Brass Kings at Grumpy's

This was Saturday; we were walking to Grumpy’s. On 22nd Ave., we saw a woman taking pictures of the switchlights at the train tracks. She saw us a looked a bit flustered, then she said, “That’s a Griswold,” pointing at a switchlight. “And that’s a Raymond. They used to all be Griswolds, back in the thirties, then they started changing them, and you don’t see them much any more. I just had to take a picture.” She was down from Brainerd, partly to look at old railroad equipment, partly to visit some friends. We commiserated about the need to indulge ourselves once in a while, and then pointed out to her the switching yard just down the way. Her husband sat in the car, patient and smiling, then held up his hands in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture, but he didn’t get out of the car.

So we moved on the Grumpy’s, the tiny bar that packs a music stage, four booths, a patio, a video game console, a wickedly well-stocked jukebox, and full bar into a space not much bigger than a basketball court. They were holding their annual Northeast Minneapolis Folk Festival, so they’d opened up the side gate into a courtyard that runs the length of the building on the north side, where a tent held the musical acts, and the guests stood under low eaves of lilac trees.


Soon enough The Brass Kings had set up under the tent and were ready to play. The Brass Kings, when you hear about them, sound like a novelty act. One guy, Mikkel Beckman, slaps and scratches ringed fingers against a vintage washboard, and another guy, Brad Ptacek, has cobbled together a single-string bass out of a battered galvanized steel washtub, a broomstick, and a length of rope. The only semi-legitimate instrument is an ancient metal guitar in the hands of Steve Kaul, which he'd plugged into a buzzing, dangerous sounding amp. So you sit down and think this is going to be some kind of frazzled old jug-band, dead-enders playing the Old Grey Mare, and then they start jamming. Kaul sets up an arpeggiated blues riff, and Ptacek plugs out the basics of a chord structure – root and fourth and fifth, pulling the rope taught with a hand kept from blistered ruination by a thick leather carpenter’s glove. The washboard is a soothing scrape in the background.

Soon enough Kaul starts singing Muleskinner Blues, about as standard a folk tune as you’ll find. But there’s something intensely different about their sound, and when Kaul stops singing and starts exploring what his resonator is capable of, the music moves from Appalachia to the middle east, a resonating otherworldly sound like a not unlike a sitar. It wouldn’t be far off the mark to say The Brass Kings are a jam band, a spiritual heir to Jerry Garcia, out there exploring the reaches of the sonisphere for rare treasures. Their own MySpace page describes them as “Split Lip Rayfield jamming with Ravi Shenkar.” The oddness goes mostly unnoticed, such is the aura they send over the crowd. When Beckman pulls out an old piece of refrigerator facing for one song, no one even bats an eye. We just sit in the sun and listen and drink, then put down a couple demon dogs, and let the evening flow.

Other bands were less successful. They were mostly kids with downy long beards and new guitars, their shoes barely scuffed. They growled some but were unconvincing in their passion. A guy on a washboard got lost in the six-piece band, reduced to obligatory old-timey ornament. Time would take care of these kids, turn them into artists someday, or not. But it was Saturday night, and we didn't have time to wait.

On the way home we didn’t see the switches or the lady who loves them or even notice that we'd crossed the tracks again; we just walked quietly in the dark night. But the old ways, man, they were all around. The Griswold switches and the found instruments, the washboards and tin-tub basses - they go away, they come back, some of them stay where they are forever, blinking away, resonating into the night.

The Brass Kings at Memory Lanes: