Events
Perfect Duluth Day Outdoor Summer Concert Primer 2021
A Band Called Truman, seen here performing as part of the Chester Creek Concert Series in 2017, returns to Chester Bowl on Aug. 10 as part of the 2021 series. (Photo by Brian Barber)
Last summer was such a bummer, Perfect Duluth Day didn’t even bother publishing its annual preview of outdoor concerts. There was nearly nothing to report. With the pandemic seemingly under control in 2021, however, the list of options is lengthy. Rock, however, seems to have barely survived the pandemic. Bluegrass, folk and country dominate the concert scene. (more…)
Math, Semantics and the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a minor math problem for event organizers that seems fairly straightforward and simple to solve. If you promote an annual happening, and it was canceled in 2020, then that year shouldn’t count when you add up how many times the event has occurred. When you announce in 2021 that the whatever annual Whatever Festival is coming up, it should be the same number that it was supposed to be in 2020.
I mean, that’s obvious, right? If I give you an apple every year for 14 years, and last year I didn’t give you one, then the apple I give you this year is the 15th apple, right? It’s not the 16th apple just because I wanted to give you one last year and couldn’t.
The math is fairly straightforward, and for the most part people are getting it right. Take for instance Duluth’s Bayfront Reggae and World Music Festival. The inaugural event was held in 2006. The 2020 event was to be the 15th annual, but it was canceled. Therefore, the promoter is referring to this year’s event as the 15th annual. And that is correct. The 2021 festival will be the 15th in the series.
But I’ve known for quite a while that keeping track of how many times an event has happened in the past isn’t always the top priority of the organizers, who let’s remember have an event to organize with all the tasks that go with it. On one hand, you’d think being willing to get involved in organizing everyone else’s fun might be a thing only math-obsessed nerds do, but that’s just not the case. (more…)
Rawkers win unsanctioned Homegrown slap-together kickball
Scott “Starfire” Lunt surveys the kickball field in his Homegown jumpsuit.
Ryan Nelson was barking all game from his first base post for the Friday Rawkers. In the eighth inning, he actually uttered something that had a grain of truth: “It almost feels like Homegrown.”
He and 50 other people were in synch Saturday afternoon as an unsanctioned Homegrown Music Festival Kickball Classic broke out at the field in the back of Chester Park. Those who were there will call it good, and witnessed a win by the Rawkers over the Saturday Rollers that now puts Friday ahead in the all-time series, 11 wins to 10. (more…)
Videos: Homegrown 2021 Day Five
Thursday’s Homegrown Music Festival content is three and a half hours of livestreamed music from 2104. (more…)
Videos: Homegrown 2021 Day One
The Homegrown Music Festival is underway, with video releases and livestreams throughout the week. (more…)
Homegrown Music Festival 2021 Primer
The Homegrown Music Festival is pretty much all online again this year, but things are a bit more organized this time around, with planned video releases and livestreams every day, May 2-9. (more…)
Call for Performers: Welcome Home {Grown} | Live {Stream}
We miss live music! We all miss live music … right?
This will be the 11th year of 2104’s Soup Social, dubbed #SoupB4Supe. Last year we were forced into the Live Stream gig … and now Bryce Kastning and I, also with support from a few others, have been producing Music Live Stream’s since April 2020. If you haven’t listened to our streams … you can pick them up as often as you want, they are at youtube.com/duluthiscool or 2104.us. As of this writing, we have created 22 streams from 2104. (more…)
The We All Belong Creativity Exhibit
The We All Belong Creativity Exhibit, an all-campus art show at the University of Minnesota Duluth with art, poetry and video makes its debut today. It is focused on the 2021 Summit on Equity, Race, & Ethnicity theme: “Being Antiracist, Doing Antiracism.” (more…)
2020: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
Obviously this past year has been about the lousiest live-music year ever, but nonetheless we continue our tradition at Perfect Duluth Day of looking back at a sampling of gig posters. Some shows really happened, with crowds of people, before the pandemic. Others were cancelled. Others were held outside in spaces that allowed physical distancing. And some were streamed online. (more…)
Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival 2020 Trailer
This year’s Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour is virtual. Films are available online from Thanksgiving Day until Oct. 24.
Proceeds benefit the Duluth Cross-Country Ski Club if purchased via duluthxc.com. Once there, click “DXC link to BMFF” to get started.
The Slice: Virtual Opera with LOON
Duluth-based Lyric Opera of the North is creating a virtual experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The theater group is teaming with the newly formed Decameron Opera Coalition, comprised of nine U.S.-based companies, to premiere Tales from a Safe Distance, a multi-week virtual opera inspired by an historic text, Boccaccio’s The Decameron. LOON presents the first act tonight, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m. (more…)
Video: Henry V in Ordean Court at UMD
Theater students at the University of Minnesota Duluth recently finished a run of outdoor performances of William Shakespeare’s Henry V. Auditions were in May, about three months into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Monday Night Trivia at Earth Rider
So I’m looking for outdoor activities during the pandemic, and while Souptown is in Wisconsin, it is host to some of the coolest events. (more…)
Floaty Flotilla event canceled due to small craft advisory
Hi all. I am canceling the Floaty Flotilla at the last minute because the wind has kicked up enough for a small-craft advisory. Will reschedule for when the water is like glass. Thank you~
https://perfectdulustg.wpenginepowered.com/the-event/floaty-flotilla/
Duluth’s story told by one of its greatest chroniclers
Tony Dierckins is among Duluth’s greatest resources. Few have given so much of their time and energy to telling the story of the city. As a small publisher, perhaps few have taken as many personal risks hoping the stories of Duluth will find their audiences. (more…)
Selective Focus: Virtual Duluth
Started on Facebook by Matt Dressel, Virtual Duluth is people posting live, streaming arts and music happenings.
My Partner is Starting a Cult
There’s a church revival going on in Lincoln Park, but it’s inspired by art, not God. My partner of nearly 25 years is one of the instigators of a self-proclaimed “cult.”
I guess you could say I drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago because I can’t say I was shocked when he announced his plans.
Life with Troy Rogers, aka Robot Rickshaw, is never dull. He builds musical robots so that he can cart them around Canal Park and the Lakewalk for pop-up performances while wearing a hazmat suit and gas mask with a teddy bear strapped to his chest.
“What have you been up to lately?” Troy’s aunt asked recently, trying to make conversation at a family event. “I’m starting a cult,” he deadpanned.
There were no follow up questions or small talk. Just a perplexed expression from the pious Catholic and an uncharacteristically quick end to the conversation as she escaped to the next room. (more…)
Images from Duluth’s Citywide Snowball Fight
Montage of photos by J.P. Rennquist from Duluth’s Citywide Snowball Fight at Leif Erikson Park.
PDD Quiz: Coming Attractions in 2020
Peer into the future with this edition of the PDD quiz, which previews events coming Duluth’s way in 2020.
The next PDD quiz, reviewing this month’s headlines and happenings, will be published on Jan. 26. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Jan. 23. (more…)
2019: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
Here it is, Perfect Duluth Day’s annual collection of things that were stapled to telephone polls, taped to lavatory walls, pinned to bulletin boards and uploaded to websites. As usual, by no means is this a comprehensive collection of local rock posters, nor is it a carefully curated archive of the best. It’s just a bunch of them we noticed and didn’t lose in 2019. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Winter Celebrations
Now that winter is here, can winter shenanigans be far behind? Test your knowledge of local wintry festivals with this week’s quiz!
The next PDD quiz, reviewing the events that made headlines 2019, will be published on Dec. 29. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Dec. 23. (more…)
Acceptance Speech, Mayor of Snow-Fort City
Thank you, distinguished citizens, for conferring upon me this office of Snow-Fort City Mayor. It is no small honor to assume my half-imaginary duties in this pop-up, collaborative, city-planning art fantasy at the edge of Lake Superior. “City” is an aspirational term for this arrangement of snow walls and monuments in Duluth’s Leif Erickson Park. Snow-Fort City’s true location lies somewhere within our skulls — like all cities. My Facebook post initiating construction was shared more than a hundred times in just a few hours, and it attracted the Duluth News-Tribune and KBJR-6/CBS-3, which tells me the vision of the snow-fort city is the real object. Almost none of the post-sharers, newspaper readers, or TV viewers made it down to the actual Snow-Fort City. They are content to view it with their eyes closed, in its most pure form: the Platonic one.
It literally came to me in a vision, like the origin of so many great cities. In a way, like Duluth itself. I remember the words of George Nettleton’s wife from 1856, when her husband’s mind swam with dreams of Duluth-as-future-city: “I thought he had a pretty long head to see that there was going to be a city here sometime when there was then nothing” (Duluth: An Illustrated History of the Zenith City by Glenn N. Sandvik). (more…)
Snow-Fort City, Day 8
I am running for Mayor of #snowfortcity. (more…)
Snow-Fort City, day 7
#snowfortcity day 7. Leif Erikson Park. Best day yet and perhaps even the last. The weather’s turning subzero for a while but we had this one last great day of wet, buildable snow to top things off. (more…)
Snow-Fort City, day 6
#snowfortcity day 6. Leif Erikson Park. The fort of the tree people is the most durable and impressive structure so far. Albeit unfinished, the vision and craft of its architects (principally Morgan Pirsig) is impressive.