Andrea Swensson with P.O.S. [Photo by Erik Hess]
“The idea of music writing is very romantic, and I think from the outside it looks like it would be this easy, crazy, 24-hour party life,” muses Andrea Swensson, City Pages’ music editor and managing editor/lead blogger over at Gimme Noise. She continues her rebuttal of the rosy view of a job like hers: “But there is actual work involved, and if you’re willing to put your back into it there are opportunities out there that will present themselves when the time is right.” So, for all you aspiring nerds with large vinyl collections and opinions out there taking notes: tireless persistence, endless passion, and a dash of destiny or luck (depending on where you stand with the universe)? “I feel like that’s how I ended up here, anyway,” Swensson adds. “I’m sure it’s different for everybody.” The longtime Twin Cities scene enthusiast’s easygoing charm mixed with decisive acuity proves that perhaps she was fated to be in the position she is now, helping shape the landscape as much as she’s commenting on it.
Having grown up in a small town outside of Duluth, it wasn’t until moving to the Minneapolitan suburbs at the pretty perfect age of 16 that led Swensson on the path that eventually resulted in her current position. “My first clear memory is going to Cheapo and buying Radio K’s [third] Stuck on AM compilation, which I think I picked out because it had a Mason Jennings track on it, and having my mind blown by how many songs by local artists I actually liked,” she recalls. Specifying further and getting even more amped in her bout of nostalgia, she says, “Mark Mallman was on there for sure, Dillinger Four, Low, 12 Rods, Oddjobs–all this great stuff, and I couldn’t believe that the songs were by people I could get in my car and drive 20 minutes to go catch live.” She reminds that back in this time period the Foxfire and other all ages-friendly venues were still thriving (hint hint, local club owners) and thus it cleared the course quite invitingly for Swensson to not too long after find herself profiling Martin Devaney (“Our interview was really, really awkward since it was my first one, but I remember the experience fondly,” she admits), having just put out his first solo record circa 2001, for Hamline University’s student paper.
That’s how the local music obsessive in her got jumpstarted, but she makes sure to note the following about her growth as a young budding writer: “I would also be remiss to gloss over the huge influence former Pioneer Press music critic/current Southwest Journal columnist Jim Walsh had on my early writing days.” She crushes a bit more by saying, “He has such a human way of describing music and telling stories, and I’ve always looked up to him for that ability.” Here is where I’d make the Almost Famous Lester Bangs analogy if I didn’t think it was overly corny and obvious. Also, it’s probably better just to let Swensson do the talking, as she explains, “His weekly column in the PiPress about local music was a staple of my teenage years and a huge inspiration for me; I think at one point I even uttered the words, ‘When I grow up, I want to be Jim Walsh.’” The way she’s catapulted herself into this world (after Hamline she got much of her chops at HowWasTheShow.com with “a lot of encouragement from site editor David DeYoung”, free-lanced for the dearly departed Pulse of the Twin Cities, and then helped start the in-depth online music magazine Reveille, which has gone on indefinite hiatus since she took over at City Pages), you’d think maybe she’s gotten at least halfway to her teenage dream.
Swensson with local music writing legend Jim Walsh.
Now Swensson’s helped the Twin Cities institution that is City Pages realize what many thought inevitable as early as 15 years ago when a young man from St. Paul started thinking maybe people might like to read pretentious things about indie rock on a daily basis from the comfort of their computer screen: that to stay relevant, print music writing needs to blend seamlessly with online coverage. On the topic of how the City Pages-associated music blog Gimme Noise, behind which she is the driving force, helps supplement what we get in our hands off street corners and restaurant vestibules, she offers, “We’re putting out 6-8 fresh pieces on a daily basis, as opposed to the print edition, which has enough room for 1-2 longer music articles and a handful of concert preview blurbs each week.” Swensson goes on without pause: “There’s also an advantage to being able to update our readers on the fly.” Pointing to a number of highlights, she suggests, “Some of our best work on Gimme Noise has been reporting on things in a really immediate way: When Gayngs get their tour bus jacked, or the Turf Club randomly closes and people start to panic, or rumors start flying about a band breaking up, we’re on it.” Having the fully backed resources of such a long-running staple of the local scene plus the energies of several eager researchers and contributors, Swensson makes sure to insist that, “People can rely on Gimme Noise to tell them what’s happening in their music community, right now.”
And yet, even with the newly comprehensive team looking to do everything possible to stay abreast of new bands, shows about town, and the like, there’s always going to be your group of dissenters essentially saying, in not so many words, that City Pages covers the scene, but you know, doesn’t really cover the scene. Much of this naysaying has come in a perennial form of criticism over the much-discussed Picked to Click poll, an annual tradition that started far before Swensson’s tenure, but nevertheless seems to garner more and more attention before, during, and after every voting period in which local scene insiders (musicians, record shop owners, DJs, etc.) make a Top 5 list of new or kind of new Twin Cities bands/musical artists, which is compiled into a finalized list of 10. “It’s supposed to be fun, and people have started taking it as some sort of end-all, be-all declaration of who’s who in the local scene,” Swensson surmises about the hullabaloo each year’s poll inevitably causes. You can actually get more real talk from the editor on the subject via her written intro to this year’s results, but ultimately, she’s very candid about her continuance of the ritual. Without getting into too much of a diatribe (because aren’t I just adding to the drama by devoting a paragraph to it?), Swensson enlightens with a fair and basic perspective for all the haters: “Really, it’s just meant to be a list you can clip out and stick in your purse and pull out when you feel like checking out a good new local band. Plus, it’s an excuse to fill the entire paper with profiles of local bands and feature one of them on the cover. Do we really want to start complaining about that?”
Despite all the bickering, however, things like Picked to Click seem to be the bread and butter of the intense fervor that so many of us feel about Twin Cities music. And that force can be used for sparking, contributing thoughtfully, or responding insightfully to debate, or it can just be a small cog in the machine that is Swensson’s biggest pet peeve about music writing in general: “It’s an echo chamber most days, with everyone posting the exact same information and no one adding their own take to it.” She references an earlier interview response too, asking, “Can we go back to the part where I was saying that music writing is all about putting your back into it?” She answers her own question then, stating plainly, “I wish more people were putting more effort into it.” The effort she’s looking for isn’t out of reach, either, she urges. “I’m probably opening a can of worms by saying this, but I want someone I can argue with about local music,” she advocates, lacking hesitancy. “I like it when someone stirs the pot, strikes up a dialog, presents an idea from an unpopular perspective.” Maybe that’s where destiny and/or luck comes in (I’m talking again at you, geek with the mental notepad at the Safewords show at the Turf Club). Say something that will get you noticed and things might fall into place for you like they did with Andrea Swensson.
