In the darkest days of 2020 — when COVID was sweeping the country with no vaccine yet in sight, George Floyd had been murdered, parts of the Twin Cities had burned and someone had carved swastikas and hate language into a wet-concrete sidewalk in his neighborhood in Savage — Tom Fugleberg took to strumming a guitar.
After dark, with his three young children in bed, he would take his guitar out to the firepit in his backyard, creating songs and singing them into his phone. It was his way of dealing with stress, of choosing optimism over anxiety, of reassuring his three young, mixed-race children that there was still plenty of hope in the world.
"It was like, 'OK, what can I do?' " Fugleberg said. "I fundamentally believe you have to put as much good and optimism into the world as you can, and especially with the world that comes at you with too much of the other stuff."
During the following three years, those solo sessions blossomed into a collaboration with fellow musician and advertising colleague Brian Kroening on a songwriting and entertainment project called "Seeking Permission: Songs in the Key of Hope." Now, with three of their original songs recorded, they're planning future recordings and live performances — through which they'll raise money to help children in underserved areas struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental illness.
COVID has been blamed for triggering a mental health crisis among children, while also exacerbating disparities in services. In 2020, emergency-room visits for mental health treatment rose about 25% for younger children and more than 30 % for ages 12 and up, according to the American Psychological Association, citing Centers for Disease Control data.
Fugleberg, cofounder and CEO of local advertising agency Friends & Neighbors, was once a member of the Spectaculars, a Minneapolis band whose musical influences ranged from Johnny Cash to David Bowie to Biggie Smalls. That was years ago, but in the depths of 2020, new song ideas began popping into his head when he was taking a walk, carrying his sleeping son home from a neighbor's bonfire or reacting to something horrible in the news. He wondered whether music could, even in these harsh times, rekindle the sense of innocence he remembers feeling while growing up.
When Fugleberg had rough drafts of a few songs, he called his old friend Kroening, founder and CEO of the marketing agency Agency Blue and a Plymouth resident. Though the two had once worked together as partner creative directors at another local ad agency, they hadn't seen each other much in the intervening years.
Kroening is a songwriter and guitarist for Rocket Club (active from 2008 to 2014, then reunited last year), a band that describes its music as some combination of Americana, country and rock. Maybe, Fugleberg thought, the two old friends could record some songs, develop them into something bigger.
