Luke Zimmerman does what comes naturally, whether its music, art or literature
By Michael Swanger michael@dmcityview.com

Luke Zimmerman is a versatile artisan. He plays music. He writes novels and screenplays. He sculpts metal. He builds furniture. He's a manually skilled worker, a 27-year-old craftsman who feeds his soul through a variety of media.

"I like to make things," Zimmerman says. "When I'm not playing music I'm doing other things. It gets me hopped up."

Playing music, it would seem, comes naturally to this up-and-coming Minnesota singer-songwriter. His father, David, is a veteran of the Minneapolis music scene; his brother, Seth, leads the alt-country outfit Tangletown; his cousin, Jakob Dylan, fronts The Wallflowers; and Uncle Bob (you know who) arguably is the most influential musician of the past 40 years.

"I tend to work with what I've been given," Zimmerman says, adding that the family name can be both a help and a hindrance. "There's always expectations, real or unreal, negative or positive."

But playing music wasn't always a priority for Zimmerman. He didn't pick up a guitar until he was 14 years old and by the time he taught himself a few chords, he had earned a degree in studio art from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., where he graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1999. Art classes, Zimmerman says, helped teach him how to express himself through music, too.

"Visual art gives you a process of creation and you get addicted to making new things," he says. "Musicians have the same drive to make something new and tell a story just like a painter has an eye for detail and description. I try to paint a quick picture with words."

Zimmerman began painting musical landscapes of "love, girls and the state of the world" a few years ago with a group he and drummer Andy Hertel founded, The Crow River Band. The Twin Cities rockers released a self-titled album in 2002, which borrowed heavily from Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, but shortly thereafter Zimmerman and Hertel left to form another band under Zimmerman's name with bassist Joel Rogness. The trio is set to release its debut independent album "Twilight Waltz" later this fall. The album's 10 original songs are an honest, heady mix of alt-country that combine the familiar sounds of Reed's art-rock, John Lennon's pop, and Neil Young's rustic folk-rock.

"I like that you turn it on and it has a consistent and coherent mood to it," Zimmerman says. "The name sums it up. It's from a book by [Frederick] Nietze, about how the whole trick to life is to maintain cheerfulness though there's trouble all around you."

To maintain that cheerfulness, Zimmerman likes to divide his time between music, art and literature. Eventually, he says, he would like to make a living playing music, as well as publish the novels he has written, convert his screenplays into movies and sell a few paintings to galleries. "I don't like to pause on one thing," he says. "When I get stuck on a song I like to paint. And when I get stuck on a painting, I like to play guitar. They balance each other out."

Still, with a new album in the offing, the young musician admits he would like to spend more time playing music. He performs about 50 shows a year and he hopes the release of "Twilight Waltz" will garner enough interest from fans to allow him to play more.

"If I can get some people out there I can justify playing more shows," he says.

Whatever it is Zimmerman decides to do, he wants fans to know that his work is honest and earnest. "I'm not trying to pull a fast one over anyone," he says. "I don't want to be seen as pretentious or fake."CV

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