Months ago, I wrote about why I run. With that thought in mind, I started training for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, hoping to finish a marathon in less than 4 hours for the first time and knock Ohio off my list.

I finally crossed the finish line. I remember scrambling to find the bag pick-up location so I could pull my cell phone out of my back pack and call my father.

“I did it,” I said. “I made it. 3:51.”

“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “Wow!”

I thought of him, and what he would be doing at that exact moment we were talking, and I pictured him in his garage, cutting this part, or sawing this piece, or doing any one of 10 million things he is able to do with his hands. I pictured him building a toy train for my godson Aidan in that garage, or re-flooring his boat in the driveway, or moving dirt from here to there with his Bobcat in the yard.

People say the sky is the limit. My father would disagree, saying that a little scaffolding, a few power tools and some drill bits alone would allow him to build a hand-crafted wooden spiral staircase past them.

Raised in the brutally cold and unforgiving backwoods of Grand Rapids, MN, my father is the classic man’s man. Growing up, he hunted, fished, played every single sport imaginable and built big things out of little things or nothing at all with his hands. It’s not that he was always working; he was always doing. There’s a reason his number of surgeries is in the double digits.

People speak of the eye of the storm. For my father, that eye is his children. He is an old school worker bee modeled after a tornado that rarely rests.

But he rested when my sister Stephanie got married. He rested when my brother Lucas hugged him goodbye and moved to AZ, and when I called him from OH, moments after my run, I pictured him stopping, taking off his work gloves and picking up the phone.

“I love you so much,” he would say, ending the call after we had finished talking about the race.

“I love you too dad,” I responded. When I heard the click of him hanging up the phone, I said “I love you too dad,” a second time, knowing that I was sending that emotion off into nothingness, into space, into infinity.

“Really?” I asked. His slew of operations, injuries and accidents over a very physical lifetime came to mind. Then there was his slight limp, and the slower pace with which he was now getting out of a chair, or off the couch.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I want to do one more race. Just one.”

I didn’t doubt that he wanted to, or could. I just didn’t know if his body would hold up.

First, a qualifier. I like, no love, California. I mention this because taken at face value, it appears as though the singer has grown weary of CA, and by posting the song, I am attaching my sentiment to it. 

But the song has nothing to do with California. Or San Francisco, Or Oakland. Or anywhere specific. Really, it has to do with everywhere.

Most of us have lived in a place, grew tiresome of it, and remarked to a friend or to our pillow “Fuck [insert city here]” or “Fuck this place.” I have. A few times. I don’t know what that makes me. To my stay-near-home friends, I may be described as “antsy” or “unsettled.” To my mobile friends, I may be described as, well, “mobile.”

So this song isn’t about a specific location so much as it is about a feeling. A feeling when you want to leave a city, a company, a person, a …

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First, a little background: Fun is fronted by Nate Reuss, former lead singer of the now defunct band The Format. If you lived in Phoenix in the mid 2000’s and were dialed into local music, you had them on repeat and often muttered “These guys are ridiculously amazing. Seriously.” They were the one of the hottest things to come out of AZ, besides, you know, the fucking sun.

The Format’s history makes for a decent Behind the Music episode. The band garnered critical acclaim, Reuss started dealing with a slew of relationship disasters and boozing more heavily, and the band got a shit load of dogs together, which Reuss was stuck with when The Format broke up.

Reuss is the only former Format member in Fun, but his voice is so impressionable that it’s impossible not to dub Fun the “The New Format.” Whatever. Fun’s debut EP won’t drop until this summer. Until then, enjoy “At Least I’m Not as Sad (As I Used to Be)” – which is your typical saloon-inspired, orchestra-fused indie ballad.

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I gravitate towards music that was inspired by angst. All the sublimely magnificent writers, poets, and artists seemed to have it, or did have it. Hell, most classic writers had a drinking problem at one time or another. I’m at the point where I’m thinking of developing a meth problem so the metaphors come easier.  

So, when buzz started to build in mid 2008 about Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and the album he had spit out after three months of solitude in a desolate log cabin following the breakup of his band, getting dumped and battling mono, I thought,  “this record is going to be fucking brilliant. How can it not be?”

And it is.

“Skinny Love” and “Flume” are the two most acclaimed songs off of Bon Iver’s solo masterpiece, For Emma, but it is the title song that allows the listener to best understand how overwhelming that angst was for him.

“Go find another lover; / To bring a. … to string along.”

Just typing that hurts.

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To promote Red Bull Soapbox Denver at Red Rocks, which went down October 25, 2008, I took The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (a crew of fun, creative college kids from the South Dakota School of Mines that competed in and won Red Bull Soapbox Providence the year before) to Mt. Rushmore for a little training and a lot of tomfoolery in July. 

First, they hit the gym hard. Real hard. Then, after we shut down highway that runs past Rushmore, they raced the winning craft from Soapbox Rhode Island (a giant calculator called “The Numerator”) down it numerous times to gear up for the race in Denver.

A friend recently asked me to post a song of the day by Foo Fighters. I immediately thought, “OK, we’re going to have to get creative here.”  I can’t come to the table with a Top 40 hit.  That’s what your local wacky FM DJ Fly Guy is for.

But then I remembered that Dave Grohl covered a Creed song a few years ago.  OK, fine, so Creed sold millions upon millions of albums and made millions upon millions of dollars.  Not sure how to explain that one. Let’s call it the “Nickleback Effect.”

Unfortunately, success does not always equate respect, and frontman Scott Stapp, while worth a ton of money, is unintentional comedy at its best.

Pop quiz – what’s most funny:

a) Greeting card Stapp

b) Karaoke Stapp,  brought to you by the temple grab and the double mic clutch 

c)  Under Armour Stapp

d)  Artsy Stapp

e) Dave Grohl’s mockery of “Arms Wide open”

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I dislike repetition of lyrics in songs – beyond the chorus of course. People don’t repeat themselves in life. You never overhear someone say, “You want to get lunch today? How about Jimmy John’s? You want to get lunch today? How about Jimmy John’s?” Then again, people also don’t sing in life (aside from annoying coworker Debbie in the cubicle next to you), so I’m not sure I have a point.

Having said that, I do like the haunting repetition of the question “What do you know?” in the Puscifer song “The Mission.” The song itself in its entirety (highlighted by that phrase and a pounding drum) reminds the time I stumbled upon the Michigan State marching band having a seance. Or something like that.

If the voice on this Puscifer track sounds familiar, then you’re a fan of Tool and/or A Perfect Circle, for the lead singer of all three is Maynard James Keenan. Puscifer is a side project.

Keenan describes Puscifer as “simply a playground for the various voices in my head, [...] a space with no clear or discernible goals, [...] where my Id, Ego, and Anima all come together to exchange cookie recipes.”

Ummmm … why don’t we move on and listen to the song.

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While we’re on the subject of bad ass folk rock musicians from the upper midwest like Damon Dotson, we may as well talk about Nick Rallis, or what has emerged recently as the Nick Rallis Band.

Nick Rallis is a singer/song writer from Sioux Falls, SD who has been performing solo for a few years. He started collaborating with Ryan Rickert and Paul Tims six months ago, and soon formed the Nick Rallis Band. 

In a few shorts months together, they’ve garnered a good deal of attention. They recently played the Sundance Film Festival on an invite from Chris Breed, owner of The Green Door, the Roxbury, and other venues in LA. His claim to fame is that he discovered Mariah Carey. He’s bringing them out to California to play the Green Door in LA on February 17 and The Viper Room in Hollywood on February 19. The band has also been invited to play the Oscar’s gifting party at Boulevard 3 in LA.

Though the band has yet to produce a CD together (the self-titled Nick Rallis solo CD is available on iTunes), a live demo from the band’s performance at Sundance is in existence. “Is It Love” is this demo’s most capitivating track.

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Calling upper midwest folk rock icon Damon Dotson undiscovered is a relative term, for his legion of followers in Iowa, Nebrasks, Minnesota and South Dakota, armed only with copies of Dotson’s CDs, would win a war against many small third-world nations.

The Des Moines Register wrote that Dotson possesses “a warmly romantic sound that veers between Dave Matthews and Coldplay.” That’s both an enormous compliment and a minor misnomer, for Dotson’s voice is not as grainy as Dave’s, nor as high-pitched as Chris Martin’s. His is a declarative yet soft voice, one that is naturally strong and most importantly, enormously recognizable.

Good singer-songwriters are capable of creating two career-defining songs that they can hang their hat on. Great singer-songwriters create three. With the release of “Atmosphere” and the existence of “Good Night” and “Summer Days,” Damon joins the ranks of the latter.

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Whereas music genre-sharing folks like Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz seem like simple stars who would date Betsy, their high school sweetheart, guitar hero John Mayer rolls with Jennifer Anniston and Cameron Diaz. Mayer just seems more complex. He is not a quick study. It’s hard not to consider him a contradiction of sorts. After all, for a man who’s more tatted up than Allen Iverson, he also drips with charm as thick as creamer.

There’ a scene in Dead Poet’s Society where Knox asks Dalton why women swoon. Well, because they’re listening to “Your Body’s a Wonderland,” that’s why.

Even when he sings about breaking a girl’s heart, as he does when he covers Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin,” you can’t help but think, “Damn, what a voice. Forget the fact that he may have cheated on that girl with her sister. That boy can sing! Geez, move on lady.”

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