THE WOOD BROTHERS with special guests SHOVELS & ROPE at Utepils Brewing in Minneapolis on Friday, May 12.

7 p.m. | All Ages (see Event Information at bottom for additional info)

TICKET INFORMATION

Enter for a chance to win admittance to this show

The Current is pleased to offer a ticket giveaway to this concert. Enter by noon (CDT) on Tuesday, May 9, for a chance to win a pair of passes to this event. One (1) winner will receive two guest list spots to the Wood Brothers and Shovels & Rope at Utepils Brewing in Minneapolis on Friday, May 12. Please use an email address you check because winners will be contacted by email.

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This event is part of Live at Utepils, an outdoor concert series presented in partnership with Sue McLean & Associates.

Live at Utepils (pronounced “OOH-ta-pilz”) takes place in the parking lot of Utepils Brewing, a full scale European-style craft brewery and taproom, nestled on the banks of Bassett Creek between the Harrison and Bryn Mawr neighborhoods of Minneapolis.

The Wood Brothers 

The Wood Brothers have learned to trust their hearts. For the better part of two decades, they’ve cemented their reputation as freethinking songwriters, road warriors, and community builders, creating a catalog of diverse music and a loyal audience who’ve grown alongside them through the years. That evolution continues with Heart is the Hero, the band’s eighth studio album. Recorded analog to 16-track tape, this latest effort finds its three creators embracing the chemistry of their acclaimed live shows by capturing their performances in real-time direct from the studio floor with nary a computer in sight. An acoustic-driven album that electrifies, Heart is the Hero is stocked with songs that target not only the heart, but the head and hips, too.

“We love records that come from the era of less tracks and more care,” explains co-founder Oliver Wood. “When you use a computer during the tracking process, you have an infinite number of tracks at your disposal, which implies that nothing is permanent, and everything can be fixed. Tape gives you limitations that force you to be creative and intentional. You don’t look at the music on a screen; you listen to it, and you learn to focus on the feeling of the performance.”

Throughout Heart Is The Hero, those performances are matched by the visceral storytelling and songwriting chops that have turned The Wood Brothers into Grammy-nominated leaders of American roots music, even as their music reaches far beyond the genre’s borders. The stripped-down swagger of “Pilgrim” underscores Oliver’s reminder to slow down and experience each moment as an interactive observer, rather than a passive tourist. A similar theme anchors “Between the Beats,” where Oliver draws upon a meditation technique — maintaining one’s focus on the space between heartbeats — to reach a new level of presence. The gentle sway of country soul gem “Rollin’ On,” featuring horns by Matt Glassmeyer and Roy Agee, expounds on the time-honored tradition of love as the guiding light through darkness, while ”Mean Man World” finds Chris Wood singing about his responsibilities as a father whose young daughter is poised to inherit an uncertain future. “Line Those Pockets” is a universal call for mercy and understanding over materialism. “Everybody’s just trying to be happy, so put your money away; line those pockets with grace,” the band sings in three-part harmony during the song’s chorus, which emphasizes compassion over cash as the world’s true currency. Together, these songs offer a snapshot of a spirited, independent-minded group at the peak of its powers, always pushing forward and seeking to evolve beyond what’s come before.

“There’s still acoustic guitar, upright bass, and percussion on this album — things people use all the time — but we’re always thinking, ‘How can we make this sound like us, but not like something we’ve already done?'” Oliver says. “Sometimes, the only way to do that is to get weird.”

That sense of exploration pumps its way through Heart is the Hero like lifeblood. Arriving on the heels of 2019’s Live at The Fillmore, 2020’s Kingdom In My Mind, and Oliver Wood’s solo album Always Smilin‘ — all of which were released on Honey Jar Records, the band’s independent label — Heart is the Hero is bold, bright, and singularly creative, a fully realized collective effort ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a group whose willingness to experiment has earned acclaim from Rolling Stone and NPR, as well as an annual touring schedule of sold-out music halls and theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. Ask The Wood Brothers, though, and they’ll tell you to expect the unexpected.

“We are never satisfied if we are not searching for new musical recipes,” says Jano Rix, nodding to the uncharted territory that Heart is the Hero covers. Chris Wood agrees, adding, “We are one of those bands that isn’t easily categorized. We know what our strengths are, but we can’t help but push the envelope, as well. It’s too much fun.”

The Wood Brothers have partnered with American Friends of Canadian Conservation so that $1 per ticket will support The Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC) in their efforts to conserve ecologically-rich wetlands and protect irreplaceable land from development. Every $1 donated will be matched by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with $2 so more endangered wetlands can be saved. If you’d like to learn more, please visit this link.

Shovels & Rope

“It’s not heavy metal, but in our guts, it feels a bit like Heavy Metal,” says Michael Trent of the band’s new album, Manticore due Feb. 18. Next year, 2022, will mark ten years since Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent released their debut album O’ Be Joyful, the first formally billed as “Shovels & Rope.” That decade included the release of six full-length albums, three collaborative covers albums (Busted Jukebox Volumes 1-3), a curated music festival in their hometown of Charleston, SC (High Water), a musical film (Shovels & Rope: The Movie) and countless dynamic live performances all over the planet. But it was in the rear courtyard suite of the Decatur St. house belonging to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans where Michael and Cary Ann began polishing up the songs that became Manticore. There was a piano in the room and a little desk. There were piles of scattered and folded papers lying on the bed and copious digital ideas in the form of voice memos. And despite the pounding parades in the surrounding streets, it was quiet in the afternoon.

Months of relentless touring, partnering and parenting had left them threadbare, and the New Orleans stay was intended for finding time to think while renovations were happening at their house on Johns Island, SC. That time coincided with the last Mardi Gras before the world shut down and went into hiding. Sitting at the piano amid the pile of finished and unfinished lyrics, there was a bittersweetness and exhausted peace that belied the coming tribulations. The Decatur St. house would be the last stop on the year-long assembly line of songwriting on the fly. An image here and a rhyme there, scratched into a note pad for later. The next stop was The Whip, the home studio that was a refuge workspace in their backyard. They got back, put the laundry on, digested the news that the world was closed, the tour was canceled indefinitely, and the only thing to do was go inside. Inside the house, inside the studio, inside your mind and inside your time.

The songs and stories that make up Manticore are visceral, bold and at times deeply personal. And while all those adjectives could be used to describe the duo, this time around it rings true in a way that hits differently – or at least harder. Perhaps everything hits harder for everyone these days. And while most of these songs were written before the pandemic, they were all recorded at a time when everyone was inside. It takes aim at the human experience and does so without pulling a single punch: reflections on idol worship, homelessness, social justice, the experience of fierce parental love and marital strife are all on the menu here; and in true American fashion, the helpings are plentiful.

Manticore was initially intended to be a stripped back affair. The songs were written with the expectation that they would feature almost nothing but acoustic guitar, piano and their two voices. But with the time afforded to the band by the complete stalling of their industry,
they returned to the recordings and indulged the opportunity to expand the sound of the album with no pressures or expectations regarding the calendar. The most extended amount of time off the road since the band’s inception coupled with the creative outlet and subsequent work/life structure the album demanded created an anchor to some kind of sanity in a world that seemed to be truly losing its mind around them. “I was grateful to have something to work on, to go into the shop every day for a few hours, get into something, exercise parts of my brain and feel excited about something when there really wasn’t a whole lot to feel excited about at the time,” Michael Trent recalls of the process.

The stark personal musings of the songs on Manticore are somewhat contrasted by the opening track “Domino,” with its sleazy menace laced through a pulsing drum beat and Motown piano. It’s a rapid-fire lyrical collage of iconic American imagery depicting the death of James Dean, America’s reaction to it and Dean’s ghost’s puzzled bewilderment to that reaction. However, like all the best Shovels & Rope songs, there is a thematic duality on display, as it celebrates the playful elevation of rock’n’roll culture while exposing some of the ridiculousness of ‘celebrity’. “Collateral Damage” finds Cary Ann Hearst writing from the perspective of a woman who is openly musing about her role and identity as a woman in the modern world and as a mother in a modern family. As we’ve grown accustomed to, in some of their finest storytelling moments, the characters in these songs are often vehicles for their own deeply personal questions and feelings about the world around them. To that end, Manticore, is also unique in the Shovels & Rope catalog as some of the songs directly address their own marriage. “The Show” is an exaggerated version of a real-life discussion in New York City on separating real life from ‘stage’ life, and perhaps nowhere is this laid bare more than in one of the album’s emotional standouts, “Divide & Conquer.” Jokingly referred to as “Bummerham” in the early days of album tracking, the song does what ‘Birmingham’ did so well before in its embellished version of real-life recollections, but “Divide & Conquer” takes it a step further in openly imagining a fictional alternate reality where things don’t work out, and the children are divided between divorced parents. Dark to be sure, but the thought exercise concludes in a particularly touching self-awareness of how real and honest their partnership is and the desire to come back to that love and consistent force in each other’s lives. ‘Come back to me, here is my armor.’ That directness in addressing challenges in their own relationship for the first time wasn’t on accident. Cary Ann Hearst recalls of those songs, “it was like…no more mister nice guys, the polish is off, the humanity is in…the shiny perceptions or previous ideas of what we are, or are expected to be, are being mildly challenged in some of these songs in a different kind of way. In some ways it’s funny that we are addressing it now because our marriage is stronger than it’s ever been.” Perhaps the most raw and untamed outpouring of deeply personal feelings is in the album cornerstone, “Bleed Me.” Quite simply a love letter to their children, the song holds nothing back in its dramatic display of yearning, unfathomable love, exhaustion and, most of all, gratitude for the transformative experience of parenthood and the gifts that singular experience can bring to a person’s life. “I love how heavy handed it is, a little bit like screaming at the top of your lungs….My heart breaks every time we sing ‘you are the best part.’ That lyric means everything,” Hearst says of the song.

The album closes with the somber reflection of “Human Race”, a despairing ode to life in a troubled headspace. Appropriately, the song is more than just an album closer; it serves as a reminder of what still makes Shovels & Rope wholly unique, even ten years later amidst a sea of their peers. They are still master commentators of the human experience and maintain a rare gift that allows them to address the most gnarly of life’s lows while always keeping an eye on hope, compassion and community. The album’s title, Manticore, at its most simplistic, is a playful combination of a Leo and a Scorpio combined into one beast. A simple google search of the word will bring up depictions that are comical, fantastical, intimidating, aggressive, playful, beautiful and even mildly terrifying. At their best, all of these can be said of Shovels & Rope, but no matter which adjective feels most appropriate in a given song, show or album, it is always powerful. Thankfully, Manticore finds them at their (weary) best. It feels like a hard-won summation of the band’s first act, shedding away notions the public may have had of them or that they had of themselves. The second act of Shovels & Rope looks beautifully weathered and wiser – shining a bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

Event Information

This is a Rain or Shine Event. All Ages are welcome. Children 2 and under are free with a paid adult.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase from local food trucks and vendors, and those over 21 will be able purchase Utepils beer on tap. There will be a designated smoking area. No re-admittance.

The following items are not permitted: 

• Lawn chairs

• Blankets

• Pets (service animals only)

• Outside food and beverages

• Weapons or firearms

• Backpacks or large bags*

*All bags will be checked by security upon entrance. Attendees will be allowed to bring one sealed water bottle or one empty container for use at the water refilling station.

Attendees are encouraged to carpool, ride-share, or bike to this event. Limited parking is available nearby and ticket-purchasers will be emailed with additional parking and general concert information closer to the show.