Pine Center For the Arts partners with Three Twenty Brewing to spotlight songwriters

The Pine Center For the Arts is partnering with Three Twenty Brewing for an Original Songwriters Showcase on Saturday, spotlighting five musicians from across Minnesota.

Adam Moe, Austin Green, Brooke Anderson, Doyle Turner, and Brent Fuqua will take their talents to the stage starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Tickets for the showcase are $25, and will raise funds for the art center.

WCMP news director Erik van Rheenen caught up with each of the songwriters ahead of Saturday's showcase to talk about their craft, inspirations, and love for live music.

Adam Moe

It didn't take Duluth-based artist Adam Moe long to earn the title of professional musician.

Moe started taking fiddle lessons in second grade, and shortly after, learned enough songs for his teacher to bring him to a "dance kind of gig" — his first time getting paid to play music.

"He gave me a third of the check," Moe laughed. "Thirty-three dollars. It was a big deal for a little kid."

Moe said he had an innate draw to playing the fiddle — "I was lucky, I could get songs out of it pretty early," he said — which he admits is not an instrument tailored for singer-songwriter types, especially with the physicality necessary for playing.

"There are people who say you can, but one or the other is going to suffer," Moe joked. "Either the vocals or the fiddle."

Moe was part of a duo for about 21 years, in which he helped pen songs for albums, but didn't consider songwriting his primary concern.

It wasn't until the duo ended at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that Moe was challenged by his wife to write a song every day during lockdown.

Those daily endeavors resulted in more than 100 songs added to Moe's library, and he credits that marathon stretch of songwriting as his start of going "full force."

"Of course, for me, it was quantity over quality," Moe said. "You never know what's going to come out, and a bunch of them are all right."

Moe has slowed down since, and guesses he probably writes three or four songs a month.

"At that point, I guess I was flushing my system or something, just getting a lot of things out that I had in my head that had just kind of squandered there, because it didn't really fit the duo thing we were doing," he said.

Moe labels his wheelhouse genres as folk and classic country, with a tongue-in-cheek caveat that he draws more from the 1940s-and-on era of classic country instead of the eighties.

He lists Roger Miller and Ernest Tubb among his songwriting heroes, and keeps a few tenets in mind when venturing into a new tune.

"I keep it short and fairly simple, and I try to have fun with it," Moe said. "Those are kind of my three rules."

Moe said he hasn't played Pine City proper, but said he's most looking forward to hearing his fellow songwriters share their craft on Saturday night.

"It looks like there's people there that are caring about what's going on in the community, and that's fantastic," he said. "Hopefully we can live up to it."

Moe's music is available on his website.

Brooke Anderson

Hinckley native Brooke Anderson is no stranger to playing shows around Pine County.

After moving to the Barnum area in 2013, Anderson — who's been playing music since childhood — started playing in a band called the Holy Hootenanners.

The group mostly performed country gospel covers, but it's also where Anderson started cutting her teeth on writing original music.

"I was an English major and have long had piles of bad poetry in notebooks under my bed," Anderson said in an email. "But it first started morphing into songwriting when I was maybe 25 or 26."

Anderson's musical affiliations also include Minorbirds — a duo with her friend Megan Barr that took flight around 2018 and frequented the Sandstone, Askov, Pine City, and Moose Lake areas — and a new band with her husband, Caleb, called Wetland Willows.

Minorbirds recorded two albums — a self-titled debut and one titled Body Knows — on which half of the songs are Anderson's.

As part of the Holy Hootenanners, Anderson's writing cleaved closer to the gospel style, but it was around that same time that she found herself working on more secular music that felt "a little bit more raw and honest."

"Anything is fodder for songwriting," Anderson said. "Often, I just sit down and see what comes out, and it's usually some concept or idea that I am wrestling with in that moment in some way. Sometimes it's things I want to actualize."

Anderson added that motherhood has been a consistent theme in her songwriting as she navigates that facet of her life "in its various stages."

In January, Anderson said she and her husband will record a new album as Wetland Willows; a prospect she's very excited about.

"We have lots of new music cooking," she said.

When it comes to Saturday's showcase, she said she's excited to share stories behind the songs in her set with the audience.

"I play a lot of bar gigs and coffee shops, and you might get the occasional intent listener or two, but it's rare for me to have the kind of captive audience that the Pine Center For the Arts brings in for this showcase," Anderson said.

Find out more about Wetland Willows on their Facebook page.

Austin Green

Pine City resident Austin Green started his foray into music in kindergarten, when his grandma put him in the church choir.

"Before I could even read the music," Green laughed.

In early elementary school, Green took up writing poetry, which he later started putting to music.

"From there, I just started writing," Green said. "I would say I started recording and writing down core songs around 12 years old."

Green said he's always been drawn to writing about love and acceptance, and he names Josh Groban and orchestral music among his influences.

He also borrows from natural elements for his lyrics, and said visits to a family cabin in his youth were an inspiration.

Green moved to Pine City about two years ago, and said he "really jumped into" the area music scene. He added that he remembers feeling "shocked" about how robust the arts community was, and now is a veteran of the Original Songwriter Showcases.

"I was really welcomed in, and have met a lot of friends through music and through the brewery," he said.

On Saturday, Green said he plans to share some older music that he's never performed before, mixed in with songs he's written within the year.

"Kind of seeing the differences and the parallels of those two, and seeing how moving changed my outlook on things, and how it's kind of still the same," Green said.

Green said those new songs are ones he's hoping to put out, but currently doesn't have a spot to record.

"I have a very firm belief that music is the bridge of humanity," Green said. "And that throughout time, has been a really great thing that can bring people together, no matter their beliefs, or their upbringing, or anything. Everyone can enjoy good music."

Green's music is available to listen to on his Instagram page.

Doyle Turner

For Bemidji resident Doyle Turner, music is all about connection, starting with early memories of his father playing the guitar while he'd fall asleep at night. Of guitar being played on his grandmother's porch, and of vinyl and eight-track records on the living room stereo.

"I like to say that a lot of kinds have fairy tales growing up, and I had Johnny Cash and June Carter," Turner laughed.

In the summer between third and fourth grade, Turner and his sister took a guitar class where passing a chord test at summer's end meant getting to keep a guitar.

"I did not pass the chord test, but my sister did," Turner recalled with a laugh. "So we had a guitar in the house that was just for the kids, because of my sister's ability to remember the chord charts."

From a young age, Turner would learn songs by leafing through chord books of his dad's collection of hit country-and-western songs from the 1970s.

In the early 2000s, Turner took the initiative on an effort to record a family album as a way to keep a memento of his father's voice.

"We thought, well, an album is usually ten songs, and there are five of us involved, so we each committed to writing two songs," Turner said. "And those were the first songs that I'd ever written."

It was in 2019 that Turner decided to record an EP with a local Bemidji musician named Lance Benson. For an 18-month period, Turner recalls "writing really hard" ahead of the recording session.

"I didn't really start in earnest until six years ago," Turner said.

Turner said he always viewed the process as something "mystical," but an introduction to an online songwriting group helped build the songwriting muscle through scheduled challenges.

"I'm not saying every song I write is really, really excellent," Turner said. "But I'm engaged in that creative process, and relying on my brain's ability to come up with something. And every once in a while, I strike gold, and I find something that really resonates with me, and for the people who hear the songs."

Turner joked that he's a volume dealer as a songwriter: For every 100 songs that he writes, he said he might count five to 10 as keepers.

"That's kind of how I do it, that ongoing practice of realizing that many of these won't ever get farther than being done, but also noting that done is better than anything else," Turner said, adding, "I don't shoot for good, I shoot for done."

Turner called local music the "heartbeat" of the community, and said he's excited to share the stage on Saturday with his fellow songwriters.

"Music is all about connection," Turner said. "That's all it is, is a way for somebody to hear something that you do, and say, 'that's true for me too.' It validates and allows other people to have an outlet for thoughts or feelings they've had that they didn't know what to do with."

Turner's music is available on his website.

Brent Fuqua

Brent Fuqua always remembers music being a core component of his life, especially growing up with a mom who gave piano lessons.

He started getting ideas for songs when he was in his teenage years, even though he added the tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that his songwriting improved as he got a little older.

"It was probably some years later when they amounted to anything, I suppose, but I was trying from the very beginning," Fuqua said.

Fuqua said his inspiration came from who he was listening to at the time: Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and especially Neil Young.

"For some reason, it was Neil Young and the acoustic guitar that caught hold of me pretty hard," Fuqua recalled. "For most of my life, I've just loved the sound of the acoustic guitar."

Fuqua recently released an EP in October, and said he's looking forward to playing some new songs live.

"I have one song that's a little older, it came out on an album from 2010, and it's one that seems to continue to make its way onto setlists, so a couple of newer songs and an older one," he said.

As someone who "plays a lot of music with a lot of people," Fuqua said it's special to get to share the stories behind his songs with an audience at a showcase.

"It's a beautiful scene, and I'm glad and really grateful that Pine City's got something like this," Fuqua said.

Fuqua's music is available on his website.