I Love Wisconsin Northwoods

I've never considered myself a city slicker.

I was born in a little town in the U.P.

Grew up in Oshkosh- current population 65,000ish

Lived in Milwaukee for a few years

Found myself back here in Oshkosh

And also on the road pretty consistently every weekend.


One of my favorite parts about being a musician is getting to see so much of Wisconsin in a bit more of a personal way than if I were to just drive through on my way to another place.

I've learned some things...

There are a lot of rural politics that happen often that don't make front page headlines even in smaller cities let alone Milwaukee or Madison. They don't get talked about much from what I can tell. A lot of times these rural politics affect things like farming and how we treat the land and the water and the resources.

I've realized this last year that I've spent my whole life in Wisconsin being pretty unaware...pretty unaware of how it all works in general. I've been a lot like many other Americans who are semi-informed on news and politics on a national level but when it comes to local politics there's quite a void.

I've researched a little bit and found a really interesting article about "rural versus urban politics" in Wisconsin. It's about a UW Madison political scientist named Katherine Cramer Walsh who has traveled around Wisconsin for the last five years- going to informal social groups all throughout the state- churches, local cafes, gas stations, etc. Check out that article here if you're interested. 


So there's politics and the farming stuff and the mining stuff and the rural people stuff...

And then there's the feel of it. The feel of northern Wisconsin... Last week I found myself way up north at Pete's cabin. West on highway 8 and then a few more miles on some gravel roads. No cell phone reception, no computers or screens of any kind to look at...

There were a few of us there and we took a walk- crossed the river on the stones. It was pretty easy for Pete- I'm pretty sure he does Parkour on the side of being in Dead Horses- for me it was a little trickier... slippery rocks and everything!

Me? I could call it a nature thing
I could call it a feeling thing
Or a solitude thing
Or getting back to the basics of things

But mostly I'd call it a spiritual thing.. in the way I experience it and the way I perceive other people experiencing it.