I’m moving to Sedalia, Mo., to start a new job, so I’ll soon be racking up new positive and negative experiences. (Based on my first dalliance with the town and the job, it will be positive, but that’s balanced out by my naturally pessimistic attitude.)
So it’s time to turn the page … and therefore dwell on my top 10 experiences as an entertainment reporter in Brainerd, Minn., from 2003-08. All joking aside, my brain will soon clear out space for new stimuli, so I want to get my Brainerd memories down.
The Eclectic Cafe — When I close my eyes and think of Brainerd, I picture the downtown coffee-and-beer shop with the lights dimmed. And I hear melancholy folkies like Charlie Parr or indie poppers like the Stereofidelics playing their hearts on a cold winter night. Every town deserves a club like this, where the cool people hang out. I don’t mean trendy-cool. I mean genuine people — they could be of any age or background — who wear their happy or sad (or both) lives on their sleeves. I hope the E’s founder, Matt Taylor, knows how much that place meant to me.
Angie Stevens — Due to the nearby casinos, I interviewed a fair number of “on their way down” superstars. Brainerd can lay claim to one “on her way up” superstar, though: Folk musician Stevens, who left Brainerd before I got there but came back for regular shows after moving to Denver. She’s a huge talent, but not a huge ego — she liked to joke about the particular way I said “huh” during phone interviews.
Reviewing movies — I got in on the tail end of the period where newspapers had local movie critics, and while it lasted, I loved it. Now, of course, there are more unpaid critics than ever, but there was something particularly neat about getting paid to watch movies and having readers tell me if they agreed or disagreed with my opinion.
Bluegrass music — I didn’t know I liked bluegrass until I heard a lot of it in the Brainerd lakes area. The genre goes down particularly smoothly at outdoor festivals; Pine River’s Lakes Bluegrass Festival was the best.
CLC theater — For such a small college, some entertaining plays were staged, and occasionally a great national act (like the Second City troupe) would stop by. The folks at Central Lakes College, namely theater director Patrick Spradlin, always treated me great and got into the spirit of the artist-reporter relationship. I missed that during my semester of playing phone tag … I mean covering sports.
The real people — Photographer Steve Kohls often talked about meeting “the real people” whenever we’d do a story on a fiddler with a lawn on his roof or a guy who liked low brass so much that he started his own chapter of Tuba Christmas. The lakes area had “real people” of all stripes, and they’re the reason why getting out of the office is always better than doing a phone interview.
Books — Oh, a lot of crap came across my desk, make no mistake. But without this job, I wouldn’t have read Will Weaver’s “Sweet Land” or the various works by Minnesota essayist Bill Holm. I’m glad I did. I expect the writings of Holm, who passed away earlier this year, will become more respected as the years go by.
The comedy club — For more than a year, downtown Brainerd actually had a very good, very cheap comedy club in the basement of the Rail, a country-music bar. In retrospect, it seems like a bizarre fluke. One of the so-bad-he’s-good comics, Dennis Anton, was my favorite opening act. Sample joke: “She asked me why I was covered in melted cheese. I said, ‘You told me you wanted me to be more nacho.'” Five bucks well spent.
Battle of the Bands — At the annual Fourth of July Battle of the Bands, Ed Koehler of local band SKATYRS was one of my co-judges for six years. He brought the perspective of a guitarist who knew how hard those kids were working. I brought the perspective of a non-musician who just knows what sounds good (and what sounds bad). Ed and I had a lot of fun discussions, and between us and the other judges, we picked a deserving winner every year.
“The Hole Story” — In 2006, Boston filmmaker Alex Karpovsky finally pushed his indie comedy in the town where he had shot it a few years earlier. It’s about a hole on a Brainerd-area lake that mysteriously stayed open during the winter, and it’s pretty funny. Plus, it gave me a chance to write about a movie again!
Main image: “The Hole Story”