Latest / Being Minnesotan / Episode 2: Folklore
Transcript
- Bryan Clapper: Hey Brian. Hey, ⁓ why are you wearing Taylor Swift stuff? Well, you said that we were talking about folklore this week, Taylor Swift's highest acclaimed album. ⁓ no, folklore as in like the shared cultural beliefs, traditions, music, art. Folklore. Yeah. Folk folk. I'm gonna go change. I'll be I'll be right back. Sounds good. This won't happen again. ⁓ no no worries. Welcome to Being Minnesotan. The pod show for anyone who recognizes more than 40% of the filming locations in the Mighty Ducks and has ever called someone a cake eater. In this episode, one of the state's highest-ranking officials talks to us about the vitally important topic of seat art. Phoebe Bottoms talks about an unhealthy relationship with an imaginary creature, and folk singer Emmy Woods shares a spooky tale in her ethereal voice. This is episode two with your hosts Emiline Childs and Brian Clapper. Okay. Okay. Episode two. Folklore. Yes. Sorry for the confusion. I thought it was pretty clear but apparently. That's on me. That's on me. It's all good. And honestly, you know, I started working on this concept with like one idea of what folklore meant. Yeah. And learned and changed my idea as it got closer to the episode. So You know, it it started off thinking solely about the myth and the legends and things like that. Yeah. And now I'm realizing that folklore and folk culture are kind of the same thing and much broader. Well, and I think one really special thing about folk culture is that it's really at the heart of what we're doing here. Yeah. We're doing this episode technically on folklore, folk culture, but I feel like every episode is gonna be centered around that in some way because that's what we're doing here. We're highlighting the culture of Minnesota. I was not thinking that deeply. When I when I wrote the idea down. So it makes me look smart and I always like that. So as we're filming this, the Minnesota State Fair is right around the corner. Yes. And I bring that up because I think the Minnesota State Fair is really the epicenter of Minnesota folk culture. ⁓ for sure. Yeah. It's where people come together, every nook and cranny, every single culture that's in Minnesota comes to that spot, that great Minnesota get together. You know, I was listening to a a different podcast, and I'm not gonna name them 'cause we don't wanna like help anybody else out. ⁓ on the way over here and they were talking about ⁓ they were interviewing a candidate for Senate in Iowa and he was talking about how great the Iowa State Fair is and the host's ⁓ partner happens to be from Minnesota and so he was trying to stick up for Minnesota but ⁓ you know he described the Iowa State Fair in sort of the superficial way that a lot of people think of our fair, which is it's got great food and rides and you can win prizes and it's showing off agricultural stuff. so I wanna know like What makes it uniquely Minnesotan? What cultural aspects at our fair do you think make it uniquely Minnesotan? So let's use food for example. You know, most people are like looking for all the new foods at the fair, the viral foods. But I think one really special thing about that is that a lot of those viral foods are actually home recipes that are produced for the masses. And quite literally for a lot of these vendors, there's grandmas and moms and aunties back home making these things. Yeah. And giving them to us at the fair. So we're really bringing that culture forward. And you're touching on food, which I th I think is a great example. I I think that one of the things that makes our fair uniquely Minnesotan and sort of ties into the Minnesotan culture is how sort of interspersed, ⁓ diverse international offerings are, right? ⁓ the sambusas and the egg rolls and Somali fries and things like that. Like they just seem to fit in with everything else. You could go to the international bazaar, that's kind of the obvious place to go, but it is sprinkled all throughout the falafel. ⁓ I'm obsessed with the full. ⁓ my god. This year you're having one. Okay. I'm obsessed with the fulwaffle. The wind is making me cry. I swear that that's a I'm also just very emotional about the Minnesota State Fair. ⁓ of course you are. ⁓ no, so I you know, I the more that I was thinking about it too, you look at the creative arts building, you know, and a lot of people are like, ⁓ it's arts and crafts and grandma knilted a quilt. But how did she learn how to knit? Yeah. Probably from her mother or her grandmother. Right. That is a tradition that's passed down and you're gonna see that throughout the entire arts building. There's even woodworking in there, right? Yep. To give a little preview of one of the s segments we have in this episode, I didn't realize that seat art was uniquely Minnesotan. Like that. We're the only state fair with that. Yeah, that was actually really interesting. I figured a lot of fairs would have that and that was really exciting and kind of fun to hear that a You know, like North Dakota, like it's all about the beans, soybeans, and it's all about the wheat, and they apparently don't do the seed art competition at the fair. I I'll have to I'm I'm probably wrong and somebody's gonna call me out on that. But I like to believe that that's true and that is uniquely Minnesotan. Yeah. So the fair is is a really fun example of, you know, all Minnesota culture and folk traditions coming together in one place, but let's zoom out a little bit. Okay. Because we have this throughout We have all of these traditions throughout Minnesota. And like I said, we can't touch on all of these in one episode. It's gonna be in in future episodes to come. But we think about cabin culture. Yep. ⁓ fishing, all of those ⁓ skills that are passed down, you know, in in that case maybe father to son, ⁓ daughters. Or lack of skill in my case. It's same. Honestly, lack of yeah, lack of skill. ⁓ but then we have things like the state high school hockey tournament. Yes. Hockey hair is only I mean Uniquely Minnesota, I would say. We've got church basement dinners. Again, I I feel like they do that everywhere, but maybe our churches do it a little bit better. Yep. I I would totally agree. Totally agree with you. You know, I it's it's really fun to get to see all of this and and that's part of why I love the Minnesota State Fair so much is that it's it's a really great opportunity for me to go five to six times a year. ⁓ five to six? Well on a on a good year. I think I hope. I think last year was the first time I did more than two days. How did you feel about it? I felt great. It was wonderful. See? And if you go more, you feel even better about it. I feel like it helps to go each time with different people. Like Yeah, it does. I I went by myself one time last year, I went with my just my wife one time last year. I went with our whole family one time last year. Yeah. And I think each that way you don't feel like you know, you're not dragging people to stuff they want don't want to do. Yeah. Because you can say, Well, I'm gonna be back here with so and so tomorrow and they'll wanna do this thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the way to experience it. I agree. That's why I like to go so much. It's fun. So I'm excited about this episode. We get to share some stories. ⁓ huh. ⁓ and I think again that's something we're gonna continue to do, but ⁓ you know, maybe not specifically uniquely a Minnesotan story, but definitely a folk culture story. Yeah. ⁓ I'm looking forward to that. The seed art was really interesting to learn about. and of course getting to actually hear some true tried folk music. Yes. And I and I and I feel like this episode, I mean Each episode is gonna be a little bit more of an evolution toward sort of the ultimate, ⁓ the final form, if you will, of of what being Minnesotan is. But I feel like this one, ⁓ it it it has a great flow to it. I think people are gonna enjoy it. I agree. Should we get to it? Yes. Julie Blaha is the state auditor of Minnesota, a role she's held since twenty nineteen. As a constitutional officer for the state, she's responsible for supervising and auditing the finances of 4,500 units of local government. However, in certain circles, she may be equally as famous as a perennial competitor in crop art at the Minnesota State Fair. And in possibly the most Minnesotan mashup of all time, she's found a way to blend the two. So we are interrupting you as you're setting up for what has become an annual fundraiser? ⁓ this is my favorite fundraiser. It is crop art for the win. Okay. ⁓ and so what we do is we come together on behalf of the great candidate, this year, Zach ⁓ Filipovich, who's running for my job. He'd be a great state owner, only accountant in the race. and ⁓ and ⁓ so naturally this is kind of where the bean counting thing came in. One ⁓ early on I had done a ⁓ a piece that said bean counter literally, and it was my sign. Yeah. So eyeballs, well, so when you put the word literally on something, you kind of have to do it. So I have since then every year I do a bean, a piece made out of beans for my office, and I count the beans and we have low contests to see how many people how how many it they are. And so ⁓ that'll come out when the fair opens, then the then the contest opens ⁓ for that as well. ⁓ but yeah, I started putting this together because people love crop art and they ask you how to get involved. And I thought if I can cut it down to some small piece and together we make something as a team. and now you can actually enter as a team. And so we're just gonna everybody's just gonna take a letter, I'm gonna put them together, and then we'll be these people will all be croppers. So we're creating one piece of art today. One piece of art that has a little my wonderful thing so everybody just does just does a little bit just like light. If we all just do a little bit it'll get done. And it's also a size that you could get done in like one night. Because these pieces take a while. Well so that's a good that brings us to a question that I've been dying to know. Right. You've done some really beautiful art. Give us a range. What's the longest you've spent on a piece and what's kind of the average? If I w if it's kind of like going straight through, ⁓ the piece I make out of beans, that's about forty hours of of planning and setting up and gluing. ⁓ the bigger pieces can take from sixty to a hundred, ⁓ especially if you have to redo a cart. Or ⁓ you're listening to a really good podcast, you know, like this podcast ⁓ and ⁓ and you're not paying attention and you're just kinda going slow. ⁓ but me I do this as a way to relax. Yeah. ⁓ I'm a relatively high energy person, so it's hard. I know, I know, it just You know, in case you couldn't see it. It's good. Good energy. It's thank you. Yes. It's unmedicated. It's a lot of it. But ⁓ it it's it's a way that it's kind of like it's like knitting or crocheting or or anything where you do the same thing over and over again in a meditative way. It's extremely relaxing. And it's the kind of art that doesn't take itself too seriously. And if you're a crop artist, you just glued a whole bunch of poppy seeds on a fork, you know, you're not gonna be too highfalutin, yeah, ⁓ honed out. Yeah. How did you get started in seed art? Well, I'd always got seen at the state fair. Huge state fair fan, right? And I'd never been a cover headed. I thought, well, what could I do? And I'm not an artist, so I don't I'm afraid if I make pickles, I'll kill somebody. I'm I'm so I don't want to do those other things. So ⁓ I thought, well, Crockard, I can do that. I'm I have an elementary teaching degree. I can do these kind of art projects. So I I tried it the first year, got a river my first year in the novice first year class. Well, what year was your first year of your ⁓ shoot, I remembered I should know this. It was the year before I ran, so 20 27th seed. It's the first year and I've put it for a little while. Yeah, so I've had one or two pieces in each time. Yeah. ⁓ and so you learn and it's a great community. They're just really nice people. You know, people who play with seeds. Do you get to do you get together with people throughout the year? Well, you know, there's a couple of really bringing people together. We have a Facebook ⁓ group that's a lot of fun. Doesn't get weird. It's really genuinely fun. A lot of discussions of Good glues, ⁓ how do you do the onion skin thing? I mean it's it's really technical. The onion skin thing? Onion skins are having a moment. All right. Okay. I need to know a little more about it. Okay, well here's the thing. You can fill the seeds background with seeds, that's probably most common. Well, one year ⁓ a woman made a beautiful feast and she'd used onion skins and then lit behind it and it looked like stained glass. ⁓ it was gorgeous. Bringing it to light. Exactly. So now you kind of take a pos it on and and you can either buy a lot of onions or Or you can do what I do. You go to the cub and you get the ones that fell off. You don't peel them off yourself. Just the ones that fell. So you're like a cleaning. Now I know everybody at the cub by me. So they know not they don't that I don't need a wellness check. That they know that I just want to take that. And then if you buy ⁓ an onion, I'm like, ⁓ so But what do you say? Give me two. ⁓ and I and I take those and I put a man in there and let me just check it in stole anything inside and then I get to walk out with them. This is remarkable. I know, it is ⁓ what it'll do for what will it do for art. It is, it's true for art. You said earlier you're not an artist, but I think both you're an artist. Well that's the thing. That's what's so wonderful about the state there. There is it's this great contrast. You can go from the fine arts building ⁓ to buying your heavy metal t shirt right across the street. You can go from ⁓ getting all of your vaccines to ⁓ eating nothing but fat. So it's all about balance. And this this event particularly is regular people and I'm just ⁓ showing alongside of legit artists. That's their day job. And in fact, once the art institute started putting up a couple prizes a couple years ago, they started where they will they show like 10 pieces now from that they pick and they give $500 prizes. That's a that's the only the prizes go from like $2 to 10. I've won upwards of like $24. I think over the years. And ⁓ anyway, so that's when attracting the real artists, especially the ones who can't get in the fine arts building. So us crafters, it's been tough. I've had to move to like special occasions. I had to move one year I had to try it to do ⁓ just a not used often ⁓ category. So I had to go, I think I did to 3D arrangements because the artists are just coming in and just taking all the tips sucking up all the ribbons. How how cutthroat is it? Okay, well see here's the thing, we none of us really know. Why you rim? Because you don't, you don't, you just you don't get your score, you don't get anything, you just come and see if you have a ribbon. And so it's not there are a couple people in that advanced division. I'm amateur, there's an advanced division where ⁓ they won't tell you where they get the other seats. Where they go on these, they kind of have their sources to get some of the harder to get seeds. They really down. ⁓ no, I don't know. But ⁓ again, I'm on the World Finance Authority as state auditor, so I'm connected with the soybean growers, ⁓ with the corn growers. So I've got some man who has it's not It's not what you know, it's who you know. Once they introduce me to black soybeans, it just opened up whole two. Okay, so that I've got questions about what kinds of seeds you can use. Right. Because I think it doesn't it change over time. Well it it kind of. ⁓ the thing is they have to be crops that can be grown in Minnesota, okay? ⁓ so you may have heard a couple years ago we had a bit of a kerbuffle over mustard seed. Yes, that is what I They're really yellow mustard is super consistent, easy to paint for the sainted things. But they said I don't think anyone actually grows that in Minnesota. And ⁓ so they were gonna pull ⁓ out. And that caused a big uproar. So I had some people calling me and said, What can we do? It's like, well I think we to find a mustard growers association and see if anyone grows it here. So someone did. They found it, found a couple of farms growing yellow mustard, and we got it. But it opened up ⁓ kind of Pandora's box and people just said, okay, we have to have a conversation about quinoa. Because and I always knew that's like quinoa was always dicey. nobody's really grown this in Minnesota, so this is the last year for quinoa. So I'm trying to get rid of all my quinoa this year. It's this our quinoa's last end. It's the last year of quinoa. How did you learn? Other than like the Facebook group. How did you learn what you're doing when I come for a seed? Back in the old days, before CropArt.com, which is this amazing website that has videos and and and all kinds of resources and history and everything, ⁓ I watched a show of what Are You Minnesota Enough that was on Channel 2? And ⁓ they had crop artists showing what they were doing. So I recorded it. I would rewind it, watch their hands, see what they did. they had some hints of where they got their seeds, and that's what I used to to learn was just watching this. 15 minute video over and over again. And then of course ⁓ you know talking to our teachers at my middle school. So obviously we know it's huge at the Minnesota State Fair, but we don't hear about crop art in many other places. It is only at the state fair. In fact we do have people who mail pieces in from around the world. It is only at the state fair. This is only in Minnesota. It is uniquely Minnesota. It is only yes. Yes. I didn't realize that. Not some hollow butter call situation. We're also the only ones that make C's art. ⁓ I love that. Do you have a favorite seed? I you know, I had I had previous millets. And this is a millet that I'm tiny. It's small, but it's not like Like winning the sweet steak small. That's that's something like ⁓ then you're gonna use amaranth, which is tiny. ⁓ well much quadrated amaranth about a third of the size of this. ⁓ or poppy seeds, which are much smaller than this. That's how you win. But this is a good workhorse, and I've had it for years, so it's faded. And white is the hard color to get. You can't use w ⁓ white rice, because that's not here. So trying to find a really true small white seed is hard. So again, this has gotten a little faded, so it's been this is my this is my my super. Super serious stash. Do you paint or add color to your pieces? When I did my pieces for the for my office and I used our logo, I had to have blue and gold. And so I painted sometimes, but I'm kind of getting kind of going back to my roots, my fancy piece I'm doing for ribbons with the small seeds, I'm doing all natural. I'm doing ⁓ different colors of corn. Which seemed like a great idea until I realized you have to smit the bottoms of each kernel so they'll sit properly with a jewelry cutter. And I regretted that choice in about in about February. Still sipping. It's more than forty hours all of a sudden. This is gonna be yeah, this is taking me a minute. Here's state auditor candidate Zach Filipovich. I want to know if you realize that this was in the job description of state auditors doing seat art. Well I'm excited for it. Seat art is a new skill that I get to learn today. Anytime I get to learn a new skill, I'm excited for it. And and how do you feel about like your first attempts? Does it feel like it's something you could catch on to? You know, I'm gonna try it again. You know, we I I had the Z and that was a lot of fun. Maybe I'll take on ⁓ a few more letters next time. We'll be back for more seed art, but first our friend Phoebe Bottoms has some thoughts to share about one particular entity from American folklore, and a quick word of warning. This segment contains material that may not be suitable for children if you're hoping to preserve the magic of the Tooth Fairy. There are also a couple of uncensored curse words. Phoebe Bottoms is a Jim Henson company-trained puppeteer, a comedian, improviser, and Emmy Award-winning writer from Minneapolis. She hosts That Felt Good, a weekly variety show at Bryant Lake Bowl, every Friday at 9:30 p.m. Hi, Phoebe Bottoms here, ⁓ local comedian and improviser and puppeteer, sometimes all three at once. I'm here today to talk to you about the tooth fairy. There's been certain things that have come to light recently that have colored my opinion of the Tooth Fairy. I I'll preface all of this by saying that when I agreed to come onto this wonderful Podcast, I was told the assignment was to come up with a folklore sort of fairy tale, you know, some kind of mythological relationship I have to something that seemed stupid when I was a kid. And it it was like unusually difficult for me to land on something. I think probably because of just Judaism, we don't have anything. I like very secular atheist Jews, but we weren't tree Jews. so we didn't do the like switch hitting of Christmas. And I think that because of that I just there was an absence of anything with any sort of like excitement to it. I was thinking about it and I feel like the the Jews collection of kind of fun fantasy characters is very similar to how deep the bench is for the RNC for celebrities. Like we have Dibbics like Yiddish goblins and ⁓ Elijah, the guy who on Passover, you leave like a cup of wine out for him and then he breaks into your house and drinks it, which is very similar to like, hey, we got Clint Eastwood to come to the convention and talk to a stool. So in that spirit, I think my mom was aware that we needed some. We're very like theatery family. I think at the time I was probably in Waldorf for the one year of Waldorfing I did. So she went really hard in on the tooth fairy for me. When I lost my tooth, I think when I was like six, I woke up and of course there was some money, but there was also like a really elaborate scroll of paper with like a full letter. It was watercolored and had glitter on it, and we became pen pals. my tooth fairy and I, we would exchange these, like, it had reference for a lot of the things in my life. And at the time that didn't seem particularly upsetting. ⁓ and I don't know I can't tell you for sure whether I did fully believe it, but we had plans to have a sleepover. Like my mom really catfished me with it pretty hard. It was a very, very sort of similar like early 2000s desktop computer like identity mix-up. I was talking to her about it and I'd like to share her feedback because I asked like, do you have any information? I'm going on national television to talk about what happened. And she said, Your memory is so much better than mine. We'd have to piece it together between the two of us. I remember a lot of the parts of it But you probably remember other parts. I remember it was a fuck ton of work. That's for sure. I kind of dreaded I kind of dreaded having your teeth fall out, no matter how developmentally appropriate it was. I would have glued them in there so I didn't have to do it all the shit, but whatever whatever, it was fun. Just kidding. It was a lot of glitter and painting and story writing. It was watercolor paint, very swooshy. She had some dumb name and pretended to be your best friend. She knew everything about you and commented on your life in a really creepy way, pretending to be all-wise and teachy, but she was just some dumb little fairy. So within the tangle of coming to terms with all this, I also found out that my mom, the tooth fairy was a begrudging presence in my life. One other thing I was thinking is that when I was twenty two I had my wisdom teeth taken out. And I was thinking today whether that's a different tooth fairy for like being older. Like if it's a wisdom tooth, is it a smarter fairy? And why didn't I get more money? But then I also realized that you get a bunch of pills. And I think maybe the pills are the money as an adult that's more valuable. I don't personally like painkillers. I don't think they're that fun. But you can sell them for probably the amount of inflation that it would be if you got five dollars as a kid in the nineties. So it should've shoulda sold that Viking instead of just let it rot. I had a nail fall off this morning and I why don't I get Money for other parts of my body falling off. Like some kind of Cronenberg body horror. Like Jeff Goldblum and the Fly would love $20. Now back to our conversation with State Auditor Julie Blaha. What's the highest award you've won? I got a blue ribbon. I did get a blue ribbon when I made a ⁓ a piece for ⁓ Lieutenant Governor Peggy Planegan. She I I know I know her husband Tom Weber so well. And ⁓ I said, here's the deal. I'm making a tree that has a heart in it, a little heart-shaped leaves, and I made it out of ⁓ wild rice. So real menoman and separate about there. And here's the deal, I can put, I can put Roger plus Julie, R plus J, but I'd rather put T plus P. So I can change it, but if I thought he was gonna propose and said, you tell me the date, I'll put it on there, I'll in the crop art. ⁓ so this was like early on. So it's early on. So I so I had to, so I was almost done, I just had a little chunk left and he called and said, I have some important news about your crop art. And so I put the date on there and that one got me to the ribbon. That was one of my best pieces. And then I gave that to them. Now it it's it's it's long gone because this is an ephemeral art. Even though I seal mine, I do all this stuff with it, still bugs will eat it, mice will eat it, and I put a lot of chemical on mine. I seal mine with a lot of polyurethane, they'll still eat it, and it doesn't seem to kill them. But it sounds like for you it's more about the process of creating urine on it. Yeah, it is. And I'll take a picture of it. But it is this, ⁓ it's it's just the idea of making something wonderful out of suffocando. Just my favorite thing. You're taking a humble bunch of seeds, regular school glueds of toothpicks, and you make something beautiful. And I think that is just everything I could say I love about Minset. Yeah. ⁓ that's wonderful. Awesome. Well, we're excited to see what comes together. And you said there's giving some like heavy hitters surgery. Yeah, well, yeah. Do you have an arch rival in the sort of Yes I do. Okay. ⁓ and I'll tell you who it is. It is State Center Athena Hollands. Because I introduced her to Crop Art. She came in. And knocking out a rubber connection, the very first year she pro she competed. She came in and took first places. She just swept it. ⁓ she's like a natural talent. She's she's I think also a legit artist. Yeah. And so she just and I'm like, so I regret that. I regret that. And ⁓ I can't ⁓ compete with her. Regret am proud of. Yes. ⁓ and that's a big year. There are other people who have come out, gone into crop art from this event who've also knocked me out of the robo. So again, and then if a good person will be really proud of that. We we talk about you know the whole sort of theme of folklore and folk art and folk music, a lot of that has to do with how things are informally passed down. Exactly. And you are informally passing it down to a lot of people. ⁓ absolutely and I'll say we have ⁓ a couple of the people here who put together this and made it a community because I mean this is a group of people that again they they could spend they spend a hundred hours ghouling seeds onto a board to make a pun. Because puns are king of this, right? I mean so those are good people and those are people who are fun to be connected with and it does feel like Again, a really good folk art in that it's humble, you can't take yourself too seriously, and there truly is community with it. Here's State Representative Athena Hollins. You have been described as a crop art arch rival. so clearly you are a skilled person at crop art. How did you get into it and what do you think of it? ⁓ I love crop art and I would not say I'm an arch rival, I would say I'm a mentee. Julie Blaha actually introduced me to crop art and the way it happened was I came up to her at a political rally and I said, I've got a great idea for a piece. And she said, that is a great idea. You should do it. And I said, I can't do it. And she said, yeah, you can. All you need is Elmer's glue and a toothpick. And by the time I had gotten home from that rally, she had sent me like five links of how to do crop art and what supplies you need and like what beans to use and all those different things. So she says arch rival, I say mente. Are you submitting anything this year? I am. I've got two pieces that I'm submitting. Maybe three. We'll see if I finish the third one. Good, good. Anything that we should know that you want the people to know about crop art? I mean, I'm an evangelist now when people say like How do you do this? It's so hard. I'm like, it's really not. I'm not an artist. I say I'm a crafter. It's all about whether you're willing to take the time to do things and be methodical about it. It doesn't require artistic skill. Like absolutely find a magazine piece and you can literally just like put seeds in the right colors and you're good to go. Finally, in this episode, we wanted to delve into folk music with local singer songwriter Emmy Woods. You can catch her live the first Thursday of the month at the White Squirrel Bar and the second Sunday of the month at the 331 Club and online at Emmy Woods dot com. My name is Emmy Woods and I am a singer songwriter based out of St. Paul, Minnesota. I grew up in a little town ⁓ in Burling called Burlington, North Dakota. It's in ⁓ North Central North Dakota. And yeah, I taught myself mostly how to play guitar and sing and started writing songs at like thirteen and I've been doing it ever since. And would you consider you sell your music completely folk music or is it a blend of things? Yeah, I I would call it a blend. I call it ethereal folk with hints of ⁓ bluegrass, country and punk. Okay. Yeah, sometimes I pick different genres for the last part. ⁓ it's just kind of yeah. I lo I love ethereal folk. It sounds b because I've listened to enough to enough of your music that I think it fits really, really well. Well because you do have sort of like an ethereal voice. It's very much that's I think the most common adjective I've had used to describe my music to me is they'll say that it's ethereal. So that's kinda I just figured I have a hard time describing my music, so I was like, Well I'll just take I'll take the information that's coming to me and use that. So the very first note when I heard, you know, the first song that I ever listened to of yours, it your voice reminded me very much of Jewel. Like very like nineties. Very ethereal, I would say. Nineties in a good way. In a very good way. I actually when we reference the nineties it's a compliment, yes. I I love the nineties. I actually used to have pieces of you on cassette tape. on cassette tape too. Yeah. And y you said that you taught yourself, ⁓ which I think is kind of common among folk musicians, that it's i in this episode we're talking about folklore and folk as sort of informally learned things in our that we find in our culture. ⁓ and and so I think that fits with it. But how would you personally define folk music? I tend to have like a really broad definition of it because I really just think of it as the people's music, you know? It's it's what regular everyday folks are writing and singing and engaging with. I think, you know, if you go to Nashville, there's gonna be people who like grew up in million dollar mansions who are like just pandering to like who they what they think country folk wanna listen to. And I think like real folk music is just real people. making music for themselves by themselves and yeah that's how I think of it anyway. And you started at a young age writing, you know, only thirteen. Yeah. Who were your influences at the time that inspired you to get started? Yeah, so at the time like my parents listened to a lot of old folk music. ⁓ they were total hippies. So you know my dad used to sing Willie Nelson to us before bed. ⁓ a lot of Joan Viez was getting played in the house. Lorena McKennett, the Beatles. And then, you know, of course I listen to music of my times, that like any 13 year old w would. So ⁓ at at 13 I embarrassingly, somewhat embarrassingly listen to a lot of Savage Garden. I don't think that's embarrassing at all. Thank you, thank you. ⁓ I think I still know. every word to that album that had Chickat Terry Cola on it and stuff. Yeah. so I listened to a lot of that. I also listened like Fiona Apple, ⁓ Natalie Merchant. So kind of drew from a lot of different genres. I also went to a lot of punk rock shows 'cause that's like the music scene that was local for me. So yeah, kind of pull from it all when I'm writing. So you grew up sorry, you you grew up in North Dakota. How long have you been in Minnesota for? ⁓ I've actually been a Saint Paul girly for about ten years. And what do you think the biggest difference is? Obviously you grew up in a very different part in North Dakota, but just North Dakota in general compared to Minnesota, what would you say are some of the cultural differences that you've noticed? Yeah, I think that ⁓ there's a lot of similarities. You know, there's like a sort of kindness in this upper Midwestern region that is just so ingrained in all of us. I think is so beautiful. ⁓ I think growing up in a rural area, one thing I learned was you know, I I tend to like lean more liberal, but I most of my friends leaned conservative. And so just like the ability to sort of like separate people. from their beliefs and just kind of see like everyone's basic goodness is something that I think is really ingrained in a lot of rural culture sometimes, at least when I was coming up. and I I've found those skills that I acquired through that to be like really valuable. is your family still there? Do you get back? I my family actually all moved to Minnesota. We're all Minnesotans now. We like the lakes and the woods and that's that's a big difference between the two. Yeah. So ⁓ that is a big difference. Although I do I miss the prairie. I I do. And luckily there's some of that in Minnesota too. So I was saying we've all lived in North Dakota at some point far go for the two of us and What I miss the most are the sunsets. Just the vast skies and the sunsets were always so memorable and remarkable. I agree. Yeah. The sunsets in North Dakota are like none other. They're beautiful. Awesome. What ⁓ what song have you chosen to to ⁓ perform for us today? I think I'm gonna do an oldie. It's one of the first songs I ever ⁓ wrote and decided to keep. It's called Ballad of Lake Superior. And what sort of inspired it? ⁓ well, I lived on the South Shore at the time and my friend was telling me a really spooky story about the lake and what happens when there's shipwrecks and it just got me thinking about how places can kind of hold our stories. And ⁓ so I was kind of just in that mindset and I just went home and wrote this very spooky ghost story. A few years older a widower was he was just a thing all the boys her age wine. Picked a wild with flowers, placed them behind her ears. He said, I have no money, only love my dear. She said, this heart of mine loves nothing but the water and the sky. ⁓ I need is the doors and wind blowing to the pine. Built for her awakening A gypsy came ahead, kissed her soft on the cheek, asked her for her hand. Upon her slender finger, a golden ring he slayed. Forever I will care for you if to me your heart you give. She said, ⁓ this heart of mine loves nothing but the water and the sky. And no Thing I need is the northern wind blown through the pine. Window stormy waters, he threw his body from a clave, he left for letters, final words to give. He said, If you cannot love me as a man of flesh and blood, I will. This heart of mine forever now becomes the sea and love sweet love of mine one day you will return. She was drinking moonshine, the bottle to her lips, replaced it with a pistol, gave her final kiss, for finally she did love him. Her heart went out to see if you walk on the shore you can hear it sing this heart of mine. Loves nothing but the sky and the sea and loves love mine forever. Give my heart to thee. Tuesday. Well there you have episode two of Being Minnesotan. I did have that exclusive interview with Taylor Swift, but since it was a different type of folklore, I'll save that for another episode. Yeah, that's probably best. Thank you to comedian Phoebe Bottoms. Which apparently that's her real name. And also to folk singer Emmy Woods. ⁓ And also to folk singer Emmy Woods. ⁓ was I feeding you that line? No, but I was talking over you, so I just redid it. Okay, that's all right. All right. We'll get better next time, I promise. Well. Well.