Minnesota Pride

Here's something I forgot to blog. Back in November B saw Shooter Jennings (the son of Waylon Jennings) play at the Cabooze, a bar that is just a few blocks away from where we live, right by the light rail station.



Shooter has a really great single out called "4th of July," but aside from that his music was only OK. He likes to combine country with rock, which I'm all for, but the rock he likes is this really heavy-guitar, Led Zepellin sound, which just isn't my cup of tea.

The Cabooze was cool, though. Very big (I think I've mentioned before that every bar in Minneapolis is somehow three times as big as you'd expect looking at it from the outside), and the crowd was very diverse in terms of age and appearance.

Also, the band that opened up for Shooter was pretty cool. They were called the White Iron Band, and they are from Minnesota, but their sound is very country-rock-and-Louisiana-bluesy, kinda like Creedence. They had one song called "Willie Nelson You Ruined My Life," was was very cool, and another called "Minnesota Pride," which was just great. I ended up buying "Minnesota Pride" on iTunes (they didn't have "Willie Nelson You Ruined My Life"). Here are the lyrics:

Yes, it gets cold in Minnesota
But I'm telling y'all it's the best damn place to be
As long as you don't mind a little fishing
And throwing on your skates to play hockey

The mighty Mississippi from Itasca
And Duluth and those Great Lakes
All them rowdy boys down in the city, Lord
Together Minnesota is what we mean

chorus:
I said here in Minnesota we got pride! pride! pride!
[cannot make out this line at all]
Don't mess with them boys from Minnesota
They'll send you all right back to where you came

You won't catch me dead in Wisconi
We don't need no Packers fans here
I'd rather be back in sweet home Minnesota
Drinkin' on some Grain Belt premium beer!

[chorus]

The crowd all sang along with the "pride, pride, pride" part, and went nuts at the lines about Packers fans and Grain Belt. (Grain Belt is sort of the Schlitz of Minnesota.) In the version I bought from iTunes, the first two lines of the last verse are actually "You won't catch me dead in Afghani/We ain't got no allies up in there," but the Packers verse is what he sang live, and since hearing it I've been referring to Wisconsin as "Wisconi."