Manifesto

Hello out there in cyberspace. This is my first contribution to the Cedar blog after having worked at the Cedar over a year and it is truly an honor to be joining such thoughtful music appreciators on the Cedar’s interweb home. I’m not really one to force other people to read about my meandering personal opinions, there’s enough people doing that already out there on the internet. I joined the Cedar blog so that I could have an opportunity to sit down with some of the amazingly talented artists that come through the Cedar and talk with them about their music. I specifically hope to examine how the wide range of music we host at the Cedar fits into what we’re doing here in this kooky little niche of Minneapolis called the West Bank and further how that ties into national and international trends in music. I’m approaching this contributing blogger role as a musician myself, so much of my focus will be on artists’ approach to their craft and how they see themselves tying in to what we do at the Cedar. I hope that by interviewing different artists every week, from the local level to the international, and posting their responses that my contributions will shed light on effective approaches to handle the multi-faceted music industry of today. Specifically I hope to show how unique the Cedar is in providing such quality of music from such a variety of genres. In these hard economic times when funding for the arts is constantly on the chopping block of government planning, the Cedar has risen to meet budget challenges and has actually seen record growth at a time when other organizations have gone under. I am incredibly lucky to be a part of the Cedar and really feel like something special is happening here. With my limited journalistic talents I hope to document this time in Cedar history like Kerouac did the listless lifestyle of the Beats, like Hunter S. Thompson did the post-60s identity crisis of the Love Generation, like J.K. Rowling did the teen angst and drama of a British wizard boarding school. Stay tuned for my next post when I sit down with bassist Jesse Schuster of local sweethearts Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles after their recent Valentine’s Day concert.

ONE LOVE!