NRBQ, which stands for the new rhythm and blues quartet, and I go back over 40 years. I had first heard of the band while living outside of Washington DC where there is a very hip music scene and I remember reading in the Unicorn Times stellar reviews of the band’s performances.
In 1979 I moved back to Minnesota to attend the university, and in the fall of my sophomore year NRBQ was scheduled to play the Whole Coffee House. As the name implies, this was a non-alcohol venue in the basement of the Coffman student union building and that as much as I wanted to see the show, my roommate, on my advice, was going to take a young woman to the show for their first date and I didn’t wanna be a third wheel. Later that night my roommate returned to our dorm room raving about the band and how they had the audience eating out of the palms of their hands. Perhaps the coolest thing about that show, was, to the best of my knowledge, the last time NRBQ used the magic box at a show in the Twin Cities, although I could be wrong on this point. That would’ve been in the fall of 1980.
The 1980s and 90’s turned out to be a very busy time for NRBQ in the Twin Cities. It seemed over the course of the next 20 years NRBQ played at least twice a year in the Twin Cities, including, it seemed, every free music festival from barbecue contests to the Taste of Minnesota, to Grand Old Days to the grand opening of the Saint Paul Mississippi Riverfront redevelopment, Bandanna Square on St. Patrick’s Day, as well as numerous club dates most often at First Avenue but also at the Cabooze bar and Famous Dave’s as well. Minneapolis music critic, Tom Surowicz famously named his music column after one of the band’s albums, “Grooves in Orbit”. For a while it seemed as though the Twin Cities had adopted the Louisville band as its own.
While every NRBQ show is a unique and special event, a few of the shows in the twin cities during this time stand out.
To be an NRBQ fan is to come to know the band intimately, including the quirky personalities, mood swings, idiosyncrasies and strained relationships that you get anytime you throw four talented and artistic individuals together. Ladle on heaps of praise and predictions that they are on the verge of being the next big thing in rock music, and you’re bound to have some volatile reactions by the band to all the stress. One show in particular that sticks in my mind was a show at First Avenue in the late 80s or early 90s where the band was in one of their particularly facetious moods. From the opening song to the last encore, Big Al and to a lesser extent, Terry and the rest of the band would break into an acappella ode to their “home town”, Minneapolis.
In this made up tune, “Minneapolis, my hometown” the band referred to Minneapolis as their hometown and how good it was to be back in their hometown and every chance they got between songs, and sometimes in the middle of songs, they would break out into an a cappella made up song “Minneapolis, my hometown delivered in the most insipid and annoying, facetious manner. It was the equivalent of their flipping off the entire town. The only problem was this was long before the town had done anything (e.g. George Floyd murder) to deserve such treatment. I have long wondered what specific act of passive aggressive “Minnesota Nice” set off the lads from Louisville / Woodstock, NY transplants.
As Perhaps the most surreal NRBQ show I witnessed in the Twin Cities was the show in the parking lot of Dixies restaurant during the 1990 Grand Old Days street festival. Less than a mile as the crow flies, Minnesota’s then Governor, Rudy Perpich, was hosting Mikail Gorbachov at the Governor’s mansion. Gorbachov had just announced glasnost and his loosening of control over the citizens of the Soviet Union who were experiencing their first, nascent tastes of freedom.
As military and state patrol helicopters flew security overhead, NRBQ was tearing the heads off the crowd down below on Grand Avenue in St. Paul with an absolutely scintillating performance. I will never forget Big Al’s version of George Jones‘ “White Lightning’” early in the set, replete with hearty belches at the end of every verse in the chorus.
As I recall, other highlights from that show were rousing versions of the band’s classic “It Comes to Me Naturally” which it seems every bar band in America was covering at the time and the crowd favorites “It was an Accident” and “Riding in My Car”. Most memorable was the festive mood and good will everyone had for the leader of the Soviet Union and the prospect for world peace. Somewhere I have a “Gorbachov for President” button I purchased that day.
NRBQ returns to Minneapolis this Sunday, December 3rd at an intriguing venue, the Parkway Theater. When I learned that the band would be augmented by their horn section, the Whole Wheat Horns I immediately thought of my old friend and trombonist Carl Querfurth who is a frequent member of said horn section. I did get a hold of Carl but alas he only plays the band’s Northeast shows.
The day before the concert I was hospialized with an abcessed tooth that made my face swell up so bad I had to call an Uber at 4 a.m. to take me to the Emergency Room. I shot the above video of NRBQ performing "Get a Grip" the next day but wasn't up for doing a review of the show due to my health.
