-
Dylan acknowledges Nobel, unbunching many undies
Stand down, World. Bob Dylan is fine. He seems happy to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He’s suitably grateful and probably attending the Dec. 10 ceremony in Stockholm. (Naturally, Dylan never makes a hard commitment, saying he’ll be there “if at all possible.”) Dylan is one of those guys who makes news when he talks,…
-
Great Northern Radio Show in Duluth
Come celebrate the 10 year anniversary of MinnesotaBrown.com with the Duluth debut of my Great Northern Radio Show on Saturday, Nov. 12. In 2011, the Great Northern Radio Show gave me the creative outlet I needed to be able to continue mining the depths of Northern Minnesota politics and economics here at the site. I…
-
Trampled by Turtles retreat into shell
When you think about the Northern Minnesota music scene, one band stands out like a banjo at a rock ‘n’ roll show. They go by the name Trampled by Turtles. The Duluth- and Minneapolis-based Americana band brings a hard-charging bluegrass sound. TBT basically put the Duluth scene on the map. They were working local musicians who remade…
-
Minnesota’s Haley Bonar does NPR ‘Tiny Desk’ concert
Minnesota’s own Haley Bonar performed an NPR “Tiny Desk” concert this month, which was shared this week on NPR’s website. The popular series features up-and-coming musicians playing 2-3 songs on or near the music desk at NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. NPR’s Stephen Thompson previews Bonar’s induction into the pantheon of Tiny Desk participants: The first time…
-
Warming up to cold fury of ‘Viking Chant’
The Minnesota Vikings are 4-0, defying expectations after injuries knocked out their two biggest star players. Powered by a suffocating defense and a scrappy attitude, the purple and gold offer genuine hope to beleaguered Minnesota sports fans in 2016. This, even though our skittish kicker is a Chekov pistol waiting to fire, wide and to…
-
Brangelina blowout happened in International Falls
Normally I strive to break the notion that Northern Minnesota is “flyover” country. We must fight the pervasive notion that we of Middle America only serve as the soft marshmallowy interior for the much more interesting coastal regions. And I’ll resume that campaign in the near future. Meantime, we are learning that the high profile breakup between…
-
The Power of Tower on the Great Northern Radio Show
See if you can connect the following: What could all this have in common? This weekend, I’ll head up to Tower, Minnesota, for the next installment of my Great Northern Radio Show on Northern Community Radio. We’ll be broadcasting two one-hour episodes back to back starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24.…
-
Murder loons show mercy on baby duck
Loyal readers of this site might recall a post last year detailing the fixation on murderous black birds shared by contributors to the Mesabi Daily News “Orchids and Onions” section. Nothing is sacred to the hardcore Onionites of the eastern Mesabi: certainly not even Minnesota’s State Bird: the common loon. “Open your eyes!” wrote one…
-
Great Northern Radio Show to broadcast from Tower
On Saturday, Sept. 24, I’ll bring my Great Northern Radio Show to Fortune Bay Resort and Casino near Tower, Minnesota. It’s exciting to start another new season (our sixth!) and to announce some changes. The Great Northern will remain a music and comedy variety show featuring the same talents as before. Instead of broadcasting one live…
-
MinnesotaBrown, KAXE at the State Fair
I’ve seen the numbers. Even though this is the only independent blog wholly dedicated to “Modern Life in Northern Minnesota,” nearly half of you live or work in the Twin Cities metro area. That’s fine. We’re cool. But it means we never get to have awkward exchanges at the grocery store, or silently wonder what’s…
-
Radio consolidation swells in Northern Minnesota
Back in high school in the 1990s, two radio stations impacted my life. The first was the one I listened to: KQDS out of Duluth. Classic rock ‘n’ roll, something I preferred to pop. You couldn’t always get KQ on the Iron Range, but you could on the jacked-up antennae my dad put on our roof…
-
Remembering the author and storyteller Jim Northrup
Jim Northrup was devastatingly funny. That means two things. He was a naturally funny writer and speaker, a gifted storyteller. But Northrup also used his humor to heal the devastation of mind, body and spirit. Northrup died Monday after battling cancer and other health ailments for the past couple years. If you’ve heard of Northrup, you’ve…
-
The man who saw the forest and the trees
Jack Rajala was a lumberman. He was the son of a lumberman. He was the father of a lumberman. Trees were his business, and he knew his business well. The Rajala company is one of the best known timber and lumber operations in Itasca County, and has been for generations. But that’s not the main reason I had…
-
New bike park planned for Itasca County
A long, long time ago, humans arrived in Northern Minnesota on narrow, bumpy paths that wound through trees and around walls of ancient rock. It’s the future now. People look forward to the next big thing. In the future, what we want is … a narrow, bumpy path wound through trees and around walls of…
-
Ely’s State Theater to relight iconic marquee
The towns of the Iron Range stretch along a 135 mile line, each at one time a shining beacon of what a bustling industrial city would look like if it were instead a network of small towns. Like the fortunes of a Rust Belt city, the small towns of the Iron Range have mostly suffered…