PRESS

Here's some Press on the reunion shows. If anyone has a copy of the Star-Trib article or anything else I don't know about, please let me know. Thanks. (Also, check out TRAVIS'S PHOTOS. There's a link on the right-hand sidebar, too.)

CITY PAGES A-List
JUNE 15, 2005:
The coroner’s report for this prog-punk trio reads “death by music industry.” But there’s a rock parable bubbling beneath this reunion show—or for the godless Marxist, an instructional tale about creative workers controlling the the means of production. During the early ‘90’s, Macalester grads John Kimbrough and Candice Belanoff played as fast and as heavy as Anna Nicole Smith in her oil years. And Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) may have been the most adept Twin Cities drummer of the decade. After Miss Happiness and Bareback Ride came out on Caroline, biggies Columbia and then Atlantic Records dealt insult after insult to the band. Presumably, those details will soon be rehashed for wider consumption. The inspiration for this get-together—apparently with replacement-to-the-replacement drummer Zach Danziger—is a Mink movie being shot by Brooklynite Chris Butler. While the band’s experience is a depressingly familiar one, a spirit of idealism seems to live in this DIY doc. The filmmaker’s website waltminkthemovie.typepad.com/mink/ solicits donations to help process the 16mm filmn (yes, actual film stock) that will be created during a 4-camera (!) shoot. All ages at 5:00 p.m.; 21+ at 10:00 p.m. $12/$14 at the door; 21+ show is sold out. Triple Rock Social Club, 629 Cedar Ave., S., Minneapolis; 612.333.7399
--Michael Tortorello

the ONION a.v. club twin cities
16-22 June 2005:

In an alternate dimension, Walt Mink is as big as U2. In this world, though, the St Paul power trio—one of the Twin Cities’ most promising bands of the mid-‘90’s—suffered a series of shakeups, bad luck, and record-label chaos that ultimately kept it from finding an audience past its small, enthusiastic fan base. Even though Walt Mink broke up in 1997, Christopher Butler has spent the last two years working on a documentary about the group. He even convinced singer-guitarist John Kimbrough, bassist Candice Belanoff and drummer Zach Danziger to reunite for two highly-anticipated shows June 17 at Triple Rock Social Club; he and his crew will be on hand to film them. (Original drummer Joey Waronker, who had the highest post-Walt Mink profile with Beck and R.E.M., won’t be there.) Recently, Kimbrough and Butler spoke with the A.V. Club about the band’s breakup, the documentary process, and why Butler’s isn’t just a nutjob.

The Onion: What have you been doing since Walt Mink broke up?
John Kimbrough: Zach, our last drummer, has his own band called Boomish, and he does music for movies. Candice lives in Boston with her husband and son, and she’s going for her doctorate in public health at Harvard. And I do a similar thing to Zach—music for movies and TV. [Laughs] It’s kind of the trajectory a lot of people follow who play in rock bands and want to continue to do music for a living. The money is not in rock. I wish it were.

The Onion: And you’re playing guitar in a band called Valley Lodge, too.
JK: Yeah. Our record just came out. It’s my friend Dave Hill and myself. Dave wrote the majority of the songs, and his approach is much more a power-pop thing [than Walt Mink].

The Onion: Chris, how did you become a fan of Walt Mink?
Christopher Butler: My best friend was a rabid fan. I knew nothing about them. He called me and said, “You have to come to this show tonight, no excuses. It’s their last show ever.” And I said, “Oh, okay,” and I went. It was at a very small club, packed to overflowing, and it was a very emotional event. I was really amazed. And that was my introduction—I saw their last show.

The Onion: How did you become interested in making a movie about them?
CB: I just always wanted to get into filmmaking. I didn’t really know how to do it.

The Onion: Did you go to film school? What’s your filmmaking background?
CB: [Laughs] No background. Totally self-taught. I didn’t even take undergrad courses or anything like that.

The Onion: John, how did you get involved in the movie project?
JK: Chris contacted our last record label, and they forwarded me his email. I immediately filed it under “nutjob”—just another one of these guys who’s coming out of the woodwork to torment me about Walt Mink. [Laughs] But I met him for dinner. He showed up with this huge steel binder—hundreds of pages, meticulously cross-referenced. He had materials I didn’t even know existed. He had correspondence between the band members—all this stuff he had gotten on his own. He said, “Look, I know it sounds crazy—like, why would I want to do a movie about this little band that nobody’s ever heard of?—but I think you guys were really a special band.”

CB: For me, this has been a two-year campaign, getting whatever footage and photographs and materials existed, and scraping some money together and flying to L.A. or Chicago and interviewing people. It’s basically all me, but we’re building a more significant crew [for the local film shoot]. Now I have a few really important helpers, Like Jamie Hook, from Minnesota Film Arts. And Chris Neil is flying out on his own dime and donating his own cameras. Fifteen year ago, he was a college kid who thought Walt Mink was great, and his cousin, Sofia Coppola, was looking to do a rock video, and he said, “You should check out Walt Mink. They’re my favorite.” And so Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut was a Walt Mink video.

JK: The first question he asked was, “Would you guys re-form for me to film a last show?” I said, “The first thing is, we’re not going to re-form. And the second thing is, I’m not going on camera. Aside from that, I will help you in any way I can.” And I handed over to him every scrap of Walt Mink-related stuff that I had, and I helped him get in touch with all kinds of people he wanted to talk to. And over the last couple of years, he gained my trust, and made it clear he was serious. I still haven’t conceded to the going-on-camera part, but he did talk us into playing a show.

The Onion: Walt Mink’s career arc had its ups and downs, but you had a genuine chance at hitting it big. What do you think went wrong?
JK: A lot of things. You know, being in rock bands is really hard. It’s like a marriage, and it’s hard to keep it fresh. We peaked before people knew who we were, in a way—and so, later, when we were getting gdeeper into major-label land, we didn’t have a lot of the emotional reserve that bands do who peak at a time when a major label has just found their stuff. And I think that my vocal style was just unbearable to a lot of people. On some level, I don’t blame them. [Laughs] But it’s too bad, because the music’s really good, and if people were able to get past that, they would be rewarded. I can make all kinds of excuses for why these things didn’t pan out, but ultimately, the marketplace decides these things. If you sell records, everything else falls into place. If you don’t, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The Onion: What’s up with Joey Waronker? Why isn’t he playing the show?
JK: Well, I haven’t spoken with Joey in a year or two. Chris contacted him about playing these shows, which would have been really fun—I wish he’d been able to do it, but he couldn’t.

The Onion: But it’s not that he’s refusing to participate, or anything like that?
JK: No, no—he’s been really cooperative with the whole movie thing. We made our peace with all that stuff a long time ago. As far as I know, he was pretty interested in coming out, but in the end he wasn’t able to.

The Onion: Do you know what shape the documentary will take?
CB: Not until I’m done. The most dangerous formula, I think, is “Let’s make a Behind the Music about a band that nobody really knows about or remembers.” I’m attempting to make a film that will entertain an audience who’s never heard of Walt Mink. It has to do that if it’s going to be successful.

The Onion: What do you think is interesting about Walt Mink that would draw in a larger audience?
CB: That’s a good question. I’m going to tell this story from a first peson perspective, and talk about the relationship between music fans and the bands they love. And, you know, that touches on indie-rock snobbery and and super-fandom and all of that dorky stuff, but I want to do it by example and say, “This is my experience with indie rock.” I want to tell a personal story about a rock band. Walt Mink were super-disciplined, they practised their asses off, and they were musicians. They were wonderful to watch because they were so good. [But] This isn’t about Walt Mink being the best band ever. This is a band I care about, and so I’m going to do it properly. If there are a thousand people who want to get off on that with me, then it’s more than worth it.

The Onion: The first show sold out almost immediately, so at least locally, there still quite a bit of interest in the band.
JK: Yeah—I knew the show would do well, but I wasn’t expecting that. Puts pressure on us to be good. [Laughs]

The Onion: If all goes well, would you consider another album, or a short tour?
JK: When the band ended, it really ended because I was just burned out, and I’d kind of run out of stuff to say musically in the context of that kind of music. If I ever felt like I had 10 really awesome songs in me that were Walt Mink songs, I would totall make a Walt Mink record. I would like to, on some levels, rock in a power trio context. But the music would have to be there.
--Christopher Bahn

Macalester Today, Fall 2005
WALT MINK ROCKS AGAIN: Drawing fans from as far away as London, the Macalester band reunites for two sold-out shows and a documentary.

Text and photos by Vince Castellanos ’92

A buzz built through the capacity crowd packed inside the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis. The Occasion? A reunion of the legendary Macalester band Walt Mink who were brought back together for a documentary movie. “Minneapolis is lucky tonight,” said the director, Christopher Butler, as he introduced the band and 16mm cameras whirred.
Founding members John Kimbrough ’90 and Candice Belanoff ’90 stepped on stage with drummer Zach Danziger. The trio opened with the apropos number “New Life,” then segued smoothly into “Love You Better.” By the time Kimbrough tore into the tune’s guitar solo coda, the band and its fans were in full-on rock mode. Not bad for a group that hadn’t played plugged-in for eight years.
When the June 17 reunion show was announced, the Triple Rock set a venue record for fastest sell-out. Demand was so great that an all-ages gig was added. That sold out, too. People pilgrimaged from California, Texas, Ohio, New York and even London for the event.
For Chris Peknik ’94, who journeyed from Albuquerque, N.M., Walt Mink was an introduction to alternative music. “I saw them open for Toe Jam in February ’91 at Cochran, and my musical horizons really opened considerably. I always carried a torch for them, and the fact that they got back together was like a gift.”

Kimbrough, Belanoff and original drummer Joey Waronker ’92 formed Walt Mink at Macalester in 1989, naming the band after a favoritet psychology professor. “An idiosyncratic Cream for the ‘90’s, Walt Mink adds daring innovation to the power trio formula,” USA Today wrote in 1992. “…Their captivating honey-and-vinegar sound is fresh and inventive without being so oddball as to forever trap them in cult limbo.” The band landed a major label deal, but bad timing and label trouble limited their commercial success. Waronker left to drum for the likes of Beck and R.E.M., and John and Candice called it quits in 1997, performing a farewell show in New York City. In attendance that night was casual fan Christopher Butler. Now a writer/producer for Nickelodeon Online, Butler became fascinated by Walt Mink’s history. “Their story is riddled with bad luck,” he says. “They weren’t screw-ups or drug addicts or rock tragedies. They deserved better. The ending in New York was so sad, but I thought, ‘What if we write a new ending?’”
Butler planned a documentary that would feature a reunion show, and he met with Kimbrough in early 2003. “If someone is proposing a movie about a band no one’s heard of, you’d think he’s nuts. So I was pretty wary,” Kimbrough admits. “And I told him I wouldn’t put the band back together. That would never happen in a million years.”
“I was so entrenched in my life with a toddler and a family and graduate school,” Belanoff says. “No way was a I doing that.”
Eventually, though, Butler’s persistence paid off. “What made our band good was elusive,” Kimbrough says. “I knew that his only shot at showing it was to film us.”
“I’ve got a son now [Eli, almost 4],” Belanoff adds, “and when he’s 14 I’ll have to convince him I was cool once.”
Butler then lobbied Waronker. Though a supporter of the project and tempted by the prospect, the budding producer couldn’t commit due to scheduling issues, so Walt Mink’s final drummer, Zach Danziger, was enlisted and the line-up was set.

Famous for frenetic gigs, Walt Mink didn’t disappoint at its reunion. Three-and-a-half minute bursts of punk-tinged power-pop bliss showered down upon spectators bouncing to the beat. Kimbrough stalked around stage and attacked his intricate guitar licks, and Belanoff pogoed in place with eyes shut as adoring fans shouted, “I love you, Candice!”
“At times it felt like we were bringing it with the old energy,” Kimbrough said later. “It was if no time had passed. It was incredible. The only thing missing was the stage diving.”
Well past midnight and after more than 90 minutes of high intensity, the crowd still clamored for more, bringing Kimbrough back for yet another encore. “I’ll play one more, but we’re fresh out,” he said apologetically.
“Lovely Arrhythmia” ended, the band took a final bow and the lights came on. But instead of leaving, fans clustered about and renewed acquaintances. “I underestimated the extent to which it would be a family affair and I didn’t know how powerful it would be,” said a hoarse Mike Lara ’89, who came from Boulder, Colo., to see his pals John and Candice for the first time in 15 years.

Belanoff lives in Boston with her husband, Jason Harmon, and son. A doctoral student in epidemiology at Harvard, she hopes to use her degree to “teach young people and do some research around health disparities, social epidemiology and maternal and child health.”
Kimbrough lives in New York with his wife, Rachel Karsen ’90, and scores movies and television shows. He earned an Emmy in 2000 for the song “Up To You,” which he wrote for a Nickelodeon special, beating out such luminaries as Marvin Hamlisch and Carole King in that category.
Neither Belanoff nor Kimbrough rule out the possibility of another joint musical effort. “It might have been the most fun I’ve had playing in the history of Walt Mink,” Belanoff says. “It was amazing to see old roommates and friends; it was a really lovely homecoming. People seemed psyched. They were singing along and smiling, I was smiling; it was a really smiley, happy event.”
Butler hopes to finish his documentary in 2006 (see www.waltminkthemovie.com). “Chris helped us rewrite the ending of the band in a super-positive, awesome way, and I’m deeply grateful for that,’ says Kimbrough. “I think it went amazingly well, and it was so much fun to feel that enthusiasm coming back at us. I got to reconnect with friends; all my people were there. It was really beautiful.”