First, just, thank you Saint Paul! Thank you Tim Houlihan and your band of music slinging warriors! We had so much fun. Too much fun. We had a massive basket of Easter egg colored fun. Our only complaint is no complaint at all, why did that bartender pour us a glass of Tequila in the Russian bar we went to after the show?   Last night my older brother Aaron came out and sang onstage with me a song we co-wrote in college, Beer Beer Beer And the Girls Come Here. Aaron was awestruck at the music that Julianne and Tom are making. Julianne and Tom played like they came out of the jungle, found and interacted with their instruments like it was their first touch of civilization. Julianne sang like she’d drank the savage water of melodic sorcery. “This is totally what you should be doing,” my brother told me. If I’m honest with myself, and this is the nature of having an older brother, then honesty compels me to understand that of anyone’s approval in the world, I value Aaron’s the most. Aaron shaped the fabric of who I am more than anyone. If you know the short story, then you know what I mean when I say that last night conjured the emotions of James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues.

We are an hour out of Minneapolis and just sang happy birthday via speaker phone to Julianne’s daughter Zoey. It’s rainy. Hek is reading a Bob Dylan feature Rolling Stone. They people who say that a merry companion is music on the journey had children and those children listened to punk rock and they said that you are only as good as your last show. Sometimes your road leads you to familiar places. Every summer my family took a family trip. These were epic cross country journeys whose sagas proliferates in my memory of childhood. This year my family, with Isaac at 12 years old holding up the anchor, have gone to Detroit Lakes, which is a minor detour on the way to our show at The Red Raven in Fargo, ND. So we are going to pop in on my family’s summer vacation. I’m ecstatic to introduce the clan to, well, my current clan, Hek, Tom and Julianne.

Finally, you wouldn’t want to go through life without watching Johnny play the shaker banana.