Day 35: Minneapolis, MN
Welcome
Yesterday we played our final show of the tour.
Our Hotel Indigo in downtown Minneapolis had the luxurious breakfast window of 6.30-10.30am. Tristan headed down to the lobby at quarter past ten and found the fire still smouldering, and a pretty small spread of food tucked away on a side table at one end of the room. I served myself a bowl of muesli and atop that I placed half a sliced banana, some blueberry Noosa finest yoghurt, and some Glenview Farms reduced fat milk. Alongside this, from the buffet warmer, I withdrew a Timber Ridge Egg & Swiss on an English Muffin.
Tristan had some last day shopping he wanted to get done so we left the hotel and made for a Target, a few blocks away. The last few times I had visited Minneapolis I had seen the strange pedestrian network of steel and glass corridors that crisscross the roadways between the high-rise buildings of downtown. Yesterday we had our opportunity to ride the Skyway.
The journey began when we entered the lobby of the nearby Ameriprise Financial building and taking the escalator a couple of floors up. Care was taken to ensure that we had our compass bearings correct, and then we set out across the first of these corridors, to the south, crossing 7th Street. We entered a new building and strode across a polished tile mezzanine that looked down on another glossy lobby, presumably the welcoming face of another prestigious financial institution. The next corridor we took was to the east, and it carried us into a brand-new building, and this time we entered a floor filled with retail spaces, most of which were closed or unoccupied.
This was how our journey went, zig-zagging south, and then east towards our target, the Target store on Nicolette Mall and 9th. Some of the buildings we passed through contained bustling stores and restaurants, and others felt forgotten and disused.
By the time we reached the Target I was beginning to sweat in my jeans and shirt. The temperature in the Skyway was quite warm. I waited outside while Tristan completed his shopping. He sent me a video of their brilliant escalator system for trolleys.
I noticed that there was no seating like you would typically find outside a department store. There were also signs asking me not to sit on the windowsill. I found the Skyway code of conduct on a nearby sign, and it explained everything. This was a place for walking. Not for sitting, loitering, or being homeless. There were many bored-looking security guards around to help you comply with the pointers on this list.
We decided to return to the hotel the old-fashioned way, at street level, on the footpaths. It was pleasantly cool outside and smelled nice, like fresh air. On the way back we passed this rather striking building at 601 Marquette Ave. All of my sleuthing has come back with nothing other than the building contains six Quebec Lofts. If anyone knows anything, I’d love for you to get in touch.
First Ave is somewhat of a legendary venue. It is one of the few large independent venues still operating in the US and it has been going since 1970. Many great artists got their start at First Ave. The most notable of course is Prince who performed there nine times over his career and recorded Purple Rain live on that stage. The black brick walls of this former bus depot are covered with silver hand painted stars, each carrying the name of an artist who has sold out the room.
The setlist wall behind the stage.
The greatest thing about this venue, though, are the staff. The warmest bunch of people you could ask for, they went out of their way to help us at every turn. Conrad was a stagehand who seemed to have been working there for a while. He showed us the replica of Prince’s motorbike, and he even pulled out the purple drum rug for Tristan to use.
This is Conrad.
We hadn’t rented a bass amp for the show. I was getting a good sound from my DI straight into the PA, and it was a good way to save money. Most venues wouldn’t let you put one of their fridges on the stage, but these guys were up for anything. The fridge did its job, filling the empty space next to the drum riser, providing an elevated platform to easily tweak my DI, and allowing rapid, mid-show access to beer, sparkling water, and milk.
Gabe was excited to be at First Ave for many reasons, the largest of which was that they possess a Midas Heritage large format analogue console. This was basically the industry standard console in worldwide music touring for at least a decade, from when it was released in 1998. There was plenty of outboard gear to go with it. Compressors, reverb, delay, limiters, de-essers; these are all housed in the three racks sitting at the end of the desk. It was pretty cool to see this beautiful, obsolete piece of technology still on active duty in a nightclub. Gabe has asked me to pass on that he despises Midas’s attempts at digital consoles, but their analogue ones were unbeatable.
This thing is so wide you will probably need to don your VR goggles and enter this panorama to properly take it in.
This was another one of those rooms that took my breath away when I walked out on stage for our set. The amount of people crammed into the space is staggering. 1550 I think was the capacity. The floor has several different levels of elevation so that when it is full of people you get a sea of heads that resembles the rise and fall of sand dunes. It was an exhilarating feeling to perform to this great crowd, and we gave it everything on the final show.
Gabe’s photos usually do an incredible job of capturing the size of the room. The limelight in this photo, however, is stolen by the incredible breadth of the Midas Heritage 3000.
Final group photo of the tour.
Afterwards we packed everything down and headed back to the hotel with Sidney Gish in tow. It was past midnight by the time we headed back out in search of a place to celebrate, and given that it was Monday night, finding somewhere open was a tough prospect. We were turned away from a nice-English pub, but after some further walking our second option bore fruit. Jackson’s Hole Bar & Grill was open until 2am, and it wore the premises description in the comforting order that God intended, name before drink, drink before food.
We enjoyed the authentic atmosphere of this place right up until until close, spending our last moments with Gabe and Sidney, and celebrating the accomplishments of the past five weeks. It was a very sad time when we had to say goodbye, and goodnight, and head back to our hotel for a well-earned rest.
Second final group photo of the tour.
This has been a huge start to 2023 for us. Those of you who came out to support us at shows, I cannot thank you enough.
Thanks to everyone who I got to share the bus with. I couldn’t have asked for a more fun, easy going, and hard working group of people.
Another sincere thank you to everyone reading at home. I’ll catch you all in a couple of months.
Ben
UPDATE:
At some point in the last 36 hours the boints graph was hacked. All previous data has been lost and the Nigel Love Bridge has shot up by 90,000 boints to reach 90,050, as well as increasing to a height of 180m. All other player scores bar the Adelaide Airport Bathroom Mirror Hand-Cleaning System have been leveled to 80 boints. A sad and shocking turn considering how hard everyone has worked over the past seven weeks.
