The Head of the Lakes Fair is an annual tradition in Superior. The weekend event usually features bands performing on a stage in the center of the Superior Speedway. Often the headliner is a major touring act that is a bit past its prime. Below is a scattered list of bands that have played the festival. Because … nostalgia.
Matt Farley of Danvers, Mass. has been producing slapped-together novelty songs under clumsy pseudonyms since roughly 2004. The emphasis is clearly on quantity over quality; his website notes he has released 19,000 songs. He purportedly made $23,000 off his music in 2013.
The heroic story of a man who led one of Minnesota’s largest disaster rescue efforts will be told in a motion picture planned for release in 2019.
This postcard was mailed 105 years ago — June 8, 1913 — when E.J. Turnbo was “enjoying the cool breeze and having one big time.”
We need to unearth some Duluth-based songwriter history. The current reference librarians at the Duluth Public Library are unable to track down the lyrics to a song about Duluth by Biz White, a female librarian during the 1980s and ’90s.
Here’s the conversation:
I was visiting with friends yesterday and one of them said he had been trying to find the lyrics to a song written about Duluth. It was written by Biz White, who used to work at DPL, and he thought it may have been for a Playhouse production. Some of the lyrics he remembered were, “Oh Duluth, your granite hills rise,” and “Oh Duluth, your heartless hills.” I was hoping you had some ideas.
Thanks,
Kim
Help! Does anyone have these lyrics recorded?
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve pulled out another relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s connoisseur of drinking establishments from 1999 to 2009. In this article we travel back ten years to the time of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 — before Duluth’s Mexico Lindo restaurant existed — when the ol’ “sultan of sot” paid a visit to Baha Billy’s at the Fitger’s Brewery Complex. The article was originally published in the June 30, 2008 issue of the Transistor.]
Have all you motherfucking patriotic cheesedicks got your economic stimulus checks from the IRS yet? That’s valuable drinking money, you know. While a few misguided Duluthians might use that free cashola to pay down their massive credit-card debt or save up to fix their sewer lines, the rest of us know what it’s really for: top-shelf liquor.
And so I walk into the Fitger’s Brewery Complex with three crispy hundos in my pocket, which is pretty much the only way you can walk into a shopping mall on Grandma’s Marathon weekend. My destination is Baja Billy’s Cantina & Grill, the tourist trappiest of the four drinking establishments in the building. Sure, my money would go a lot further at, for example, the Rustic in West Duluth, but I’m not dealing with real money today. I’m going to sit outside on Duluth’s best deck, look out at the full moon over Lake Superior, and slowly get hammered, all on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.
Warrior Printress Letterpress and Design is a partnership between two creative entrepreneurs, Janelle Miller and Stacie Renné. Janelle, the original Warrior Printress, started the printing business in 2010 after apprenticing and working for Rick Allen at Kenspeckle Letterpress (featured previously on PDD). Stacie Renné, a graphic artist experienced in brand identity, advertising, and corporate communications, joined forces with Janelle this summer. This week in Selective Focus, they tell us what they have planned for Warrior Printress.
WP: The heart of our business partnership is the shared love for place, for the lake, for paper, for type, for the clank of the press, for the hiss of the ink on the press rollers, and shared passion for creating a quality impression. Couple all those things with a desire for delivering simple, creative designs that communicate clearly, and you have Warrior Printress Letterpress and Design. We fuse contemporary design, technology, and techniques with old world, quality printing processes to create a product that, as we like to say is, “as unique as you are.”
My father-in-law was recently telling me about a photo he saw in the 1970s(?) that someone took of ice along the north shore during a storm.
When the photographer developed the film, one of the ice/water spray images appeared to be an image of Jesus (sort of like the Jesus in the toast thing from some years ago).
Does anyone know of this photo and/or the photographer? Father-in-law would like to track down a copy of the photo if available somewhere.
This undated photo, attributed to photographer John Vachon, comes with the following caption:
View of the ore classification yards of the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railroad. Here cars are made up in train loads according to quality specification and hauled by powerful mallet engines down the six-mile grade to the Duluth ore dock.
Ryan Welles interviewed the Richardson brothers today on his “True Stories and Other Damage” podcast. In it, we detail the history of how we got to Duluth 20 years ago, and provide an overview of the creative projects we have been involved with here, from Gonzo Science to Mr. Nice to Lake Superior Aquaman. Other topics include our perennial concerns of psychedelics, UFOs, Dadaism, and several things in between.
Duluth-based bluegrass band Glen’s Neighbor recently released its third album, Ice Cream. The video for the single “Explore, Dream, Believe, Imagine” is directed and animated by Shane Nelson.
The Lake Superior Marine Museum & Maritime Visitor Center doesn’t look much different today than it did in this postcard, probably from the 1970s.
To celebrate 20 years of smoking, slinging sandwiches and stumbling through the seasons with various levels of success, Northern Waters is offering discounts, sales and giveaways all year long. For the month of July the business is conducting a Duluth-wide (within its delivery range) Scavenger Hunt.
