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Dan Wilson at Sacred Heart. Photos by Jill Fisher.

Three separate extraordinary male singer-songwriters strutted their stuff with their guitars in Duluth this past week. 

What a treat it was to witness their individual musical worlds and be amazed by their unique talents.

First up was Jonathan Richman, who appeared at the West Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 17. At age 74 he doesn’t seem to have lost any of his “proto-punk” take on the world, though I really wouldn’t know since this was my first exposure to him. 

And what a trip it was! 

Richman, who played acoustic guitar, was joined by jazz drummer Tommy Larkins. They have played together for many years now and, between Richman’s off-beat humor and Larkins’ responsive percussion, they kept the audience rapt with amazement. 

The two opening songs, “Back In The Day” and “Door To Bohemia,” provided some biographical background for those of us not familiar with Richman’s early work with the band Modern Lovers or his being influenced by the Velvet Underground. This latter song was a hoot with Jojo (as he is also sometimes referred to) describing looking for the New York bohemian scene in Boston (he’s a native of Natick, Mass.). Then, when he made it to New York, he sang of his brashness as a 16-year-old stalking the Velvet Underground.

Richman is certainly one of a kind; a true showman whose onstage dancing, antics and even clowning, provided pure expression of his lyrics. 

His repertoire veers effortlessly between quirky songs (“I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar,” 1992) and biblical references (“David and Goliath”); spiritual (one about shameless angels trying “weird stuff ‘cause that’s how we learn”) and the profane (“Picasso” going commando). 

Just when you were prepared for another wacky song, he broke into a beautiful instrumental of “Strangers In The Night.”

Richman is a talented guitarist. He plays an acoustic guitar without a strap, which led someone in the audience to call out the question: “Why don’t you use a guitar strap?” His answer: “I copied some Flamenco guitarists who didn’t use them – they were bitchin’!” 

I’d say he was bitchin’!

His previous gig was in Winnipeg and he said they drove down early to Duluth to have a couple days off. He expressed his awe of Lake Superior and then said, “but you all know that.” The audience appreciated that comment. 

Richman doesn’t shy away from the mystical either as in the title track of his 2025 album Only Frozen Sky Anyway, with the line “when I make my transition, it’s just a change of position.” He also sang “Little Black Bat” from that album, with lyrics in both English and Spanish (as far as I could tell). He also sang a song in Farsi (Persian) and another in Ojibwe!

There was no intermission, the music just flowed from one inspiration to another and the audience went with it. Richman sang his 1995 “Vampire Girl,” “Springtime in New York” (with lyrics describing the demolition of an old building as “the smell of 1890 on the breeze”), then it was back to the everyday with “Cold Pizza in a Cardboard Box.” 

He left us with the poetic and romantic thought: “To win in love, you must surrender.”

Jonathan Richman, right, with Tommy Larkins

It was a simply thrilling performance to see. The presence of a number of our local musicians and singer-songwriters at the concert, who told of his influence on them, is testimony to his body of work. Richman is really something else; someone I hope to see and hear again.

The next night, Thursday, Oct. 16, I was at Sacred Heart Music Center for the “Words & Music by Dan Wilson” show. 

Opening for Wilson was Duluth native Dave Mehling, who has worked with the likes of Gaelynn Lea and Emily Haavik and is now based in Minneapolis. Accompanying himself on electric guitar and piano, he played compositions from several of his seven albums released to date. These included “Will you Ever Love Me? (Broke Heart Songs, 2013), “After the Rain” and “Hymn” (Afloat, 2020), “Big Time Sadness” (Beach Boy, 2021) and “Country, USA” (single, 2023). 

The short set left plenty of time for headliner Dan Wilson, a native Minnesotan from St. Louis Park who now calls Los Angeles home. 

Music wasn’t always his main interest, he actually pursued visual arts at Harvard University. However, his educational background evidently broadened his perspective on life so as to foster his successful songwriting career. 

He is perhaps most famous for his band Semisonic, which gained national recognition in the late 1990s. Wilson launched his solo career in 2007 and has collaborated with top recording artists to create memorable songs ever since.

On this evening Wilson played acoustic guitar and was accompanied by pianist Brad Gordon of Los Angeles. Together they played songs the audience wanted to hear. 

I was impressed by Sacred Heart being nearly at capacity, attesting to this artist’s significant fan base. Wilson began with “Free Life,” the title track of his first solo album. 

Second up was the song “Easy Silence” that he contributed lyrics to for the Dixie Chicks (now just Chicks). That was a sweet one. 

Then it was on to Taylor Swift’s hit “Treacherous,” which they wrote together when she was just 20 years old. “Dancing on the Moon” was from his six-song EP released in 2022, then it was back to the Semisonic number “Beautiful Sky” from its 2023 album Little Bit of Sun.

Wilson shared stories about the songs he sang. One was about working with Chris Stapleton, particularly on the 2014 song “White Horse.” 

Wilson described how quickly Stapleton responded when he had wanted to incorporate a “pre-chorus” opening — coming up with a memorable whooping “oh-oh-oh” that repeats throughout the song and which Wilson accurately replicated. 

Another song the two of them wrote together, that he performed, was “When the Stars Come Out” (released in 2015). Wilson deprecatingly admitted that his initial reaction to the title of a song about L.A. was that one can’t really see the stars in that city due to the smog. He was reminded that this was a metaphor.

One of the interesting things about Wilson’s presentation of these hit songs was he approximated how the singers who recorded them sounded, including some very nice falsetto notes. One of these was the song “Closing Time.” It was also the song the audience couldn’t keep from singing along on the repeating refrain: “I know who I want to take me home.” 

One of the memorable lines from that number is “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” 

Wilson also displayed his beautiful falsetto on the last number of his set, “You’re Not Alone,” the title track from the reunited Semisonic’s 2020 EP.

Of course the audience demanded an encore. Wilson complied with his gorgeous song, “All Kinds” from Free Life and asking folks to join in on the chorus, “running all around, all around, all kinds of beautiful.” 

He wanted to hear them produce some Germanic harmonies that would do justice to the acoustics of Sacred Heart. And in fact they did approximate that ideal while his entire concert demonstrated Wilson’s appreciation for and adaptation of his music to this space. 

Indeed, it was one of the concerts I’ve heard here where spoken words and lyrics were clear and understandable. This was likely helped by the recently installed and more elaborate sound board run by the formidable long-time soundman Eric Swanson.

After these two memorable and fabulous concerts, I wondered how Shawn Phillips, an 82-year-old native of Fort Worth, Texas, would stack up with his appearance at the West Theatre on Friday, Oct. 17. 

In particular, I wondered whether this would be simply an “oldies show” of his 1970s music that seems to have been the apex of his career. I needn’t have had any concerns but I was not actually prepared for what transpired.

As Phillips quietly slipped into his seat at the edge of the West stage, he delayed making any sound. Then, after a significant pause, he said “Sometimes the music is in the silence between the notes.” 

Shawn Phillips

It was a hint at the spiritual tenor his previous output has been known for. Then he slammed into a deep bass rhythm that he laid down on an electronic track then followed up with multiple tracks using an array of electric guitars positioned at his side. 

It was in stark contrast to his 1970 album Second Contribution, with an image of him on the cover, with his back to the camera (the better to appreciate his long blond hair) sitting on a parched patch of desert (like Jesus) holding a 12-string acoustic guitar. 

That first number lasted 14 minutes. His vocals were introduced 10 minutes into it and were more of a rap and a screed than the singing he is known for with his four-plus-octave vocal range.

With that introduction, Phillips explained that, due to his medical condition and the drugs needed to combat it, he was apt to make some mistakes during the concert and he asked the audience to give him a break. 

Attendees responded warmly with applause and a shout out, “We love you Shawn!” 

Phillips went on to explain that everything we would hear was live and recorded right there by him — except for several drumming tracks that he had gathered from hand-picked drummers.

It was clear there was much improvisational music to be performed. In some of the pieces one could hear bits of his older tunes. And his tracking made use of the organ-like sounds afforded by his state-of-the art pedal device, which he adjusted throughout his performance. 

One melody he played on a double-necked guitar evoked far-eastern music, revealing the wide range of musical influences he had absorbed during his lifetime of travels. 

One of Phillips most touching compositions, “Starlight,” was his tribute to the IZ, the late native Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole who had a hit song in 1990 with his cover of “Over the Rainbow.” In this song Phillips modified the sound of his electric guitar to that of a ukelele, replicating that of IZ’s recording. 

Phillips didn’t tell stories associated with the songs he performed, rather he explained why he was using eight guitars and tracking: “After 40 years of performing as one man with one guitar, it got boring.” 

At another point he recited a poem (presumably his own) that began “I’m one step from the grave, with both feet on the ground” and ended with the line “we all turn into stars.” 

Later he spoke of  the pandemic as prelude to “As the Days Pass By.” He also asserted that humanity had made a big mistake 8,000 years ago when bartering was replaced by money. He told us of his research which revealed that 95 percent of it has been amassed by only some 3,000 or so individuals. 

He stated this result of capitalism was the cause of all the suffering and cruelty in our world. It was the first time I’d ever heard a musician speak so directly about a political issue.

As he returned to playing music, there was again a 10-minute improvisational piece which segued into the song “Woman” from Second Contribution. Since that was one I was hoping to hear, I was more than satisfied by this concert, so much so that I purchased his latest album Continuance (from 2017), which resonates with much of what I heard and enjoyed that night.

POSTSCRIPT: If you didn’t make the No Kings rally last Saturday, you might want to watch Paul Metsa and Alan Sparhawk’s video of their composition “No Kings, No Crowns” online, which they performed at that gathering. See youtube.com/watch?v=SdjkeI0IFYI.