Music

​We’ve Had One, Yes, but What About a Second Breakfast?

July 20th, 2022

By Dylan Bender

dylanbender808@gmail.com

Second Break-Fest is a two day festival centered around food, music, and merriment hosted by Prairie Sky breads in Minot. This festival is originally born out of a play on Tolkien's hungry Hobbits, a joke about hosting a festival early enough in the day that everyone is home before 8, and a desire to create a family reunion feeling amongst performers, was hosted for the first time in July of 2021. Now the Prairie Sky Breads team is getting ready…

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​Unrelenting Brutality Upon the Unprepared

June 18th, 2022

By Martin Beckman and Jordan Tepley

High Plains Reader: Just to fill in the people that are unfamiliar. Who are y'all and could you tell us a little about Suffering Hour?

Suffering Hour: Suffering Hour is a black/death metal band based in Forest Lake, Minn., formed in 2013. We’ve released two full lengths, In Passing Ascension in 2017 on Blood Harvest and The Cyclic Reckoning in 2021 on our current label Profound Lore. We’ve done two European tours, 2019 and 2022 and have done various…

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​Noise, an Almost Inescapable Part of Life

May 18th, 2022

By Michael Str!ke 

michaelstrike.solo@gmail.com

The word noise can mean so many different things. But here in Fargo, our Noise scene is thriving as what many consider to be the last true expression of art through sound. Nothing could showcase this better than 'Fargo Noise Fest III' at Seagrave Studios right in the heart of our little big city.

Brandon Wald; coordinator, organizer, and themself a performer of Noise has…

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​A Ukrainian Story

April 21st, 2022

By Jim Fuglie

jimfuglie920@gmail.com

Ukrainians are much on our minds right now, with the Last World War apparently beginning in their country. North Dakota has a smattering of them. I’m going to tell you the best Ukrainian story ever, but first a little background.

Where I grew up in Hettinger, in extreme southwest North Dakota, there were no Ukrainians. We were Germans and Norwegians, with a smattering of Swedes. Hettinger was one of about a dozen towns settled by the railroad—the…

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​Bender Fundraiser Uses Healing Power of Music

March 16th, 2022

By John Showalter 

john.d.showalter@gmail.com

In my experience of writing about music, two things have always stood out about local music acts, one being how much excellent musical talent can be found at the local level, and the other being how quickly folks can band together toward a common cause with art and music as a backdrop.

That holds true not just for the music scene in Fargo-Moorhead, but elsewhere in the…

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​Being Begonia

February 21st, 2022

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

Photo by Stephanie Dinsdale

HPR first caught wind of Begonia one hot day at Winnipeg Folk Fest in 2019. Even though we were trying not to wilt from the triple digit temperatures at the outdoor festival, onstage despite the heat, she maintained a coolness and oozed a certain level of sass, confidence and MAN.. what a voice. Once we found out she was coming to Fargo in March 2020, catching her show was a no brainer, little did any of us know this would be…

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​A Musical Journey From Baltic to Boardwalk

January 20th, 2022

By John Showalter 

john.d.showalter@gmail.com

Over the five years that I have written for High Plains Reader, I have made no secret of the fact that I think that Fargo-Moorhead has its fair share of artistic talent, musical and otherwise. Surprisingly, in all that time I had never gotten around to writing about a mainstay of Fargo music that has been around for over a decade, Baltic to Boardwalk. So…

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Making Beautiful Music in Zeeland

December 15th, 2021

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

Trudy Wolf is a woman of many hats and has been making waves since she came to Zeeland Public schools in 1993. Zeeland, located in south central North Dakota, had 87 residents according to the 2019 census, and is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the South Dakota border.

Wolf started out as just the music teacher. “Then a few years later, I added librarian to it, and then a number of years later, I added elementary principal, and then secondary…

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from Punk to Polka

November 19th, 2021

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

You may recognize Owen Hanson, from seeing him play with any number of folk punk projects throughout the past few years, such as his solo project Owen Broke, Bottle Wound, or Mr. Meaner. His folk punk roots may have just delved deeper into his interest in traditional folk music.

With the encouragement of a good friend, Fargo-based musician Owen Hanson applied for an accordion apprenticeship through the North Dakota Council on the Arts Folk Art and…

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​The Spirit of Amanda Standalone

October 23rd, 2021

By Sabrina Hornung 

sabrina@hpr1.com

Amanda Standalone is a force, in fact one could say she’s an old soul with the Midas touch of musicality. You may have seen her playing any number of instruments with a bluegrass band: a washtub bass with a burlesque troupe, a musical saw with a jugband, or busking on the sidewalk with her violin…and then there’s that voice…

With two albums under her belt,…

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