Artcetera: Memories are made of We Fest

It's looking like 2020 will be the year of the hiatus, with the MayDay Parade and Northern Spark taking a break, and now We Fest, the huge country-and-camping hoedown in Detroit Lakes, Minn., which is regrouping after its purchase by Live Nation. My memories go all the way back to the inaugural event in 1983, with Alabama, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette — and skydivers landing in the middle of the dude ranch corral where the concert was held. There were many highs and a few lows (Ray Charles tarnished his reputation on a blustery, 55-degree summer evening when he hit the road, Jack, after just two numbers). There were country veterans — George "No Show" Jones showed up big time in 1993 — and rising stars. I got an in-person chat with Taylor Swift in her bus backstage in 2008 (her mother asked me to take off my shoes). Every fest-goer had their rituals. Mine at the end of the night was to visit friends from St. Paul who parked their RV in the same spot every year. One night in 2006, we were sipping a late-night beverage when a golf cart came whipping around the corner. It was Big Kenny Alphin of Big & Rich, those "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" hitmakers, looking for a party at 1 a.m.

JON BREAM

Your film just won an Oscar, Bong Joon-ho. What are you going to do next? "I'm going to Minneapolis." That could be the scenario in a couple of months, when Walker Art Center snags an appearance by Hollywood's buzziest director. Bong's lacerating drama "Parasite," currently in theaters, won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May and is the early favorite to win this year's foreign film Oscar on Feb. 9. Three days after that, Bong will be at the Walker for a Feb. 12 discussion of his work. The two-week retrospective begins Jan. 31 with a screening of "Parasite," followed by Bong's earlier movies, including the serial-killer thriller "Memories of Murder," creepy "Mother," kid-with-a-creature melodrama "Okja" and the class-struggle-on-a-runaway-train drama "Snowpiercer."

CHRIS HEWITT

You knew young old-school country singer Tyler Childers didn't suffer fools gladly when he won the "emerging artist of the year" prize in 2018 at the Americana Music Awards and blasted the organization for labeling him "Americana." The 28-year-old Kentucky twanger didn't tolerate fools this week at First Avenue, where he played to rabid sellout crowds Sunday and Monday. On the second night, when Childers spotted two men tussling in front of the stage, he stopped singing and raised his voice: "Quit! I don't care who started it. No one gives a damn. If you want to act like heathens, get out." One combatant apologized then. "You ought to be sorry," Childers said, and told the two to go to opposite sides of the room. j.B.

As he did before his last album, Minneapolis hip-hop guru Brother Ali has kept a relatively low profile this year. This time, though, he's apparently been hanging out in a garage near the beach in Venice, Calif., instead of a mountaintop Muslim retreat center — and he has a new, surprise album to show for it. "Ev smoked a lot of weed, Ali prayed extensively, and their influences on each other can be heard in the recordings," Rhymesayers Entertainment described in a news release about the making of "Secrets & Escapes," the collaborative album Ali made with Los Angeles rap stalwart Evidence. It's streaming via YouTube, Spotify and other digital platforms, and physical copies are available from Rhymesayers.com. The seemingly unlikely cohorts hit the road this week and will wind up at First Avenue together on Dec. 19.

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

C.R.

Who doesn't like their pizza with a side of art? The Parkway Pizza chain is offering three grants — one for $1,000 and two for $500 — for any emerging artist in Minnesota. Winning artists will be invited to hang their artwork at one of Parkway Pizza's three locations in Minneapolis and St. Louis Park and create an artist-designed pizza recipe that will be on the menu for the duration of their solo show. Parkway owners Sam Nestingen and Tyler Dill felt compelled to offer this opportunity to artists because of risks they took to open their own pizza place 13 years ago. For details, go to parkwaypizzamn.com. The pizza-loving judges include Robyne Robinson, the former TV personality who now runs the public-art consulting firm fiveXfive.

ALICIA ELER

When Preservation Hall Jazz Band returned to Minnesota on Tuesday, leader Ben Jaffe wanted to give a shoutout to the man who gave the group its first gig outside its native New Orleans — at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 1963. Jaffe, son of PHJB's founder, scanned the crowd at the Fitzgerald Theater fruitlessly at first for Dr. Henry Blackburn, a now-retired University of Minnesota heart specialist and jazz-loving clarinetist. Finally, with the house lights on, Jaffe spotted him in the balcony. "They put him way in the back row," Jaffe announced. "I told them to give him the best sounding seats in the house."

J.B.