Go to the (Release) Show – or Be There in Spirit!

By Jim Walsh

For the past few years, I’ve been taking notes towards a memoir about creativity. Now’s a good time to talk about it, as this week I surprisingly uncork a new record with my band The Dog Day Cicadas.  

“Surprisingly” because this record probably shouldn’t exist, given how definitively I told myself and just a few others that I was done making music a couple years ago. I said it out loud, the way I have a couple of other times over the years, but this time felt permanent. I had finally quit the game and was happy enough to listen, relieved to peel off the thick skin required to get on stage and expose myself.  

This probably sounds slightly dramatic to all my regularly-gigging friends who don’t even think about any of this and play gigs as often as athletes play games. All I know is the writer in me who requires quiet and concentration doesn’t always meld with the louder, more extroverted singer in me. Overthinking it all, as I’m inclined to do, I put the former on the shelf. But after a year or so, the songs started coming again, the times demanded tunes, so I grabbed my guitar and got going. 

I’m happy to be back. The truth is I had to quit for a bit to get to that fresh perspective, to miss every tasty morsel of writing, recording, practicing, and playing. Ever since, I’ve been diving deep into the whys of it and what exactly I consider to be success and failure in my, and anyone’s, career in music. What I’ve learned will speak to plenty of my fellow musicians and songwriters reading this. To cut to the chase, I’m here to say that I’ve gone through the purgatory, so you don’t have to. Here’s what I learned, here’s my advice (to myself):  

Do nothing. Rest up. Write. Sing alone. Ditch the performative male without and hang with the inner child within. Dance with yourself like a tantric devil. Heal and repair. Forget the risk-reward equation that lands on the side of safety over rejection. Ignore the mindless, relentless, thoughtless, soul-sucking pace of American life. Read and recognize other artists’ stories who simply upped and quit or paused or otherwise put the brakes on hard. 

After all that, don’t quit. Get outta your head. Keep going. Write your songs. Make your records. Learn something new. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Play your shows. Take a break if need be but never let that flame in you die. Because putting yourself out there is an important act, inspiring to the rest of us, more so than you may ever know.  

“Stay vulnerable, be vulnerable,” was the message from Steve Almaas’s friend Jody Kurilla at Steve’s memorial two weeks ago, and that’s gospel in these heart-hardening times. For artists, that means to nurture your sensitive side by any means necessary. For musicians, one of the best way-of-life credos is currently bouncing around social media feeds, from Kansas photographer and musician  Joshua Heath Scott: 

“There’s a version of musical success almost nobody on the internet talks about anymore, and it’s the most common one in human history. You make music with your friends. You record your songs. You play the local bar on Friday and the church on Sunday and the festival in the park in July. You teach a kid down the street how to hold a guitar. You write something that gets sung at a wedding. You die having made beauty for the people who shared your life. That is success. That has always been success. Most musicians who have ever lived have lived exactly that life, and most of them were not unhappy about it.” 

Point being, in lieu of capitalistic rewards or fame, you chart your “wins,” small though they may be to anyone else, which can serve as little bits of kindling that keep the flame lit. 

My latest such win came this summer, when Minnesota Music Archive Executive Director Mitch Thompson invited me and my buddy, bandmate, and fellow songwriter Doug Collins to play some music at their booth during Minneapolis Mile of Music. We unpacked our guitars on the corner of 5th and Nicollet Mall outside the Meet Minneapolis Visitor Center and busked our way through some of our tunes, along with a rush hour-inspired version of The Replacements’ “Kiss Me on the Bus” for good measure, as the 18G blared past us and our audience of indifferent downtown workers heading home.  

But hey, we made some connections and had some heartfelt laughs and got the chance to sing. 

As we played, I looked across the street and noticed for the first time the blacked-out front on 5th Street that was once Jay’s Longhorn. In addition to being the place where I fell in love with punk rock and local music, the Longhorn was one of the first places I sang professionally 46 summers ago—with my band REMs, opening for Safety Last, a few weeks after our three-night club debut opening for Flamin’ Ohs at Duffy’s.  

When I put it together, I squinted and I could almost see the city the way it was back then.  

With Doug and I singing across the way from the (now Bob Dylan mural-adorned) parking lot where everyone parked for free in those new wave days, I couldn’t help but crack a smile thinking about how that 19-year-old kid who was scared to get on stage would appreciate that this old man is still out there, still getting over his stage fright and singing his guts out.   

My late great friend and hero Slim Dunlap accompanied me on guitar and harmonica for my release party for the first Mad Ripple record at Bryant Lake Bowl a few years ago. We practiced exactly once, with wiseman Slim correctly telling me, “The release party is kind of the funeral for your record.” In so many ways, he was so right. All the work and planning is done, now your hard-won work and fun is out in the world, and you lay it to rest. 

In this town, album, CD, single, and video release parties happen all the time, and a healthy music community depends on everybody showing up as much and in as many ways as possible. So last Thursday, I made a point of getting to The Schooner Tavern for the release party for Scott Allen and The List’s new record JUNE.  

Scott was one of the few people to whom I confessed my quitting woes a couple summers ago as we watched some pals play on Nicollet Island. I don’t know him well, but he struck me in that moment as someone I could trust with my soul-baring. He understood what I was talking about immediately, and he talked about his own breaks and thoughts of retirement. 

Over the next couple of years, I saw Scott out and about several times, and we always nodded knowingly or did a quick catch-up, bonded by that conversation between our formerly secret-scared selves. Then, two weeks ago at Dusty’s, he gave me his and his band’s great new CD, and I was happy to report that I had one for him, too – comrades in continuing. 

The scene at The Schooner that night was a small communal miracle, a rush everyone should experience more than once in their life and a vivid snapshot of the “we take care of us” ethos, which was lit anew here in the winter of ’26. In other words, it was warm, inviting, genuine, meaningful, and rockin’.  

As Scott and his great band ripped, I sat with members of The de’Lindas and Lolo’s Ghost, and was surrounded by many musicians in the room who’ve recently hosted release parties, including Mary K. Stone, John Magnuson, Ted Hajnasiewicz, Craig Teiken, Edie Rae, Mike Owens, Terri Lynn Owens, and members of Hot Pastrami, Institutional Green and The Driftless Area.