BOOM! Welcome back to another edition of Tuesdays With Lazerbeak. I hope you’re all enjoying this tale end of April. We are kicking things into full Spring gear here at Doomtree HQ and there’s a ton of May events coming up to tell you about. First off, this Saturday, May 4th marks the long-awaited debut of the Minnesota History Center’s First Avenue exhibit. Hard to believe the greatest music venue in the entire world is about to turn 50 years old! Huge shouts to everyone at the History Center for putting the time and resources in to honor such an incredibly influential institution.
Doomtree has donated some artifacts and memorobilia for the exhibit, including my very first MPC 2000XL and Mike Mictlan’s legendary DOOM TREE brass knuckles. Nothing is quite as cool though as donating your ENTIRE TOUR VAN. That’s right, our trusty van MOUNTAIN has finally retired from the game and will now call the Minnesota History Center its home for the rest of time. This is truly one of the greatest things I could ever imagine happening. It didn’t come without a little pain though. In order to get MOUNTAIN through the freight elevators and into the exhibit we needed to do a little surgery.
Not to worry though, MOUNTAIN has made a full recovery and is good as new. Check out this video of the final surgical touches.
And voila!!! I still can’t believe this is happening.
To kick off the exhibit the History Center is throwing a huge opening party this Saturday. I’ll be there DJing from 2:00-3:00pm and there will be a slew of other awesome DJs throughout the day as well. Come say hi and celebrate 50 years of First Avenue! Info and details HERE.
Later that very same night (Saturday, May 4th) I’ll be out in Winona, MN to play a headlining set with my man Longshot at the 2019 Mid West Music Fest. It’s basically a small town version of SXSW without the Doritos JACKED billboards and everyone puking everywhere. Such a great lineup too. Check out the full weekend schedule below and grab your tickets HERE. See you down there!
Dessa heads overseas later this week to kick off a short run of European dates. She’ll have Matthew Santos and Aby Wolf accompanying her this time around and the trio will be playing shows throughout Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, England, and Ireland. Check out the full routing below and grab your tickets HERE.
Then at the end of May, Dessa will head back to the states to rock a trifecta of big Memorial Day Weekend fests. Things kick off Friday, May 24th in Napa Valley for the annual Bottlerock Festival. Check out the full lineup below and grab your tickets HERE.
On Saturday, May 25th Dessa will be in Boston for the big Boston Calling music fest. Crazy lineup below. Tickets right HERE.
She’ll end the mini-run on home turf at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds for Soundset 2019. They got an extra incredible lineup going this year. Should be a total blast. Grab your tickets HERE.
That same weekend I’ll be posted up at the Memory Lanes Block Party in Minneapolis playing a super rare show with my brothers Mixed Blood Majority. This is currently the only MBM show we’ve got on the books this year, so you definitely don’t want to miss it. Saturday, May 25th. Check out the crazy local lineup below and check out the schedule and info right HERE.
That does it for the Doomtree May Show Review, which means I now get to highlight one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Last week I got turned into a MEME! That’s right, all these years of repping #CrystalDaddy finally paid off when our German friend Nele Katzwinkel made a thread of me as various forms of crystals. Check this out and click the arrow to scroll through.
Within half a day our friend Adam Dunn had taken those same images and turned me into some sort of #CrystalDaddy animorph situation. Watch this video below.
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Goodnight. #CrystalDaddy Pics by @neleneko. Video morphing by @phantomsloth.
Aaaaaaaand by the next morning the Legend God Paul “Arlo” Guthrie took a stab at visually remixing my latest “Valley Low” music video by turning my face into crystals. You really can’t make this stuff up. Thanks to Nele, Adam, and Arlo for making my entire week!
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Aaaaaaaaand now this. Thank you @arlographie! Does this mean that I’m a meme now?!
OK, how about some Bonus Jams? I’ve been crossing off the days until the new Carly Rae Jepsen album drops, but in the meantime there are still plenty of great songs getting released on a weekly basis. Let’s kick things off with the return of FKA Twigs. This “Cellophane” song is cool, but this music video is INSANE. The human body continues to blow my mind. Excited to hear her upcoming album.
FKA Twigs – “Cellophane”
Flying Lotus announced he’s got a new record on deck and shared this excellent single featuring Little Dragon. Super into it.
Flying Lotus – “Spontaneous” ft. Little Dragon
Huge shouts to newcomer Arin Ray for featuring the greatest living singer on his new single “Always.” Just gonna put it out there, if you feature Babyface on your album you have a better than average chance of making my Top 5 Albums of the Year list. Word to the wise. This song is great.
Arin Ray – “Always” ft. Babyface
Really digging this new ScHoolboy Q album, and I haven’t always been that big of a fan of his full records. I’d say this is his best one yet and there’s some really cool production on it as well. Check out one of my favs below.
ScHoolboy Q – “5200”
Rico Nasty and producer-of-the-moment Kenny Beats have teamed up again for this Anger Management project. I listen to this in the Pilot when I’m by myself and it makes me want to throw my body through the windshield (in a good way). Rowdy stuff.
Rico Nasty & Kenny Beats – “Again”
Minneapolis emcee Will Robinson just dropped a new video for his single “Ventilations.” Shouts to Mercies May on the visuals. Looking forward to checking out more of Will’s stuff.
Will Robinson – “Ventilations”
Fresh off of her major motion picture acting debut in that new Khalid movie, Dizzy Fae is back with a new loosie called “Altar.” Really feeling this one.
Dizzy Fae – “Altar”
Stoked about this new Zoo Animal EP that Holly Hansen just put up on Bandcamp. Check out all three tracks below and grab it right HERE.
Zoo Animal – Naive Enough EP
I randomly got put onto this local band Fragile Canyons through a hilarious Twitter correspondence between them and Hippo Campus, and I’m so glad I caught it. The internet really can be a wonderful place every once in awhile. Their new album sort of reminds me of if a teenage Neil Young fronted a jam-band version of late-era Pavement. And I mean that with the utmost respect and admiration for all parties involved. Check out “Powerless” below and get Fragile Canyons’ excellent Slow Dancing Beyond Silverdome album right HERE.
Fragile Canyons – “Powerless”
And lastly, the homie James Gundersen of CLOQUET just released a nice little instrumental banger over the weekend. This guy really can do it all. Always thrilled to hear new music from him. Check out “C L O S E R” below.
J. Gundersen – “C L O S E R”
BAM! That does it for this week’s Bonus Jams. Don’t forget to subscribe to my Spotify playlist right HERE. I update it every week with brand new heaters so you can stay on top of the game. Doooooooooooit.
That’s it for this post! I hope you all have an amazing week. Looking forward to seeing some of you out at the Minnesota History Center and Mid West Music Fest this Saturday. If not, next Tuesday for sure. Take it easy on yourself!
— Beak
Twitter: @_LAZERBEAK_
Instagram: @lazerbeak
