Our traditions are not just steeped in history and high art. Some of our traditions are also sweaty and smell a bit of lager, though what truly makes this so poignant is you get to see the same musicians and fans enjoying this wide spectrum of musical traditions – sometimes even crossing through both ends of the spectrum in one night.

Bands and Band Shells

One of the oldest of these is Menomonie’s Ludington Guard Band. Officially founded in 1888 after supporting a cavalry regiment of the same name, the band was organized by Charles Ingraham. Over time the band has grown from 11 to 70 members. From its early days on, this band played throughout this region bringing soaring music to warm summer days.

Keeping Eau Claire covered in both patriotic standards and cinematic scores is one of our oldest community organizations, the Eau Claire Municipal Band. This band not only provides free entertainment to fans throughout the summer months in the historic Sarge Boyd Bandshell at Owen Park but also is a great example of inclusivity: Membership in the band is open to musicians of all ages, and musicians are encouraged to just bring their instruments and music stands and the band will help with the rest.

However, ensemble traditions are not limited to Sousa marches and Fantasia orchestrations. We also are privileged to have an amazing choral ensemble, The Master Singers; traditional orchestra music from the Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra; symphonic masterpieces from the Chippewa Valley Symphony Orchestra; and a cornucopia of jazz stylings from the Chippewa Valley Jazz Orchestra.

A Night of Decadence

Next, we get to the part where our tradition wears fishnets: the Decadent Cabaret. This staple of the Eau Claire music scene has featured a definitive listing of rock bands from this area. We’re talking pretty much every band that’s ever lived in or near this town. Making it even better these bands are playing cover tunes. To complete the fungasm, this is also a costume party.

Throughout its 35 years this festival has been held at many former venues like the Golden Chair, Brat Kabin, and Stone’s Throw before making finding its current home at the House of Rock for the last 11 years.

What keeps this tradition alive is simply the wealth of talent from Eau Claire bands and a labor of love from the many people who have organized it. This festival attracts the whole gamut of sub-genres that we use to divide rock ’n’ roll. This is not just three days of amazing music; this is a musical reunion that unites many scenes and crosses age boundaries. It’s the bridge that a sustainable scene needs.

Organizer Brent Kuechenmeister does have one critique: “I’d like to see more people coming out in costumes. The whole thing is intended to be Halloween, Mardi Gras, and New Year’s all rolled into one.”

Holiday Togetherness

Another holiday tradition that brings together Eau Claire is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Eau Claire.” This annual online mixtape brings together lo-fi recordings from all sorts of Chippewa Valley musicians. The idea is quite simple: Artists email their home-recorded songs to organizer Andy Plank and he creates a playlist at VolumeOne.org in the order the songs were received.

What is crazy is the process results in one of the most listenable holiday compilations pretty much ever. The songs move between experimental dissonance and reverential beauty without a pretense that the compilation be anything other than a grouping of gifts under the Eau Claire music tree.

One thing that all of the above traditions have in common is the fingerprint of the UW-Eau Claire music program. Every one of these traditions involves musicians who spent hours plying their craft in the practice rooms and recital halls of the Haas Fine Arts Center.

That tradition is seen most publicly in the jazz program at the university. The program has produced Grammy nominees and hosts an annual Jazz Festival that fills every venue in downtown Eau Claire. This festival features performances from nationally renowned artists at historic venues such as the State Theatre. It includes the 52nd Street event, which fills every possible space in downtown with performances from area jazz ensembles of all styles and sizes. It’s the closest thing to a jazz South by Southwest I’ve ever seen.

In the end, all of these traditions have the same goal: to make great music and make this a better place. That’s what keeps many of us here year after year after year…

In the end, all of these traditions have the same aim: to make great music and make this a better place. That’s what keeps many of us here year after year, consistently blessed and amazed at the wealth of talent that runs deep in the Chippewa Valley.

If I missed your tradition that was not my aim at all. Either let me know in person and I’ll buy you a beer at The Joynt or, even better, post it below the online version of this article so we can all learn more.

“It’s only the last five, six years that I've gotten that kind of playing time that I had in my time in Eau Claire. That’s where I figured out how to be a professional.”

Take two Chippewa Valley musicians who left town around the same time as Vernon … but unlike Vernon, they never migrated back: Andrew Neesley and Phil Cook. Neesley (The Andrew Neesley Quartet, Jesus on the Mainline) moved to New York and Cook (Mount Vernon, DeYarmond Edison, Amateur Love, Megafaun, The Shouting Matches, etc.). moved to North Carolina. Over a decade later, each is still in those respective places, happily making a living creating music.

Neesley, as an award-winning UW-Eau Claire music graduate, created a popular weekly live jazz gig at The Stone’s Throw in downtown Eau Claire. Now in New York, he’s producing, writing, and playing music and for himself and countless others. He’s been nominated for a couple of Grammys for live albums on which he’s played trumpet. And the schools he works with – such as the Manhattan School of Music – and all of the businesses and musicians who hire him are often a simple train ride away.

“In a city of millions there’s a lot more ‘work’ work,” Neesley said in a recent phone interview from New York. “Everybody likes to pretend they’re doing the creative stuff all the time, but you gotta make the doughnuts sometimes. And here, there’s just a ton of nuts-and-bolts work. There’s a lot of people here with a dollar and a dream. So life is good. I’m staying busy. Living the dream … or grinding away – take your pick,” he said, laughing.

With those types of opportunities sometimes unavailable in the Chippewa Valley, Neesley’s new home makes his time in Wisconsin nothing but a pit stop on this way to success … except that it’s not.

“I might be a New Yorker now, but I left my heart in Wisco for sure,” he says. “I still consider myself a Wisconsinite. If I didn’t have to be in New York to make a living, I’d be having a Berghoff at the Joynt and talking shit with Manas right now. I will come back eventually … when I’m financially able to do whatever the hell I want.”

And he recognizes that his special Eau Claire experience is what enabled him to do what he does now.

“The day-in and day-out of playing in Eau Claire … not a lot of other music scenes can afford a growing musician that kind of playing time,” he said. “You just don’t go to a big city and get that. It’s only the last five, six years that I’ve gotten the kind of playing time that I had in my time in Eau Claire. That’s where I figured out how to be a professional.”

For Phil Cook, proximity, too, played a role in his successful move to North Carolina, where most of the East Coast can be reached by car within a day. “The access is undeniably more appealing,” he said by phone from Raleigh, N.C. “When we lived in the Midwest … Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison were our four options. Beyond that it was like, ‘Where ya’ gonna go?’ You’d have to really haul somewhere.”

With Megafaun, Cook toured the country and Europe several times over, promoting several albums. He became a go-to instrumentalist in the Raleigh music scene and beyond. The diversity of the music projects available is what drew him to North Carolina in the first place. With a wide range of gospel, Appalachian, blues, and R&B, combined with a mix of cultures and traditions, North Carolina proved a natural fit for Cook’s musical instincts. He’s there to stay.

Still, he considers Wisconsin home – and he’s fully aware of the impact of his formative years here. “You know, it’s immeasurable … it’s immeasurable,” he says. “I would never in a million years and for a million dollars trade the upbringing that I had and where I grew up.”

The long isolating winters – often viewed as negatives – have a way of forging creative fires, Cook says.

“It kind of forces you to figure out what your hobbies are,” he says. “People have hobbies in Wisconsin like nobody’s business. It’s like Hobby Zone, man! It’s a hobby land!” he laughs. “The climate forces you to find something that gives joy, and people really cling to that. And it becomes a big part of your identity. And me, and Justin, and the Mount Vernon crew, we found that common love of jazz when we were 15 and explored that all together. And it’s pretty remarkable that they’re still my group of best friends now, 20 years later.”

And Cook couldn’t say enough about the support he received from the people of the Chippewa Valley, from musical mentors to supportive audiences starting when he was a teenager. With fewer entertainment options, people appreciate the music more, he says, and support those who are creating it.

Now, with a new band, The Guitarheels, his debut solo album ready for release, and a spot on the line-up of Eaux Claires Music and Arts Festival, organized in part by his former bandmate, Cook has a chance to move forward while still embracing his roots.

“I kinda look at it like this, man: Mount Vernon was summer camp, DeYarmond Edison was high school, Megafaun was college or graduate school, and what I’m doing with The Guitarheels is my first real job,” he says. “It took a long time. It took almost 35 years to get this point.”

And he’s bringing it back here, where it all began. Or, as Cook puts it: “That is some looong arcing full circle shit …” he says, with that Wisconsin laughter, echoing all the way from the coast.

Since that move, Christopherson has done pretty well for himself. He and Mel Gibson member Ryan Olson1 have gone on to become stalwarts of the Minneapolis music scene as members of Polica2 and working with a number of the city’s well-known hip-hop artists. Other Chippewa Vallians have found similar success like Solid Gold3, Peter Miller4, Savannah Smit5, Feng Meng Vue6, Vacation Dad7, and far more than my editors have space for me to list.

The relationship between our two – OK, three (I gotchu, St. Paul) – cities obviously starts with the big lights syndrome that strikes almost any teenager or 20-something living somewhere without a skyline. That’s what brought Kyle Frenette to the Twin Cities for college, and then brought him back in 2013. Frenette, the late 20s music industry pro who owns Middle West Management and has managed Bon Iver through its meteoric rise, said the allure of Minneapolis is its size – big, but not too big.

“For a kid from Chippewa Falls, Minneapolis is the big city, but traveling as I have in the last few years I realized it’s a pretty small city and feels different from other major metro areas,” Frenette said. “It feels like a small community, but there are skyscrapers. And that’s how the music scene here feels. Everyone knows each other and everyone’s supportive of each other.”

But like any self-conscious younger sibling, what we really want to know is what Minneapolis thinks of us.

“I think mostly people are surprised there’s so many (Eau Clairians),” Christopherson said. “When I tell people I’m from Eau Claire they’re like, ‘Wow, you too?’ ”

The stretch of I-94 is of course a two-way street, which is great news for Eau Claire. Frenette talked excitedly about the bridge that’s built between the communities. For example, Eau Clairian Ryan Olson met Minneapolis rapper Lizzo after moving to the city and brought her back to record at April Base – Justin Vernon’s studio in Fall Creek – where she ended up collaborating with Vernon on that record.

“It’s all connected now,” Frenette said. “And it’s no one person’s doing. That’s just the natural Midwestern invitation to collaborate.”

Moving forward, Christopherson hopes more Chippewa Valley artists will make the jump and join in on those collaborations, from wherever they might end up.

“Eau Claire has always been a really strong arts community, but I don’t think people should be afraid to leave it,” Christopherson said. “I guess what I’m saying is keep them coming. The more Eau Claire musicians that spread across the country, the better for Eau Claire. And for the country.”

Yes, to understand the roots of live music in the Chippewa Valley during the 20th century, you need to talk to people, because no one has written the book about them … yet. And the “book” would likely have several volumes, probably one for each decade. A post to Facebook’s “You Know You Are From Eau Claire When” group on the topic drew nearly 100 responses, with as many opinions as individuals answering the question about their favorite memory of local, historic live music venues.

And, to understand what happened at the start of the second half of that century – the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s – you need to listen to your “elders,” who age-wise are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Among them is Eau Claire native Jim Hoehn – a guy who as a sports reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, picked up a guitar, wrote a few songs, and gathered a following of Parrot Heads – dashed off a quick note from the press box at a recent Milwaukee Brewers game: “A couple of places come to mind for live music: Pine Point on Tainter Lake near Menomonie, and in Eau Claire, the London Inn and The Barr before it became Fanny Hill.”