entertainment

Father John Misty (aka Joshua Tillman) was animated but also sometimes agitated in his sold-out First Avenue concert Tuesday. / Jerry Holt, Star Tribune

With only one album to his name – or his newly adopted name, that is -- Father John Misty couldn’t help but avoid several slumping moments in his 80-minute performance Tuesday. “Fear Fun” is a half-great record, so it was no surprise the concert pretty much followed suit.

As is pointed out in the full review for Thursday’s newspaper, the real-life Joshua Tillman might have been better off pulling songs from some of his earlier albums as "J. Tillman" than playing the dullards “I Love You, Honeybear” or “This Is Sally Hatchet.” He did play a new song solo-acoustic to kick off the encore that was one of his weirdest and most curious tunes to date (in a good way), with lyrics about sounds like a truly messed-up relationship and the closing line, “I obliged later on when you begged me to choke you.”

Between his sometimes crude between-song banter and many Bible-referencing songs – which aren’t exactly defamatory but also would never make a church hymnal – I couldn’t help but wonder how Tillman is going to go over with the Basilica Block Party’s hosts. At least he’ll be better off having a shorter set time that day. Here’s his set list from Tuesday:

Funtimes in Babylon  /  Only Son of the Ladiesman  /  Nancy From Now On  /  I'm Writing a Novel  /  Misty's Nightmares 1 & 2  /  This is Sally Hatchet / Well, You Can Do It Without Me  /  Now I'm Learning to Love the War  /  Tee Pees 1-12  /  Everyman Needs a Companion  /  Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings        ENCORE: new song  /  Happiness is a Warm Gun (Beatles cover)  /  I Love You, Honeybear
 

Walker Art Center's Summer Music & Movies series returns to Loring Park starting July 29. / Star Tribune file

After taking a very unwelcome year off two summers ago, Walker Art Center’s beloved Summer Music & Movies series will return July 29 to Loring Park for the second straight year.

Scheduled again for four Mondays in a row, the lineup -- centered around the theme “Roadways”-- was announced today with Prissy Clerks, Charlie Parr, Zoo Animal, Aby Wolf, the Roe Family Singers and this summer’s It Band, the Chalice, all slated for the musical halves of the shows. Alas, the Walker did not commission a live score like the one Brute Heart created last year, but many of the aforementioned acts are cinematic enough in the first place.

The movies were all selected by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas, whose exhibit “The Autoconstrucción Suites” recently opened at the Walker. Save for one obvious choice, the road films he picked are all pretty obscure to Western audiences – as one would expect in the case of this. Here’s the schedule:

MUSIC BEGINS AT 7 PM; MOVIES BEGIN AT DUSK (APPROXIMATELY 8:45 PM)

Monday, July 29
Music: Prissy Clerks
Movie: "The Hawks and the Sparrows" ("Uccellacci E Uccellini")

Monday, Aug. 5
Music: Roe Family Singers + Charlie Parr
Movie: "Cochochi"

Lizzo and Sophia Eris of the Chalice / Leslie Plesser, Star Tribune

Monday, Aug. 12
Music: The Chalice
Movie: "In the Pit (En el Hoyo)"

Monday, Aug. 19
Music: Zoo Animal + Aby Wolf + Grant Cutler
Movie: "Pee Wee’s Big Adventure" 

Pretty much the same format as the Walker's series, but a little more populist in nature, Vita.mn's Music & Movies series will take place around the same time. That lineup was announced last month, with highlights including a pairing of Now, Now with "Adventures in Babysitting" and John Mark Nelson with "The Goonies."

All grown up -- or at least past puberty -- "MMMBop" sibling band Hanson will play the fair's bandshell Aug. 26-27.

Not that anyone expects Marijuana Deathsquads or any other current buzz bands, but you can get an idea of just how dated the lineup is for the Leinie Bandshell at the Minnesota State Fair this year when you note that the youngest act on the schedule had its big hit 16 years ago.

Sheila E. / AP Photo, Mark J. Terrill

With a couple grandstand concerts yet to be announced, fair organizers went ahead and unveiled the 2013 lineup for the bandshell and other free stages today. Oklahoma teen popsters Hanson of 1997's "MMMBop" fame -- who are now in their late-20s and early-30s and have maintained a cultish following -- are among the biggest names headed for the bandshell, scheduled Aug. 26-27.

Other bandshell acts will include Texas country starlet Sunny Sweeney (Aug. 22-23), undying “Don’t Fear the Reaper” rockers Blue Öyster Cult (Aug. 24-25), former Prince protégé and renowned percussionist Sheila E. (Aug. 28-29), fiery sacred-steel rockers Robert Randolph & the Family Band (Aug. 30-31) and Branson, Mo., mainstays Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers (Sept. 1-2). Datedness aside, that's a pretty good music musically and demographically, and the tree-lined, wooden-bench-filled bandshell area remains a favorite place for us music critics and many other fans to see performanceseach summer.

Other acts playing the fair's free stages this year -- including the International Bazaar, Heritage Square and daytime bandshell gigs --  will include the Okee Dokee Brothers, Pert Near Sandstone, Tonic Sol-fa, Dale Watson, Chubby Carrier, Bill Kirchen, Pieta Brown, Chastity Brown, Mary Jane Alm, the Daisy Dillman Band, the Native Pride Dancers, Rogue Valley, GB Leighton, Billy McLaughlin, the Roe Family Singers and Sena Erhardt.

Click here to see the full lineup.

Who knew Carol Burnett was still such a rock star? The adoring fans who gobbled up tickets fast to the legendary TV comic’s sold-out appearance Friday at the State Theatre came bearing gifts and even wearing Irish green Scarlett O’Hara dresses (with curtain rods, no less!). They had a whole lot of stories to share with Burnett, too, many of which involved some kind of ailment or sad story that her classic TV show helped them or their late parents bear. In fact, at times it felt like Friday’s interactive discussion – modeled after the opening Q&A montages of “The Carol Burnett Show” (CBS, 1967-1978) – was more about the fans than it was about the still-redheaded and resplendent-looking comic, who turned 80 last month.

When she wasn’t directly responding to the audience, Burnett made the show more about all the people she worked with in her storied career. She shared stories about her castmates from her series, like the time Vicki Lawrence called a jabbering Tim Conway a “little a-hole” in a famous blooper. Or when Conway came out of a bathroom at his wife’s bridge club party with Q-tips glued to his face (“They got divorced shortly after that,” Burnett deadpanned). Asked for a behind-the-scene story from rehearsals, she recounted one incident when the notoriously moody Harvey Korman threatened to quit the show. Burnett told him he would be welcomed back Monday morning if he came in skipping and whistling (he did).

She also told stories about all her guest stars, including Lucille Ball (who died on Burnett’s birthday in 1989, but somehow managed to still send flowers and a card) and Jimmy Stewart (who took a liking to Burnett after she bufoonishly stepped in a bucket of whitewash paint on a movie set upon meeting him for the first time). Each story was complemented with accompanying clips from the show, including the “Gone With the Wind” skit that prompted two theatergoers to come wearing the full curtain get-up – a gimmick she credited to her famed costume designer Bob Mackie.

A scene from "Went With the Wind," per CBS's "The Carol Burnett Show."

While the average age of the crowd would've made an AARP sales executive salivate, there were a few equally adulating young kids in the audience – most of whom probably know her from her role as the villainess Miss Hannigan in 1982’s big-screen adaptation of “Annie.” She relayed another story about having to reshoot one scene in “Annie” a few months after filming wrapped – and a month after she had a little cosmetic surgery. “Um, I have to tell you, I have a chin now,” she recounted telling the studio rep when they called.

She also laughed at how she knows whenever she’s recognized from that particular movie. “Every once in a while I’ll see a little girl stop in the aisle at the store and go, ‘Huh!?’” she said in mock terror. They must be the only people she regularly encounters not thrilled to see her.
 

ArtPlace America, a three-year-old Chicago-based consortium of public and private arts funders, has included three Minnesota projects in its 2013-14 round of grants totalling $52 million.

Two arts projects in St. Paul and one in Lanesboro, Minn., have each received six-figure amounts for efforts toward "creative placemaking."

Bedlam Theatre received $350,000 to develop a Lowertown space designed to serve as an arts nexus for the Central Corridor light rail.

Blue Ox, an artists' collective, also got $350,000 to construct a mini-golf course as the anchor attraction on a 15-acre redevelopment of teh Schmidt brewery site.

The city of Lanesboro in southeastern Minnesota received $313,000 toward its ambitious "arts campus" project, which aims to transform the city into one big arts experience.

This is the third grant cycle for ArtPlace, which has previously funded five other projects in Minnesota, for a total (including the above) of $3,073,000.