Scenic Route

Smokin' Joe Scarpellino is a longtime musician and event organizer in the Twin Cities music scene. He calls in to the Scenic Route to talk about the "Just Be Kind" online concert series in rememberance of his friend and Kind Country frontman Max Graham, who tragically passed away in early March. 

The series is running primarily on Facebook through March 21st, with more information here.

Twin Cities songwriter Sarah Morris has a new EP coming March 2st called Between Here and There that features a number of collaborations with other artists. She talks about the upcoming release along with making her 2020 album All Mine on the Scenic Route.

Dan Israel is a longtime singer-songwriter from St. Louis Park with two new singles out, "Pandemic Blues" and "Late at Night" coming on the heels of his 2020 album Social Distance Anxiety Disorder. He chats with Will Moore about all the new songs and navigating a pandemic world as a musician over the last year.

Last Friday saw another edition of the TIP Jar Minifest, a now monthly block of music where 3 local and regional artists play whole virtual music sets on WTIP. Pete Kavanaugh, Christopher David Hanson, and Mysterious Ways all put on terrific performances. The series will continue each final Friday of the month, through the spring.

You can find the archive of the most recent and all past sets here.

More information about the TIP Jar musicians fund can be found at cookcountychamber.org

Annie and the Bang Bang are a four-piece band from the Twin Cities who recently came out with an album called "Loveland", full of loud and hard-hitting original songs. Will Moore speaks with Annie Enneking and Kari Tweiten about songwriting at sleepovers, the bands beloved mascot, and more.

You can find out more information about the album on the group's Bandcamp.

Will Moore is joined by the trio of Julia Floberg, Isabel Damman, and Aubrey Weger known as Lady Spruce. The folk trio has at last released their debut, self-titled album full of both original and traditional songs and some pop standards interwoven with fiddle tunes of old. You can find more about the new record at their Bandcamp.

Dharma Hounds is a group from the Twin Cities whose sound ranges from "from Americana Psycho-Billy to Northern 'Peat-Bog' Boogie Rock". Guitarist Drew Druckrey and keyboardist John Reinhart explain what that could possibly mean, and more about their self-titled debut album which came out in January. 

Each Friday evening in January, WTIP had 3 artists play a whole hour of music live over the air from remote settings for the TIP Jar Minifest.

You can find more information about the TIP Jar musicians fund at cookcountychamber.org.

Those artists were:

1/8 - Michael Monroe, Adam Moe, Gordon Thorne with Jim Elverhoy

1/15 - Joe Paulik, The Sapsuckers, Bug Dope

1/22 - Chris Gillis with Thomas Stamps, John Gruber, Jim McGowan

1-28 - Kenna Rose, Jim and Michele Miller, Bump Blomberg

You can hear all those archived performances here.

Minnesota folk songwriter Chris Holm has teamed up with Minneapolis honky-tonk country band The Federales along with some other area musicians to comprise the Looneys, a new group born out of playing and writing music remotely during the 2020 pandemic. Holm, along with James Gould and Mark Larsen of the Federales, join Will Moore on the Scenic Route to talk about their new single "Days Crawl By", along with each of their new records from earlier in the year, and some of their great new original Christmas songs.

Hayward, Wisconsin's own Sonofmel returns to the Scenic Route with plenty of stories and philosophies, as well as new music. He talks about what he's been up to in this pandemic year, taking cold dips in icy waters every day, and playing gigs where he can safely. He also talks about a new song he wrote and serendipitously had featured in a video, and the slew of new music and writing he has coming next year.