Variety from various decades, along with killer music resumes, make Good Neighbors

For a relatively small town, Roberts has some big-time bands with extensive resumes that feature a lot of variety and draw from various decades, when it puts on Good Neighbor Days from June 2-5.
The main thrust behind the annual festival in the middle of St. Croix County is the Roberts Lions Club, which has celebrated its 50th anniversary of service.
The bands in order of their performance are: The marching band from St. Croix Central High School starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Maiden Dixie at 7 p.m. Friday, The Drop at 7 p.m. Saturday, Rock Godz at 9 p.m. Saturday, and Thorns and Roses at 3 p.m. Sunday.
— Minneapolis-based Maiden Dixie has toured for a year in support of UNSAFE & SOUND, their critically acclaimed sophomore studio project that spent two weeks on the featured release list for iTunes New and Noteworthy Contemporary Country. Notable tracks Honest Man’s Wage, Bullets In The Gun and The Road became programmers’ favorites on radio outlets across the U.S. and Europe.
In addition to a full slate of YouTube videos, the band released two music videos. The Road, Maiden Dixie’s first full-length concept video, was directed by Zack Dyer, programmed on multiple music video channels and outlets across the country and viewed more than 100,000 times on the Maiden Dixie YouTube channel.
Maiden Dixie performed over 100 live concerts on their UNSAFE & SOUND Tour, and even got praise for the regular guy appeal of having a man on a garden tractor happen into their video shoot and shoot the breeze.
The band’s first Christmas single, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, got extensive country radio airplay and accolades, including a DisCovery Award from Robert K. Oermann in his Music Row Magazine DISClaimer column.
Maiden Dixie still found the time to return to the studio for their latest release, Wrecked (NAV10026). Working with producer Makoa Johnson and engineer Eric Blomquist, the EP again highlights the songwriting of Channing Himes and Jonathan Krentz, the vocals of Jesse Becker and the musicianship of Zachary Scanlan, Tyler Kloewer and Andrew “Tank” Sherman. Wrecked takes the “signature kinetic blend” of country, pop and rock that Maiden Dixie unveiled on UNSAFE & SOUND and packs it with new songs.
It begins with Freedom Feels Like, then ventures into the first notes of the haunting The Whiskey’ll Miss Me, then moves into the lighthearted commentary on surrendering to the addiction of love in Today Ain’t It, and at last slides into the searing guitar and soaring vocals of Wildcard. Wrecked takes the fans of real music on a ride through the human condition. And they ask, what other country band gives you songs with bongos and a theremin?
— As co-headliners, the group Rock Godz are dressed like ’80s glam rockers, and their all ages show is billed as taking the audience “on an over-the-top, wildly fun trip through the best eras of rock and pop music.” The ’80s-focused production, which is combined with classic and current rock and pop, lets listeners sing along to Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Journey, Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC, Poison, Prince, Bryan Adams, Led Zeppelin, Theory of a Deadman, Quiet Riot, Buck Cherry, Steel Panther and more.
Rock Godz is made up of veteran musicians who have toured regionally and nationally with acts such as Jonah and the Wales, Wild Side, Mortal Chaos, Shameless Desire, Hollywood Blvd, 13th Step, Si6ks, A:POD, 80-D and Driven By Design. Their extensive experience as rockers has let them share the stage with national acts including Dokken, Great White, Ratt, Slaughter, Firehouse, Jackyl, Saliva, Joey Belladona, Sevendust, Candle Box, Seether, Skid Row, Alice In Chains, Shinedown, Vince Neil, Brett Michaels, Krokus, American Head Charge out of Minneapolis and others. Members have rocked some of the biggest stages around including Target Center, The Myth, First Avenue and Whiskey a Go-Go in L.A.
— As essentially their warm-up band, all the young dudes in The Drop look a little grungier and steer more toward modern rock.
— Rose ‘N Thorns also is a sextet and also is known for Eagles songs, just like Maiden Dixie. What started as a laid back trio of acoustic pop has grown into a six-piece high energy band that mixes up genre styling from rock and blues, to country and folk. Rose n’ Thorns covers the music of their generation (Baby Boomers) with a blend of humor and enthusiasm that even excites those who can’t name the four Beatles, they say.
The members come from backgrounds so diverse, and cover so many genres, that it’s impossible to fit Rose n’ Thorns into a single style. Whether it’s the soul needed for a Lucinda Williams ballad or the throaty wailings to pull off Neil Young, someone in RNT rises to the challenge, they say. In addition to over 100 cover songs, the group has produced many originals that are now as readily requested as the old standards. But names you might recognize are Jimmy Buffett, Van Morrison, The Band, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Grateful Dead.
Among the other events you can check out at the fest include the Friday evening tractor pull, the Saturday 5K and fun run, as well as the car show, truck pull and coronation pageant, and the Sunday demo derby and parade through the middle of town, which has a new starting time of 11 a.m.
But its not all music and fun. The Lions invite listeners to stop by the park building and drop off used eye glasses and hearing aids so they can be refurbished and donated to those in need.
For more information, visit the Good Neighbor Days and Lions online sites and their Facebook page.

Share the Post:

Headliner

Urban Table has solo and duet acts already in the books, and the tunes put in its vault, as they’ll soon be brought back for more music events. and positioned practically tableside tonight in their designated intimate enclave, has been enlisted an acoustic ensemble, turning it into an ample stage, and then another band next Saturday, just for starters. Bluesy, yes, and even jazzier. And always eclectic.

This about all that soft jazz, and a whole lotta related offerings, taking a renewed seat at the table, like a not-seen-for-a-while relative at Thanksgiving dinner, as they have plenty of quick eats or full meal to go with the music too, at a venue that adds another element to the local song scene. It’s an intimate setting, where you can be not much more than an arm’s length or two from one of the players as the regele you with their sung stories — and still stay out of reach and vocal range of that odd uncle, but close...

Headliner

Clarity. Craft. Better together. Like a guitar harmony. Or Clarity & Craft Co., for penning business proposals that turn old notes and rough drafts into persuasive plans for your client’s action. Like a concerto. Choir to double down, on composing ditties.

Business writing, and even life, is like penning a song. It moves through the various seasons, like The Rain Song. (Snow coming soon.) But the very season at which we choose to begin is telling. And it may vary. For each client’s, or band’s needs. Or the second side of an album. They say keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your bandmates closest, because they are the ones you hole up with for long periods and churn out the creative process. One of those for me, is the pen during the day, and voice at times at night when...

Headliner

Nicolas Cage has been around locally for weeks filming one of his latest projects. Could ‘Parish’ be considered a cage match between he and St. Michael the Archangel, a local parish, with sword slitting sinner’s neck, considering his bent for projects of a spiritual and apocalyptic nature?? But farmhouse famously. Read on, or see it in a theater soon …

When I first heard that star actor Nicolas Cage was in town for an extended stay to film one of his new movies, it didn’t take too much of a deep dive to discover that the film and its protagonist takes the name of Parish, which made me think it had something to do with things post-apocalyptic and churches, like some of his past flicks. (Spoiler alert: It actually is not a parish in the sense of the name of a church, but has that end of the world and eternity vibe, as it’s about a man who decides to hole up in his adapted...

Headliner, Killer Metal Lyrics

MAGA goes South, and everyone from South Park to various ends of St. Croix County ‘can plainly see’ it. Yes, Republicanism may have won the day in the county, but in the final tally in the state, and country, it was curtains for them keeping a majority, being tied too closely to Trump. aberations in that county voting were Knoke vs. Zimmerman, and the early tallies in Town of Hudson absentee voting.

Mr. Hat, meet Mr. Reality, meet Mr. Mandate. Via Mr. Crowley. If you don’t get that post-election humor, then there’s no hope … When it concerns the latter, check out the Ozzy song and it’s message, “won’t you ride my white horse” and “did you think you were pure,” see if you then get the gag, as a U.S. dictator’s realm falls in a landslide rarely seen. “Your lifestyle to me seems so tragic.” As the last midterm election tallies are being, well, tallied, South Park (and later SNL too) roared on with its satire on Wednesday night, getting going at it...

Headliner

Sick of getting flyers in the mail, as many as five a day, and leaving no room in the box for the postman? Even if they happen to target a political interest of yours? I went through more than 100, so offer this synopsis, which got very detailed, as your primer for when you go to the polls today. (See results here in coming days.)

The divide in politics these days is not still as much left vs. right, with granted little center, it’s become the informed vs. the uniformed or downright ignorant, and by the flyers politicians put out, you can see they are catering to this predilection. So I propose a solution, though radical, as long as these days we’re throwing that word around all over the place even when it’s not merited, and it’s mentioned literally hundreds of times in Republican flyers across the state: If you are not going to educate yourself, don’t vote. If you think about it, this is very Darwin-ish. Another...

Headliner

Few inflatables? Just Chip away at the beyond-rigatoni-like-structured (Penne please?) them plastic bones? Halloween has come crashing to a sugary candied conclusion. But not before the alley cats were spooked, if they were not caught with their costumed tails between their legs, (no prizes), or by a pirate that’s DEPP-osed, (maybe.) Or, did Zappa do it? Double, double P. —– But hence, tomorrow is Election Day, and I will provide detailed coverage and how-to-fight-through-the-chaff analysis that will include the local polling numbers. You will see that much sooner here than in the local paper, as they do not staff elections firsthand.

Hark Halloween has been buried, as the big inflatables are now being sacked and stored — they were slowly being replaced anyway by some bigger creatures of all, very tall types and rounds lengths of plastic, currently used as the centerpieces, not the ones that often end up laying flat on the ground, strung out. As far as the bigger than gourds, such pumpkins were seen around town at the bars and antique shops, such as three of carefully chosen shades set in a triangle, of all different colors were the shapes painted on — they being squares and circles of...

Variety from various decades, along with killer music resumes, make Good Neighbors

Related Posts