300.

in honor of my 300^th post: an open letter to any band who comes to play in minnesota. 

dear you,

first off, i just want to start by saying that we love you and we are so excited that you are here. thank you for coming up here! just so you know, we genuinely LOVE live music and we get into shows, no just standing there with our arms crossed in this great state.

i’m just going to toss a couple of pointers to make your time and show here a real top shelf experience. so hop on the bus as we cross the principalizing bridge to minnesota culture. (that last sentence is mostly because i paid many thousands of dollars to get a degree in intercultural studies that i don’t use but i feel like i should hold on to some of the concepts.)

U\unless you’ve had a bus break down or a flight come in late or the venue itself is experiencing some sort of problem, open your doors on time and start your show on time. often there is a line winding around the block at doors and when you say the show starts at 8pm we will politely be there by 7:50pm (if, as individuals, we aren’t the sort to get there at doors) to be fully engaged in the entire show. we feel like we are doing our part to respect your time and simply ask the same in return. if you know you aren’t going to start playing until 10pm, put that on the ticket…we’ll show up then.  if you are late getting on stage, either come out with both guns blazing and make us forget that we were annoyed we’ve been standing around for an hour and a half doing nothing or apologize for the delay. doesn’t have to be long or even all that heartfelt, just a “sorry about the wait, guys” will be more than enough for us. i can’t even explain why we need it, but we do.

and speaking of guns blazing, we go all out at concerts. we love it. we aren’t cooler than thou; we clap and sing along at the top of our lungs. depending on the show there is even jumping and dancing involved. i know you feed off the crowd and you’ll eventually get there but if it’s possible for you to just come out of the gate like you’re ready to have the time of your life we will meet you there immediately. despite our stoic exterior we are an excitable people.

if you love our state (or even better, our city) you should tell us. we are all slightly obsessed with our cities and we all have a great sense of pride in living in minnesota. if for no other reason than we know we’re tough for surviving our winters. which, by the way, if you are here in winter and you mention how painfully cold it is and question how we handle it, we eat that ish up. we’ll all chuckle and think to ourselves, “it’s not even that terrible out today!” and then probably turn to our neighbor and say that exact same thing out loud. even if we ourselves have been complaining for the past two months straight about how chilled to the bone we are and earlier that day said we were done with being cold we will still say it’s not that bad. it’s part of our charm.

have some sort of cold weather merch. again, especially helpful if you are here in the winter months, but we love it when bands have a really great soft long-sleeve of some sort. whether it’s a hoodie or a zip-up or a long-sleeve-tee we are pretty much fans of it all because at some point we will wear it. we have months and months of weather that requires us to wear clothing that covers our extremities. make a cool design on a well-fitting shirt and we will promote your band regularly.  besides, i know you make your money on merch so selling a couple of $35+ articles of clothing makes your sales for the night look really good.  

finally, here are some personal nuggets of wisdom for how you can spend your time off in minnesota. i know that the mall of america seems like the logical choice of attraction to visit (it’s free, indoors, has accessibility to food, you can ride a roller coaster, etc) but once you’ve seen it once there is really no need to visit again. 

so here are a few other options of places to visit:

if you’re looking for top tier coffee: five watt, urban bean, spyhouse, butter, and dogwood are all stellar.

if you’re looking for a food experience (i’m not a foodie so these are really more experiences you have while eating than food you’d stab someone over): the weinery, chatterbox pub, psycho suzi’s, and brit’s pub all have interesting atmosphere’s in addition to the cuisine.

if you’re looking for some free entertainment: como zoo and conservatory, “hiking” minnehaha falls, ice skating in rice park, checking out the minneapolis institute of arts, the sculpture gardens or exploring the skyway system if you’re needing a shopping fix all kill a couple of hours in the afternoon before a show.

if you’re looking for entertainment and are willing to spend a few bucks: we have some great museums (the science museum, the Swedish American institute, and even the little museum at the top of the foshay tower are incredible), indoor ice skating at the old train depot, renting stand up paddle boards and taking them on one of our 10,000 lakes (this only works if it’s not freezing outside), or going to riverview theater (it’s a second run theater that only costs a couple of bucks and has the best popcorn).

i just really want you to have a great time here because then you will come back.

all my love,

xo