How weird can Door County get?

After a personal walking tour (nobody else showed up) of historic downtown Fish Creek, led by retired schoolteacher & native local Barb, whose parents ran the Summertime ice-cream parlor/gift shop on Cedar Street for decades, I hurried north along the coast to Sister Bay in time to catch the Newtonburg Brass Band play in period attire at Waterfront Park yesterday. The musicians sat in formal 1910 dress as though the intervening century of progress in more comfortable styles & cooler fabrics had never happened.

Man, I thought, dig that lady pounding the drumkit, garbed in a big black sun hat & ankle-length dress like some proto-punk Lizzie Borden! I sat on the grass, surrounded by the geriatric set, stifling an urge to mock those bandgeeks from Manitowoc County who acted as though Sousa marches remained all the rage in 2010. A sad sunny spectacle indeed. Still, their music may have sounded better than the hip-hop & pop dreck no doubt pouring into the iPod-covered ears of those teenagers barely clad in bikinis on the beach a stone's throw away.

I stopped at the Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few food items & I ran into my former media-crush, Milwaukee TV sportscaster Jessie Garcia for the second time this week. I hightailed it home, ate & read some Norbert Blei essays. Later I got drunk while watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas on a DVD courtesy of the Menominee Tribal Library in Keshena (via inter-library loan, godsend to poor intellectuals stuck in the boondocks). The drug consumption habits of Dr. Gonzo & Raoul Duke made me feel like a piker, so I drove off to Husby's to hear The Mullet Hunters. The band was a no-show, though, due to a sick child, the baldheaded bartender told me. Note to self: never trust any group, rock or otherwise, with "mullet" in its name.

I sat & studied the crowd, sobering up by slowly sipping a Guinness stout for an hour and a half. The more energetic drinkers, mostly youths born before I managed to graduate from college (1986), regarded me with suspicion - as small-town folk regard all silent strangers. I was pleased, however, to have found a Northwoods tavern where women outnumbered men. My patience was rewarded in with a song by The Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated." And so, it seems, does sedate Door County, Wisconsin, USA.

A Chinese fiddler in Egg Harbor

This summer I'm volunteering at the Peg Egan Performing Arts Center in Egg Harbor, Door County (Wisconsin/USA), home of the 2010 Sunset Concert Series. At the opening show on Sunday evening, June 27th, hundreds of sun-drenched music fans enjoyed Chicago harmonica virtuoso Corky Siegel's eclectic Chamber Blues project.

Siegel presented an intriguing fusion of the blues, classical & world music. His touring group features a beautiful young Taiwanese-born musician named Chihsuan Yang on violin & erhu, a traditional Chinese two-stringed fiddle. The highlight of the show for me was when Ms. Yang led the group on her own untitled composition - "a Chinese blues," Siegel quipped - which started with a long, captivating erhu solo.

At the post-concert reception, I asked Ms. Yang whether she agrees with critics who claim that the violin is the most emotionally expressive instrument, aside from the human voice. She disagreed, asserting that the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) is actually the most expressive instrument. Ms. Yang, who also plays piano & Okinawa shansin, admitted that she was distracted during the concert by the sublime clouds floating around the Egg Harbor venue.

Ms. Yang is versatile, having played erhu for the Dalai Lama (during his June 2007 talk at Millenium Park in Chicago) as well as having toured as a violinist with Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys). The Corky Siegel Chamber Blues group is playing at the Chautauqua Festival in upstate New York & the Montreal Jazz Festival this week. Catch them if you can.

Steel Bridge Song Fest 2010

Here's an incredible small-town music festival you might not have heard of: the Steel Bridge Song Fest (SBSF). This year, the 6th annual SBSF, was an inspiring gathering of 150 musicians, singer-songwriters & (mostly ad hoc) bands, spread over 4 days on an outdoor stage & inside 15 various venues in downtown Sturgeon Bay, Door County, Wisconsin (USA).

Saturday I spoke with LA session drummer Wally Ingram (of Timbuk 3, Stockholm Syndrome & the Sheryl Crow band), who worked with me in Madison in the summer of '81. He played at Butch's, a throwback neighborhood bar, Friday night with co-organizer pat mAcdonald (Timbuk 3) as well as San Francisco guitar virtuoso & singer Eric McFadden in a heavy-blues group called the Legendary Sons of Crack Daniels (sample lyric: "I'm all out of love, baby, let's make some more!").

Pat's raw blues project with fellow Door County resident melaniejane, Purgatory Hill (listed as hailing from "Heaven/Hell, WI") might just blow your mind. Their CDs distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press. The crowd on Sunday afternoon certainly dug their abbreviated set. Among the other highlights for me at SBSF this year:

* Dry-witted, big-hearted Texas troubadour James McMurtry ("Painting by Numbers" etc.) performing with his banjo-playing son Curtis at a moving Fathers & Sons/Mothers & Daughters set.
* New Orleans native (a Hurricane Katrina refugee by way of Memphis & Atlanta) James Hall, who coaxed sweet sounds out of his Gibson hollow body & sang with a passion reminiscent of the late Alex Chilton. I rewarded him with an ear of roasted corn during the closing blues jam Sunday.
* Wisconsin-born ukulele-strumming singer-songwriter Victoria Vox making uncanny trumpetlike vocalizations on both her own tunes and during an all-star jam session.
* Noah Engh howling his California blues into a eerily distorting CB microphone while wailing on slide guitar, sweaty hair flying to the delight of the audience at Butch's late on Friday night.
* Geri X, a riveting rootsy tattooed brunette rocker transplanted from Tampa Bay to Atlanta, moving the Saturday crowd to dance. She autographed my copy of her new CD, "The Bedroom Sessions." She looks as good as she sounds too.
* Solo Per Adulti (For Adults Only), a weird acoustic group of Italian pretty boys led by a scatalogical blasphemer of a singer, who did one tune in English.
*The Maybenauts, a self-described glam pop band from Chicago, featuring a male guitarist who performs in a panda mask, a dynamic young female singer in silver pants plus a pair of tattooed chicks on drums & bass.
* Gospel & bluegrass for the churchy feeling of a Sunday morning coming down.

Not only is Sturgeon Bay (pop. 9,500) packed with hipsters & hotties on SBSF weekend, the supportive community vibe of SBSF is spectacular. The skies may have been mostly gray, but the music was bright & intoxicating. Put it on your calendar for next year (second weekend in June) if you love live original music. It's a non-profit event created, in part, in order to preserve the historic 1930 Michigan Street steel bridge (currently undergoing rehabilitation by the state). Among the vendors this year was Guitars for Vets, whose slogan is "putting the healing power of music in the hands of heroes."

And always remember, folks, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that TWANG!

A wounded fawn along a Wisconsin country road

At the corner of Sugar Hill Road & Hillcrest Drive in the town of Brooklyn (Wis.) this morning I saw a fawn. She was stoically dragging her broken right rear leg as she moved dow.n the side of the sunny asphalt country road.

A white wolfish dog watched the injured deer from across the road, his owner keeping him at bay by voice command. It was just about the saddest damn thing I'd seen in ages, but I admired that fawn's struggle to survive. I slowed down immediately. I pray that I never hit a deer with my little Volkswagon.

I am moving to Door County (Wisconsin) this Friday - just in time for the Steel Bridge Song Fest this wseekend. I hope I have better luck finding a job up there, where the rich Chicagoans temporarily dwell. At least for the summer tourist season. Enjoy the summer, everybody!

Farewell, (UW Professor) Nancy Kaiser

I found the Spring 1988 (the same year I visited East Berlin) issue of the UW-published Monatshefte. It's the classic Lester W. J. Seifert issue guest-edited by (my ex-linguistics prof) Juergen "Aber Deutsch ist eine leichte Sprache!" Eichhoff - on a free-books cart at the Oregon Public Library yesterday. Pathetically it featured a "5 cent" sticker (& the initials DL) on the groovy green cover.

Inside I found a book review by Nancy A. Kaiser captioned "Women in German Yearbook 1: Feminist Studies and German Culture." I especially enjoyed her phrase "Johnson's critical examination of gendered structures in the West German Peace Movement." It makes me nostalgic for my waning undergraduate-student days. Ah, Madison, Wisconsin - circa 1986...

Have a happy retirement, Professorin Kaiser! Danke noch einmal fuer Deine fantastische Hilfe mit meiner Honors-These ueber die Berliner Mauer!
Dein Freund und Student
Josef C. Mrazek

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

This sounds like my kind of national park:
Whiskeytown - no longer merely a '90s
alt-country band featuring
the younger hipster Ryan Adams,
now a sacred place near Klamath, CA.
"I'm headin' for the golden hills
of Californ-eye-ay / with a mandolin
on my knee..."

http://www.nps.gov/whis

Ode to a Stylish Critic

To a FILM CRITIC & FRIEND

I like your new specs, Mike,
those clear plastic frames
reminiscent of Warhol.
Stay critical & droll:
Keep viewing culture
through non-rosy lenses.
You're top of the heap!
Now, did you keep
the Icelandic ash
Cannes souvenir?

-Joe Mrazek (Madison, Wis./USA)
An INSOMNIAC in the state capital