Dwight Hobbes, Writer
Dwight Hobbes has written for ESSENCE, Reader’s Digest, the Washington Post, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul, MN Law & Politics, Pulse of the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Observer, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, Saint Paul Almanac 2009, Women & Word, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Circle and Insight News—where he wrote the opinion column “Something I Said” and was lead arts critic. At the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder he contributes the commentary column “Hobbes in the House” and the column “Arts, No Chaser.” He’s spoken his mind over National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and Minneapolis-St. Paul’s KMOJ and KFAI. He was a frequent commentator on NewsNight Minnesota (KTCA-Minneapolis/St. Paul).
His plays are Shelter (produced at Mixed Blood Theatre by Pangea World Theater), Dues (produced by Mixed Blood Theatre in Point of Revue, selected for Bedlam Theatre’s 10-Minute Play Festival and published by Playscripts, Inc.), You Can’t Always Sometimes Never Tell (produced by Theater Center Philadelphia, Long Island University, read at the Kennedy Center, and published in the anthology Center Stage), and In the Midst (produced by Long Island University, starring Samuel E. Wright). Hobbes spoke on the “Farewell To August Wilson” panel at the Guthrie Theater, broadcast over Conversations With Al McFarlane (KFAI, KMOJ). He’s been interviewed on WCCO’s Steele Talkin’ by Jearlyn Steele and Unobstructed (BlogTalkRadio) by Alaina R. Alexander.
As a singer-songwriter Dwight Hobbes recorded the single “Atlanta Children” (BeatBad Records) and gigged for ten years in the Long Island/NYC area, including at The Other End, Kenny’s Castaways, and My Father’s Place. He briefly fronted the Boston blues-rock band Midlight. In Minneapolis, he’s opened for David Daniels (at the 7th Street Entry) and James Curry (at Terminal Bar) and sat in with Yohannes Tona, Alicia Wiley (at Sol Testimony’s Soul Jam), The New Congress (at Babalú), Willie Murphy (at the Viking Bar) and Wain McFarlane & Jahz (at Lucille’s Kitchen). Dwight Hobbes still drops in at open mics around town. Right now he’s at Winterland Studios recording Angels Don’t Really Fly, an EP by Dwight Hobbes & The All-Stars featuring Alicia Wiley.
MUSIC | From screaming to strumming, Ezra Sauter's got serious chops
Playing guitar in a soul band demands special chops. First and foremost, you’ve got to be tight. And tasty. And tight. And fluid. And tight. Also, did I mention you have to be tight? As in air-sealed. Ezra Sauter, with hip-hop/R&B juggernaut Soulacious, cleanly fills the bill. MORE »
MUSIC | Bruce Jackson's right tight blues
I don’t spend much time in the Warehouse District. Don’t go there at all, actually, since Babalú closed almost a year ago. Accordingly, I paid the devil trying to get around that vicinity at all, let alone find JJ’s Dry Dock Café. Went this way and that, asked the bartender at JD Hoyt’s no less than twice—probably three times—where the place was and, God bless her, she was patient. MORE »
MUSIC | Art Vandalay dances with your demons
Don’t tell anyone, but in his secret identity, singer-songwriter Art Vandalay is PR rep Brandon Henry of Red House Records. (He’s not, by the way, the only Red House staffer doing double duty—steadily gigging folk artist Mother Banjo is head Red House flack Ellen Stanley.) Vandalay’s CD debut, Dancin’ With Your Demons, works. It’s well-crafted folk rock, at times pure mellow magic. MORE »
MN VOICES | Poet Mark Nowak evokes the mortal hazards of coal mining
Coal, the world’s most abundant fossil fuel, is, to state the obvious, a vital resource for energy. What’s also obvious yet, history shows, could stand restating are the terrible dangers of coal mining. West Virginia’s infamous Matewan Massacre in 1920 and its aftermath, the Battle of Blair Mountain, saw the slaughter of coal miners by agents for the Stone Mountain Coal Company, which’d had enough of employees fighting for unionized pay and reasonably safe working conditions. Between 1980 and 2007, “only” 197 miners died in U.S. disasters. In China, last year alone saw 4,700 deaths—according to official figures, anyway. Independent labor organizations say it’s more like 20,000 deaths every year. MORE »
THEATER | "My Father's Bookshelf" at the Guthrie: A truly forgettable show about memory loss
If you have to miss one show this season, I highly recommend that it be My Father’s Bookshelf at the Guthrie Theater. A Live Action Set production directed by Galen Treuer and Noah Bremer, the play is two hours of torture with a 15-minute break that passes all too quickly. MORE »
workaround
