Star Tribune
St. Paul guitarist Billy Larson, ‘a Kmart Keith Richards,’ dies of brain cancer
Billy Larson was a blue-collar guy from St. Paul’s East Side who just wanted to play guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
“You’re just a Kmart Keith Richards,” singer Jody Hanks told bandmate Larson, who loved to party.
Larson was a big Rolling Stones fan. Even though he was diagnosed with terminal cancer last fall, “all he wanted to do was make it to the Rolling Stones concert at Soldier Field [in Chicago] on his 71st birthday” on June 27, said his wife, singer Lisa Wenger.
Larson died of glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, on March 7 in his home in Breezy Point, Minn. He was 70.
He did get to perform one last time in February, sitting in with the Lisa Wenger Band in Cross Lake, Minn.
“He sang the Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ ” Wenger said. “He had a hard time with some the words; I whispered them in his ear. I knew he was having a hard time but everyone in the crowd loved it. It was heartbreaking. He told me afterward that he had so much fun, and he was so glad that he did it.”
Growing up on St. Paul’s East Side, Larson started playing guitar at around age 8 and began gigging six years later. The Johnson High School grad was best known for his stint in Raggs, formed in 1971, and later Vintage Raggs. Whether playing in bars or at high school dances, the bands offered covers of the Stones, the Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Cars, among other classic rock.
“He was a good rhythm player and a good slide player,” said guitarist Tom “Buffalo” Ferderer, his longtime bandmate. “It was a joy to play with him. He had such a good sense of space.”
After bartending at the Payne Reliever on the East Side, Larson became co-founder in 1997 of the Minnesota Music Café, where he proudly displayed some of his rock memorabilia including a Bob Dylan setlist and an Eddie Cochran guitar.
“It was his dream come true,” said Wenger, who met Larson when she performed at the club. “And at the time, it was an investment for him; a musician didn’t have a steady income. He was the face of the building. He couldn’t go anywhere without being the owner of the club. He was going to City Council meetings. He was a businessman.”
In 2009, Larson severed his involvement with the Payne Avenue club, which is still presenting local bands.
Besides loving classic rock and blues, Larson was an avid Twins fans and fisherman.
“My fishing partner, he was terrible,” Hanks said, with a chuckle. “The last time I went fishing with him, I thought he said ‘Let’s go in’ because he got his hook hooked to the carpet on the bottom of the boat. And for 10 minutes he was trying to get the hook out while we were going around in a circle. He was an uninhibited and fun guy. The most free person.”
Wenger also witnessed Larson’s hard-luck love of angling.
“He fished. He didn’t catch fish,” Wenger said. “He loved to go fishing and sit in the boat and listen to Twins games. Very rarely did we have fish.”
Whatever he did, Larson looked cool.
“He always looked good, man. It was a cool look and not ‘here I am,'” Ferderer said. “He had a gentle personality that way.”
Ferderer recalled their first gig with Raggs. He showed up early for a photo shoot “in a shirt that [made it] look like I got off the farm. Billy would always bring three shirts. He said, ‘Wear this one and keep it.’ He taught me how to dress.”
In the late ’70s, Larson would organize trips to New York City for Raggs to buy outfits in Greenwich Village. “He’d find these stores where they only made eight of one thing,” Ferderer recalled. “I don’t remember anybody dressing like him.”
Even when Larson got eyeglasses later in life, he had to have the coolest glasses, too. And he always had a distinctive hairdo.
“He fussed over his hair. His hairdo took longer to get it fixed on our wedding day than mine,” Wenger said. “When he started to lose it [during cancer treatment], we had to find cool hats to wear. He did have good hair.”
After Larson’s earlier bout with cancer, he and Wenger moved from St. Paul to Breezy Point in 2015. Up North, he’d grab his guitar and head up the hill past the town’s famous resort to a buddy’s garage.
“He’d go up and play in Ron’s garage for 25 or 30 people,” Wenger said. “They’d just party and have a good time.”
Larson is survived by his wife, daughters Charlotte and Nicole, and one grandson.
A celebration of life —”Billy Larson’s Life of the Party Concert” — will be held April 7 at the Myth Live in Maplewood.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
