Homegrown Winter Fiasco showcases 15 local artists at five different venues

Five different venues in the Lincoln Park Craft District in Duluth provided free music Friday night for the Homegrown Winter Fiasco.

“We’re so excited to have live music here again,” said Wild State Director of Operations Allison Longley. “It’s great to just get that energy in the building, and Homegrown, the festival itself, is something that we always look forward to. So the Winter Fiasco is really fun to just get us excited for homegrown too.”

Ursa Minor kicked off the event at seven with music from Slope City.

“It’s just really fun to hear the buzz around the event, and it’s just like a fun culture,” said singer Michael Smisek. “I’m glad that I get to go first and then I get to go enjoy the rest of the music.” 

Events like this give new artists the chance to perform in front of a large audience. 

“I’ve been going to Homegrown. I’ve been watching live music, you know, the entire time I’ve been living in Duluth,” said Smisek. “I’ve been living here for ten years now,and I finally decided to work up the courage to start trying to play by myself.”

The music industry in Duluth has been growing steadily over the years. 

“We’ve definitely had a lot of musicians reaching out to us to play at our venue, and so we’ve had a big spike in folks coming out to come see music,” said Ursa Minor Events Coordinator Alisha Williams. “We can definitely see the local music scene growing again.”

This could be just the start of a successful music career for any of the fifteen artists featured.

“Duluth has been an anchor for music in what I would consider regional music forever,” said Bent Paddle Director of Taproom and Retail Operations Pepin Young. “You have Trampled by Turtles. You have Charlie Parr, that list goes on and on and on and on. Homegrown really represents how vast and how deep the pool of talented musicians are here in Duluth.”