SD Day 6 - Musical Instruments, Michelangelo, and Meatloaf
Today I started out by driving a little south of Sioux Falls to the college town of Vermillion. My first stop was to get some coffee and a hefty brunch from the charming local diner Cafe Brule (I believe the name is intended to evoke crème brûlée and not John C. Reilly’s finest creation). On the breakfast side of things I got a good strong cold brew coffee, and on the lunch side of things I got half slab of meatloaf with veggies, mashed potatoes, and bread all smothered in good country gravy. It was very tasty, and somehow under $10 which blew my mind (in many ways, I am very much my father’s son).
The main attraction that brought me to Vermillion was the National Music Museum at the University of South Dakota which has a massive collection of unique, historic, and historically unique musical instruments from around the world. I was really looking forward to it, and it seemed like a good omen that right outside was this really pretty flower arranged with sculptures of little kids going bananas for the violin.
Right away the museum wasted no time being hugely impressive by putting a ton of cool stuff front and center. Walking into the lobby, I was greeted by giant Thai goblet drums, 17th century brass instruments, acoustic guitars that belonged to Johnny and June Carter Cash, and a vintage Gibson electric guitar that had been owned by John Entwistle of the Who. Quite an introduction.
My personal favorite piece in the lobby though was this vintage photo of klezmer band with a violinist who bears a shocking resemblance to Andre the Giant:
The first special exhibit was a truly gorgeous Indonesian gamelan set made special for the museum. Gamelan refers to traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia played on these impressive ceremonial percussion sets featuring a variety of xylophones, gongs, hand drums, cymbals, and an instrument called the bonang which sort of looks like a set of metal pots. The instruments are played in intricate synchronized rhythms.
The drums on their own are beautiful pieces of art, but seeing professional gamelan players in actions is pretty unreal. Everyone just seems to be totally on the same wavelength:
I’m not entirely sure why this piano was next to the gamelan set, but it did have a particularly artsy paint job so I wasn’t too upset by it.
The next gallery was dedicated to a stunning collection of artful string instruments including violins, violas, lutes, cellos, and funky Renaissance instruments called citterns. While the instruments themselves were incredible examples of craftsmanship (with a couple original Stradivarius pieces and the oldest known surviving cello in the world, no big deal), I loved seeing all the insane carved wooden necks, highly detailed sound holes, and extravagant inlaid ivory and mother of pearl artwork that made each piece extra impressive.
The most historically interesting pieces to me were some of the oldest made by the Amati family in the 16th century. Not really knowing anything about classical music or the history of these instruments, I never realized how relatively new the whole violin family is with Andrea Amati being credited as designing the first violin with the recognizable modern form in 1555. They didn’t have that exact first one, but they had some very rare, original pieces which were super cool to see in person.
The next gallery was big cross section of historic piano-family instruments including the oldest known still functional harpsichord and two of the earliest known grand pianos in the style of Bartolomeo Cristofori who is credited with inventing the instrument (which is just crazy considering he lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. I always just sort of assumed these things date back much farther than that). They also had a few cabinet pianos which were a very tall style of upright pianos which looked very elegant but had a habit of falling over which shows that a lot of rich people at the time really wanted the appearance of playing an instrument without caring about the practicality of actually doing it.
Amid all these historic pianos, some of the instruments stood out for also serving as canvases for amazing paintings. These artistic flourishes would have impressed on traditional media, but the fact that they’d survived these several centuries on functional instruments without losing any of their vividness was just bonkers.
In one corner there was a grand elegant pipe organ built in 1808 and featuring a really lovely night sky design embossed over the pipes.
Other highlights were two quirky early portable keyboards. One initially looked like a small wooden chest but is actually a miniature pipe organ from 17th century Poland, and the other is a tiny reed organ (one of the earliest) from 19th century Vienna.
The next gallery would have been my dad’s dream come true as it was dedicated entirely to great American guitar makers featuring some real beauties by D'Angelico, D'Aquisto, Fender, Gibson, Martin, and Stromberg-Voisinet. They were phenomenal examples of craftsmanship, as well as fun little windows into history as you can see experimentation with body shapes and designs start coalesce into the acoustic guitar we know today.
They had a number of guitars once owned by famous players, but the coolest one to me was a signed Gibson that had belonged to blues icon B. B. King:
In addition to the traditional acoustic guitars, there were also some experiments with other string instruments including banjos, ukuleles, and mandolins (even featuring the earliest known surviving Gibson Mandolin). My favorite though was an unusual harp-guitar which Gibson started to produce in 1903. Musicians didn’t really warm up to the massive instrument, and in 1912 Gibson included an article in their annual catalog chastising their customers for ignoring what they promised would be the instrument of the future. Whoops.
In the corner of the gallery, there was a recreation of a guitar making shop featuring all the tools of the trade and some great vintage photos of masters at work.
After the guitars, it was back to some fancy keys in the hallway including: a super strange experimental upright piano with a lot more keys than normal; a gorgeous grand piano by Chickering and Sons; and a sleek original Hammond organ which I was very excited to see as someone who is a big fan of both gospel and reggae (which I believe are the most organ heavy genres of music).
I made my way up to the second floor where the hallway had big display cases of smaller instruments on either side. On one side of the hall, the cases were filled with fancy concertinas, accordions, and other hand held organs some of which were surprisingly ornate.
On the opposite side of the hallway, the cases were filled with unique and unusual small wind instruments including pitch pipes, horns made out of actual horns, seashell whistles, and lots of harmonicas (though the real show stopping harmonicas were just a little bit down the hall).
At this point, I left the hallway and entered the main galleries of the museums collection. These began interestingly enough with a pretty divisive instrument: the theramin. Invented by a young Russian physicist named Leon Theremin in 1920, this instrument (which he originally named the etherphone) was one of the earliest electronic instruments and is still one of the only musical instruments that is played without any physical contact between the player and the instrument. Sound is generated by moving within two electromagnetic field generated by perpendicular antennae, one field controls pitch and the other volume and by moving your hands in synch you can generate a variety of tones in an impressive 5+ (depending on the instrument) octave range. While the often eerie, artificial hum of the instrument is probably most associated with its use in horror and sci-fi film scores, Theramin had really intended it to be a serious instrument used in classical orchestras and he toured extensively trying to make the world see what his invention was capable of. Many dismissed him as a novelty, but he did make some notable converts, particularly a young fellow Russian ex-pat and violin virtuoso, Clara Rockmore, who with her perfect pitch and classical training took the instrument to new heights of critical acceptance while touring with orchestras and the legendary bass-baritone and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (who sang this iconic version of Ol’ Man River in the 1936 film version of Show Boat). Theramin was so moved by Rockmore’s playing of his instrument that he asked her to marry him several times but she refused and married an attorney. It was probably a smart move on her end because Theramin would be forced to return to the Soviet Union in 1938 and he wouldn’t be allowed to leave for 51 years. Nobody knows for sure if he was kidnapped by the KGB or left of his own volition to escape debts in the US (possibly accrued because he was ostracized from most US social circles after he married a Black ballet performer named Lavina Williams which shocked 1930s sensibilities). Theramin himself claimed the latter, but the fact that he disappeared in the middle of the night without taking his wife and was forced to work in a gold mining labor camp upon returning to the Soviet Union suggest that probably the former happened and he wasn’t allowed to say anything (or most likely a combo of the two). Once he was freed from the labor camp, he was made to work in secret Soviet laboratories to work on listening devices for espionage, including one giant bugged seal that was hung in the US ambassador to Moscow’s office to overhear all of his conversations. He tried to teach music, but the USSR said electricity had no place in music and forced him to teach physics instead for years until he was finally free to travel again. Dude had an absolutely insane life.
Here’s Clara in action:
The next chunk of galleries was dedicated to the history of American wind instruments. These began with instruments built by Samuel Graves and Co., a New England instrument maker who was the first American to give European wind instrument manufacturers a real run for their money. He made all sorts of instruments, but he was particularly celebrated for his clarinets which elegant works of craftsmanship.
One of the largest collections was dedicated to the works of the Conn Instruments out of Elkhart, Indiana one of the most celebrated instrument manufacturers in the country. One of Conn’s biggest claims to fame is that they were the first American company to produce Saxophones starting in 1888. While the Saxophone was invented in Belgium, it was not particularly embraced by the European classical music community and it might not have taken off at all if not for being really seized upon by American marching bands thanks in part to the work of Conn. Even without the fun history, these saxes were just stunning to look at with some truly unreal engravings.
One of the wildest historical footnotes was that a big reason that saxophones took off in permeating American pop culture was because of the silly antics of saxophone sextet of Canadian brothers who dressed up in either clown makeup or Black face (big yikes) and took Vaudeville by storm. It’s crazy that so many different American arts can be so directly linked to Blackface performances, but I guess that if you were so starved for entertainment in the days before home recordings were readily accessible you might not question the racial politics of your art. It’s not really an excuse, since we know for a fact that there were legitimate hugely talented Black artists around at the same time who were being ignored by White audiences in favor minstrel acts which plenty of people at the time knew was gross and unjust. I think it speaks to the complexity of American identity that even something as seemingly innocuous as the popularity of the saxophone is also so deeply intertwined with race relations.
Some other highlights included a stars and stripes saxophone played by Bill Clinton and a very bedazzled tenor:
Beyond your more traditional alto, tenor, soprano, and baritone members of the saxophone family, there were these funky outcasts that Conn had experimented with such as their own unique creation, the Conn-O-Sax, intended to be a hybrid saxophone and English horn and which was only produced from 1928-1930 and a real behemoth called the Sarrussophone which filled the contra-bass niche that tends to be filled with bassoon but with a lot more power intended for outdoor bands. To hear what they sound like click here for the Conn-O Sax, and here for the Sarrusophone.
While their saxophones might be Conn’s biggest contribution to the American music landscape, the brass instruments that initially put them on the map were some pretty incredible pieces of work as well:
My favorites of the brass instruments because I hadn’t really seen anything like them before were two of Conn’s unusual double bell-ed creations, a euphonium and unique custom instrument similar to a French horn called the Echo-horn
Amidst the real instruments, the museum’s collection also featured some fun novelties such as an unplayable heart shaped trumpet from a wildly misguided 70s Beatles inspired rock opera starring the Bee Gees (and featuring this very surreal Steve Martin cameo) called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and an impressively strange porcelain saxophone-bugle hybrid by an Oregon artist named Steve Smeed.
Next up was a display dedicated to one of the pioneers of comedy music Stanley Fritts and the Korn Kobblers who combined wacky antics (notably not in Blackface), silly lyrics, and homemade instruments to become a popular traveling act around the country to delight 30s and 40s audiences with their nonsense songs. I couldn’t find any really good quality recordings of them but you can click here to see them playing back up with Freddie Fisher (an influence on Dr. Demento favorite, Spike Jones).
i can only assume they were a big inspiration on the band Korn
Transitioning to the next stretch of galleries, I passed by a bizarre contraption called the double chromatic harp which is only one of two in the world and a very 70s looking electronic church organ.
The next few displays were filled with more guitars and other string instruments owned by famous players. Highlights included: a guitar Elvis had broken onstage and then given to a young lady in the audience; an electric guitar signed by Steve Miller, Mike Love from the Beach Boys, and Stu Cook from CCR as part of charity concert for South Dakota Vietnam War veterans; a Johny Cash guitar with his name stylishly scrawled up the fretboard; guitars from Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Chet Atkins, and Fury Lewis; and a big display for somebody I’d never heard of before named Eddie Peabody who was a talented multi-instrumentalist most noted for championing the plectrum banjo which has 4 strings as opposed to the common 5 earning the title the King of the Banjo. It’s very goofy but I couldn’t resist sharing a video he made in 1942 called Banjo-mania! (click here)
Rounding out the famous guitars were various strange and/or artful novel guitars. Highlights here for me were: a Gibson with particularly pretty mother of pearl dove and rose on the fret guard; a funky pre-cursor to the peddle steel guitar called the electraharp; and an electric guitar that also doubled as a crutch.
After the guitars, there was an amazing collection of more organs and pianos with extra impressive art around the frames (including one with its own stained glass for Christ’s sake!)
Next up, I went back into the main hallway to really dive into their Treasures from the Alan G. Bates Harmonica Collection, the second largest collection of historic harmonicas in the world. I feel like most people might not think twice about harmonicas, but the sheer variety of shapes, styles, and sizes on these weird little guys was shocking and it was a real highlight of the museum. My big takeaway is that anything that could possibly be a harmonica is probably a harmonica be it a lipstick container, a car, a fish, walking sticks, binoculars, or even a gun.
Some of my favorites included: tiny harmonicas with little trumpet bells amplifying the sounds; a Banana Band Sweet Music banana harmonica; and a harmonica that had been owned and played by one Stevie Wonder.
Next up was display of handcrafted instruments by various Native peoples of the Americas. These included things that I was impressed by but sort of knew about such as beautiful carved wooden pipes, clay whistles, and painted animal skin drums, but I was much more surprised by string instruments made out of turtles and armadillos. Because their shells and armor plates are naturally resonant, it makes a lot of sense, but it’s not something I would have ever thought to do in a middle years.
Naturally though my favorite piece from the Native instruments was this simply jaw dropping engraved sousaphone that was used in an Indian marching band. We just didn’t have tubas this pretty in any band I ever played in.
The tuba segued nicely into a display about the history of military bands leading and the birth of the concert band with some real great vintage brass instruments, marching drums, and an absolute beast of a thing called the contrabassophone.
The next display was dedicated to the motliest crew (sorry crü) of mandolins I’ve ever seen. Honestly if not for the display information I never would have guessed that these were all variations on the same instrument, but I love how some musical instrument manufacturers really just let their imaginations run wild. In particular I’d love to play that giant Mando-Bass in the center.
Here’s some old guys having too much fun playing some of these vintage bad boys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLB08nL_pu4
Next up was some some homemade ingenuity in the form of cellos made out of barrels and stove pipes. I’d seen home-made folk instruments before, but normally they don’t really go for classical strings so I really loved these guys for going for it.
After that was a display about ukuleles featuring different models. This was largely a celebration of early Hawaiian craftsmanship but they did also give a shoutout to Tiny Tim which made me very happy because he was a one of kind oddball.
Past the ukuleles was a particularly sleek collection of banjos:
Next up was a focus on the instruments that might be in the home of a typical upperclass family at the turn of the 20th century with a full recreation sitting room. Highlights here included a snazzy square piano, a wooden phonograph, and a gorgeously ornate dulcimer.
The biggest wow though was in the form of massive early automated music players. These hefty works of art are precursors to not just current music players but also computers as they were some of the first programmable machines ever mass produced. The quality of the actual music these things play is hilariously tinny and not great, but it’s also hard to fathom living in a world when you couldn’t easily hear music whenever you wanted so I’m sure they meant a lot to people that owned them warts and all.
Last but not least in the American wing of the museum was a display case of some great early drums with really great decorative casings:
From there, I moved into more international musical waters. The first global gallery I walked through was a feature of some excellent pan-African percussion and string instruments. I knew highly sculptural percussion instruments were common across a lot of tribal cultures, but some of the string instruments were a fun surprise indicative of the Islamic and Middle-Eastern influences throughout the continent. Here’s a fun video I stumbled across of some of these strings in beautiful harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfnaQ9Cuw5k
Next I jumped continents over to Asia. Which began with some beautifully crafted East Asian, strings, reeds, and percussion (with a real favorite obviously being the giant fish drum). The reeds and ceremonial drums in the top two photos are Chinese in origin, while the two stringed instruments on the bottom are Japanese. For me personally, the biwa (bottom right) is really fascinating to see somebody play live because the way it’s strummed with a special pick creates a really ethereal sound, check it out here.
The next displays were instruments from all around India. I think largely because of the Beatles, Western audiences tend to just think of Indian music as just sitars and tablas but it’s such a massive freaking country with really diverse cultures and you see that diversity really play out on the variety of instruments on display. Here’s a really beautiful traditional Sikh instrument called the Taus, which has a lovely tone and for added fun is usually designed to look like a peacock: check it out here.
Rounding out some of my favorites from Southeast Asian collections were some beautifully made wind instruments from Tibet (including trumpets made out of seashells a and a really elaborate stringed instrument from Myanmar called the Saung gauk.
Other big highlights from throughout the Asian galleries were all the impeccably crafted ceremonial percussion instruments which were really works of sculptural art as well as functional instruments.
Next up was a collection of instruments from the Pacific Islands which also had highly symbolic sculptural qualities to them. I particularly liked the gigantic carved slit drums from the island of Vanuatu which you can see people jamming on here.
At this point it was another continent jump over to Europe, for some insanely intricately carved early plucked strings instruments including one of the oldest surviving English Citterns (center) which the museum had to intensely outbid the Metropolitan Museum of Art to obtain.
Next up were some early European hand carved woodwinds included some of the oldest known clarinets in the world:
Two of my favorites wind instruments were this teeny but highly decorative carved bugle-like instrument called a natural horn made in 17th century Germany and a beautifully carved traditional Jewish instrument called a shofar from early 18th century Poland made out of a hollowed out ram’s horn.
Next up was a series of lutes featuring out of this world carvings around the sound holes and elaborate mother of pearl inlays (and at least one carved ivory fretboard). These were just jaw dropping.
Next up were some violins, violas, cellos, and basses from around Europe. It was cool seeing subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) variations on the common form as you moved around the continent, but in general the level of craftsmanship was so high and I’d be so terrified to play any of these things since they look so fragile despite having survived for several centuries in many cases.
Some more uncommon highlights were this wild looking wind-up hurdy gurdy from 18th century France, some funky dulcimers and zithers, and an unusual thing called the tromba marina named after the fact that for a bowed string instrument it was able to achieve a shockingly brassy trumpet-like sound. Because trumpets were thought to be too masculine for nuns it became a popular replacement instrument in convents earning it the nickname the Nun’s Fiddle. History is strange. Thankfully an organization called the Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments has been working on building new non-medieval Tromba Marina’s and performing with them which you can see here.
Other unusual highlights included nightmarish bagpipe from the Czech Republic is carved to apparently resemble an angry demon-goat and an instrument called the glass armonica which was invented by Benjamin Franklin after he was impressed by someone playing tuned wine glasses at a party. He thought the process could be more streamlined by creating a keyboard-like configuration of differently tuned glass bowls which constantly spin so the player just has to put a finger on them as opposed to doing the whole circular motion. In a crazy historical coincidence a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart actually saw Ben Franklin giving a demonstration of his invention (did you ever think those two guys interacted?) and he was inspired to write some music for it, which you can actually hear a contemporary performer playing here.
Next up was some more beautiful piano (and piano-like) instruments from around Europe. I might be out of fun piano anecdotes at this point but they’re still mighty fine to look at:
Back to the woodwinds, there was a great display about the evolution of the oboe and bassoon, a weird little fella I’d never seen before called an Oktavin, and a clarinet with a some pretty top notch flower carvings below the mouth piece:
They also had some original saxophones by their inventor Adolphe Sax which was totally insane. Sax invented his eponymous instrument in 1846 when he was 32, but the craziest thing I read about him was that he had so many near brushes with death during his childhood that his friends and family growing up referred to him as “Little Sax, the Ghost” and his mother once said he was “a child condemned to misfortune; he won’t live”. She was clearly graced with impeccable bedside manner. His list of near death experiences according to Wikipedia includes:
fell from a height of three floors
hit his head on a stone and could barely stand afterwards
at the age of three, drank a bowl full of acidic water and later swallowed a pin
burnt himself seriously in a gunpowder explosion
fell onto a hot cast-iron frying pan, burning his side
survived an accidental poisoning from keeping varnished items in his bedroom during the night
was hit on the head by a rock
fell into a river and nearly died
It’s truly a wonder that we ever ended up with saxophones at all.
Next up were brass some of Europes finest brass instruments. The ones I think you might need to hear to believe include an oddly pleasant sounding precursor instrument called the Ophicleide which looks like a strange hybrid of a tuba and a saxophone (which you can hear here) and a multi-belled creation that might the single goofiest thing Germany has ever produced called the Schalmei (watch this wonderfully strange and peppy demonstration here)
Other highlights were some unnecessarily complicated multi-valved trumpets also designed by Adolphe Sax. I can’t imagine why this wasn’t the invention of his that caught on.
I also always love seeing this very bizarre early ancestor of the tuba called a Serpent for obvious reasons. Oh, and you better believe you look as doofy playing one of these as you might imagine, check it out here
Next up were some more guitars that somehow managed to have even more extravagant fretboards and inlays than the ones that had already impressed me so much:
And last but not least (it’s a pretty dang sizable collection, huh?) there was a collection of giant, stylish harps. Naturally then, I have to end by sharing a video of my favorite harp player, Harpo Marx, who always improbably managed to find a harp in every movie and add in a dash of surreal beauty amidst he and his brother’s madcap antics. The idea of him always playing these bits of classical musical completely straight and virtuosically (he would get training once the brothers actually had money, but he was mostly self-taught which is wild) is such a strange and wonderful choice for these otherwise supremely silly movies and I’m so glad that scenes like this exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArbUV_yv2k
After a pretty extensive day of museuming in Vermillion, I made my way back to Sioux Falls. You might have noticed from the embarrassing reflections of myself that occasionally creepy into the photos, that I had attained a very shaggy state and was long overdue for a haircut so I decided to get the job done at a hilariously named place called The Man Salon. As ridiculous as the name was it was actually a pretty fantastic barbershop, and while they didn’t give you free whiskey like some other overly masculine barbershops I’d been to on this trip, it did come with complimentary hot towel massage which was pretty sweet though I hope I didn’t sound too much like I was dying whenever she hit a knot. Sitting in your car for several hours a day for a year will do to that you. At the end of the day, I was really happy with my hair cut even if I always somehow look like I’m pain whenever I try to take a selfie:
A couple pounds lighter from the haircut, I started exploring Sioux Falls. One of the more delightfully strange facts about this city in South Dakota is that they have two faithful bronze casts of great sculptures by Michelangelo, The David in a public park and Moses on a local college campus. A wealthy art-loving philanthropist who lived in the town, Thomas Fawick, paid to send an artist named Felix DeWheldon to Italy where he was able to strike an agreement with local governments to makes bronze casts of the original marble statues which is just such fantastically great lengths to go to spruce up some public greenery. The sculptures really are incredible though. My phone died at the David, but I got a pretty snapshot of Moses. You might notice that Moses weirdly has horns, which to modern eyes seems a little anti-Semitic, but I guess it was pretty common in medieval and Renaissance art to depict Moses with horns due to a translational error by St. Jerome in which after meeting God and receiving the ten commandments Moses is described as “horned from his conversation with the Lord”. The literal translation of the Hebrew word would be something close to horned, but nowadays Judeo-Christian scholars think the actual wording refers more to a figurative glow of shining lights emitting from his head as opposed to literal animal horns. So while the image of horns has over timed been perverted to evoke devilish comparisons, it was initially intended as physical manifestation of Moses’ glory in meeting God. It’s funny how long lasting the ramifications of a single typo can end up being.
After taking in the random Renaissance masters, I went to visit the titular falls of the town. Falls Park is right on the Big Sioux River, and while I had heard it was a must-see, it really blew my mind as one of the most impressive public parks I’d ever been to. Maybe I just had a perfect day to visit, but the juxtaposition of serene foliage with roaring waters down naturally stepped cascades was just a really stunning showcase of the power of nature. I took a long walk, and I remember being on the phone with my cousin Kevin at the time and just not really being able to describe to him just what I was seeing.
For some man-made attractions to compliment the falls, there were the remains of an old mill that had been on the river but has since crumbled and succumbed to time. It’s remains are a kind of hauntingly beautiful addition to the landscape that give it a sort of fairy tale quality because it sort of looks like a collapsed castle.
After my strolls around the falls, I went back to the main downtown area to get some much needed coffee at an awesome local cafe called Coffea Roasterie. As the confusingly spelled name implies, it was a pretty fancy looking place, but the coffee was really good to match the classy interiors.
While I drank my coffee and refueled, I got to enjoy one of Sioux Falls’ sweetest traditions, their Sculpture Walk. Every year the town hosts a competition to get a new batch of sculptures from around the world displayed throughout the main city streets. The artwork brightens up your walks, and at the end of the year 14 prizes are given out to people’s favorite pieces totalling up to $15,000 to foster the artists’ burgeoning careers so everybody wins. And then the whole process begins anew each year, which sounds like a lot of work but it’s such a great community initiative. To see all the sculptures from this current year and years past, the Sculpture Walk board has a really good and thorough website that it is actually pretty fun to peek through.
Some of my favorites while I was there included: a very windy lady by Kimber Fiebiger; a sweetly realistic family by Ben Hammond; a charmingly weathered concrete bust of Leonard Cohen to memorialize his passing (which had happened that year) by Peter Vogelaar; a super sassy frog by Pokey Park; a pig with a jetpack (naturally) by Dale Lewis; a sweet bear made entirely out of forks (!) by Gary Hovey; a sculpture of Carmen Miranda that is also a playable marimba by Lee Leuning & Sherri Treeby; a giant, fantastical reflective mushroom by Bruce Stillman; and a dreamy depiction of someone persisting in the face of being blown away by Cameron Stalheim.
My absolute favorite though was this piece by Ray Kobald called Like The Stars, Forever which when you view it from the front is a really lovely geometric representation of two people in love…
But when you view it from behind, it is just two unnecessarily detailed protruding butts. I almost died when I saw this, and it still fills me with so much joy nearly two years later.
After all my walking I stopped to get a drink at a local brewery called Wood Grain Brewing Company. I got a flight of their imperial brown ale, their cream ale, a chocolate stout, and a milk stout and I was thoroughly satisfied with all of them though unsurprisingly the darker beers are always my favorite. The beers came with some free pretzels, which I demolished disgustingly quickly, and the bartenders and other customers were all very friendly and I ended up having some nice conversations while I sipped. I also got a big kick out of the fact that their two New England IPAs were named Snobbery and Nervous Laughter which does seem like an oddly fitting description of big parts of New England.
For dinner, I got some good old American comfort food at a restaurant called Grille 26. It’s pretty hard to go to states with big ranching industries and not get really top notch local burgers and this was no exception. I got a ranch burger which came with aged cheddar, house barbecue sauce, applewood smoked bacon, haystack onions, and a hefty patty all with a side of fantastically crunchy fries. I really couldn’t ask for more.
When I got to my airbnb, I found out that I was sharing the relatively small space with two jumbo sized great danes. My mom would have hated this, but these lovable mutts had big hearts hilariously little concept of just how freaking huge they were so they spent the whole stay trying to play with me and share one bed that the three of simply couldn’t fit on. It made working on my blog a lot more exciting than usual, and they were a fun duo to bring a nice day to a close.
This is the photo the owner put of these two droopy boys on his listing so it shouldn’t have been a surprise but I think it always will be for any guest.
Favorite Random Sightings: a store called Touch of Dutch (you don’t want to overdo the Dutch); Compassionate Dentistry (what does that say about their competition?); and an absolutely nutso billboard that said “Eat steak, wear fur, Keep guns: the American way” (which cracked me up because I don’t associate wearing fur as being quite as overtly masculine as the other two things which was definitely the vibe they were going for.
Regional Observations: Sioux Falls has such a gorgeous varied landscape, but most of the drive to get here was exceedingly flat. The plains are always full of surprises.
Album’s Listened To: (I finished my audio book so it was back to the olde iPod) Witness by Benjamin Booker (a great blues/gospel/punk album with a feature by none other than Mavis Staples); A Wonderful Life Single by Brian Fallon (off the first solo album from the Gaslight Anthem frontman); Word of Mouth Revisited by Jaco Pastorious Big Band (the legendary Jazz bassist gets the posthumous big band treatment with insane bass feature from Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, and more!)
Joke of the Day:
There was this guy at a bar, just looking at his drink. He stays like that for half of an hour.
Then, this big trouble-making truck driver steps next to him, takes the drink from the guy, and just drinks it all down. The poor man starts crying. The truck driver says, "Come on man, I was just joking. Here, I'll buy you another drink. I just can't stand to see a man cry."
"No, it's not that. This day is the worst of my life. First, I fall asleep, and I go late to my office. My boss, outrageous, fires me. When I leave the building, to my car, I found out it was stolen. The police said that they can do nothing. I get a cab to return home, and when I leave it, I remember I left my wallet and credit cards there. The cab driver just drives away."
"I go home, and when I get there, I find my wife in bed with the gardener. I leave home, and come to this bar. And just when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, you show up and drink my poison.
Songs of the Day:
The live strings and back up singers are fantastic
Such a baby face
i know this clip isn’t a big band, but it’s such a simple, pretty distillation of what made Jaco great