Minne-indies on the national stage
It's a nice month to be Twin Cities filmmakers Brady Kiernan and Todd Cobery. Two of their projects were accepted by gold-standard film fests. The short supernatural chiller "Good Morning, Beautiful," directed by Cobery and produced by Kiernan, premieres Friday at South by Southwest while the romantic drama "Stuck Between Stations," which Kiernan directed and Cobery produced, will debut at New York's Tribeca in late April. The story of a soldier, home for one night on bereavement leave, who crosses paths with his high school crush, "Stuck Between Stations" stars Sam Rosen and Zoe Lister Jones with supporting turns by Michael (Christopher Soprano) Imperioli and Josh Hartnett. Filming, which took place after hours in downtown Minneapolis in the fall of 2009, was a charmed experience, Kier­nan said — aside from the occasional Warehouse District barfly wobbling by. Now he and Cobery are lining up sales agents and publicists to get the film a limited theatrical release. "We're encouraged, because this year [the festivals in] Toronto, Sundance and Berlin all seem to be active sales markets," he said.
COLIN COVERT

Preservation flashback
A few years ago, Preservation Hall Jazz Band leader Ben Jaffe told I.W. about his desire to pay tribute to the 50-year-old group's first real album, "Sweet Emma Barrett & Her Preservation Hall Band," recorded in 1964 at the old Guthrie Theater. Jaffe and the crew are doing just that Monday at the new Guthrie with modern boogie-woogie queen Marcia Ball filling in for the late Barrett (all the original players have passed). Reissued as a double CD in 2005, the recording was helmed by local musicologist Harry Blackburn. Jaffe remembered his late dad, Allan, staying up all night after the show to oversee the audio mix. "It's the band's most important and probably best-known recording," said Jaffe, whose parents opened Preservation Hall in New Orleans in 1961. Here's hoping someone records Monday's show.
CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Drumming up work
With the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on strike, its drummers have marched away. Principal percussionist Jacob Nissly is going to the Cleveland Orchestra. Principal timpanist Brian Jones heads to the Dallas Symphony. And Ian Ding, who's been the DSO's assistant principal percussionist for eight years, is moving to Minneapolis. No, not to join the Minnesota Orchestra, but to end the long-distance nature of his relationship with his fiancée, Gina DiBello, principal second violinist at the MO. Ding, 34, who's also known in Motor City for his involvement with the contemporary music collective New Music Detroit, will pursue freelance work in the Twin Cities.
CLAUDE PECK

A new boy band?
Remember that Rascal Flatts concert filmed in January at Xcel Center for a TV special? ABC will broadcast that hourlong program Saturday (8 p.m., KSTP, Ch. 5). British pop star Natasha Bedingfield was flown in to sing at the X. Another superstar who didn't perform that night has been added to the mix — Justin Bieber singing his "That Should Be Me" with Rascal Flatts on backup vocals. I.W. is guessing that Flatts — country's kingpins of hair product — did it because they dig Bieber's 'do.
JON BREAM

Dancing back home
The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet received a big ovation Tuesday at the State Theatre, thanks not only to the performance but to the Minnesota roots of two of the troupe's dancers. Fans turned out in force to support Stillwater native Sam Chittenden, who got his start at Ballet Arts Minnesota, and Katie Dehler, who's from St. Joseph, Minn. The show was the company's Minnesota debut. Ben Johnson, Northrop's director of concerts and lectures, praised the dancers' crew for "buying, like, a thousand tickets for the show." Chittenden estimated the number of ticketholders with connections to him or Dehler at closer to 150. Not sure if they got the friends-and-family discount.
ANDREW PENKALSKI

Guitars and coffee
Although he grew up as Kevin Hazlett in Hopkins, he built an impressive résumé as Kevin Calhoun, New York studio musician, working with Paul Shaffer, Run-D.M.C. and on the soundtrack to "Karate Kid," among other projects. In the 1990s, he returned to the Twin Cities, where he has performed in the band Van Hazlett (with his brothers John and Buck), worked on jingles (notably the National American University) and run the Bryn Mawr Coffee Shop. Now Hazlett is having health issues so a bunch of his musical friends — Curtiss A, Slim Dunlap, Gary Rue and the X-Boys (featuring Hazlett) and comic Alex Cole — will perform a benefit for him Tuesday night at Bunker's.
JON BREAM

Barry plots his next move
Veteran Minneapolis gallery owner Thomas Barry has closed his N. 3rd Street space but he's not folding his business. Besides representing some of the region's more successful artists, including photographer Lynn Geesaman, folk-style sculptor Don Gahr and painter James Kielkopf, he's long had sidelines in ceramics, glass and even art storage. He's not ready to unveil his next plan just yet but said it will be "a more effective and contemporary form of doing business in the art world." He's promised more info after the art is hung and the boxes are unpacked in a new space.
MARY ABBE

93X marks new spot
For the first time since 2004, there will be major headbanging over Memorial Day weekend in the metro. Once the property of Somerset, Wis., the 93X Fest will be revived May 28 in the friendly confines of St. Paul's Midway Stadium. It's a relatively monstrous lineup: Boston kingpins Godsmack headline, preceded by one old-school favorite, Queensryche; two '90s mainstays, Puddle of Mudd and Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society, and newer names Hollywood Undead, All That Remains, Escape the Fate and New Medicine. KQRS is staging Rock Stock the next day in the same venue for the same prices ($40, $200 VIP), but with only three bands, Styx, Cheap Trick and Lamont Cranston. More proof that kids are smarter than their parents.
CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER