Talking music and activism with Ethan Buckner of The Minnesota Child

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Buckner.

Hi Ethan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My indie/folk project The Minnesota Child is all about finding beauty in both darkness and light and that ethos has been central to both my songwriting and my political work throughout my career. I grew up outside of Minneapolis in a loving Jewish family. When I was 15 years old, I witnessed death for the first time while on a trip to learn about my heritage and the history of the Holocaust. Coming through that experience, I realized that I needed to dedicate my life in service of sustaining life. Soon thereafter, I learned about climate change – an existential threat to life itself – and I found my calling to fight the climate crisis. And at the same time, I started writing music as a form of self-therapy; songwriting helped me work through the anxiety that teenage trauma seeded and gave me a tool to process uncertainty in my life and in the world around me. Music and activism have been the cornerstones of my life ever since.

For more than the past decade, I have worked full-time with Indigenous, working class, and communities of color to wage campaigns against big oil, gas, and petrochemical companies that threaten harm to communities and the climate. My work for social change, currently for the non-profit Earthworks, seeps into my music, encapsulating my belief that even in these tumultuous times, a just, equitable, thriving world is still possible.

After college in New York, I was wooed by the natural beauty, cultural vibrance, and political innovation of northern California, and moved to the Bay Area. During my six years living in Berkeley and Oakland, I worked full-time as a community organizer and began recording and performing regularly. During my time in the Bay, I had the incredible opportunity to perform on many of the region’s iconic stages, from The Chapel to Great American Music Hall to Mountain Winery, supporting artists including Jewel and Howie Day. I worked with my brother Matt and Bay Area producer Jeff Saltzman (The Killers, Blondie) on our first full-band EP, Fireflies.

Then in 2019, life, love, and an itch to immerse in the epicenter of songwriting brought me to LA. From the minute I landed in the Venice beach apartment I share with my partner Heather, I dove into LA’s musical playground, performing, collaborating, and writing new material.

During COVID lockdowns in 2020, with indoor venues still shuttered, I started hosting Bring Back The Music (BBTM), an intimate monthly concert series that continues to attract LA’s up-and-coming independent artists to the charming patio in our Venice apartment complex. We’re always looking for local artists and brand partners in service of creating high-quality, intimate performances that are meaningful for music lovers and artists.

My newest project is TMC’s forthcoming debut LP, produced in here in LA by Grammy nominee Justin Glasco (Wild Rivers, The Lone Bellow). The record is a meditation on my struggle with anxiety and embracing a new chapter of adulthood in the context of social, political, and environmental turmoil. The songs weave between moments both intimate and anthemic, exploring struggles that are both deeply personal and unavoidably collective. If you catch me performing around town or come by one of our Bring Back the Music showcases, you’ll most certainly hear songs from the new record.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Balancing music and full-time environmental work has not always been easy. My current job has me on the road a lot – I spend a lot of time working with community groups in the Gulf South and Appalachia, and before the pandemic, I was traveling over half the time. Yet for me, music has always been a necessary counterbalance to my political work, and I think I would have burnt out on activism a long time ago if not for the nourishment that songwriting and performing continue to give me.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Here in LA, I’m starting to be more recognized for my role as a curator. I absolutely love cultivating community and hosting BBTM continue to bring me so much joy. As a performer, I always seek to build a real, authentic connection with my audience, whether I’m playing at a tiny café or a massive concert hall. I integrate storytelling and model vulnerability, and that seems to have a real effect on people, helping others process what’s happening in their lives. And as a recording artist, I’ve been in the lab for quite some now, and I cannot express how excited I am to share my new record with the world. The album, a true labor of love, is by far the most personal, vulnerable, introspective, and exploratory story I know how to tell. About what it means to be alive in the tumultuous times we’re living in. About my own struggles with my physical and mental health. About living and loving as big as I know how. And about acceptance of things I cannot do and change.

Social change work can be incredibly meaningful and also exhausting. The music I write has always been the antidote to my own burnout. As the world burns around us and forces of disconnection exert so much pressure on our lives, I hope these songs will offer listeners solace and inspiration, reflection and hope.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
In my work as an organizer and campaigner and in my music career, I think the characteristics that have always been most important to me are empathy and humility. To show up for others, be authentically myself, and most importantly, always be open to learning and growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: theminnesotachild.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/mnchildmusic
• Facebook: Facebook.com/theminnesotachild
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanbuckner/
• Twitter: twitter.com/ethan-buckner/
• Youtube: YouTube.com/theminnesotachild
• SoundCloud: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ULgGbJ1a9X0e8B3IEgPaa?si=pZapHrwvTpaDz0SivQKodA
• Other: instagram.com/bbtm_la/

Image Credits
Sam Fine, Heather Kryczka