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Stars Over the Prairie
- University of Minnesota Press
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STARS OVER THE PRAIRIE I formed my first band, the Positive Reaction, when I was twelve years old. While the name of the band seemed to roll off the tongue, it may have also come subliminally from the whispers of wisdom and encouragement from my dad, a businessman and acolyte of writer and selfimprovement guru Dale Carnegie, the Deepak Chopra of his time with a ’50s suit and tie. Carnegie died on the day I was born, November 1, 1955, and I’d spend a lifetime trying to win friends and influence people one show at a time. When it came to bands, the Byrds were my favorite. Their magical mix of an electric twelve-string guitar, heavenly harmonies, and Mulligan stew of old folk songs, Dylan numbers, and originals blasted first from transistor radios, soon after on a turntable. They lifted me off the ground and shot me eight miles high into outer space. In preteenage ecstasy I felt imbued with some southside superhero strength when I’d listen. I wanted nothing more than to play like that. I wanted the Positive Reaction to be the next Byrds. An article in the Duluth News Tribune told of a Duluth native who had relocated to Canoga Park, California, and started a record label. He had released a 45-rpm single of a band from Duluth, which I ran out and bought at Range Music on Chestnut Street. I wrote him a letter and mailed it to the address on the kelly-green record label. In no uncertain terms, and with the deep conviction of a young boy soon to be thirteen , I told him I thought we could be the next Byrds and asked him for advice. He was kind enough to write back and said that as good as the Byrds were, he thought we were better off searching for our own sound. I’m hoping (thinking positively) the letter will one day resurface from a dusty file. Fast forward. The Blood on the Tracks Band was booked to play their Tenth Anniversary show at an amphitheater in St. Louis Park, a southern suburb of Minneapolis. I had organized the Million Dollar Bash at First Avenue in 2001 celebrating Bob Dylan’s sixtieth birthday, including forty different acts on two stages and the original members of the Minneapolis STARS OVER THE PRAIRIE session musicians who played on that classic Dylan album. They had not played together since those sessions and were reuniting again tonight. Comedian Al Franken, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and the moviemaking duo the Coen brothers had all grown up in St. Louis Park. Other notable residents included television star Hugh O’Brien who starred as Wyatt Earp, and Guy Bannister, an FBI agent who some believed may have been involved in the shadowy ring of the JFK assassination . I was invited to play at the show by Kevin Odegard, now the leader of the band for tonight’s show. He asked what song I would like to play. I chose the Byrds’ version of Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” as both the song and the sound set my ship a-sailin’ back in 1967 using “ideas as my maps.” I love playing music outside in the summertime. Minnesotans are gifted with three months of summer, and Mother Nature rewards us latitude-wise, after months of frost, snow, and bitter cold, with long days in June, July, and August with which to enjoy all that our ten thousand lakes (and almost as many treatment centers) have to offer. There is something about music on a cool breeze that mingles with butterflies and birds straight toward Heaven, electrically charged by rays of sunshine during the day, then at night under a canopy of the moon and stars. The amphitheater for that gig was built behind a faux town square. I parked my truck and went to find it. After walking past coffee shops, chichi clothing stores, and restaurants, it appeared innocently and invitingly , a small prairie down a rolling hill, just far enough away from the suburban sprawl, an oasis of solitude with lots of green grass and trees. It featured a humble stage with wooden benches for the audience, which swept gently back up the hill in front, in a semicircle around it—a glorious place to end the summer. August was slipping quietly away, yielding to the falling leaves and colder winds of September. It has been said that...