One Week Live at Wussow’s Concert Cafe

For 20 years now, Wussow’s Concert Cafe has hosted One Week Live.

“It started out we made live albums,” Jason Wussow said. “And we’ve had some bumps with COVID and maybe the loss of people listening to music on CD, so we’re not sure what we’re doing with this, but we’re recording it, we’re recording video, maybe we’ll do a podcast, maybe we’ll put out an album.”

Monday was the first night with performances from Steve Solkela and his “Overpopulated” One Man Band and the Driftless Revelers. “Barney Sycamore” with The Driftless Revelers has been on the One Week Live stage before, but it’s been awhile.

“This is my first time back in almost 20 years,” Sycamore said. “Last time I was out here was in … either 2003 or 2004. So it’s exciting to be back.”

Clancy Ward, who also performed Monday with The Driftless Revelers, was back at One Week Live a third time.

“I’ve always loved this week at Wussow’s Cafe. It’s just sort of the culmination of all of the music that he (Jason Wussow) puts on all year long. And he puts on a lot of music, more music than anybody else in town, and a lot of it gets overlooked,” Ward said.

“It’s kind of like a time capsule too,” Wussow said. “So if you go back 20 years ago and you look at some of the fun folks, some of them it’s hard to remember, some of them are quite famous now. So it’s just a nice way to keep track of the years in the local music scene.”

Sycamore described it as “kind of like a family reunion.”

“Like a lot of family reunions, there’s new people that are showing up because different generations come in,” he said.

Wussow said that every year he hosts One Week Live, “there’s something totally amazing.”

“What I love about it is Duluth supports music seven days a week. And there’s no better example than here’s a Monday, there’s going to be a good crowd, and it’s just the first of a number of shows,” Mike Wolf with The Driftless Revelers said. “And that says a lot about Duluth, and that says a lot about what Jason has helped build over 20 years.”

Shows start at 7 p.m. every night through Saturday at Wussow’s Concert Cafe. They cost $10, except for Wednesday, which is free. The music is also live streamed on YouTube and Facebook.