Set List

I sold all my big amplifiers a long time ago. I really am not that big a fan of loud these days. I loved the power of loud when I was young and the way I could feel a chord with my whole body when my pick hit the strings of my guitar with a force that would break more than my fair share of strings. I thought, and I still believe, that that force is the defining power behind rock-n-roll, or if not rock-n-roll, punk rock.

But, these days, I like melodies and rhythms and structures of songs. I play an acoustic guitar, mostly and I can hear my voice clearly when I sing. I don’t play out, but think I might some day again. For now, I strum my guitar alone in the house with my family and occasionally for a select group of close friends (cronies).

If you happened to stop by, this is what you might hear. I don't play with a pick but with my fingers, my thumb plucking out a strong steady bass line. My fingers brush against the strings with the back of my fingernails on the down-stroke to drive the songs rhythm and pluck the song’s melody with my nails on the upstroke. The sound is full with the melody weaving in and out of the bass line with a steady constant rhythm going on. I do all of this without thinking after years of playing and listening. Without band members, I have learned to create as much of the full band sound as I can all by myself.

I will start with a random song that falls from my head to my fingers. If I can’t find a song, I might reach back for an old one-even all the way back to an old Floored song. Its funny how much melody those songs actually had, underneath all that noise. I can’t even guess at the number of times I have heard my wife say “that’s really pretty, whose song is that?” after I have played an old Floored, Hammerhead, Diddy-wah-Diddy, Loaded or even a Mess song on my acoustic guitar.

Eventually I will pull out a folder of songs I have with lyrics written down to play and sing with. I might start with Taj Mahal’s “Johnny too Bad” to see my sons face light up so he can sing along to “You gonna run to the rock for rescue and there will be no RoocccKKKKK.” Dragging the Rock out like he is an opera singer.

After that song, I might choose John Prines “The other side of Town,” just to see my wife’s look of disapproval. The first time I played it for her I said to her, “Every time I hear this song I think of you.” And she sat down to listen in anticipation until she began to understand the meaning of the song around the second verse with “You might think I’m listening to your grocery list, but I’m leaning on a juke box half…”

Perhaps, then you might hear me do Tom Wait’s “The House where nobody lives,” followed by Greg Brown’s “Like a Dog,” that always gets a hoot from my son at the end when I howl like a dog at the moon. I will work in Michael Frante’s “Nobody right, Nobody Wrong” or “Bomb the World” just to provide a little inspiration before breaking into Charlie Parr’s “Cheap Wine,” that I just can’t help singing with much more bitterness from the liquor store owner perspective than Charlie’s sweet singing of old ladies and bums.

You would surely hear me sing “The man in the bed” by Dave Alvin at some point, but might not notice that I have changed a verse to reflect the man in the bed as my father or noticed the tears behind my eye and the lump in my voice. I will quickly switch to “Home Grown Tomatoes,” by Guy Clarke to liven up the mood again and then do “Rex’s blues” by Townes Van Zandt just for the pretty melody despite the sadness in the song.

I will do “Cold War” by Fred Eaglesmith, because I remember the cold war, my daddy fixing small machines and him listening to Johnny Cash on the radio. There will probably be some other songs mixed in, but I will end with the last song I wrote. I used to hate doing other peoples songs. If you remember one of my old bands, you know we mostly did our own songs. Except, it seems, everyone remembers that Floored did a mean ass cover of “Age of Aquarius,” and if I am in the right mood and I am passed my fourth Summit beer, you might still hear me do “Age of Aquarius” all the way through to “Let the Sunshine in.”

The last song I will do is Wishbone, which I wrote a couple years ago for my son. My son will sing along with this song too. I wrote it after I introduced him to his first wishbone and asked him to take a pull. He was about 4 years old at the time. Its got one Chord (E Major) and a steady Blues beat and melody weaving in and out of that one chord. Here's the lyrics.

Wishbone

We plucked the chicken
Skinned it too
Put it in a pot
Then we made some soup

(Lookie here) Now I got a wishbone
Tell you what we’re gonna do
I’ll make a wish
You make one too

Chorus (Wishbone, wishbone, wishbone,
Wishbone, wishbone wishbone [repeat])

I’ll take one end
You take the other
We’ll both pull it tell it gives
And then we’ll see which end is longer

Don’t you worry
Don’t you fret
You still got a chance
Though I ain’t lost one yet

Chorus

Don’t you cry
Dry your eyes
Don’t you know
That the wishbone never lies

Hold your head up
I rigged this one for you
My only wish
Is all your wishes will come true

Chorus

Been 4 years now since I wrote my last song. Still waiting for the next one to come along.

The Greatest Rock - n - Roll Band Never Heard

I don’t play in a band anymore. I have an acoustic guitar stored in the basement of my suburban house, but it rarely comes out of its case. I work for the State of Minnesota regulating utilities. This position makes use of a Masters in Economic that I received after giving up completely on a dream to be a professional musician.

In the spring of 1994, I was working in St. Paul, MN as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service. I was wearing my headphones, listening to the radio for updates on Kurt Cobain who had gone missing for almost a week. I was not surprised when word came in that his body had been found with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Kurt Cobain had taken the deal I turned down earlier from the same mysterious dark man with steely dark eyes many would refer to as the devil. Cobain met him on a crossroad in rural Washington or, perhaps, an alley in the Seattle urban area. I met him at a crossroads on the outskirts of Fargo in the summer of 1988. Three years later I walked away from the same dark man as he cursed my name from the same crossroads outside Fargo.

As I listened to the reports of Cobain’s death coming in, I realized that the world would have surely be hearing of my similar tragic demise had it been I, instead of Kurt, who took the deal for rock-n-roll stardom. As it was, I was suffering through my own curses when the news of his death reached me. However, since I eventually walked away from the devil, my demons were much milder than Cobain’s. I turned down his offer, but it was not without consequences and it took many more years of battle of suffering the Devil’s curses that haunt me to this day.

It was August in1990 when I was making my second trip to the crossroads to seal the deal I had made a couple of years earlier with this mysterious dark man. I was walking along a gravel road with my guitar case concealing a Gibson Sonix 180 guitar and following in the footsteps of the great blues guitar playing legend Robert Johnson. It was a road outside of Fargo, North Dakota, and a long way from the Mississippi Delta. On this hot day in August outside of Fargo however, I assumed this flatland plain along the Red River of the North was an equally attractive place to meet the force from the dark side so I could seal the deal for my rock and roll future. It could not have been any less hospitable place for the tyrant of eternal hell fires than the flat plains of the Mississippi where Johnson made his deal more than 60 years earlier.

It was 5:00 in the morning and the air was thick with humidity as the temperature still hovered in the high 80’s. I had walked several miles after the bars closed, through the city streets of Fargo until I reached a dusty road south of the city past Interstate 94. I was still feeling the effects of several pitchers of beer served up to me and my band mates by Bob at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead just across the bridge from Fargo. As I walked my mind was on the band and the recent streak of bad luck we had experienced.

Floored was just starting to get attention in Fargo and soon the local colleges would fill the campuses with students during the days and the bars with young drinkers at night. We were playing well and our sound was bigger than anything you could find on the radio or even on records from bands that were playing in Minneapolis. Many bands, like the Geardaddies, Run Westy Run, Soul Asylum and Jonestown from Minneapolis, knew of us as a great little secret from backwards Fargo. However, our drummer, Rodney, had just been kicked out of his house in north Moorhead leaving us without a practice space. My girlfriend, Sweet Anne, was in Montana and I was feeling the pains of lost love. My former best friend and another band sidekick, Manny Breeze, had a fling with Sweet Anne before she left to Montana leaving a fistfight between best friends in her wake. This proved to be a blessing for Floored, since the band with Manny, Diddy Wah Diddy, was probably not as viable as Floored. But, I was depressed as I walked to the crossroad to offer the rest of my life to Rock-n-roll and seal a deal for Floored that would finally bring rock stardom to all of us.

I had learned of the crossroads from my friend Spooky. Spooky was a piano player—the best one in Fargo. He would play in the back room at Ralph’s for all of us. He had his own band called Spooky Chunks. Although he was only slightly older than all of us, we considered him the wise old sage musician and he was an inspiration to each of us. He would leave town periodically and come back at random intervals. When he was in town he stayed at Rodney’s house and joined us in after hours jams until early dawn when he’d finally announce he had “crickets in his ears.”

Spooky was the one who told me of the crossroads south of Fargo. I wasn’t sure of the exact spot, but after many late nights of wandering and days of driving I found what I assumed was the spot. That was the first time I met the Man with the dark soul, before I had been given the gift of guitar playing to go with my raw and nascent songwriting abilities. When I met the dark man at the crossroads the first time, he ordered me to come back later when I was ready. He gave me some inspiration and cursed me for a portion of my soul and put a retainer on the rest.

Now, I found myself wandering the same route to the crossroad on a hot sticky night outside Fargo to sell what was left of my already seriously compromised soul. I had a long walk to think about what I was going to do. A lot was on my mind-Sweet Anne, Manny, Betsy, Mary, Heather, Molesy, Thumpy, Rodney and, mostly, Spooky. The talk at Ralph’s that night was some recent news we had received from Minneapolis. Spooky was in the hospital.

He had been on the roof of a three-story apartment building dancing, naked under the light of a full moon. He was doing his patented spooky jig that ended up taking him over the edge of the building before he fell and landed on a stair railing in the middle of the night. Spooky would never walk or dance his jig again. He broke his spine completely through in two spots. Spooky was the best blues piano player ever in Fargo and might have been on his way to Blue immortality when the Devil came to collect his dues. Spooky had made the same walk I was making several years earlier and now he would never walk again.

I was contemplating my fate, weighing the pros and the cons of what lie ahead. I knew I was considering a shortened life for a brief period of fame and possibly putting myself in the same class as Dee-Dee Ramone, Keith Richard, Sid Viscious, Bob Stinson, Jimi Hendrix and others. We had already reached the height of a very good rock and roll band - maybe even great. From my perspective, based upon the raw power we could generate that transposrted each of us to the mysterious and unexplainable, we were equal to any band I had ever heard on record or seen live in a club. But, we were stuck in Fargo where the police broke up our parties quickly due to noise complaints and bar owners kicked us off the stage for being too loud.

This story should be accompanied by a soundtrack, but unfortunately the soundtrack does not exist. There would be Gremlin Stomp playing in the background as Molesy stumbled home on a snowy and drunken February evening, Blue Fields of Wheat playing during the adult exploits each of us partook with Betsy our local porn queen, Queen Geraldine whenever I held sweet Anne in my gaze, Guaranteed to Bleed as my fists drove into Manny’s face crushing his nose and cheekbones and I Can’t Get my Dick Up at the appropriate Rodney moment.

But, alas, the music meant to accompany this story has been lost to everyone but me. There are others who remember, particularly my band mates Thumpy and Rodney. My occasional recent conversations shared with them discussing those far away days reveal a shared nostalgia for the music we created almost twenty years ago in Fargo. However, even their memory is tempered when compared to my own. The memory of Floored in each of their minds is one of failure to rise to the level I thought we had reached. Rodney revealed to me he still has some recordings in his apartment in New York City and his descriptions of these recordings today does not support the memory I have of what came roaring from our amps and fingertips. But Thumpy and Rodney never made the trip to the crossroads. I was the only one to make that trip, although each of us paid a price for the curse the man with the steely eyes put upon me. Paul and Rodney’s pursuits for careers in music were similarly cut short by my breaking of the contract I had signed at the crossroads. For that, they were tantalized with limited success in a band called Hammerhead and the subsequent failures accompanying it.

I spent three years living in Fargo from 1988 to 1991 playing in three bands – Diddy wah Diddy, Hammerhead and Floored. I arrived as a twenty-two year old singer/songwriter with limited rhythm guitar playing abilities. I could strum a few chords and string together some songs. After my initial meeting with the devil, I became one of his potential minions capable of harnessing power and magic from my fingertips as they danced along the fret board of my cheap Gibson guitars before releasing it to anyone who dared stand in front of our amps to feel the full force of our songs. We played sparingly to only a few people who remain largely unknown. Later we learned we had actually built up a group of core fans that went on to make the “scene” in Fargo that became modestly famous along the same line as so many other local scenes around the country lasting months to years and producing a limited fame among national audiences.

From 1988 to 1991 however, there was nothing that could be described as a scene except for a small following that included some young and beautiful high school and college girls from nearby small towns willing to play the role of rock groupies for us. Those days from my early twenties created memories that would last a lifetime. In those three years, I did more living than the more than twenty years I have lived since. It seemed everything we touched turned to magic; it seemed that beauty was to be found in every direction we chose to perceive - it seemed I touched something I would never get a chance to touch again, for better or worse.

I have talked to a few others who witnessed some shows of Floored in Fargo. This small group of people is of varying opinions of what they witnessed on the stages of Kirby’s, the back room of Ralph’s, frat parties at North Dakota State University, gigs at area colleges and parties in the house where we practiced in North Moorhead. My memory of the music remains resolute even amongst those who remember a loud, drunk and obnoxious band. I know what we were. We were the greatest rock and roll band never heard.

My First Guitar

I was born in Little Falls, Minnesota and moved to a suburb outside of Minneapolis when I was two years old. While riding the bus to school in kindergarten, the school children often broke into song.

Marijuana, Marijuana
LSD, LSD
Mommy makes it
Daddy takes it
Why can’t we?
Why can’t we?

It was 1970, and drugs were not yet vilified by parents – by the parents of our parents? Perhaps, but I grew up during a permissive era in the white American suburbs. We wouldn’t hear about the dangers of drug use until middle school and, by then, we had already formed a fairly high opinion of them. There were teachers smoking in our classrooms in elementary school and our middle schools had a “back 40” reserved for students to smoke cigarettes, too. Before school, children gathered outside of the middle school smoking cigarettes and passing around joints received from older siblings. My first drawings in elementary schools were of hippies smoking joints and holding boxes labeled “LSD.” They were standing before banners saying make love not war and peace symbols were pasted in the background next to the sun. I was not peculiar, but was merely drawing what everyone else in class was drawing.


My parents were not hippies. Before kindergarten, my mom stayed at home. Her stack of albums included artists such as: “Peter, Paul and Mary,” “Simon and Garfunkel,” “John Denver,” “Glenn Campbell,” and “The Carpenters.” She would clean the house as these albums spun on the living room turntable. I learned to sing in perfect key to songs like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” “Cecilia,” “Sunshine on my Shoulders,” “Rocky Mountain High,” “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy,” and “Sing a song,” just like they were nursery rhymes from Mother Goose. In grade school, I was always picked to sing the lead parts in our chorus performances.


I asked my mother and father for a guitar at a very young age, so I could learn to be like John Denver when I grew up. They did not buy me one right away. It may have been the money or perhaps they thought it was a stage I might grow out of. I remember sitting in the backseat of my fathers Pontiac when I was a young boy. My father was driving and my mother was in the passenger seat. I had recently learned from my music teacher in school that there were only 12 notes on a staff. I pleaded with my parents from the back seat that time was wasting and, if I did not get a guitar soon all the songs would be written before I learned how to play guitar and no more would be left. There were only 12 notes after all and almost every combination had to be used up by then. They chuckled from the front seat, but a guitar did not arrive.

When I was 8 years old, I opened a Christmas present and discovered a ukulele. My parents must have immediately sensed my disappointment. They began telling me that a guitar was too big for my hands and I had to learn how to play a Ukulele first. I could get a guitar after I learned how to play the ukulele. I held it in my hands and ran my fingers along the nylon strings. I sang “My dog has fleas” and turned the tuning pegs till they matched my voice. I went to my room and sat on my bed holding it and plucking at the strings. Then, I got up, opened my closet door, put the ukulele on the back shelf, and closed the door shut tightly.

A few months later, I saw Pete Townsend smashing a guitar on the television. It might have been on the news or perhaps it was a late night show. Or maybe, I just saw a picture of him in a magazine. I opened the closet door, went inside, grabbed the Ukulele and shut the door from the inside. Then, I raised the Ukulele high above my head and brought it crashing down to the floor, shattering the ukulele, sending pieces flying as a loud pinging noise went echoing throughout the house. My mother came running into my room and found me in the closet holding the ukulele in my hands as tears streamed down my face. She grabbed me by my hand and led me to my bed. My pants came down and she wore a wooden spoon out until the welts appeared upon my buttocks. My parents never bought me another instrument and I stopped singing in school and at home. Though my musical training was cut short at this early age, I was being groomed as a rock star from that day forward. I would not buy my first guitar for 10 more years, and punk rock was still a ways off in the future. I got a later start on guitar and, lucky for me, for the purposes of puck rock, that was a good thing. I also learned through my studies in mathematics about powers of 12 and through music listening about time signatures, choruses, verses, lyrics, harmonies, and bridges. In short, I came to realize that availabilities of notes may be limited but the possibilities for songs were infinite, while my oppositional nature and rebellious streak was slowly emerging as I entered my teenage years.

Tough SOB's

I always admired the artists who seemed like tough motherF@#*ers. My first rock-n-roll hero was Kieth Richard, but his fame and acclaim has kind of eroded my view of him over the years. Now when I think of tough I think of the guys from punk bands who made it to the top of their scene, but are now kind of floundering around as their audience grew up and many of the musicians they traveled amongst died. Mike Watt, Bob Mould, and Curt Kirkwook. I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to learn that Curt has recently reunited with his brother Chris.

Brothers Meat, you come through Minneapolis soon and I'm there like I was before.

I Hate Banks

I Think it was 1987 when I saw Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper at Kirby's Bar in Moorhead, Minnesota. He was jumping all over the place playing his guitar and singing rants such as "I Hate Banks" and "I Ain't Gonna Piss in no Cup." He had so much energy, he was practically jumping off the walls on the stage as he banged on his guitar or a large empty 5 gallon drinking water container. I was awestruck. That night at Kirby's he played for me and about 100 other college student aged music lovers. The next week I drove to Winnipeg for the annual folk festival they have up there and to my chagrin, they had Mojo in the lineup and he was scheduled to play the main stage the first night. This time he was playing for aging hippies who were sitting on their blankets with their young families and enjoying acts such as Bonnie Raitte, and David Lindsley. Mojo got up there and did his thing and soon had several thousand people in the palm of his hand.
The Chorus for "I ain't gonna pis in no cup," is

I Ain't gonna Piss in no cup
Unless Nancy Reagan licks it up

Well he got to the last chorus and then started prancing around stage as Skid thumped out a rhythm on his washtub one string Bass and ranting about Nancy and Ronnie to the melody of the Chorus. Then in an impromptu moment he started a chant and had the whole audience repeating after him

Nancy Reagan Sucks the Devil's Dick

Maybe, you had to be there, because it seems kind of childish. However, seeing those middle aged families jumping up and down next to their infants, toddlers and teenagers, and chanting enthusiastically about Nancy Reagan gave me a new appreciation for liberals from the 60's generation. I was thrilled.

I am thinking about Mojo, though, because I really do hate Banks. Or at least I have a contempt for them. I hate how we live in fear of a soiled credit rating as if we all live for being in debt and beholden to the lenders of funds. My contempt for banks has gotten me in trouble.

When I was an undergrad and as I neared graduation, I suddenly was receiving in the mail all these applications for credit cards. I filled a couple out and then received them in the mail and maxed them out on beer at Kirby's and Ralphs for all my friendw with absolutely no intention of paying them back. "Oh, your credit rating," I would constantly hear. "You will never own a house." Well, I've always been stubborn. I thought it would be a good experiment, so I waited out several years of harassing phone calls and letters and relatives who chided me for my irresponsibility. What I discovered was soon all was forgotten and the Banks eventually determined that I was not a credit risk any longer and happily loned me money again without my having to pay back about $3000. 00 in credit card bills.

I never got in trouble with debt again, but I still have contempt for banks that still leads toward trouble. When I went back to graduate school I rang up new debt in student loans. Then, it took me sometime to get a job after I left the PhD program with only a Masters in tow. I have slowly been paying back credit card debt that I built up over that time and recently have been making a strong push to pay them all off so I can pay off my student loans. I had a checking Account with a bank called Twin Cities Federal (TCF). Well, in my enthusiasm to pay off my debt, and because I never balance my checkbook and prefer to keep an approximate running balance in my head, I suddenly started to get an occasional overdraft letter from TCF with a service charge for $33.00. I called TCF and explained my situation and they waived the fee. Nice. It happened three times like that with TCF waiving the fee, but I realized I was playing with fate, so I went into my local branch and asked for overdraft protection so I would not get anymore fees and I would not have to make anymore calls.

I filled out the application and TCF told me that I should be approved in a few days. Two weeks later I knew that my account was getting close to zero, because I made some purchases online for some spring gardening needs. I had money in another savings account to cover it, but I don't like to touch this money. I would have but it had been two weeks and I thought my overdraft protection application would have been approved. On a Saturday, I suddenly received four overdraft statements in the mail. I called the customer service line and they told me that They could not waive any of the fees, even after I explained what happened. On Monday Morning I went through the drive through at my local branch and deposited $500.00 to bring my account out of the negative and learned that three more overdrafts and service fees also went through. I called my local branch from work and learned that my application had been just sitting there the whole time and no one looked at it. I was told that my service fees should get waived for this oversight, but I would have to check with the checking account manager. I went in on Tuesday after work and talked to some kid and he told me "Sorry, we cannot waive the fees, none of them." I immediately closed my account. The next day I called my student loans and told them my account was closed and that electronic payments could now be taken out of a new checking account at a credit Union.

Several days later I get a new overdraft statement from TCF becaue my student loas company took money out of my closed account in addition to a payment taken out of my new checking account. Another $33.00 service charge. That's eight of them so, far. Shortly after, I get another overdarft (9) card over a backorder on some seeds ($3.00 for a seed packet, $33.00 more for a service charge from a closed account). I start getting calls on my answering machine telling me to call TCF over suspicious activity on my account and letters in my mail threatening to close my account (I already closed it you dolts).

Okay, I'm irresponsible. I recognize that. I cold have avoided all of this. TCF is not at fault. So, what? I can't stand how banks operate. They prey off of customer irresponsibility and mistakes. I ended up paying 7 service charges for a total of $231.00. That is not that much.My closed checking account is two service fees ($66.00) plus a student loan payment ($255.00) in the Red. And Guess what? I am not going to pay it. I have several years ahead of me of harassing phone calls as TCF sells my delinquent account once they realize that $321.00 is not worth the effort. I don't care. TCF loses me as a customer forever and I have to deal with some jerks on the phone. It is not that big of a deal. I don't really care. This is not about $321.00. I just hate banks.