Today at noon is your first chance to get your hands on 2015 Winterfest, All Pints North and Autumn Brew Review tickets. All of these festivals sell out, but as you know Winterfest and Autumn Brew Review tickets disappear at a blinding pace. $200 gets you a ticket to both nights of Winterfest (Feb. 27 and 28), All Pints North (July 25) and Autumn Brew Review (September 19th). Point your browser here and have at it: www.tempotickets.com/mcbg

Your next chance for Winterfest tickets will be next Monday, January 12th at noon. On the 12th, you’ll have a chance to buy tickets for both nights of Winterfest for $135. Single tickets will go on Sale on Friday, January 16th at noon. Mark your calendars. Tickets are $75.

In case you haven’t heard, the Guild is changing up Winterfest a bit this year. To accommodate all of the breweries and beer fans, the festival will be spread out over the course of two nights – February 27th and 28th. The festival will remain at Union Depot and will run from 7-10pm each night. As per usual, this event will feature beers brewed in Minnesota by current Minnesota Draft Brewers Guild members. They’ll also offer up food, beer education, entertainment and music. Each night will feature a different set of breweries, with a few “best of the fest” winners that will appear both nights. Details about which breweries will be appearing each night are forthcoming.

Doomtree at Surly. Photo courtesy of Surly Brewing Co.

Happy Monday. As you’ve probably heard, local hip hop collective Doomtree is hosting their last Doomtree Blowout in December. And if you’ve been playing attention, you’ve noticed that one of those days was labeled as a Surly Doomtree Day. Music and beer fans, we now have news as to what’s going on…

Surly Doomtree Day is Sunday, December 7th. The day will include creative bar crawl curated by Doomtree and Surly as well as a collaboration beer that will be available at concerts during Blowout week.

The fine folks from Surly and Doomtree crossed paths this summer, and compared notes about their craft and a mutual affinity for going against the grain. After several months of scheming, talking and perhaps popping a few beers, the idea for a collaboration came together. Lips are tightly sealed on this one, but the collaborative beer is said to be a style that fits both Doomtree and Surly, “non-traditional and hard to classify.”

“We always say that the Surly way isn’t the easy way, but it’s the way we’ve always done things,” said Omar Ansari, President of Surly Brewing. “We were attracted to working with Doomtree because they shared our belief that putting out a quality product that you can be proud of is more important than chasing what you think consumers want. This collaboration is a nod to that shared belief.”

Doomtree Producer Lazerbeak said: “We wanted to do something really special to cap off this decade-long Blowout run. Getting to know the Surly guys over the last year and witnessing the pride and dedication they have not only for the beer that they create but the state that they come from, it all just kind of clicked. Our approach to our craft is super similar, plus we all just get along really well. Simple as that. Collaborating on a new beer that we could all enjoy during the Last Blowout Ever was a no-brainer. SO PUMPED.”

More details forthcoming.

This week it’s time to roll out a Friday 5ive featuring bands that have managed to blow me away upon first listen. I caught each and every one of these bands live at one point or another. When I arrived at the show I didn’t have the foggiest idea as to what any of the bands might sound like and it was only when they plugged and started playing that I found that I not only liked the band, but was blown away for one reason or another.

In the latter part of my high school years and leading into my first years of community college, I ventured to “the big city” of Fargo, North Dakota. While there, I caught bands play at various venues ranging from the old (beautiful) Fargo Elks and Moose Lodge buildings to dingy VFWs, on-campus clubs, bowling alley back rooms, youth orientated venues like Exit 99 and The Grape Garage, and sweaty basements teeming with flannel, t-shirts and raging 15-20-something hormones. One of the first bands I saw from that era was made up of a couple of guys from Fargo. I remember walking into the venue and gazing a cobbled-together drumset and a huge, sketchy-looking bass amp. They plugged in and threw up a wall of sound that to this day I have a hard time describing. Wailing, somewhat melodious noise, lots of distortion and a bass being played more like a lead guitar than anything. My ears, body and brain were floored. Check out godheadSilo.

As a hungry live music fan in the “grunge era,” I was always up for checking out something new. Back in the day we didn’t have the fancy tubes of the GopherTelnetInterWorldWideWeb to use to get a glimpse as to what a band we’d never heard sounded like… so we showed up at the concert, plopped down our $5 and hoped for the best. When I first saw Sunny Day Real Estate, I had no clue what they sounded like, but they were on Sub Pop Records, so surely they might sound something like Mudhoney or Nirvana or Green River, right? Eh, not so much. Do you know what they actually sounded like? The word awesome comes to mind. Dig it. Bonus trivia, a couple of the guys from this band went on to join The Foo Fighers.

Shortly after high school, friends and I started a band. We weren’t particularly good, but we had jobs and a slew of semi-reliable equipment, including a small Kustom PA system (yellow rolled vinyl). Said PA came on handy on occasion… like the time that a Twin Cities’ band, The Totallies, booked a show in our friends’ basement. They were young and a bit sloppy but Karl, Tyson and UV(?) ripped up some Screeching Weasel-inspired pop/punk and when the band finished playing every song they knew, the crowd begged them to play them again.

During the summer of 1995, I caught a last-minute opener at Fargo’s DIY Center. The band opened for some ska band that I’ve since forgotten. At The Drive In, blew everyone in the building out of their socks with so much raw energy, on-stage antics and of course good music. Why weren’t they headlining? None of us were familiar with the band at that point. That changed rather quickly…

Finally, a handful of years ago, I had tickets to see Trail of Dead at the Triple Rock. That night I had contemplated showing up a little late and skipping out on the opening acts. I didn’t. As luck would have it, openers Funeral Party blew me away. Check them out!