Small town musicians make rural life worth living

Charlie Parr performs in the June 18, 2016 episode of the Great Northern Radio Show (PHOTO: Grant Frashier)

Happy Thanksgiving! And it is a week for thanks. Thank you for subscribing to my website and for reading my work. My latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune is out Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 27. Entitled “The music scene is alive and well in rural Minnesota,” his one connects a happy time in my recent past to my current work.

From 2011 to 2019, I wrote, produced and hosted the Great Northern Radio Show on KAXE/KBXE Northern Community Radio. The show was borne of a notion I had to be a famous radio show host. Indeed, not unlike a certain other prominent Minnesota variety show host. The other guy seemed loathe to give up the ghost, so I just started doing the job hoping someone might notice. Years of contract work for KAXE gave me the opportunity to pitch them the Great Northern. For eight years, I put all my effort into a traveling variety show exclusively dedicated to small towns in northern Minnesota.

What I didn’t know was that the show wasn’t a means to advance my career, though it did in a sense. Rather, the show was a device put in my life to keep me sober after I first realized I was an alcoholic. It rebuilt my marriage and delivered friendships and truth that would make me a better person in the years that followed.

We did a good show that never quite broke out, never quite made anyone famous, and ended quietly after I signed a modest book deal with a university press. It was the “great almost” of my life, and leaves me with memories and experiences far more important than the commercial success I thought I wanted. I still hear from people whose lives were touched by the show. This, even years after those sound waves escaped into the ether.

I’ll always appreciate the work of professional musicians and performers who bring excitement, joy and soul to rural places. People never would have come to see me talk or perform skits if our show didn’t have really great music. While I was glad to provide a day’s pay to these performers, the truth is they were around before us and continued long after we stopped doing shows. They’re out there now, even as I type this.

Rural Minnesota musicians make our state better. They light the misty halo above small towns at night. They want to be famous, too, but keep going even when they’re not. The slightest things separate break-out artists from local legends. Often, it’s just choices like living in the woods and taking care of elderly parents. You’d be surprised at the musical quality you find outside the big cities. So, why not support these artists? Anyway, that’s the theme of my column in Thursday’s Minnesota Star Tribune.

Sometimes people ask me if we’ll bring back the Great Northern Radio Show. As of this moment, the chances of that happening are low. This was an expensive, labor-intensive production. I am now fully absorbed in a writing career that consumes all of my free time. The market for old time radio variety shows collapsed after the end of A Prairie Home Companion. Frankly, it will take some really weird cultural dynamics to bring them back.

Perhaps if I ever land a full time writing gig, without the academic day job, I might consider doing a music and comedy show again. But I don’t control that, and that’s OK. Until then, we have the memories, and my latest column which is really about the future of Greater Minnesota.

Comments

  1. But you offer so much for your students, the academic day job is a means toward your goal. I write better with my side hustles, teaching, tutoring, editing, formatting, etc. Helping others truly is a selfish thing.

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