Minnesota folk and blues community unites to honor ‘Spider’ John Koerner’s life, music and legacy
A tribute concert was held at one West Bank venue Koerner used to play.
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The punks slammed at the Longhorn. Disco, then funk, blared at the Gay ‘90s and First Avenue. But away from downtown, on Minneapolis’ West Bank, there was another scene.
Bars like the Viking, Triangle, 400 and Palmer’s, hosted folk musicians during that era and earlier — blossoming in the 60’s.
The center of that world was a musician who didn’t seek the spotlight, but preferred to blend into the scene, be one of the crowd, and sing about everyday people.
“Spider” John Koerner died last month at the age of 85. On Sunday, hundreds of admirers gathered at the Cabooze in Minneapolis to remember a local legend with an international reputation, beloved by Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
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‘The biomagnetic center of the universe’
One of Koerner’s fans who entered the dark bar on a sunny afternoon was Mary Lundberg. Decades ago, she haunted the gritty bars and coffeehouses near the University of Minnesota.
“It was total hippie time,” Lundberg said. “Prince was happening and I was on the West Bank. I wasn’t a downtown girl, I was a West Bank person.”
Originally from Rochester, New York, Koerner ended up in Minneapolis to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota — but that didn’t last long. After getting handed a guitar and a Burl Ives songbook, he immersed himself in the music scene near campus. Eventually, he teamed up with Dave Ray and Tony Glover to form the trio for which he was most known — and they took stage across town.
It was the “biomagnetic center of the universe,” said Steve Mayer, quoting a window of the shuttered New Riverside Café. And Koerner was central to the scene’s pull.
Mayer remembers sharing a few beers with Koerner at classic spots across the West Bank. Over one cold glass, Koerner told him he liked to sing the songs of anonymous men.
“He was not about celebrity, not at all. Anonymous man and all that, including himself,” Mayer said. “He was one of the most humble, self-effacing people I’ve ever heard.”
As Koerner’s fans are well aware, he did have an influence on a handful of famous folks. John Lennon and David Bowie praised his records. And Bob Dylan, who was raised in Hibbing, said Koerner was the first musician he met when he moved to Minneapolis in 1959.
Koerner and Dylan crossed paths at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a “beat coffee house” in Dinkytown, then eventually started playing together — Dylan learning from the older player.
Although the “Tangled Up in Blue” artist moved to New York, eventually establishing himself in the Greenwich Village folk scene, Koerner continued to make waves in Minnesota. He had his national touring chops too, playing Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival among others, but Minneapolis was his place.
As Koerner once told fRoots Magazine: “People definitely got their own style there and they don’t need to be from the East Coast or the West Coast, they don’t give a s--- about either one of those,” he said.
Added Koerner: “They’re part of their own style.”
Pop Wagner performed at the Cabooze concert. Wagner, 74, says part of Koerner’s style was an overwhelmingly welcoming feeling. No competition, no cutthroat attitudes. There was a total lack of pretention. Yet to Wagner, seeing Koerner around town was like witnessing a “mega star.”
Wagner had been hooked on Koerner, Ray and Glover since he was 14 years old and his high school buddy put the needle down on the trio’s debut album, “Blues, Rags & Hollers.” When the strong, stomping beat on “Linin’ Track” spun out — a high-energy Lead Belly cover — he said he was flabbergasted. It was so different than what was on pop radio at the time.
“What Koerner, Ray and Glover was doing was really raw, wonderful music that got me going,” Wagner said.
A final tribute
The Cabooze concert spanned six sets, including covers from the Front Porch Swingin’ Liquor Pigs, who played with Koerner in the ‘90s, and blues and folk musician Paul Metsa who made his mark in Minneapolis in the ‘80s, after moving to the city from the Iron Range.
“The guy is gonna, in a few years, enter Paul Bunyan territory in terms of Minnesota myths,” Metsa said.
That legacy was salient as musicians put their twists on Koerner originals, keeping his words alive. A speech from Koerner’s friend Bonnie Raitt was read on behalf of the Grammy-winning folk icon, who could not attend.
“I admired him for always carving out his own path, covering great blues songs, reviving overlooked American folk songs and writing some of the most quirky, wonderful songs of his own,” Raitt wrote. “He literally created his own funky rhythmic guitar style and modified his own instruments.”
One of those modified 12-string guitars went to musician Charlie Parr, a country blues artist who was a friend and mentee of Koerner. Parr, who some see as the main carrier of Koerner’s legacy, played a cover of “Good Time Charlie,” an energetic, chugging song off the trio’s debut album, and one of the first songs Koerner wrote.
That influence seems to have reached younger musicians too. Troubadour Jack Klatt played a rendition of “Last Lonesome Blues,” one of the final originals Koerner wrote — and one he suggested be played at his memorial.
Klatt remembers meeting Koerner at Tom’s Burned Down Café on Madeline Island. Koerner was watching and after Klatt played out his final strum, Koerner asked him a question.
“Well, where did you learn how to play all that stuff?”
Klatt’s reply: “Man, from watching you brother.”
‘He never let me go’
Tucked away in the back of the Cabooze, in the musician’s green room — a spot Koerner once set up — Koerner’s two sons swapped thoughts on their father’s legacy with the musicians who honored him.
The Cactus Blossoms — comprising Jack Torrey and Page Burkum — played a set. Torrey said he used to use Burkum’s old ID to sneak into bars at age 19 to hear Koerner play. They were both inspired by what Koerner called “‘60s bar style,” a funky approach to old music, full of rhythmic stylings and drop beats.
“I hope we could do some kind of 2020’s bar style of Koerner, Ray and Glover songs,” Burkum said.
The sons — Matt Koerner and Chris Kalmbach — had their own memories.
Kalmbach said he didn’t meet Koerner, his biological father, until he was 23. At the Cabooze, he told the crowd he was a “long lost kid” from a short-lived romance. There were too many John Koerners in the phone book to nail down the guy, but that changed when he saw a “Spider” John Koerner in the lineup at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.
He drove to Milwaukee, introduced himself to the father he’d never met just minutes before Koerner went onstage. He was unsure what the reaction might be.
Koerner embraced him, warmly.
His hug was so tight, he crushed his harmonica rack “into little bits of metal,” Kalmbach said. “And he never let me go after that.”
Kalmbach got to know his dad as someone who could put others at ease, and whose penchant for gazing into the stars matched a philosopher’s outlook.
But no matter how packed his own lore was — Koerner mopped floors in Denmark at one point, made a black-and-white film another year, built boats and telescopes in different countries — he was always most curious about the person he was talking to at that moment.
“I let so many little things bother me,” Kalmbach said. “He found ways to not let that happen. He did his best to ease other people and get them to take a step back and look at the world and just say ‘Look, you’re here, you’re happy, you’re breathing, you’ve got friends, you’ve got people who love you.’
“Sometimes that’s hard for us to digest, but he lived it.”
