god bless the googles

Google Alerts are way cool. You can sign up to be immediately notified when your name (or the names of your compositions) make it onto the Internets. Unlike some friends of mine, I have a name that isn't common but also isn't unique at all (Jocelyn and Abbie probably never have these experiences) and, consequently, there are other gentlemen out there who I get notified about that have nothing to do with music composition.

Occasionally I'll search my name on Google to see if there are any performances I should know about (one of the downsides of having your pieces published is that you never know who is presenting them) and there have been some fairly interesting hits on "Joshua Shank" over the past couple of years that have nothing to do with me. I say interesting because, although our names are essentially the first definition of our character, the other Joshua Shanks out there worthy of Internet inclusion are quite a bit different from me. Here's the "greatest hits":

There's the graphic designer from Youngstown, Ohio who is also a pastor in his community.

Then, on the Shank Obituaries Page, there is the Indiana coal miner who passed away in 1961. The only thing stranger than seeing my name on an obit page is the fact that he was born in 1890 and I was born in 1980. I know it's just a coincidence but it's still a little weird.

But the one that prompted me to write this blog entry was this gem. I'm sure these pictures are copyrighted or something but, for comedic effect, this will be our little secret.

Res ipsa loquitur.

The upshot of it is that these were entered into some sort of contest (which I found out a few Google pages later) and...they lost! Damn you, Court Bates! Damn you! (Check out that link to get that maybe-funny joke.)

p.s. Not really. I'm sure Court is a perfectly nice kid (after all, he is apparently "St. Theresa's Most Eligible Fifth Grader") but how can you beat an argyle sweater vest? How, I ask you!

still in decorah

I took a break from writing to meet with an old college friend in town. We hit all the hot spots from years past.

T-Bock's has the best burgers in town. Try the Ermaburger if you're feeling brave or you like a fried egg with your fried beef. I'm not made of such stuff so I wimped out with a cheeseburger.

Afterwards, we shot some pool at the local watering hole.

Mabe's Pizza for lunch the next day. This particular pizzeria is as much a part of the Luther experience as any class you take (they actually truck the stuff up to the Twin Cities for Luther alumni events). It's made from that really fresh, soft dough combined with homemade-with-love sauce that gives hole-in-the-wall pizza places their character and makes Pizza Hut quake in their boots.

Dr. Griesheimer was nice enough to take me out to a show at the Commonweal Theatre in Lanseboro. It's a small tourist town in southern Minnesota that supports a fully professional theater troupe of amazing actors. They actually opened up a new $3.5 million space this season which was really, really nice. The play we saw was Harvey (you might be familiar with the film adaptation that stars Jimmy Stewart). It's about a man who sees an imaginary 6-foot tall rabbit and how his family and friends react to him. I thought it was going to be a drama about the inner reaches of the human psyche. It turned out to be a slapstick comedy...which was really funny.

We ate at a local restaurant on the Root River.

If there were such a thing as Little Norway, Decorah would be it. That particular European heritage runs pretty strong in these parts anyway, but Decorah is essentially the center of that universe. The Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum is the oldest and most comprehensive museum in the nation which is devoted to a single ethnic group and every summer the town pulls out all the stops and throws Nordic Fest. That being said, it's no surprise that they serve some great Norwegian food in town. The Dayton House Cafe is my favorite.

Varme Polser is Norwegian sausage wrapped in lefse bread. Sort of like a Scandinavian hot dog but way better tasting.

And rømmegrøt for dessert. It's cream pudding topped with butter and sugar and it essentially tastes like cinnamon and sugar toast. I made the mistake of eating this stuff in 95-degree heat one time a couple of years ago and somehow lived to tell the tale and do battle with it again. It's that good.

And some random pictures I've taken over the last few days to fill up space.

laryn-frickin-gitis

I'm sidelined from writing in any substantial way for a while due to--of all things--a bout with laryngitis. It's really ridiculous and frustrating and ironic to think that I took time out of my summer to travel hours away to a place where I could focus on writing an opera and I am now losing my voice. Really? I mean really?

Oh well. My forced vocal rest has given me a chance to catch up on correspondence which, contrary to the work I really want to get done, is actually pretty important. I was Gwyneth Walker's airport chauffeur a few years ago and, during the trip, we had a great 3-hour conversation about various things composer. If I remember correctly, she gets up every morning and does something like 2 hours of correspondence (no more, no less) and composes after lunch. Come to think of it I may have that backwards, but whatever. Either way, she hits the proverbial nail on the head about one of the inherent struggles of being a creative professional: you have to be very regimented about anything organizational.

In any case, my vocal problems are made a whole lot easier to deal with by the fact that I'm here in Decorah. I spent 4 years here as a student and 2 summers as a resident and I absolutely love this place. It's a smaller town (only about 8,000 people live here) and the residents are maybe the nicest people ever. You could probably walk straight into oncoming traffic with no right of way and the drivers might actually apologize for the inconvenience. Minnesota Nice has nothing on Decorah. Someone once told me that this place is "like all of America used to be 50 years ago."
















Another great thing about Decorah is the fact that there are almost no corporate-owned places to eat. I had lunch and researched some poetry today at Hart's Tea & Tarts (which was way less hoity-toity than it sounds). I've never actually been to an English tea house before and it looked interesting. I had the jasmine green tea.
















Their chicken salad sandwich was on some sort of herb bread that I swear had an addictive chemical in it that makes you crave it fortnightly.
















Brick Pattern: Diderikke Brandt Hall

composing vacation

I'm blogging from the Magpie Coffeehouse in beautiful downtown Decorah, Iowa. I decided to get away from everything in the Twin Cities for a week in order to concentrate on finishing this opera and, so far, writing in a sleepy town in Northeastern Iowa seems to be working. I knocked off the opening aria yesterday. It's a three-paragraph soliloquy by one of the main characters so it wasn't easy. However, this is exactly why I headed south.

Decorah is home to my alma mater, Luther College, so I was able to have dinner with my former music history professor (and all around genius), Dr. James Griesheimer, last night. We grabbed some Mexican food at Sabor Latino on Water Street. When I was a waiter there in my college days it was called Cafe Deluxe and had a completely different menu so it was interesting to see the new decor and try the new cuisine.

Their chips are salty and the salsa is perfect. It's really hot but also really fresh so you just keep torturing yourself with more and more of it.

I had a combo platter of some different stuff and it was easily as good as the salsa. As I was explaining why I was taking pictures he reassured me that it was not annoying and that, in fact, he "travels with his stomach" as well. Consider this "blogging with my stomach."

Lunch break here at Magpie. Cheese and chutney sandwich with pasta in a dill sauce. I'm going to need to run an extra couple of miles tomorrow...

the jucy lucy

In the latest issue of Minnesota Monthly their food critic toured the state to find the greatest burgers in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It was a great article (read it here) and a Twins game provided the perfect excuse to check out the burger that occupies the #1 spot.

Welcome to Matt's Bar on 35th and Cedar in Minneapolis.





















They keep the menu pretty simple.





















Matt's famous burger is the Jucy Lucy (purposely misspelled) and it's so simple it's genius. They take two charbroiled patties and sandwich a piece of cheese between them. Then they cook it a little longer until the cheese is the temperature and consistency of liquid hot magma. They actually ask you if you know what you're biting in to when they serve you because you can burn the crap out of your mouth if you dig right in. There's also some crisp dill pickles and chopped onions (drizzled with hot oil from the fryer just to make it that much more ridiculous) to increase what the Monthly's food critic termed the "Burger Inherent Awesomness Quotient".

Here's some pre-delivery Lucys on the ancient grill. You cant' see it very well but the cook is wearing a Matt's t-shirt that says Fear The Cheese on the back.

It's a good idea to get some of their amazing fries to eat while your burger cools. This can then be accentuated with some cold Minnesota beer to wash it down with.

The piece de resistance. Sooooooo good. Keep the condiments the hell away from her! She's perfect.

Finish the night off with another cold beer at the Dome and a Minnesota Twins victory. Perfect.

poster

I recently got a nice new thing to hang on my wall. The folks from Vox Musica did a full concert of my works last April and their promotional art was really beautiful. I requested a high-res PDF so I could make a poster to hang on my wall and, in another show of how classy they are, they sent an enormous, glossy and gorgeous poster. It was bigger than I was going to make it and the photo is really cool. That being said, I finally got it back from the framer and I'm way happy with it.





















This particular blog might come across as a tad self-aggrandizing but I don't care...it's just so beautiful...and it's got my name on it. It's kind of like when I got that brand new Transformers lunch box in 1st grade and all the other boys were jealous. Of course, what they didn't know is that everyone else had all the actual action figures and all I had was a crappy lunch box...but it sure made me feel good.

matisyahu

I went to a Matisyahu concert last weekend at the Minnesota Zoo and had an amazing time.
















If you've never heard of him before it might surprise you to know that he is a Hasidic Jew who is wildly popular in reggae/rap circles for his incredible fusion of those musical genres with the teachings of orthodox Judaism. I know that sounds too good to be true but...seriously...check it out and see for yourself.

(On a side note: embedding was disabled on the "original" breakthrough version from Live at Stubb's but you can still check it out here. The audience loves this guy.)

I'm not a religious person in pretty much any way, shape or form and that, I think, is where his appeal lies for me. If you get past all that stuff his music is still amazing to the core. It's essentially how the entire art should be: truthful and delicate and timeless to a fault no matter what the subject matter is.

I missed him last time he was in town at First Avenue and have been kicking myself ever since. Luckily he came back through. The zoo is one of my favorite places to see a show and, although I didn't get seats as good as when I saw Guster there last year, it was still amazing. There aren't very many other places you can go to see a show where you can watch the artist...
















...and then turn immediately to your left and see this. Minnesota in the summer is pretty great and the concert was over before sundown.
















Work continues on the opera...