MUSIC & ART this weekend

poster by Andrea

Double whammy on Friday night: 7:00 opening art exhibition: "Broken Hearts Bleed" drawings and paintings by Andrea Drida. 8:00 Live Music with Kyle Feerick - Milwaukee independent musician.

Kyle Feerick

From the press release:

Kyle Feerick is a musician living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who has shared the stage with many established Milwaukee artists. He has a reputation as an artist who enjoys spontaneous collaborations and musical experimentation. A member of the Milwaukee band Momentary, Feerick also performs numerous solo concerts while continually writing and experimenting with new sounds and recording techniques. His voice and music have fresh and upbeat quality reminiscent of the 80s English New Wave band XTC, while he lists his influences as including artits such as Radiohead, The Mars Volta, Dave Matthews Band, Bob Marley, Nirvana, Weezer, Wes Montgomery, and Sublime. This will be Feerick’s first appearance at Stumpjack Coffee and his performance will take place during the opening reception of “Broken Hearts Bleed,” an art exhibition featuring the drawings and paintings of Andrea Drida. Feerick’s Music can be heard on his MySpace site as well as Momentary’s site.

Saturday night at 8:00: Becky Markvart, recent winner of Best Local Musical Group (along with her partner Bill Martell) and new recording artist with her just released CD "Shine Down On Me."

Open Monday mornings/Coffee Column

Open this summer on Mondays 8:00a.m. - Noon
FYI: We're going to be fiddling with our hours a bit for this summer (yes, we'll likely be using the term "summer hours" in signage somewhere). Haven't entirely settled on everything yet, but one thing we will be doing is opening Monday mornings from 8:00 until around noon. Cheyenne will be running the shop while I'm busy doing other maintenance work.

Last Week Wednesday, June 11, the Herald Times Reporter published the first installment of my coffee column. We've received a truckload of very kind responses and comments on it, that are much appreciated. The HTR is calling the column "Spill the Beans"...a bit clichéd but serviceable nonetheless. The column will be published twice a month with half of columns being written by me and the other half coming from a small pool of other good folks.

You can click the image above to enlarge or go directly to the HTR site online to read it: http://www.htrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080611/MAN04/806110535/-1/archive

I would ask a favor of you: if you do read the articles at the HTR online site please leave a comment at the bottom of the page with your thoughts (for this and future "Spill the Beans" columns by me or the other writers). While a lot of people have been very vocal about the column to me personally, the HTR would also like to know what people think, and your feedback will help keep the thing going and may even shape what is discussed in the column.

New Flickr Sets

click the links below each picture or on the right side column

Koz 5/17/08

Kerry Michaels & Tom Reynolds 5/23/08

Jeannie Mayotte 5/24/08

Pagel & Turner 6/6/08

Lloyd Rohr 6/7/08

Bill Walkner 6/13/08

I crush your head!

Yes, yes, hello there...I crush your head!

We are crushing your head!
(Click on this one to see Becky's victorious head crushing smirk.)

I am crushing your head!

Wild Bill at the Stump Friday Night

Bill Walkner performing live at Stumpjack Coffee - Friday (June 13th) at 8:00pm.

Dancing Girls and Live Animal Acts may or may not be a part of Bill's performance!

MBB Syndrome

As my friends know, I'm generally a pretty laid-back, mellow and unflappable fellow...am cool under fire, confident and perhaps even a bit too cocksure of myself. However, yesterday I experienced a few minutes of MBBS brought on by a telephone conversation I had with a guy in New Jersey. I don't feel completely embarrassed because I'm fairly confident that everyone has experienced or does experience MBBS from time to time. MBBS is, of course, Momentary Beavis and Butt-head Syndrome, and is characterized by brief moments of slightly increased heart rate; vacant cerebral function; unintentional nervous laughter; vocal emissions, also unintentional, that sound like "uh...uhhh...haha...uh...haha...uhhh...cool"; and a distasteful though undeniable urge to name drop and excitedly advertise the source of the pathology.

Ok, the guy I just got off the phone with was Pat Dinizio! Yes, Pat Dinizio of the Smithereens! He of a truckload of hit songs, videos, sold-out concerts, and three decades of consistently excellent rock music. I was a fan of the Smithereens in my college days (although I was also briefly miffed that they stole the name I had settled on for my own never-realized band...c'mon, there's not even a guy named Smith in their band! But I got over it and claimed them as my own band anyway).

So, I've been daydreaming and talking about getting Pat to play the Stump since we opened. And now it's gonna happen. Pat and I talked about a few things, including the concept of community...people connecting with one another in an increasingly technological and at times disconnected world. He talked about why he does his "Living Room Concert Tour," about how much joy, friendship and inspiration these small, intimate shows have given him. The guy was just what I had hoped he would be...direct and honest, generous, funny and bold. How many other legitimate rock n' roll stars would hop in a van with a few pieces of equipment and a road map to unassumingly drive across the country to play in people's home living rooms and backyards, for literally a fraction of what they get paid doing full-blown stage concerts? It's heartening is what it is. I would think that you'd have to have a very healthy combination of ego and humility to pull something like that off successfully.

I'll talk more about this later, but for now here are a couple of videos with Pat's solo material. Do a youtube search to get a lot of Smithereens and Dinizio vids and music.



I love this song - "Any Other Way" - from one of his solo albums. It's got a tangible early '60s European spy movie vibe (the track that accompanies the shots of the steely-eyed hero driving his sports car, top down, through the French countryside and into the city) or "summer on the Riviera" feel to it. Love the jangly guitar and bluesy undertone.


One of the great voices in rock...earthy and rich. I told Pat how much I liked this particular song and video, the directness and simplicity of it. He said they recorded the video at his old high school. He had always wanted to perform on that stage as a kid, he said, but had been too afraid to do it when he was young. "So we went back there to my old school, set it up, and and I finally did it." How cool is that.

Stumpjack dandyism

If you would have been here last Sunday you would have been served coffee by a dapper, tuxedo clad gent...a rare instance of Stumpjack dandyism.