6/27/2023 0 Comments Sparta iron money“The fire department burns down houses and puts ‘em out for training. It’s just kind of wild to see everything going away before my eyes,” said Mattson. “It was really vibrant when I first moved here, there was a grocery store, a church, a skating rink. Since opening Sparta Sound, he has recorded numerous timeless-sounding recordings with some of Minnesota’s best rock, folk, and alt-country musicians, including Gemberling, Martin Devaney, Jennifer Markey, Trampled By Turtles, the Belfast Cowboys, and Dan Israel. Many Twin Cities musicians make the trek up north, lured as they are by a creative solitude that’s about to get even quieter. Mattson grew up in West Eveleth and, after immersing himself in the Twin Cities music scene for a couple decades, moved to Sparta in 2005. We’ll stitch ‘em all together for the song, eventually.” One day we walked around with a video camera through all these abandoned houses and took video. Most of the people that are moving out grew up here, and these are 60- and 70-year-old people. We’re close enough to the main road or something, and I guess where we’re at, maybe they found the vein of iron oar doesn’t come anywhere near our house. “I don’t know if they plan to mine this neighborhood or what my guess is that they’re not going to do anything with it for a long time. The open-pit method is basically just digging up dirt, and after it’s all dug up they let it go back to nature but it’s all scarred. They’re gonna start mining for precious metals up at Ely, and that’s kind of upsetting because it could really mess up the water and everything. “It’s open-pit mining, so it’s not as harmful to the environment as copper mining. “It’s not like they’re drilling for oil,” said Mattson, leader of beloved Minnesota bands Ol’ Yeller, the Tisdales, the Glenrustles, and, with Gemberling, Junkboat. “This town was built upon some precious minerals/And they’re coming to dig them up/Not tomorrow and it’s not today/I think I’ll stay/And wait and see/What happens to this ghost town, ghost town, ghost town…” While it’s not a political take on the area’s mining and environmental wars, the song does get at how corporations affect the land and its people: Inspired by the sheer weirdness of the fast exodus, Mattson wrote and recorded a new song, “ This Town (Ghost Town),” with his band the Northstars. From what I’ve heard, the premises must be vacated by March.” But it’s been a wild ride for this little haven. Our house and Sparta Sound is not on the leased land. “So everybody is moving out, trashing their houses on the way out and burning everything they don’t want to take with them. “Sparta was mostly built on mine property they own the rights to the land, and they’re not renewing the leases to tenants,” said Mattson by phone, while building a fire to warm the house. Census Bureau, in 2000 Sparta, Minnesota was a town of 814 people (247 families) living in 311 households.įourteen years later, it’s down to a handful of hangers-on - including singer/songwriters and recording artists Rich Mattson and Germaine Gemberling, who own the former church-turned-recording studio Sparta Sound, which is suddenly one of the few buildings in town left standing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |