When I was a senior in high school, I did what many fellow seniors did and toured colleges I was interested in. One of those schools was the University of Minnesota, and the tour included a stop by Northrop Auditorium. The tour guide introduced Northrop as the spot where “the most famous U of M dropout,” Bob Dylan, once played a show.
In the end, I chose to attend St. Thomas instead, a decision I stand by over four years later. It felt like the right fit then, and it feels like the right fit now. However, one thing I’ve noticed is that St. Thomas does not have that kind of pull for live music outside of the occasional Music on the Quad event or TommieFest. It’s been something I wish the university had been trying for during my time here, but it has not been mentioned during the many changes made to grow the school’s profile.
Having live music on campus is not something limited to schools as big as the U of M. During my sophomore year of college, I found out that Memphis rapper NLE Choppa was doing a show at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where only about 2,000 students attend compared to the roughly 6,000 undergraduates at St. Thomas. My friends and I considered taking the one-hour drive to see the show, since we all had been listening to the artist while driving around the Twin Cities, but in the end decided not to go. Had that show been on campus, we would have been more likely to attend.
It’s not as if there’s no demand, either. St. Thomas students Tommy Fischer and Brendan Bonin started Woodstock UST, an organization that put on shows featuring artists from St. Thomas, in the fall of 2024. They opened with a concert in the backyard of Fischer’s house on Laurel Avenue near campus. The show was well-attended and well-received by students, and since then, Fischer and Bonin have rebranded Woodstock to Scholars Entertainment. They’ve planned, promoted and executed a few more shows since then, with their latest being at Jameson’s Tavern in West St. Paul on Friday, March 20.
Seniors Ben Barrett and Rachel Clement have both performed at Scholars shows and also helped found the 480 Collective, a student-run record label located on the first floor of the Schoenecker Center. Beyond this, they have also performed shows with their bands, Monarch and Brunch.
“Our bands did a show at Amsterdam Bar & Hall. That was a fun one,” Barrett said. “We raised, like, close to $1,000 for a community aid network, so across two bands, $1,000 per night music. And that was, like, a really powerful thing for us. It felt really great to do.”
In addition to being performers, Barrett and Clement are both fans of live music, especially in the Twin Cities.
“I think the Twin Cities is a great, great location to, like, experience different ranges of what live music is,” Clement said. “Like, we have such big venues like (Grand Casino Arena) and then, like, once U.S. Bank (Stadium) was put up, obviously U.S. Bank isn’t meant for concerts, but it’s been utilized as that. And then you have Target Center, and then you have the small things like the Dakota jazz club and First (Avenue) and The Armory.”
With the current state of the Twin Cities music scene, Barrett and Clement want the university to bring the experience of live music to campus for students.
“What I think happens right now is that the people at the University of St. Thomas, they go outside, like, outside the university everywhere to get that cultural experience,” Barrett said. “They’ll go to the U of M for shows. They’ll go to, like, Downtown Minneapolis for all these shows.”
St. Thomas has been all about growth even before I started attending with the jump from the NCAA’s Division III to Division I. Since then, the university also built the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena, which brought Tommie hockey to campus and provided a major upgrade over the Schoenecker Arena for basketball. However, this growth should not be based solely in athletics.
With basketball and hockey season coming to a close soon, live music could be a way to keep campus exciting during the lull brought on by their absence. The opportunities the new arena provides are not limited to sports, and St. Thomas should recognize that by planning for the offseason.
The opportunities that live music could provide for St. Thomas are not just limited to filling seats, however. While the 5,500 seats in the arena would be suitable for a high-profile artist, they also serve as a way to introduce local acts.
Barrett believes that a strategy like this could raise the 480 Collective’s profile: have one big artist perform as the primary show, along with a “secondary, smaller backup artist,” and “as many 480 artists for a small amount of time, so people get a taste of it, a sample of it.”
While St. Thomas has been working on increasing its public profile, there are still untapped ways to do so. Bringing live music to campus would be a great way to do so, while also showing how St. Thomas can be a greater part of the Twin Cities community. If the university is serious about this continued growth, it is absolutely a route worth exploring.
Miles Schiffer can be reached at schi9629@stthomas.edu.
