tom Horgen, Star Tribune, 2011]