Making Music

Think of the Making Music Series at the University of Minnesota’s Whole Music Club as Inside the Actors Studio for Twin Cities musicians. Curator and host James Everest says he started the series in 2005 as a way to “combine my curatorial skills with my background as a musician, historian, and former Whole volunteer and U of M alum.”

While volunteering at Whole in the early nineties, Everest attended a series of monthly lunchtime discussions with speakers from the local music industry, including First Avenue’s then-manager Stephen McClellan and Soul Asylum’s Danny Murphy. “It was very inspiring to realize that these were just real folks doing jobs that they loved,” Everest says.

In essence, Making Music is a continuation of that lunchtime discussion series, except it is open to the public. Everest welcomes six local artists per calendar year, plus one guest from the U of M’s Spark Electronic Festival each spring. Singer/guitarist Haley Bonar, a guest in fall 2005, says, “I loved that James asked me to incorporate live newer music and old recordings that I was embarrassed of.” Other guests have included Happy Apple drummer Dave King, Doomtree emcee Dessa, electronics experimentalist Martin Dosh, and Babes in Toyland drummer Lori Barbero.

This fall, Everest welcomes Vicious Vicious/Tapes ’N Tapes’s Erik Appelwick on September 27, Low’s Alan Sparhawk on October 10, and Atmosphere’s Sean (Slug) Daley on November 29. Whole Music Club, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. SE, Mpls.