Return of van*gloria: Minneapolis v. 2.0

After reaching a consensus decision that we had left the Minneapolis-St.Paul metro area insufficiently rocked, we returned to the Uptown Bar in uptown Minneapolis (which is actually southwest of downtown Minneapolis??) to rectify the situation. Aiding and abetting us were the opening band, Self-Sufficient Flying Machine, a bluegrass quartet whose guitarist mightily soldiered on despite breaking three (!) guitar strings during their set, and Liarbirds, a fantastic punk band originally from Milwaukee who have shared the stage with our Miami compatriots Airship Rocketship (Airship's guitarist Prof. Rainer Davies can often be seen wearing his Liarbirds t-shirt). Bearing witness to the aforementioned rocking were several familiar faces from our past: UM-ers Dave Birrow (who told us about the Minneapolis Pirate Pub Crawl, which sounds like a timber-shivering good time if you ever find yourself in the Twin Cities during Pirate Season) and Jon Estes (also on tour, with the Rosewood Thieves), and my Madison friends Matt Krieger, Annie Sanders, Eric Mullis, and Kelly Cox.

Big thanks to Liarbirds, who, "knowing what it's like to be on tour," graciously gave us their share of the evening's money (which many bands have done for us, actually, and for which we are extremely grateful: gas costs, tolls, and vehicular failures sure do quickly eat up the indie rock financial reserves). Liarbirds have several tours coming up, so keep checking their MySpace page this summer to see if they're visiting a town nearest you.