Listen up, Cinnamon Buns.

2024 marks my 30th anniversary. Thirty years ago, I was 14 and sitting in my new bedroom, in a new house, in a new city, going to a new school. I didn’t have any friends. And I desperately wanted to play bass guitar. My new junior high band teacher told me, in so many words, that my hands were too small to play bass and steered me to playing sousaphone in school band instead. So, bored, sitting in my bedroom, refusing to practice the sousaphone, I made a 3D vision board: a “bass guitar” constructed of an empty kleenex box, with four rubber bands wrapped around it and a cardboard paper towel tube for the neck, on which I drew frets with a black marker. Did it work? Well, in a way: I got a paper route and saved enough money to put an actual second-hand bass guitar on layaway. After six months of payments, the bass was mine. Total purchase price was $150, including the hardshell case. Heckuva deal, even for 1994.

That same year, I found my way to the Minot, ND punk music scene, which was quite literally life-changing. It’s impossible to state here how much the ethos of the scene, the aesthetic, the music, the relationships changed me. Many others can attest to this as well! I was playing in my first band by the next fall, dreaming of taking the stage.

Life leads you to often unexpected destinations, and it was no different for me. Between 2000 and 2024, I would live in five different cities in five different regions of the country, but music was my constant companion. As an ode to the many talented musicians I have been blessed to collaborate with (or have been influenced by) over the past three decades, I have chosen a favorite song from each band to recreate for you here.