this probably won't win me any musician friends...

i am not a fan of bands doing online fundraisers.

i mean, i am all for pre-orders so they have a decent idea of how many albums to print but i just feel like it's a HUGE rip off to pay an exorbitant amount of money to have one guitar-lesson-skype-sesh.

having friends in bands that have used these types of services (kickstarter, pledgemusic, etc) i want to tread lightly because i love them as people and artists and i understand that sometimes we all need a helping hand to cross that finish line. so i'm not saying that we should completely do away with using these types of available resources (shoot i have pre-ordered albums from these service providers to support bands i love) but i am saying that i think it can get out of hand. 

if you're an artist thinking about using a fundraising site please consider the following....

1. why not just do a pre-order of the album and maybe a merch bundle or two for the same cost (or maybe even a couple bucks less *gasp*) that you would sell it for at the table?  i know there is business involved in the music business and it's expensive and everything takes money (touring, promotion, salaries, etc). potentially more money than just album sales can cover but asking your fans to fork over $300 for signed drumsticks that you were planning on pitching seems a little slimey to me. 

2. on that note, you are asking your fans to give you their hard earned money so make the price match the prize. maybe there's a kid who has been wanting to buy a guitar and has been saving for it and decides to buy the signed guitar you have up for grabs for $500 because he was planning on spending that much anyway. well that's perfect. but what about the girl who pays $200 for a phone call with the band and it ends up being a grand total of 5 minutes long. or worse yet, a voicemail because she was in class and didn't answer her phone. not even close to worth it and you know it. 

3. if you are going to have an incentive where you hang out with some of your fans for a day (or some other pre-determined amount of time) you'd better be prepared for awkwardness. if your fan is spending the amount of money most bands put on these types of prizes (the prices some of you put on this you'd think your time was worth twice that of the non-musician human) they are probably a super fan and will either be painfully shy around you or will stick to you like glue and rattle on about all kinds of crap you don't care about. i just wanted you to know ahead of time. and stay off your phone unless you are taking a picture with said fan to post to twitter/instagram. your time now belongs to her (because let's be honest, it's most definitely a girl that paid to spend time with you). 

4. do you really need to do it? i think one of my biggest pet peeves with this new-ish way of gaining band dollars is the bands that are doing it who have been around a long time and have had a whole lot of commercial success. the ones who are closing out the mainstage at festivals and actually getting airplay on radio. the ones whose fans have a collective name (ex: Beliebers). have a little faith that your fans are going to buy the album and come out to a show and drop $50 at the merch table. if you're that big of a deal that means your fans have shown up time and time again, they will this go-round too. 

5. would you pay that much to your favorite band to probably not get that much in return? i am aware that most of the time when people give that much it's more to support the band than getting that coveted hand-written lyric sheet. i think it's great when people invest in people they believe in. but if i shelled out $5000 for something i'd better end up BFF with the band and i'd be stowing away under a van seat (because again, if your band has a bus stay the frick off kickstarter). 

so if you're in a band and i don't seem excited when you tell me about your kickstarter campaign and all your sweet incentives this is why. i'm probably trying really hard to not visibly roll my eyes but know that i will most likely still support you and pre-order your album. so don't take my dislike personally, it's not you it's your $250 broken drumhead. 

xo

frontman friday: jt daly

FRIDAY.

yeah, let's just meditate on that word for a second. it's a good one. the day to wrap up all the loose ends at work from the week and to get really excited for what the weekend holds. 

i'm all for living each day to the fullest but there is just something special about friday. 

got a special frontman today: jt daly

he looks disinterested but i'm gonna say he's lost in the song.

photo credit: no clue, let me know if it's yours

mr. daly fronts a band called paper route

all of them are americans, i think that's why he's holding the flag

photo credit: paper route

fun fact: paper route wasn't always a three-piece.

for the first six years it boasted four members. 

andy smith left the band in 2010 and formed the band brother leather.

the camels in the background are confusing but clearly JT has 
been a fan of suspenders for a very long time. 

photo credit: paper route

if you haven't heard of them i can guarantee you have heard of the bands they have toured with. it's an impressive list including: paramore, switchfoot, mutemath, imagine dragons, LIGHTS, anberlin, owl city, passion pit, jack's mannequin, and copeland to name a few. 

watch this video and then tell me that you aren't a little smitten with daly and co. 

jt is probably one of the most unique frontmen i have seen. i got to see them perform on tour with anberlin and i got more than i bargained for. i knew i liked them and after seeing them i keep a close eye on their tour schedule to see when they're coming back. when they do, let's go together!
xo

my heart isn't ready for today.

being back in my office after a weekend at a music festival is a little suffocating.

my heart is so full and so discontent at the same time. 

so full from experiencing days of live music. re-falling in love with some bands and discovering new ones i hadn't heard before.

so discontent because i just want to live in that world. not at the festival, that would be boring 361 days of the year, but in that creative world of stages and songs. 

the sunburn on my back hurts every time my shirt touches it but it reminds me of watching judah & the lion play a killer show. and reconnecting with a friend during her brother's set. (yeah, i broke my own cardinal rule of talking during a song...she came running up and surprised me! sorry, it won't happen again.) or wandering away from the stage for a minute to cool down in the shade and ended up hanging out with some band boys that have been friends for years. 

the bug bites on my arms itch like mad but make me think of the final shows on the mainstage each night. my favorites; needtobreathe and switchfoot. 

my eyes have that slight burning sensation where you're not sure if it feels better to have them open or closed...so many hours in a dusty festival field staring into the sun because it's behind the stage and handsome alan powell is on the stage (yes, handsome is on his birth certificate). 

pictures on my phone that to the untrained eye look like crappy phone-camera shots where everyone is a little blurry and you aren't entirely sure who you are looking at but to me are basically frame-worthy works of art. i know exactly which little unfocused man is bear rinehart and which one is jon foreman.

this one is jon foreman

this one is bear rinehart

so why am i writing all of this? 

i don't really know. maybe just to get myself back into the routine of my current day-to-day life before i do something completely irrational like walk into my boss's office and quit because nothing in my being wants to be here today. 

please, someone, take me on your tour bus. 

xo

frontman friday: alan powell

this is one of my favorite weekends of the year.
it's sonshine weekend, guys, and (as i previously mentioned) the line up this year is fantastic. i was hanging out at the edge stage all day yesterday and have some killer burn lines to prove it.

one artist i wasn't expecting to see turned up on stage at one point and i was pretty excited to look at his pretty face for a half an hour.

he has a name: it's alan powell

i don't even like bowties but dang. 

photo credit: breathcast.com

he sings and occasionally plays guitar in a group called anthem lights. they really are a boy band more than anything...no synchronized dancing but a lot of singing to tracks. 

seriously, he loves bowties. but look at that stare. 

photo credit: anthem lights

they do a lot of covers. and they are REALLY good at them. 

i'm gonna need you to not judge that this is one of my favorite covers of theirs.

he's clearly got some singing chops, now he is trying his hand at acting.

that's the whole reason he was at the festival, to promote his new movie "The Song"

it's a modern-day telling of the story of solomon. 

they are showing the film tonight at the festival after NEEDTOBREATHE finishes their set. i am pulling for this movie, i hope it isn't cheesy and poorly done (like so many "christian" films are). but no matter what i get to look at alan powell's face for an hour and a half. this time of year just makes my heart so full.

xo

that time i hated my concert neighbors.

the imagine dragons show was good. so so good.

but some of the people we were sitting by....

you guys, they were some of the most annoying people on planet earth. 

now maybe in their day-to-day lives they aren't annoying at all but as fellow concert attendees...i wanted to punch them in the face.

let's start with the least offensive: 

the 2 twenty-something girls sitting in the row in front of us. they mostly kept to themselves, knew approximately 4 imagine dragons songs and seemed to enjoy the show. totally acceptable. the annoying part: before the show they each got chicken strips and fries and one of the girls ate the chicken and then put her entire basket of fries under her chair and didn't eat any of them! she let those tasty fries go to waste, my friends. then she didn't even have the decency to throw them away when she left. ugh. 

next up: 

the guy to the left. he was clearly the dad of the three children sitting next to him. i don't think he had any fun at all. i'm guessing the mom was mad at the dad and sent him as a punishment because he looked like he would rather be cleaning the port-a-potty's than sitting (!!!) at the show. fun-killer. 

we're getting to the worst: 

man in the orange polo. he was sitting in the row front of us and off to the right a chair or two...he was in EVERYONES business. i think he thought he was being friendly but it was beyond friendly. it was pushy and busybody. not to mention he had a voice that carried and his world clearly revolved around him. thankfully he only chatted with us for a few seconds but in that time we found out that he didn't care about imagine dragons (he, too, was there with his kids), he was hot (as in physically warm), and then he mumbled something that i didn't catch so i just smiled at him. i'm hoping he didn't tell me that their family dog just died or some other tragedy. 

this is it, kids:

the most annoying award go to the mother/daughters trio that were directly to my right. 

oh.my.gosh.

1. they were redheaded and fair skinned. it was sunny (at first, the sun eventually went down during the show). you do the math on the whining about that particular subject.

2. the mom's arm was in a sling and made stupid comments about her kids not being old enough to go buy her a beer. she thought she was hilarious. 

3. before the opening act you would have guessed that they were the biggest atmosphere (he's a local rapper) fans in the world. they ended up half-rapping a couple of the songs.

4. talking. there was SO MUCH talking coming from them. talking in between sets, totally fine. talking between songs, sure. talking during songs or when the band is talking, NOT OKAY. and they weren't talking about anything that pertained to the concert, they were talking about crap that they could have talked about in the comfort of their living room. if you're gonna have conversations about nothing, don't waste your time (or my patience) coming to the concert. 

5. proving she knew the lyrics. instead of watching the band and singing along like everyone else in the crowd, the older sister sang all of the lyrics at her younger sister whenever she knew them. this wouldn't have been as terrible if i hadn't been directly next to the younger sibling. we were both being shouted at. it was terrible. shut it girl, i want to hear dan reynolds, not you. 

6. freebird. yes, these were the people that yelled freebird. i wish i was kidding. 

so if you ever find yourself next to me at a concert it would be in your best interest to avoid doing all of these things because at some point my minnesota nice is going to run out. 

xo

all-star concert.

minneapolis has been getting a LOT of love lately from the sports world.
i don't think our teams are very good (i actually have no idea...i don't follow sports at all but that's the general feeling i get) but we have new stadiums and fields and that's always appealing.

this year target field is playing host to the all-star baseball game. i was told this means all the who's-who in baseball are here to play a fantasy game and people from all over the nation turn up to see the best of the best play.

in addition to the star studded game they have a TON of other activities going on in downtown. i love it. so many people getting to experience my favorite city.

most of the activities i don't care at all to participate in but when they announced a few months ago that there would be a concert as part of the festivities i was all ears. then they announced it would be imagine dragons. and finally they said it would be free.

it's like they designed this show just for my cheap-action self. 

these pictures are kinda crappy. they're from my phone. 

we may look far away but our seats were BOMB.

27,000 people gathered in tcf stadium to watch the dragon boys and i was blown away by their live show.

first shot of the dragon boys. 

i would kill for their job. 

dan reynolds is quite possibly the most precious frontman of all time. he seemed so genuinely happy to be there. it really felt like there was no where else in the world he would rather be.

as a band they are incredibly talented musicians; they all can keep a beat (seriously, there had to have been 20 drums on stage that they rotated around and played ) and have choirboy vocals that give you goosebumps when they break into a 5-part harmony.

they did a good chunk of the songs off of night visions and covered u2's with or without you. dan and guitarist, wayne sermon, did a stripped down song that they dedicated to a friend they had lost to cancer, it was a surprisingly intimate moment in a packed stadium with thousands of people. they ended their set with radioactive and i literally thought everyone in the audience was going to start levitating with excitement.

i liked imagine dragons before, i would definitely call myself a fan now.

if you look really closely you can see a tiny dan reynolds beating

on the huge drum! taken during 'radioactive'

after the concert there was a fireworks show above the stadium. they kicked off the fireworks with prince's 1999 and ended with american authors' best day of my life with a few other songs sprinkled in between. what fun!

then my roommate and i decided to walk home since we had taken the lightrail over and the line for that was well over a city block long. the walk turned out to be slightly longer than i thought it would be. i thought it was around 2 miles (and it is. by car.). when you're on foot and can't walk across the 35W bridge it's more like a 3.5 mile walk. oops.

xo

frontman friday: josh jenkins

happy weekend, friends!
*in dumb & dumber voice* we're there.

it's summer and summer music is either dance-y beats, major chords and (usually) fluffy lyrics or songs you want to listen to around a bonfire that include banjos and foot stompin'. in true summer fashion, today i'm loving on a frontman who has songs designed for summer fun in the latter category.

                                                               his name is: josh jenkins 

can't go wrong with a fitted flannel
photo credit: ateenview.com

josh is, by far and away, the tallest one in green river ordinance
he's also their lead singer (almost as noteworthy)

dude is like 6'5"- true story

i saw them open for NEEDTOBREATHE a couple years back. they kicked off their set with this song and i was immediately hooked.

they came through minneapolis this past spring and played a killer show. their set lasted an hour and a half, it was nuts. i wrote a concert review on that show for indie vision music if you feel like reading more of my incoherent babble.

go grab some GRO music, build a fire, grab a cold beverage (but stay away from the diet coke, that's all mine) and some s'more fixins and settle in for a perfect summer night. 

xo

everyone loves a minnesota girl.

another dude from another band just put up that he's 'in a relationship' with a girl. she happens to be from minnesota. (i know this because, like any good friend, i creeped on her profile after his announcement).  then i got to thinking...there seem to be a surprising number of musical fellas that are with girls from my great state even though none of the fellas themselves are minnesotan.

a short list includes:

andrew ripp

andy from a plea for purging

cody from the wedding

micah from hawk nelson

jason formerly of hawk nelson

ben from band of horses

and those are just the ones that i can think of off the top of my head, i am sure there are more. and don't even get me started on the local musicians married to minnesota ladies.

so why does everyone love a minnesota girl? 

i know i am biased when i say these things but it's because: 

• we're tough. we deal with harsh winters and continue to choose to live here (maybe we're also a little stubborn). we get 12 inches of snow and we just shovel out our cars and get to work on time because the world doesn't stop because of some precipitation. we rarely play the damsel in distress card. 
• we value family and friendships. the midwest is still pretty traditional and relationships rank high on the importance scale. that's appealing, right? 
• we work hard. whatever the role; stay-at-home-mom, CEO, teacher, artist, electrician, barista, doctor or pastor we throw ourselves headlong into it. it's probably the work ethic of our scandinavian/germanic-farmer-grandparents/great-grandparents being passed down.
• we love the outdoors and being active. we may not have mountains or oceans but we eat up every second of being outside. in whatever weather from negative temps to "feels like 110" we find a way to be outside doing something enjoyable. we aren't afraid to get our hands dirty but don't get me wrong we still like to put on our fanciest and clean up to at least an 8. seriously, there was a study done and it said minnesota falls high on the "pretty" and low on the "skanky." i call that a win. 
• we're nice. okay, so maybe it's just a cultural thing where we feel need to be pleasant everyone on a surface level but i like to think of it like southern hospitality without the sweet tea...at least not right away. we will be the first ones to help you pull your car out of the ditch but we probably won't invite you in (we're a private people) if you come over unannounced, and you'll have to ask us at least three times before you get an honest answer (it's rude to say yes the first time around, even if it's just about a glass of water) but once you climb over the privacy fence of our lives we'll be friends for life. life, people. 

glad we were able to clear that up, now spread the word to handsome, single frontmen far and wide and then point them in my direction. 

my name is sara, i'm a minnesota girl and proud of it.

xo

frontman friday: matt shelton

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!
and what's more american than rock 'n roll?!
actually probably a lot...freedom, fireworks, amber waves of grain, overeating at cook-outs, parades, stars and stripes, red-white-and-blue, the lakes of minnesota...

anyway, today my frontman love goes to an all-american rockstar.

his name is: matt shelton

directly in the spotlight...like a good rockstar would be

photo credit: michael ervin photography

matt does all the mic tricks in the wedding

i adore these fellas. as a band and as people.

you would never guess they are as nice as they are when they look so tough.

matt and his lovely are in the process of adopting

yes, i know this poster is old and the benefit concert is over

yes, i DID steal this from matt's facebook page

yes, they will make super rad parents

one time i got to play my violin with matt at a festival (read the story here) and it was such an incredible experience. i still tell people about it because it makes me seem way cooler than i am (obviously) and because i literally just love those guys so much and i want everyone to know what incredible people they are. they've been off the road pursuing other interests lately but i hope that they decide to tour again in the not-too-distant future, i miss them!

now get off the computer and go enjoy your independence day! sing proud to be an american, light a sparkler, and thank God for your freedom. 

xo

blind date.

holy balls, i may have just asked a friend to set me up on a blind date of sorts. 

ah, yeah, that just happened. 

dan reynolds of imagine dragons was my frontman friday a few weeks back because 1. he's handsome and a frontman and 2. my friend and i scored free tickets to go see them when they play in my city. 

what i failed to mention was that we each actually got a pair of tickets.

now we could have gone "girls night" and grabbed a couple of lady friends and had a killer time. only a couple of problems with that plan, most of our girlies don't love going to concerts as much as we do and/or they are all married and would want to bring their husband and then it turns into a weird double date where my friend and i end up coupled. no. 

we started digging into the recesses of our brains to see if we could each come up with a fun dude to take with us. short answer: no. again, we run into the problems of our guy friends also being married (mostly to our female friends), they don't actually like going to concerts (why is everyone such a lamehead?), or they are in bands and on the road for the summer therefore not available to hang out. 

what's a girl to do? 

so i reached out to a friend (she's actually already tried to set me up once so i figured she'd play along) who isn't in our tight friend circle and asked if she knew a couple of fun guys who wanted to go to the show with us. we figured maybe she could find a couple of bros who were friends with each other so that they would have some moral support in all of the awkwardness since my friend and i will at least have each other if the night is a total disaster.

she has already come up with one potential option and is checking with him to see if he's free. 

i'm not entirely sure what i've gotten myself into but at least i could walk away from this with some new friends...and no matter what, i get to see dan reynolds. 

xo