Frank Turner | Live at Grand Casino, Hinckley, MNEmpty Bottle Evenings

Mar022016March 2, 2016March 14, 2016No Commentby Bake

Frank Turner | Live at Grand Casino, Hinckley, MN

Posted in Music

I wouldn’t say that a beer tasting…at a casino…in the middle of Minnesota is the place you should normally go to find a punk rock show. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m Begs McGee here, desperate to listen to something that isn’t country music or talk radio about lake fishing. And to be fair, The Grand Minnesota Taste Together was a pretty phenomenal event. I would have paid the $45 just to see Frank Turner, but this time I got to sample different crafts beers for 3 hours. What a deal! I’ve been looking for concerts in all the wrong places. Beer, music, and weird people. I couldn’t be happier.

I had low expectations for Turner & the Sleeping Souls, not because I thought they would be terrible live, in fact, just a few months ago I had a fantastic time seeing them in a different cold, craft-beer-loving state. But when it’s a beerfest, or a fair, or other non-music-centric event I mentally prepare myself for a set of about 10 songs, and usually the ones that the most common person in attendance might have heard once or twice before. But they played as good of a set as I could have imagined. A handful of positive songs from…Positive Songs for Negative People, and a lot of songs from all the other records over the past decade. They rocked all my favorites at least: “Long Live the Queen”, “Peggy Sang the Blues”, “I Am the Disappeared”, “The Road”, “Try This at Home”, and on and on.

And the crowd was surprisingly awesome. Maybe they too were craving some punk rock in the Minnesota wilderness. When Turner played songs like “Get Better”, “Glory Hallelujah”, and “If I Ever Stray” they sang at the top of their lungs. My voice gave out after about 4 songs. I still think I sounded beautiful for the next 20 songs. You know, like a chain smoking Tara Reid kind of beautiful. Regardless, the others who weren’t straining serenaded Turner back his songs, even the older ones like “The Ballad of Me and My Friends”. They clapped at the right moments, the crowd surfed and stage dove whether anyone caught them or not (as did Turner himself), and when Turner did his “everyone get down on the ground as the music gets low and then jump up and go crazy as it picks back up” thing to “Photosynthesis” strangers made sure that their neighbors were huddling on the ground with them in anticipation. When the final song (“Four Simple Words”) played and we both waltzed and moshed one last wild time, it was hard to not feel alive again and impressed with both the band and its fans. I guess I need to watch for more shows at beer tastings…at casinos..in the middle of Minnesota.