While you were in …

Soup Town Night. The line in the Homegrown Music Festival sand. This is where everything ramps up, the bands play louder, the 45-minute set thing is bendable, people start posting photos of their broken hotel room keys from the Androy on Facebook and a man dressed in a gorilla suit dances in a cage at the Main Club.

Wait. Wha?

The Moon is Down, inventors of the song “My Amazing Kite,” were on stage dressed in black, white paint with black smudges on their faces and played loud and fast and whoa.

It was terrifying. Like that time when you were five and accidentally caught KISS on PBS and never looked at a tongue the same again. Worked through some serious flight instinct and became one with the spectacle. And there was also the aforementioned gorilla dancing in a cage. Also: Old Knifey dancing in a cage.

Manheat followed, local reps of all things Homegrown on The Current. The guys did an in-studio performance and were the download of the day on Minnesota Public Radio’s all-music station recently. No big, right. Pains of Being Pure at Heart were there a week earlier.

Acceleratii played two sets at Bev’s Jook Joint, just another bit of lawlessness from this band of rowdies. Now with added keyboard. They played, took a break, then played for the rest of the night. They really should be the life-long Soup Town Thursday mascots.

Word on the streets is that Elton John’s crew made a stop at the Brewhouse. True or false, Duluthies.

I’ve always said the best way to get a mess of young music fans to travel west of the Duluth Grill is to put Trampled by Turtles on a stage. True enough. Wednesday’s show at Clyde Iron Works was sold out by just after 7 p.m.-ish. That is about 1,200 people getting crunk on the Duluth natives’ signature speed-grass on Hash Wednesday of the Homegrown Music Festival.

But first: Old Knifey and the Cutthroats … and friends. There were about 13 people on the stage for his show, which closed with that catchy bit of country “Whiskey, Cigarettes and Country Music.” True story, when Knifey released his last album, this song was stuck in my head for two weeks and it was not at all unpleasant.

“How many people can be on stage? That should be illegal,” said the guy next to me.

Then, Turtles. In a curious move, Trampled by Turtles played “Wait so Long” second in their set. A gutsy move, playing the crowd favorite so early in the night. To quote the guy next to me: It’s an unreasonably good song. Meanwhile Old Knifey had doubled back to hi-five people in the front row. He joined them on stage for “Whiskey.”

There were some pretty serious moshing rules. It was like “Footloose.” Someone threw underwear on stage.

After plenty of wicked banjo burning and fiddle fiddling, Trampled by Turtles closed out the hour-plus set with Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.” A good time was had by all.

***

Do you ever have that situation when you’re at a bar and suddenly it fills up with belly dancers and you aren’t sure if it is because it is Homegrown or if there just happen to be a ton of belly dancers in the room? Me too.

Every Experimental Tuesday for the past two years I’ve had a great idea starring Healthy Band Music Club, that quirky collective that includes a sassafrass singer, a keyboard player, a trumpet player, a barefoot tambourine player, a guitar player and a drummer.

Last year I wanted them to write and perform a rock opera. I still stand behind that. But this year I have two other ideas for them:

1. Make an album and release it exclusively on vinyl;
2. Contact Tim Massett at Zinema 2 about being the next band in his Silent Film/Live Score series. I’m thinking “Suspiria,” but a muted “Suspiria.” Or maybe a muted “Blue Velvet.”

They sound like a plush room, wall to wall velvet, heads in laps. A band that would play in a club that requires a secret map to get to and doesn’t have a sign on the door and you have to hand the bouncer an egg. Their lyrics are interesting: “It’s not road kill … yet” and “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a trunk like this?” (I think the word was “trunk.”)

This is the show you should regret not seeing if you missed their set at Sacred Heart Music Center.

***

On to the Twins Bar where Yester was pitching against Liriano who was pitching a no-hitter. This made for some awkward moments between the sports fans and the music fans. Cheers that erupted 10 seconds into a song. “Ohhhhh!!!!” in unison well after a song had ended.

I didn’t stick around long enough to who won in the battle of beards and flannel versus tightly trimmed goatees and jerseys.

***

On to Chester Creek Cafe where DJ Path Annu played early to fill in for Fancy Hands, who canceled. The setup was like a party in a basement rec room, chairs along the walls. He spun through his records.

Yes, records. Just three days after I had a conversation with DJ Delgado about DJs nowadays, and I catch someone kicking it old school. No, DJ Path Annu told me, he’s not the only one left in town. There is at least another one.

***

Bruce Wallin, who creates up some wicked stuff in Chester Creek Cafe’s kitchen (cough, cough Maverick Grits cough, cough) handed me a list of appetizer specials with a strong chicken theme: Crispy Korean Fried Chicken Wings, Chicken Confit Biscuits and Green Curry Farm Egg.

That’s the Homegrown spirit: Eat the chicken.

Danecdote followed, mixing stuff up on his Mac. This didn’t break spontaneously into dance, but it looked like it might get there by the time I left. My only regret is that I didn’t one of the burned CDs on my way out. I could see getting weird to that at stoplights when listening to it in the car.