The Weird, Stubborn, Homegrown Half of Grand Forks Music

Every profile of a small-market scene eventually has to answer the honest question: strip away the touring acts, the nostalgia bills, the cover bands working the Blue Moose on a Saturday — is there anything actually from here? In Grand Forks the answer is yes, it's just quieter and stranger than the marquees, and this weekend is a decent place to go find it.

Start Saturday morning, Aug. 15, at the Town Square farmers market, which from mid-June into September hands its main stage to rotating local acts working polka, folk, and honest old-school rock while the crowd buys produce and kuchen. It is the least pretentious gig in town and, for a lot of Grand Forks players, the most reliable — a paid, in-public slot in a city that doesn't have many. It won't change your life. It will show you who's actually working.

Dig a little and the homegrown scene gets more interesting than the market lets on. The Grand Forks Herald once profiled the alleles, a local band that files its sound under "psychedelic indie space rock" — guitars and vocals buried in pedals until the whole thing sounds beamed in from somewhere off-planet. Around and after them, area write-ups point to acts like Day of Bliss, Wes Elementary, and Soulomon working post-grunge, psych, indie, and alternative — the unglamorous connective tissue of a real scene. The institutional home for a lot of this is the Empire Arts Center's "Music Box," described as one of the only rooms in town where artists play whatever they want, of any genre or experience level, with an open jam at the top of the night. And Ojata Records on North Washington has served as a shop-slash-stage for local and regional bands across genres.

That original-music underground is also why a booking like The Bromantics at the Empire on Saturday, Aug. 15 is worth clocking even if a high-energy regional party band isn't your usual thing. It puts a paying crowd inside the one downtown room most committed to homegrown music — and a full night at the Empire is what keeps that Music Box stage funded and lit for the weirder acts the rest of the year.

Here's the "why it matters," and it's simple. A college town's scene is always tempted to become a pure import economy — buy the tour, book the cover band, let the students provide the crowd and the touring acts provide the music. The alleles and their peers are the argument against that: proof that Grand Forks can still generate its own strange, specific noise instead of only renting other people's. That's fragile. It survives on tiny rooms, forgiving open mics, and a record shop willing to clear the floor.

So this weekend, catch the market stage in the morning and keep an ear out for the odder stuff after dark. The touring acts will always find their way to the Alerus. The homegrown weirdos need you to actually show up.

Sources: Grand Forks band brings psychedelic indie space rock to local music scene — Grand Forks Herald; Amp It Up: A Grand Forks Guide to Live Music — Grand Forks Is Cooler; Calendar — Empire Arts Center; Summer sounds in the Forks — Visit Grand Forks