Posts Tagged ‘eau claire’ |  

I’ve said it before, but if you’re ever in the Chippewa Valley, a visit to the Chippewa Valley Museum is worth your mileage.  It’s an unobtrusive structure settled close to the earth beneath big white pines remnant of the lumbering days of yore (that filled nearby Half Moon Lake with sawdust).  Their Farm Life exhibit (and the word exhibit doesn’t convey the half of it) has attracted national attention.  I don’t know how to describe it other than to say it’s real, heartfelt, and right. They’ve just posted some YouTube clips to convey a sense of it.

This sorta sums up why I like how things work around here: The same guy who recorded and produced this also recorded and produced this*.  And while the Long Beds and Desolatevoid are unlikely to split the bill on any given Saturday night, we will give each other the farmer nod at the coffee shop or gas station on any given Tuesday.  At the core, it’s not about genre or taste or better or worse, it’s about punching in.  Grab your lunch pail and have at’er.

*Heads up: While there are times (cleaning out the pole barn, doing taxes) when I fancy a little homegrown grindcore, you should not click the link if fast-and-nasty puts you off your feed.  For my part, I spend most of my time mooning around wishing I was Greg Brown or even Patty Griffin.  However, should you find yourself burning an afternoon searching for misplaced receipts, may I recommend “Isolation Embrace” with a “Friend Placebo” chaser?

Wherever I am standing when I say it, I am from – and of – New Auburn, Wisconsin.  Nothin’ without Nobbern.  And these days I get my mail at the Fall Creek post office (where Shirley knows your name).  But beginning in the fall of 1983 and running right up into the present, the river city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has forked me into tangents I never saw coming.  That’s a story I’ve already told.  What I like about this story is how it focuses on the new generation and what they’re doing.  (Full – as they say – disclosure: in addition to his writing career (and dare we say it, banjo career) Andy Moore is also the Wisconsin Public Television producer who converts my bloopers into what has become known around here as “The Clodhopper Report“).