In the heart of the Rondo community, music comes alive at the Walker West Music Academy. Founded in 1988 by musicians Reverend Carl Walker and Grant West, Walker West Music Academy has created a safe space in the community, teaching people of all ages and backgrounds to play music. When the academy moved from its…

The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal recently published a list of the largest LGBTQ+ businesses in the area, and three of the top five are prominent entertainment venues. In order to qualify for this list, “businesses must be headquartered in the Twin Cities 24-county metro area and be majority owned by a person who identifies themselves as…

Bananas Foster French Toast These ska sensations will have you skankin’ through the Midway all night long. UpNorth Puff Pasty This Ely rapper will have you nodding your head with his bold lyrics and bouncing beats built on polka samples. Shrimp Ceviche This jazz guitar quartet will wow you with their fleet-fingered renditions of Ritchie…

When McNally Smith College of Music abruptly shut its doors late last year, hundreds of people were displaced. The institution listed financial trouble and low enrollment as the reasons for the swift closure. Since then, the college has sat empty on Exchange Street in downtown St. Paul. Because everything ended so quickly, everyone was left…

If you’ve heard anything about Rock the Garden 2018, you know it got hot. Just like last year, a sell-out crowd stood under the sun, basking in summer heat and good music. Of course, the first priority on a warm day is hydration. So in honor of Rock the Garden’s 11,000 attendees and all the…

The Suburban World Theater could be entering a new era as a concert venue. Doug Hoskin has offered to buy the Uptown Minneapolis space, but the deal has not closed yet, according to the Star Tribune. Hoskin plans to work with DJR Architecture to convert the theater into a concert venue and event space with…

Musicians and music lovers alike will be spread out across the Twin Cities to celebrate Make Music Day next Thursday, June 21. Make Music Twin Cities is part of the global Make Music Day celebration that started in 1982 in France. Last year over 800 cities around the world participated. The Twin Cities are participating…

Resmaa Menakem, a licensed independent social worker and therapist, released his book My Grandmother’s Hands this past September. The book sought to tackles issues of racism and white supremacy from an unexpected, yet plausible place: how it affects the bodies of the oppressed and oppressors. My Grandmother’s Hands focuses specifically on how Black bodies and…

Low – “Quorum,” “Dancing And Blood,” and “Fly” Low‘s newest music might feel familiar to the 2013 Rock the Garden attendee. This “Double Negative triptych” demands patience, as did their “drone, not drones” performance of “Do You Know How To Waltz?” at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Whether you like these songs or not, you have…

With the release in April of their third full-length — Bark Your Head Off, Dog — Hop Along have proved more than ever that they have transcended genres as we know them. The band’s catalog now stretches wide, covering folk, punk, indie rock, and power pop and making it hard to categorize them as one specific type of…