The Hopefuls

The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock 'n' Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene (McFarland & Company, 2018)   is the definitive musical biography of Erik Appelwick, Eric Fawcett, John Hermanson, and Darren Jackson and the musical collective that formed around them in the Minneapolis independent music scene, encompassing bands Kid Dakota, Spymob, Storyhill, Vicious Vicious, and many others.  The book comprehensively traces how their musical partnerships formed, reformed, and transformed from the early 1990s through the late 2010s. You can read the introduction  here  and watch the book trailer below. The book was recognized with a Certificate of Merit in the 2019 ARSC Awards for Excellence. It's available in paperback and ebook. Buy it from your favorite independent bookstore, Amazon , Barnes & Noble , or directly from McFarland . The official book trailer!

I knew in writing about The Hopefuls that I was writing an incomplete story. As long as Erik Appelwick, Eric Fawcett, Darren Jackson, and John Hermanson keep making music, there’ll be more to tell. In that spirit, I’ve decided to continue to compile and document their ongoing adventures, and release updates every two years.   Believe it or not, it’s been six years since I sent  The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene  off to the publisher. So it's time again for an update. This one covers mid-2022 to August 2024. The first update, covering mid-2018 to mid-2020, is available  here . And the second, covering mid-2020 to mid-2022 is here . Appelwick Following the February 2022 release of the Vicious Vicious album Paradise , Erik Appelwick went silent, only emerging briefly between December 2022 and August 2023 to release three singles with Bethany Parks under the Citrîne moniker: "Walk It Back," "Alchemists," and a cover of "Wh

I knew in writing about The Hopefuls that I was writing an incomplete story. As long as Erik Appelwick, Eric Fawcett, Darren Jackson, and John Hermanson keep making music, there’ll be more to tell. In that spirit, I’ve decided to continue to compile and document their ongoing adventures, and release updates every couple of years.   Believe it or not, it’s been four years since I sent  The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene  off to the publisher, so that means it’s time for the second update, covering mid-2020 to mid-2022. The first update, covering mid-2018 to mid-2020, is available here . Appelwick With one major exception, these two years were quiet ones for Erik Appelwick. In January 2022, he signed with Castle Rock Music, an L.A.-based agent that represents independent artists for licensing. The next month, he released Paradise , the sixth album from Vicious Vicious. The songs were recorded at Pachyderm Studios with engineer Nick Tvietbakk. Adrian

Showtime was supposed to be 20 minutes ago. We’ve watched the band carry in their gear, set it up on the tiny stage, but then they disappear for awhile. When they walk back on stage one-by-one, it’s with no ado. The lights don't dim; the overhead music doesn't even turn off. Despite the lack of usual ceremony – this is a slightly upscale bar on the edge of Loring Park, afterall, not a club – they seem like trickster gods taking the tiny stage, resplendent in their matching red and orange tracksuits. They're visually striking, Appelwick tall and lanky with a lopsided sly smile; Darren short, bespectacled, and poker-faced; Johnny tucking his long brown hair almost shyly behind one ear while focused intently on his keyboard; Heath smiling widely; and Matt fresh faced and blonde behind the kit. Darren asks politely that the overhead music be turned off, and his request goes unheeded. The band look at each other and shrug. The feeling that we're seeing something special

The Hopefuls' musical world is rich, diverse, varied, and just a bit daunting to navigate. Even trying to create a primer or "greatest hits" is a tall task, because there are so many different ways to approach it. I've tried several times over the past 5 years without hitting on anything I was completely happy with. But recently I struck on the idea of using the 3-part format of The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock 'n' Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene to create a soundtrack for the book. And I kind of like how it turned out. Here are links to the playlist on YouTube  and Amazon  (note: the latter is missing The Harvesters' "Skid Row"). Introduction 1. Olympic Hopefuls: "Let's Go" (2004)  Part I: It was Once Upon a Time (1994-2000) 2. Storyhill: "Parallel Lives" (1994) 3. The Harvesters: "Skid Row" (1995) 4. Spymob: "Half the Time With You" (1996) 5. John Hermanson: "80s Party" (1998) 6. Spymob

I did an Q & A in November 2018 with Erica Rivera for (now-defunct)  City Pages  about  The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock 'n' Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene . This was a really cool thing that I pretty much completely fucked up. I made two rookie mistakes. One was not asking to see the questions – or at least asking what the focus of the interview was to be – beforehand. The other was not being more on my guard. Erica’s questions weren’t bad, they were just hyper-focused on a somewhat negative aspect of the story I told in the book, and I just wasn’t prepared for that. As a result, my original answers were too raw and under-thought. Here's what I should have said. (If you’d like to torture me by reading my original answers, here’s a link to the original article ).   City Pages:  They say they you should never meet your idols or your heroes. In researching the Hopefuls, did your opinion of them change? Paul V. Allen:  That’s always a danger of writing about som

While working on The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene – a story so sprawling and multi-faceted that each of its four principals could easily have a whole book to themselves – I knew I was going to miss some things.  Case in point, in June 2020, I received an e-mail from Jay Krasnow, who revealed that he had served as Spymob’s very first manager, before they were even Spymob. Jay is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who spent 10 years in the Twin Cities scene producing, playing, and co-engineering for a wide variety of artists. He happened across The Hopefuls by chance in a public library in Cleveland, where he now makes his home (I must say it warmed my heart to hear that the book is in libraries in “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Capital of the World”), and realized that he had a missing piece of the story to share. Jay and I chatted on the phone about his memories and impressions of his brief time with Eric Fawcett, John Ostby, Brent Paschke, and Brian Roe