Them Coulee Boys/ Humbird/Long Mama
Event info
Them Coulee Boys
“from pure and genuine ballads to a leaping, countrified take on rock and roll”
Bio
Soren Staff and Beau Janke—co-founders of folk/rock/Americana outfit Them Coulee Boys—met as camp counselors in northern Wisconsin in 2011. Their weekend workshopping of Avett Brothers tunes led to original songs and adding Soren’s brother Jens on mandolin. As the years grew, the band turned into a more rollicking outfit, adding Neil Krause on electric bass and Stas Hable on drums.
The band’s name is a nod to the glacial melt-carved river valleys they call home, known by early French fur trappers as coulees. 2023 marks the 10th year since launching themselves during a now legendary apple farm hootenanny. Known for wild swings of emotion during sets, it is not unusual to see fans in tears and minutes later dancing with abandon. The honesty and ability to talk and sing about the feelings and emotions that shape them has endeared them to a growing group of fans and friends.
With four full-length albums and an EP behind them, including 2019’s Die Happy (produced by Trampled By Turtles’ Dave Simonett on Lo-Hi Records) and 2021’s Namesake (produced by Grammy winner Brian Joseph), the band has garnered international attention and earned press in American Songwriter, Ditty TV, Folk Alley, and The Bluegrass Situation, as well as tours with Trampled By Turtles and a spot on the songwriter’s Cayamo Cruise.
2021’s Namesake found the band following a new trajectory, combining their signature take on folk-grass and Americana with comfort on electric instruments and playing rock and roll. The record lives and breathes. It’s both intimate and bombastic. It’s the sweet aunt who makes delicious pies and the wiley uncle who’s not afraid to hit a bit of the hooch. At the bottom is the acceptance that comes with family and old friends; none of us are perfect, but there’s enough love out there to make up for it.
In 2020, they were named Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Band to Watch. In 2021, they won Bluegrass/Americana Band of the Year by the Wisconsin Area Music Industry.
For all things Them Coulee Boys, please visit themcouleeboys.com.
HUMBIRD
“Humbird is the genuine article, a beautiful singer and a phenomenal songwriter who explores what it means to be a musician in this modern age. Humbird’s music and lyrics explore with an infinite passion and curiosity, the human condition and an honest exploration of love, loss and happiness.” – Cloudwatcher Uno Podcast
"With a burgeoning sense of social responsibility and her recognition of the role an artist can play in facilitating conversations about social issues, Siri Undlin will undoubtedly continue to be a force for good.” — Brooke Billick, Americana Highways
“You can’t deny the rich experiences and young wisdom that helped find these words… both beautiful and a reminder of the part we all play in determining our fate.”— Folk Radio UK
“Siri Undlin’s crystalline voice is thoroughly enchanting...an absolutely hypnotic listening experience.” — Folk Alley
“The new music from Humbird is music to my ears. Siri Undlin’s songwriting crosses genres. It’s creative, sophisticated, daring, thoughtful and beautiful.” — Mike Pengra, Radio Heartland on The Current 89.9FM
"Humbird carved out a unique place in Americana music on the 2021 LP, exploring the cross-sections between folk, rock, jazzy grooves and electronic music. ‘Still Life’ is Undlin’s vision rendered in full color, a vivid album that stands as a testament to the power of collective creation shared by her and her bandmates: Pat Keen, drummer Peter Quirsfeld and producer and multi-instrumentalist Adelyn “Addie” Strei.” – Live For Live Music
“‘Still Life’ offers a delicate balance – a yin and yang – with soothing, meditative instrumentation paired with more pressing, thought-provoking lyrics, layered on top. Each song on the album melts into the next seamlessly, and captures your attention. The album offers a sense of tranquility and a simultaneous sense of change and urgency. ‘Still Life’ forces you to listen and really hear.” — Music Mecca
“Whether it be experimenting with atmospheric electronic elements, sprinkling in a bit of country, or weaving in a touch of whimsical woodwinds, each choice feels like an exploration of how sounds and styles can naturally influence and heighten one another. And while each song stands solid on its own, it’s the whole of the ‘Still Life’ album as one living organism that’s most breathtaking.”— Adventures in Americana
“‘Still Life’ is an album to lose yourself in during certain moods, or in others to find comforting details to grasp onto. The album stands alone as its own artifact, which, carefully crafted as it is, has a particular kind of spontaneity.”— Keith Harris, Racket Magazine
“‘Still Life’ is beautiful stuff that’s as pellucid as a summer afternoon and as cool as a fall morning.” — Edd Hurt, Perfect Sound Forever
“Leave it to Minneapolis indie-folk strummer Siri Undlin to find beauty, peace and hope during the tumult of 2020. ‘Still Life,’ her second full-length album as Humbird, was mostly written and recorded in the house where she waited out quarantine. Songs range from the yearning, Lissie-flavored rocker ‘Plum Sky’ and the raw, George Floyd-and-riots-reflecting ‘May’ to one of the most moving COVID postscripts yet, ‘Pink Moon for John Prine,’ all rife with Undlin’s soul-punchingly poetic style.”— Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune
“‘Still Life’ is a wishing well that is constructed for everyone to gather around and toss your penny in. Each song became a residence for stories to be heard and for burdens to be lifted. Now being released from its four walls, the album is a reflection of deep friendships, artistic respect, and a love of togetherness.”— Music in Minnesota
LONG MAMA
Long Mama’s music blisters with the heart and grit of someone who has lost hard, loved harder, and licked her burns until they stung then silvered. In a drafty attic just west of the Milwaukee River she grew up on, you’ll find songwriter Kat Wodtke (Wood-key) raking through notebooks in search of a salve: words, stories, and sounds to temper the dumpster fires we never mean to light. Flickering behind each song is Wodtke’s lived insight into our human faults & fissures – the moments in life when we can slip and lose our footing, or claw our way out…better people on the other side of the blaze.
Wodtke was raised in Southeastern Wisconsin by two radical, musician-turned-teacher parents. Often left to wander through the stacks of People’s Books as a kid, she discovered a love of reading – devouring everything from Carson McCullers and Ralph Ellison to Sam Shepard and Tu Fu. In the basements and living rooms of Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, a gangly teenaged Wodtke was captivated by scrappy DIY bands that defied categorization and carved their own paths. Wodtke eventually moved to Minneapolis where she waited tables and immersed herself in the mercurial Twin Cities music scene. They traveled to Alaska for seasonal jobs, living in a small, secluded cabin. All the while, Wodtke observed and wrote, studying the curious characters who always seemed to hang their hats in her unsettled heart, whether they paid rent there or not.
With years of drifting in her rearview mirror, Wodtke made their way back home to Riverwest. After the death of a close friend in 2018, she struggled to make music. It took time – and a heap of tenderness from friends and family – for her to pick up a guitar again. When she finally did, music became a raft – or maybe more like a submarine – through the strange wilderness of heartache and grief, loneliness and love, risk and abandon. With a growing collection of original songs and buoyed confidence, Wodtke coined the name Long Mama (after a prickly, shade-loving cactus) and teamed up with guitarist Andrew Koenig and drummer Nick Lang, a pair whose chemistry adds dusky afterglow to Wodtke’s musical landscapes. Upright bass ace Samual Odin came aboard soon after, along with regular collaborator Eva Nimmer, whose backing vocals blend so elegantly with Wodtke’s that one could mistake them for blood harmonies.
Poor Pretender, Long Mama’s debut album released October 2022, embraces a rich spectrum of light and shadow, heat and cold. The ten-song collection’s palette of country, folk, indie rock, and punk reflects its makers' coming-of-age in the rustbelt crossroads of north, south, east, & west. Engineered by Erik Koskinen and recorded live over a long, snowy weekend in Cleveland, Minnesota, the record showcases the band’s particular ability to conjure the beautiful in the broken, the silver in the ore.