RandBall Q&A: Chris Kluwe, Vikings punter and occasional rock star

We had a chance to speak earlier today with Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, who moonlights as a member of the now-named Tripping Icarus. That's a hard rock band that will be playing Friday night at the 7th Street Entry, one of the Twin Cities' most venerable music venues (attached to the best of the best, First Ave). They are on third tomorrow night, which puts them at around an 11:30 p.m. start time. CURFEW! Don't miss bed-check! Chris is pretty stoked about his dual-threat career. You laugh, but Craig Finn never held for a game-winning field goal, and Kurt Cobain surely never helped an NFL team win the field position battle. In any event, here are some of Kluwe's thoughts:

Q Do you think you guys will ever get a star on the side of the First Avenue wall?

A That would be pretty sweet. There's a lot of music history in that building. Maybe one day.

Q So you finally settled on a name?

A Yeah, we were at practice space and we were going to record at Pachyderm the next day. We decided we can't be "that band" that shows up to record without a name, and we said we weren't leaving without everyone agreeing on it. At that point, we were trying to find something not taken by a crappy metal band. Tripping Icarus sounded kind of cool, pretty unique.

Q I thought "Warbear" was in the picture. What happened?

A There was already a previous Warbear. [Ed. note: What are the odds of that?]

A The good news about that is the last show we did at the 400 Bar, I ended up getting back around 3:30 a.m., then we went out and played Detroit, and I had a pretty good game. I'm 1-for-1 so far.

Q Do you talk to guys on the team about your band a lot?

A Longwell and Loeffler hear about it all the time. I'm sure they're sick of it by now. I figure some of the guys might like the style of music. If guys like it, hopefully they'll be fans and come to a show or two.

Q Finally, one football question: If you played in Dallas, would you spend all your time trying to nail that giant video board that hangs 90 feet off the ground?

A It's funny, when we played Dallas in the preseason two years ago, (Cowboys punter) Mat McBriar was telling us about how they took him down to the new stadium when it was under construction and had him punt balls to see if he was hitting it, and he was hitting it every time. ... I really wanted to play there this preseason to see if I could bounce it off there. It's just the most tempting target ever. I'm not going to lie. I'd like to hit that thing. It makes you wonder if there was a series of hurdles in the field for running backs, would they allow that?