The Cactus Blossoms Take Over First Avenue

Jack Torrey and Page Burkum of the Cactus Blossoms Photo by Alexander Thompson

For alt-country band the Cactus Blossoms, headlining First Avenue’s Mainroom on Saturday, November 30, is a respite from the road and an opportunity to kick-start the winter season after a grueling 2019 touring schedule. The Minneapolis-based group, fronted by brothers Page Burkum and Jack Torrey, was on the road for much of the year in support of the second and newest 10-track Cactus Blossoms LP, Easy Way, which was released in March.

“We had a fun year touring, but it’s been really nice to be back home and get to hang out, and go see music and start working on some new songs for the next record,” Torrey told me in a recent interview. The brothers have also been enjoying brewing quality coffee again now that they’re more settled.

Bringing Easy Way to listeners presented its challenges and some exciting opportunities. “It’s been a big learning curve,” Torrey said of self-producing the record and starting their own label, Walkie Talkie Records, to distribute it. “We had this opportunity to kind of get out of a record deal and try something else, and we ended up just going with the idea of putting it out ourselves.”

Burkum spoke of the process and the advantages of the do-it-yourself shift: “It’s been a sensitive balance, with the creative side of things and putting out the record ourselves and everything,” he said. “But it does give us ultimate freedom to be in charge of how we put it out and when we put it out. The only people to approve the album, or the album art, or anything about it, is us. It adds to the workload, but it’s kind of freeing in a way and fun to explore.”

Walkie Talkie Records

Beyond these changes to the business side of things, the band’s sound has been shifting for some time. The brothers, known for their harmonizing and heavy use of stringed instruments, started performing together in 2010 and once featured a fiddle but have since transitioned to more of a guitar-heavy sound. Many tracks from their previous album translate as being somewhat delicate, perhaps a bit less accessible, while the new record expresses more universal themes and features some rough edges that add fun and flare. This is especially true of “Desperado” and the hit single “Please Don’t Call Me Crazy,” which opens with these lyrics: “I got a time machine/Bought it off TV/Was a commercial break/On Jeopardy!/Everything’s a gamble/Nothing is free.”

The changes have been a thrill for the group during live performances. “It’s been really fun playing all the new songs off the new record, and we have fun digging into those and kind of morphing them live,” Torrey said. “‘Boomerang’ has been really fun for me. Just having stringed instruments at all is starting to be pretty rare, old-school stuff,” he added, speaking to how a lot of contemporary pop and rock groups have been shifting away from the use of guitars in particular in recent years.

The Cactus Blossoms, who were featured on the most recent season of Twin Peaks with the song “Mississippi,” are no strangers to the Twin Cities’ live music scene, coming off a series of weekly popular sold-out headlining shows during January residencies at the Turf Club in St. Paul. “We’re just going to do what we do. What we do doesn’t necessarily change a ton depending on the room. We’ll do our thing in a bar or a fancy venue,” Torrey said of bringing the full band to play the Mainroom. While the club’s dimensions may not influence the live experience much, there have been tweaks to the set compared to previous live shows that Minnesotans will get to see.

“On the last tour we did, we extended the solo sections for our song ‘Change Your Ways or Die,’ which has been kind of fun to just let the guitars go extra long on those,” Burkum said. The brothers, who typically harmonize together, may also play a cover of Tom T. Hall’s classic “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” sung by Burkum. Hall’s track should fit the Cactus Blossoms’ discography like Marty McFly teaming up with Doc Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, as the band’s songs tend to transcend space and time, giving concertgoers the perfect opportunity to reminisce.

“It’s like a BIC lighter, or a wood mousetrap,” Torrey said of the effect. “There’s some timeless things that just stay around forever, and they work forever, and I think we probably just kind of tap into this older style.”

Lillie Mae opens for the Cactus Blossoms at First Avenue on November 30, 2019,  at 7:00 p.m.