As 3-year-old go-getter Lincoln Alexander started into one doughnut too many Tuesday at Glam Doll — ironically avoiding the special cream-puff pastries named the Doomtree — his dad sat across the table talking about how his group has possibly bitten off more than it can chew.
"I haven't been this nervous or intimidated by something we've done since probably the very first Blowout," admitted the elder Alexander, Stef, aka P.O.S. of the Doomtree hip-hop crew. "Which was sort of the point."
That something in this case is the Doomtree Zoo, a new one-day outdoor music festival taking place Saturday at CHS Field in downtown St. Paul.
The eight-hour, nine-band event was cooked up as a replacement for the septet's wildly successful Blowout concerts, which evolved from a single Varsity Theater concert in 2004 to a weeklong marathon of gigs in 2014, including three sold-out First Avenue shows. Even more than the Blowouts, though, the planning and buildup behind Saturday's Zoo has been unlike anything the DIY crew has tried before.
"I'm on puppets, inflatable slides, face painting, and Double Dutch duty," Dessa said, listing off her assignments prepping for the big show.
Having just returned from an East Coast tour a day earlier, the two bandmates and their fellow rapper Sims hit Glam Doll Donuts at lunchtime Tuesday to meet fans and pass along a clue for the ongoing Doomtree Pop Quiz, Hot Shot contest, all part of a busy week hyping the Zoo.
Rehearsals also factored into the buildup. Drummer Ben Ivascu (Poliça), keyboardist Eric Mayson (Caroline Smith's band) and some special guest vocalists were broken in to add to the onstage melee that is a Doomtree set.
While the rest of the group toured in recent months to tout their January album "All Hands," producer/beatmaker Lazerbeak stayed home and managed the many details of Saturday's shindig. He said one of the reasons they picked the new Saints ballpark was because "it already had a lot of infrastructure in place, like bathrooms and concessions, so we could focus on other, wackier things."
