What do hats, Godzilla, beards, and church bells have in common? They were all sources of inspiration for improv comedy sketches performed this month at the Bryant-Lake Bowl by a group called the Local Music Scene. Every month, the Local Music Scene invite a different musician to perform alongside them in a music-comedy variety show.…

When Minneapolis-based guitarist Toni Lindgren was a young girl of about five or six, her uncle would strum Bob Dylan and John Prine on his guitar strings, inspiring a love for the instrument early on in her life. “That was my introduction,” Lindgren said, “and then from there I just took it and ran.” Run…

Rock ‘n’ roller JD McPherson is headlining night two of our 13th Birthday Parties on Jan. 20, and he has a 13-year-old daughter of his own. As The Current heads into teenagerhood, we thought we could use some expert advice. So we asked JD: what it’s like to be a rock ‘n’ roll parent, and…

Welcome to the residency bonanza of January 2018! We made it to the New Year, and with its first month comes a slew of residencies: weekly shows helmed by locals Metasota, jeremy messersmith, Charlie Parr, the Cactus Blossoms, and Andrew Broder. We’ll be posting photos and a brief recap of a night each. If you were…

Leave it to tony the scribe. To create music that examines the intersections of romantic longing and technology. To convert a suit of armor into a device that makes fissures glow. And to make it catchy. A resident of Minneapolis, tony is a rapper, writer, and organizer, and he works alongside producer ICETEP in Killstreak.…

“Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer of the band The Cranberries, has died suddenly at age 46,” reports NPR. “O’Riordan defined the sound of the Cranberries — with hit songs like ‘Linger,’ ‘Salvation’ and ‘Zombie.’ She brought a particularly Irish inflection to pop charts around the world.” O’Riordan’s passing was confirmed by a publicist, who said…

Rogue Valley will be leaving the metro area and doing residencies in Worthington and Austin. The band are going beyond just playing shows in these towns. They’re also going to be working on spending time with the community, focusing on students. Chris Koza, the band’s frontman, sees these residencies as a way to invest time…

Club Nomadic, a pop-up club scheduled to be constructed outside Mystic Lake for concerts timed to coincide with the upcoming Super Bowl, has been canceled. Shows by the Chainsmokers, Kygo, Florida Georgia Line, and Gwen Stefani will move to concert spaces inside the casino. “We are disappointed to have to make the decision to cancel…

Despite all the snow yesterday, the Fine Line Music Cafe filled up for two separate duos: husband-and-wife headliners Tennis, and best friends Overcoats in support. The crowd was full of familiar faces from past Tennis and Overcoats shows in Minneapolis; just last March, the same bill played the Triple Rock Social Club. Neither band was…

Happy Friday on this crisp, sunny day! If you’ve been following this feature throughout the past year, you’ll have seen a Pony Rug video pop up about every week or two. But this week, I wanted to highlight a whole stack of work from this series, which really seems to have come into its own lately.…