SMILE: You’re playing Homegrown Music Festival

By Tom Wilkowske For the News Tribune

On the cusp of playing my 10th Homegrown Music Festival, I’m going to make a promise before God, man and the DNT’s readership:

I will practice more.

See, my bass playing could use more work. Although I’m playing bass in A Band Called Truman now, I’m really a converted guitar player. I feel like an imposter.

And my backing vocals could be better, more consistent. That whole playing-notes-while-singingother-notes thing is not as easy as it looks. I don’t know how Sting does it.

But that’s not really what I’m talking about. The thing I really need to practice the most is smiling.

At least once per gig, Leon Rohrbaugh, Homegrown pioneer and Truman’s frontman, tells me to smile. (Usually I grimace back.) Others have described my playing look as pained or angry. My family has even given it a name: my “bass face,” a sort of pursed lips grimace.

What can I say? I’m enjoying myself, really I am. I think music is a gift from the universe and playing the Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is a blast, even though:

• Sometimes the venue isn’t a great fit for your band (a nine-piece band on a singer-songwriter stage, for example).

• Sometimes the time slot is too early or too late for your crowd.

• Sometimes your gear craps out two minutes before showtime, or your hand cramps up in the third song.

• Sometimes your band, which plays six to nine local gigs a year, is up against the worldtouring, huge-drawing Black-Eyed Snakes. In the same time slot, two blocks away.

Ultimately, that stuff melts away. You set aside what could go wrong, get tuned up, and start rocking. People show up and cheer. Once the music starts flowing, you take a deep breath or three. You tell yourself to be here now. You feel the bass, in your hands and in your feet, and lock in with the kick drum.

Sometimes you even notice yourself smiling.

Here are some times that others may have noticed me smiling as well:

• 2003: My first Homegrown was as guitar player for Hobo Alley, a post-Ballyhoo spinoff project. About the only thing I remember from the gig was my attire: purple wind pants and a huge black windbreaker.

Hilarious!

• 2006: I played Lakeview Coffee with Steve Horner in our folk-pop duo, Bare Common. It would turn out to be our last gig. I did remember to smile when someone snapped a picture. We got a one-line mention in the DNT (“like Simon and Garfunkel, but less whiny”).

• 2011: Truman, as a four-piece rock band, played the first Sunday night of Homegrown at Lake Avenue Cafe at a kickoff/ thank-you event for volunteers. The Crunchy Bunch opened and the crowd, while not huge, was uberenthusiastic. They took over the mics partway through our “Whole Lotta Love” cover.

• 2012: Truman played Carmody Irish Pub on a Monday night. Not one of the coveted big nights/ big stages, but then again, we were one of only a few acts playing. The place was at capacity and so packed, the crowd was pushing right up against us. We barely had room to swing a guitar neck without bashing someone in the head or spilling a drink (both happened). The highlight: our cover of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” with Sarah Krueger belting out the “war, children” chorus. Photo evidence shows two things: I am smiling, and Leon is wearing his tie as a headband.

• 2013 (maybe): Truman plays Amazing Grace, a venue best suited for solo singer-songwriters, maybe duos. We’d ballooned to eight members by then, including a four-piece horn section, and stuck out at odd angles from the little stage. Multi-keyboardist

Jim Pospisil stacked his gear sideways on top of an upright piano. A cold, wet fog blew off the lake and the joint was full and warm.

• 2016: Truman opened The Sports Garden on a Wednesday night at the un-rock-and-roll hour of 8:45 p.m. My bass was a newly painted deep purple in honor of Prince, who had died 12 days before.

We had already been considering an early-career Prince cover, “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” But Prince’s death seemed to require more. Leon’s standing joke for years in rehearsals was to start “Let’s Go Crazy,” complete with fading echo (“Dearly beloved… We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life, life, life, life...”). It wasn’t a joke any more. We learned “Let’s Go Crazy” for real. In practices, Jim dialed in the over-the-top organ intro, Brad Bombardier worked up horn charts, and Leon worked up the blistering guitar solos note for note. Then that night, around 10 p.m., near the end of our set, we sprung the Prince covers on a crowd that organizers said was close to 1,000. They went nuts. They cheered loud and long, long enough for us to look around at each other, go “wow” and soak it in. It felt really, really, good.

Smile-worthy, even. u

Tom Wilkowske is a writer, musician and consultant from Duluth. His favorite Homegrown T-shirt is the classic 2016 “Perormer” edition. Reach him at tomwilkowske@gmail.com.