S5, E23: Travel to Listen: The City That Made Prince

Welcome to “Travel to Listen,” a new Unpacked series hosted by veteran music journalist Tim Chester. Over four episodes rolling out every other week, Tim takes us into the cities where music is more than entertainment—it’s the shortcut to a place’s soul.

This week, he heads to Minneapolis to hear how a community center, a cold climate, and a once-in-a-generation genius combined to create one of the most distinctive sounds in American music, plus how the city is celebrating a decade since Prince’s passing.

Transcript

Some people want to die so they can be free.

Tim Chester: I’m Tim Chester, this is Unpacked: Travel to Listen and that is “Controversy” by Prince, a classic Minneapolis soundtrack. As a travel and culture writer and editor, I’ve always loved music. In fact, I’ve spent the past 20 years exploring the world through the lens of music, as a reporter for magazines like NME, Spin and Afar. I’ve traveled to some of the world’s best festivals and music scenes everywhere from Manhattan to Malawi and Beijing to Berlin.

One thing I learned pretty quickly: music really is a shortcut to a city’s soul. And in this new unpacked series, we’re going to take that shortcut together. We’ll be discovering the soulful sounds of Macon, Georgia, getting lost in music with the desert rockers of California, and hearing about big news at Detroit’s Motown Museum.

On this episode, we’re heading to Minneapolis.

What time is it?

Tim: It’s time to get funky. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, something special happened in Minneapolis. A bunch of artists coalesced in the city and created a brand new sound. An energetic blend of R&B and pop, and a hefty dose of funk that became known as the Minneapolis Sound.

Like a Queen.

Tim: Key artists included The Time, Morris Day, Sheila E and, of course, Prince. Prince passed away in 2016, but this year the city will be partying like it’s 1984, with a ton of celebrations and events to mark the 10th anniversary of his death. And even if you can’t visit in 2026, there are plenty of ways to revisit the Prince legacy and discover that the Minneapolis sound is alive and kicking. One of the people dedicated to honoring his legacy is his former bandmate and collaborator Paul Peterson.

If I were a rich man.

Tim: Dubbed Saint Paul by the Purple One, he’s the leader of an all star band called the Minneapolis Funk All Stars.

Paul Peterson: We are an All Prince alumni supergroup, I guess you would call it. It certainly isn’t a tribute because we were there. We were all parts of the bands that he had, including The Revolution, The Time which I was in, The Family that I was in. A lot of us were in Purple Rain, The New Power Generation and Mint Condition, as well in the Paisley Park House band.

Tim: The Minneapolis Funk All-Stars put on a great live show. Check out their versions of Prince’s “1999” and “When Doves Cry” on YouTube for proof. It might just be the next best thing to seeing Prince live, and the band is having a riot keeping the legacy alive.

Paul: Prince is probably the Mozart of our time, as far as I’m concerned. I just happen to be lucky enough to witness him in his element at the peak of his creativity during the Purple Rain years for me, I was 17, 18 years old, and it was the best college I could have ever gone to. And what he didn’t necessarily say to me, but he taught me, was how to produce a record, how to organize a band, how to brand a band. So many different things that people pay so much money to go learn at these music colleges. It’s just my duty at this point to make sure that all those lessons that we learned are carried on from generation to generation. And, you know, spread the word of the sound that Prince created because it’s joyous, it’s funky, and it makes you move.

Tim: Minneapolis has had a hard year, but Paul is a big believer in the power of music to bring people together.

Paul: Our objective is to bring unity and healing through the Minneapolis Sound. We had a concert that we were considering canceling because of the murder of Alex Pretti, and our fans reached out to insist and say, No, no, no, no, don’t cancel. Please don’t cancel. So we did not. And we literally performed at a beautiful venue called the Green Room, which is probably a mile away from where Alex was killed. And the whole point was to bring a healing to the community and provide a service for the community, because it’s really the only time, the only thing we can seem to agree on is music. And to be able to do that for our community was so important to us.

Do you feel what I feel?

Tim: The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are well worth a visit. There are parks and lakes galore and some world class cultural spots like the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Minneapolis was even ranked top in a list of happiest cities in the U.S. in 2024. If you’re looking to hear some live music in the city, Paul has the tips.

Paul: You have to go to Bunkers on Sunday or Monday nights to hear the combo, Doctor Mambo’s Combo. Prince used to go down there all the time.

Tim: That’s Bunker’s Music Bar and Grill in the historic North Loop. Doctor Mambo’s Combo play every week. Check out their super funky take on Rufus and Chaka Khan’s Tell Me Something Good on YouTube if you want a taster.

Tell me something good.

Paul: Of course there’s The Dakota, a great jazz bar that’s been around for decades that I played at, Prince has played at, and all the proteges have played at, and so many more venues that are scattered around.

Tim: The Dakota is an intimate venue downtown with a packed calendar every night of the week, and there are plenty of newer acts taking to the stage and keeping things lively.

Paul: This just will never stop being a hotbed for musicians. There’s a young man by the name of LA Buckner. And he’s got a band called Big Homie. He is incredibly talented, incredibly positive, and plays so great. He’s a drummer.

David Feeley is another young guy who’s just crushing it. And of course, Cory Wong, he’s a little bit older than those guys, and Cory Wong has been doing so well, and he’s one of one of our dear friends. And it’s so fun to watch his meteoric rise over the last few years.

Plenty of talent here, Dylan Sulfur. Great great blues artist. He might have just moved out of town, but if he’s, uh, happens to be playing here, you should check him out. Chris Lawrence, Alex Rossi, the list goes on and on.

Tim: Check out the show notes for links to all the people Paul is talking about. So what is it about Minneapolis that made it such a crucible for talent?

Paul: Because it’s too cold here and it keeps the Prince said it keeps the bad people out. But actually what it does is it keeps us in the studio creating because we don’t want to go outside.

Tim: Paul’s joking, of course. In fact, there were a host of interconnected factors that led to the birth of the Minneapolis sound. After the break, we’ll be hearing from an expert on how it all went down.

Kristen Schloemer knows pretty much all there is to know about Prince. She’s the co-founder of the International Center for Prince Studies. She gives guided tours of Prince’s Minneapolis, and she’s launched Sound Around Tours, an app that offers self-guided tours of the city. For her, Prince is personal.

Kristen Schloemer: You know, after Prince died, I was sort of left with a sense of sorrow. He was such an important part of my life growing up. You know, when I grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota. Great place. But I like to joke that we had both kinds of music, country and western. Right? So when MTV came on and I started getting exposed to, you know, New Wave artists, London artists, all that, it opened up a whole new world for me. And then when Prince appeared, I was just like, who is this magnificent being so talented, so beautiful, loved his music. And then when I fouWelcome to “Travel to Listen,” a new Unpacked series hosted by veteran music journalist Tim Chester. Over four episodes rolling out every other week, Tim takes us into the cities where music is more than entertainment—it’s the shortcut to a place’s soul.

This week, he heads to Minneapolis to hear how a community center, a cold climate, and a once-in-a-generation genius combined to create one of the most distinctive sounds in American music, plus how the city is celebrating a decade since Prince’s passing.nd out he was from Minneapolis, you know, I was like, oh my God, he’s like my neighbor. That’s so cool.

Tim: Any encounter with Prince is pretty memorable. I remember seeing him play on a giant stage shaped like his famous symbol at London’s O2 arena, and it was an unforgettable show. Kristen wanted to honor his legacy and she had the perfect background for it.

Kristen: My day job, I’m a historian and I do projects where I’m trying to figure out where are there historic places, things that would be worthy of recognition to the National Register of Historic Places. So I started researching where he was, when he was there, and I put together this very in-depth document and tracked over 50 different locations that Prince lived at, worked at, recorded at, throughout his life here in Minneapolis or Minnesota. And that work corrected a lot of narratives that people had about Prince. And so I really wanted to get the information out there. So I, I do do personal tours and in-person tours, but again, wanting to have it be more accessible. That’s sort of what led us into telling this story.

Tim: Kristen doesn’t just tell the story of Prince. She explains how the whole funk pop genre emerged thanks to a number of different factors.

Kristen: The story of the Minneapolis Sound and the whole funk scene is just, to me, truly incredible. It is this outcome of African Americans moving to the Minneapolis area as part of the Great Migration, fleeing the South, and a lot of the oppression, only to come here and find a different type of segregation through housing covenants and redlining districts. But yet you, you know, this incredible music sort of comes out of that experience, this blending of soul, jazz, funk with a heavy rock element that, you know, was very dominant here in the Twin Cities.

Tim: Like much of the country, Minneapolis went through a period of unrest in the 60s.

Kristen: There were some riots in north Minneapolis in 1966 and 1967, where African Americans were frustrated by, you know, the lack of economic growth and opportunities. So it boils over into some protests, the National Guard being called in. And while not a lot changed substantively, one thing that came out of that was the creation of a community center called The Way, and they offered all sorts of programs for people, for African Americans living here. But one thing they had was a house band and they had musical instruments. So people like Prince, Terry Lewis, Morris Day, Andreas Monk could go in and learn to play these different instruments, but also jam with some older musicians like Sonny Thompson.

Tim: That was really a catalyst for the scene, but the media landscape of the time played a big part, too.

Kristen: Because it was such a predominantly white community, there was a lot of rock music stations, but not a lot of black music radio stations. There were programs, but not necessarily fully dedicated radio programs. So you had a lot of these musicians growing up on Santana and Led Zeppelin. And so that really became part of that crucible.

Wanna whole lot of love. Wanna whole lot of love.

Kristen: I think when we look at the alternative rock that came out of groups like Hüskär Dü and The Replacements, it was also things like, we had some record stores here, the Electric Fetus, that were bringing in a lot of new wave music from New York, punk music from London. And so that also became part of The Crucible. But yes, like you said, too, venues were critically important. Jay’s Longhorn was really the birthplace of that, you know, Minneapolis alt music scene. First Avenue, through its various iterations, was bringing in national acts, but also giving a platform for local acts. So there are a lot of things that just all sort of came together at that time to lead to these different musical genres being developed here.

Tim: Many of the key historic venues have disappeared or changed. In fact, Kristen says that the first recording studio Prince worked at is now an insurance agency and The Way community center closed, but there are other community projects on offer.

Kristen: There is a group called Purple Playground, which works with a lot of the artists who are part of the Minneapolis Sound, and every summer they have a session where students can learn the engineering side of things, musical side of things, songwriting.

Tim: There are still some essential stops on any Prince pilgrimage. Paisley Park, his home and studio, is the obvious first port of call. And then there are the lesser known locations, unassuming places with a lot of significance. Lots of them feature on Kristen’s tours, and she’s actually worked towards getting two of them added to the National Register of Historic Places. One of them is Prince’s childhood Home, a single story building in north Minneapolis.

Kristen: It’s where he mastered the piano, where he really started his craft of songwriting. He talked about in his beautiful but tragically short autobiography that he was working on at the time of his death, that a great day for him was going to the record shop, getting an album, going home, playing it on the turntable behind him while he figured out the chording, and then also figured out the lyrics and not just the words that people were saying, but the phrasing, how long they held to note the spaces in between. So he was solely dedicated to doing that work at this house.

Tim: The second is the Sound80 studio where Prince worked in the late 70s.

Kristen: It was the premier recording studio here in Minneapolis. It’s where he recorded the demo tapes that got him his Warner Brothers contract when he was 19 and also, as he said, got hip to Polymoog and Linn drum machines, synthesizers and things that were really coming into fashion and became so much a part of his sound aesthetic. He really started working with those at that location.

Tim: You can hear Prince using the Polymoog on tracks like “I Want to Be Your Lover,” particularly in the latter half of the song. Kristen is currently trying to get a third place added to the National Register. First Avenue, a music venue that you might recognize.

Kristen: He made it famous with his 1984 movie Purple Rain, but he also recorded the song Purple Rain. The first time it was ever performed was performed at the venue.

Purple rain. Purple rain.

Tim: First Avenue calls itself your downtown danceteria since 1970. The Minneapolis Sound continues to this day and there are a bunch of musicians to check out.

Kristen: We have up and coming artists like Nerdy or None Above, which is a group of four siblings who are sort of continuing that that tradition too. So it’s, you know, we’re very blessed here to have a great public radio station called the Current. And they have a Purple Current live stream, which plays Prince music and music that, you know, he was inspired by an artists who were inspired by him. They also have a gig list. So people can really check out like who’s performing where. And it’s remarkable. There’s just there are so many concerts going on all the time here in the Twin Cities.

Tim: 2026 is a special year. It marks a decade since Prince’s passing.

Kristen: Celebration is an annual event that the Prince Estate puts on this year. It’s going to be a five-day event, I think, June 3–7, and there will be a variety of concerts, dance parties, you know, unseen footage. It’s a great time.

Tim: Kristen recommends Prince fans and anyone who wants to learn more about the music of Minneapolis to come early. Her organization, the International Center for Prince Studies, also holds conferences and fan events and has some programming planned for June 1 and 2. And one of her curator friends is opening a new museum in the north of the city.

Kristen: And it really reflects on people’s stories around Prince. So it’s not like, here’s Prince’s guitar. It’s here’s the outfit I was wearing the night Prince pulled me onto stage to dance with him. So it’s really sort of inverting that curatorial lens, and it’s a really great way to think about Prince’s influence and why his fan base is so big and so strong.

Tim: I had to ask Kristen if there was one song that sums up the city, what would it be?

Kristen: Rock and roll is alive and it lives in Minneapolis. That’s a good one.

Rock n roll is alive and it lives in Minneapolis. Rock n roll is alive. Rock n roll is alive.

Tim: To learn more about this year’s celebrations and the Minneapolis Sound, check out the show notes. We’ve included links to the music venues and musicians, and a playlist for your next flight or road trip.

This has been Unpacked: Travel to Listen, a production of Afar Media. This show is a part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. The podcast was produced by Aislyn Greene, Nikki Galteland and me, Tim Chester. Music composition by Chris Colin. I’ll be back in two weeks exploring the spacy, grungy desert rock scene in Southern California and finding out there’s loads more to the region than Coachella.

See you then.