Dan Gaarder profile picture

Dan Gaarder

It's been lonesome in the saddle since my horse died

About Me

I was born and raised in the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis. I've played guitar since I was 14 and it turned out to be my job. I've played in a lot of good bands, played in some cool places and have eaten from the deli trays of a lot of famous people while they were on stage. Currently play in some good bands (Roe Family Singers, Trailer Trash, Jen Markey, Randy Weeks and occasionally Two Tickets to Paradise and Lazy Ike and the Daredevils). I also run the sound and recording gear at Electric Arc Radio shows at the Ritz theater, which you should all check out sometime, it is hy-larious. I run a country jam at the Eagles club in south Minneapolis, first Sunday of every Month from 3-7 pm. I also work at Books for Africa, a great organization that provides books free of charge to countries all over Africa. If you have books that you don't need anymore, feel free to drop them off on the first and third Saturdays of the month from 9am to 1 pm at our St. Paul warehouse in the old Hamms Brewery.I have two rockin' boys, two great parents and three decent, steadfast siblings. I live in south Minneapolis by way of Anoka MN and Wilton ND.

My Interests

My offspring, cooking, my garage, swimsuit modeling, walking around Lake Nokomis, daydreaming, workdreading, street food, art of all kinds, painting my crappy paintings, historical societies, I don't like travelling but I like being in other places, my front porch, any mountain range, days off, construction techniques, going to the Oak Street and Riverview theaters, feeling hopeful about the future, run-on sentences.

I'd like to meet:

My Ancestors...without being dead...and Clooney, who doesn't want to meet Clooney?

Music:

Songs that never fail to make me cry, give me chills or make my hair stand on end:
In no particular order
•I Can't Reach You/The Who
•Synchronicity II/The Police
•Sunrise, Sunset/Tevye
•Guilty/Classix Nouveaux
•Days of Wine and Roses/Dream Syndicate
•Days of Wine and Roses/Andy Williams
•Girl Don't Come/Sandie Shaw
•I Miss You/Bjork
•Are Friends Electric?/Gary Numan
•By This River/Brian Eno
•Love at the Five and Dime/Nancy Griffith
•I Turn to You/Melanie C (sorry, not the dance mix)
•Do You Realize/The Flaming Lips
•Walking With the Ghost/Tegan and Sarah
•Fidelity/Regina Spektor
•Message in a Bottle/Police
•The Girl I knew Somewhere/Monkees
•I'm Not Okay/My Chemical Romance
•Liverpool/Suzanne Vega
•Babooshka/Kate Bush
•Aces/Suzy Bogguss
•Killer Queen(the guitar solo)/Queen
•Malaika/Angelique Kidjo
•Almost the Same/Clearlake
•Wondrous Stories/Yes
•SOS/Abba
•Searchin'/Del Shannon
•Warmth of the Sun & Wendy/Beach Boys
•What a World/Rufus Wainwright
•All the Things She Said/Tatu
•Love My Way/Psychedelic Furs
•I'm Not in Love/10CC
•'tis Autumn/Esther Phillips
•Action/Sweet
•Titanic Days/Kirsty McColl

Movies:

Tuvalu, Spirited Away, David and Lisa, Repo Man, Prisoner of the Mountain, The Science of Sleep, Eraserhead, Shame, The Robe, Little Otik, Margaret's Museum, A Thousand Clowns, Brothers, Underground, Ghengis Blues, Mr. Arkadin, Broken Flowers, The Great Escape, Tree's Lounge, Huckabees, Batman Begins, Ghost World, Napolean Dynamite, Barton Fink, Kelly's Heroes, Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Gilbert Grape, Where Eagles Dare, Bill and Coo. Anything with Robert Mitchum, Anthony Quinn, Toshiro Mifune, Bill Pullman, Richard Farnsworth, Sergei Bodrov Jr. And for some reason...Roadhouse.

Television:

Comedies featuring fat men with hot wives, game shows that borrow heavily from The Prisoner. Hospital shows are OUT but corpse shows are IN! Cooking shows where everything tastes bad. Cops, Cheaters, Washington Week in Review.

Books:

New one - Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks - Loved it!
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Tin Drum, Santa Mouse, Geek Love, Shipping News, Gargantua, Marcovaldo/Seasons in the City, Lost Twin Cities, Confederacy of Dunces, Winter of our Discontent, Encyclopedia of Country Music, The Quiet American

Heroes:

Killebrew, Van Vliet, Hopper, Bach, Mencken, Steinbeck, Warhol, My Dad, My Uncle Charlie Dickey.

My Blog

Grenada-earnestness-GOUSA

My earnestness, in today's climate of clever, is my greatest liability. When I am being earnest, I am happy in the same way a soldier in Iraq feels happy to remove his kevlar vest or the president fee...
Posted by Dan Gaarder on Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:58:00 PST

NIGHTFLIGHT - USA Network

My son was listening to Night Flight by Led Zep early today. I told him that when I was in my early twenties my parents got cable. On Friday nights, while my folks were out at the VFW, I would watch "...
Posted by Dan Gaarder on Wed, 30 May 2007 03:07:00 PST

playing into the terrorists hands

I keep hearing that withdrawl from Iraq is playing into the terrorists hands. It seems to me that we have a finite number of soldiers and every day that number decreases by five or ten. That is a perc...
Posted by Dan Gaarder on Wed, 23 May 2007 07:54:00 PST

The real world - other worlds

As a former member of the middle class and now a member of the very lowest of middle class, I always assume that because most Americans are in my boat that we are the real world. Our president does no...
Posted by Dan Gaarder on Wed, 23 May 2007 07:22:00 PST

I'm doing my best to be funny

What a week! I don't know if you can end a week on a Tuesday but I'm going to, cuz I want this one to be over. On Halloween morning I was cooking a pot of beef stew for a party that night. I had volun...
Posted by Dan Gaarder on Thu, 09 Nov 2006 07:32:00 PST