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All Recordings are Now in Print

For the first time in years all my recordings are in print! It’s a really good feeling to have my entire body of work out there and available.
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More Coffee!

dakota dave hull makes pour-over coffee
Today, we're going to make some pourover coffee, right here in my kitchen. I've been doing this for years, and I'm here to tell ya, it's good!
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New Video

dakota dave hull guitar video for Stewart-McDonald
I did a video for the good folks at Stewart-MacDonald last month and now it’s up. It’s part of their Trade Secrets series and I was surely honored to be asked to do it.
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Coffee!

People who’ve known me for any length of time know that I take my coffee seriously. Very seriously. In 1980, while on the road with Sean Blackburn, my friend Fr. Bill Teska introduced me to Don Lohr.
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Best Albums of 2013

hull north star front cover
Under the North Star made two top ten lists. StarTribune critics Tom Surowicz and Tim Campbell both picked it. I’m really honored!
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Inside Llewyn Davis

The late Dave Van Ronk, whose early career provided the inspiration (however broadly) for "Inside Llewyn Davis," was a dear friend of mine. The stories I heard from him and from others concerning the Village folk milieu of the late 1950s and early '60s remind me of my own experiences in the Twin Cities a decade later.
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Bill Hinkley

Bill Hinkley
Bill's five-decade long career as a musician started with a gig at the Tokyo Grand Ole Opry in the early 1960's. After moving to Minneapolis in 1970 he joined the legendary Minneapolis group The Sorry Muthas and toured with them nationally. He became musical and life partner with Judy Larson in 1972. They helped inaugurate Garrison Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion and were featured regularly thereafter. They also toured nationally for decades. After a long engagement they married in 1990. They remained partners in life and music.
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Flying With Guitars

I came up with some rules for flying with guitars that have served me reasonably well through the years. I thought it might be a nice idea to share them. When I travel to Europe or Asia I have to fly. Sometimes it’s necessary in North America, too. Here are some rules.
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My New Guitar

Fairbanks Guitar
I've been trying to find a builder to make a copy of my 1935 Gibson Jumbo for quite awhile now and a few months ago I found the man for the job. I'd talked about it with Todd Cambio of Fraulini guitars, but he's just so busy making Stella-style twelve strings that he simply didn't have the time.
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The National Baritone Tricone

Well, the good folks at National have done it again! I've been so in love with my baritone guitar, not to mention my tricone, that I thought it would be a good idea to combine the two and get myself a baritone tricone. So that's exactly what I did; it's a Style 1.5.
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Hull’s Victory in LP format

hulls victory
This just in! We recently found a number of copies of Hull’s Victory in LP format for all you audiophile types out there. That’s right, you can get your very own copy of Hull’s Victory on vinyl! They’re all sealed, but some of them were promotional copies, with cut corners.
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California Swing

Information about Dakota Dave's swing through California in January, 2007.
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Northeast Tour 2006

Hi to all. I hope this finds you well. I'll be leaving home on Thursday for a couple weeks in the northeast and I'm looking forward to seeing many of my old friends. I'll be in Lansing at the Ten Pound Fiddle along with Peter Lang on the 20th at 8, and a Guitar workshop at the Herb David Studio in Ann Arbor at 1PM on the 21st.
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September 2006 News

Well, I'm just back from a couple of tours that took me to gigs in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland and then to parts of Canada. I had a great time and met a lot of wonderful people. It was a busy time and a lot of driving but that's what I do. Drive. If I'm good they let me play the guitar in the evenings.
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West Virginia

Just home from a nice little tour of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Ohio. I got to drive through West Virginia three or four times and saw more of that gorgeous state than I ever had before.
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Spring Tour 2006

Well, I'm getting ready to head out on a tour that will take me to Wisconsin, Michigan, western New York State, Ohio and Indiana. I'll be home for a few hours and then heading to Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The Yahoo site that handles these messages for me also has a cool calendar so you can see exactly when and where I'll be. Just log into Yahoo, go to my group (dakotadavehull) and check it out.
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Kirby Puckett

One thing I’ll never regret as long as I live is that my home is in Minneapolis. I got to see Kirby Puckett play baseball. Many times. I’d have seen him play more if the Twins had played outdoors, but I caught a few games at the dome every year and had the pleasure of seeing him play on the road, at storied Yankee Stadium in 1987, the first year they went to the series and ultimately won.
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Ted Bogan

When I think about the great guitar players who influenced me, and there are many, both through recordings and people I knew personally, the one guy that really changed my life at the tender age of 23 or so was Ted Bogan. Ted played with Carl Martin and Howard Armstrong as part of, naturally, Martin, Bogan and Armstrong, "the last of the old-time black stringbands."
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SingOut! Article

The winter, 2006 issue of SingOut! had a nice article about me written by my old friend Jerry Clark. Now that it’s off the newstands you can download it in Adobe pdf format here. It’s a really nice article and it was really an honor to be featured in this venerable magazine. You might want to consider subscribing; it’s an extremely worthy endeavor. You can do that here.
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A New Guitar from National

Coffee Cup National Guitar
I think I might have mentioned that I got a new guitar from National late last year. It’s basically an M-2 baritone with a few custom features—no fingerboard inlay (athough it has side dots), a solid peghead with the coolest inlay I’ve ever seen on a guitar (MacGregor Gaines is a world-class artist; you heard it here), a custom neck profile that feels a lot like my Gibson Jumbo, and an unusual mandolin-like cover plate that they only made a couple of for guitars.
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The Mayor of MacDougal Street

Dave Van Ronk’s autobiography, The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a wonderful read. To me it was like sitting in his living room late into the night talking, eating, drinking and listening to music. Dave was a masterful storyteller and it’s an amazing and wonderful thing that he was able to capture that feeling on the page.
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Mankato in February

I’ll be back in Mankato, Minnesota on February 11 at the Bothy Folk Club at 7:30 PM. The Bothy holds their concerts at the Eagles Club, 702 North Riverfront Drive in Mankato. My old pals The Blind Moose Review will be doing the opening set, so it should be big fun. Mankato, as I’m sure most of you know, was the original target of the James/Younger gang’s infamous Northfield raid, but there was some kind of big shindig going on in town that day so they went to Northfield instead and we know what happened there.
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The Hundredth Member

It’s good to know that my mailing list Yahoo group is growing. I got this letter today: Hi Dave, I have just become the 100th member of your webclub, or whatever it is called. This is so exciting! Do I get a free prize? Is this like eating the billionth hamburger at McDonalds? Do I get my picture taken with Angelina Jolie? What about the babes, the free carwash, the big lint brush? Can I get Frequent Flyer miles? What about free baby-sitting, car insurance and extended warranties on eyeglasses and guitar amps? God, I can see this is going to be fun. I’ll try to be patient, but it’s not easy. Wow, I can hardly believe it—I’M NUMBER 100! I’m going to cry!!!!! —Jay Peterson
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Culver City Visit

For all my southern California friends, I will be returning to Boulevard Music in Culver City, California on January 21st, 2006. Showtime is 8 PM. It’ll be a split night with Paul Asbell. I’ve not met Paul before, but I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage with him; he has a great reputation. Boulevard Music is located at 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230. Call (310) 398-2583 for more info. See you there!
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Coffeehouses

I moved to Minneapolis in late 1969 at the tender age of 19. I came because it was a guitar town and I played the guitar. Well, it was reasonably close to my home town of Fargo, too, and that was important to me at the time. It turned out to be one of the luckiest moves of my life. The West Bank (near the part of the University of Minnesota that sprawled across the Mississippi River to its west bank) seemed to draw young creative people like a magnet.
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Happy Holidays 2005

This has been quite a year. I hardly know where to begin. I’m just home from a lovely trip to the Northeast where I had some gigs. I got to spend some time with some great friends, too, Sally Rogers and Howie Bursen, Martin Grosswendt (and his charming twin daughters), Steve Moscov, Mary Faith Rhodes (of John Pearse Strings), Jackson Buck and a few others. I played gigs with Paul Geremia (Johnny D’s in Boston), Peter Lang (Godfrey Daniel’s in Bethlehem, Pa.) , and Doug Yeomans (The Sportsman’s Bar in Buffalo) on this tour in addition to some solo concerts.
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Truth in Advertising

walmart truck
  I shot this picture outside of Salt Lake City on my drive home from a west coast tour. I really can’t add anything; the picture says it all.
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I Quote

“These days, country music stars are created in a factory in China, molded out of plastic by workers earning 38 cents an hour, then shipped to Nashville, where they are fitted for a cowboy hat and taught to sing ditties written by a committee of moonlighting Hallmark employees.” –Washington Post, November 8, 2005
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Pickups

Every now and then someone comes along and tells me about some new pickup I need to listen to. Piezo electric pickups and pressure sensitive pickups have one major problem. There’s no air. When you mike an artist’s voice there’s air around it; it sounds like it is somewhere, in a space. The piezo equipped guitar, or mandolin, or anything, has no air around it – it doesn’t sound like it occupies the same space as the singer.
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Sean Blackburn

December 13, 1948 - September 29, 2005 As many of you know, we lost my old compadre Sean Blackburn in September, 2005. Sean and I worked together for ten years, singing, playing and traveling. He was my brother. In October we did a big memorial concert for him here in Minneapolis at the Cedar Cultural Center.
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Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk, gargoyle
It's still hard to believe that Dave's gone. He was a huge influence on me both musically and personally. I'll never forget so many evenings through the years spent sitting down to one of Dave's legendary meals followed by hours of Vivaldi, Joseph Lamb, Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, John Kirby, Duke Ellington, Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis - the list goes on and on. What an experience, always something new, always another surprise. I loved that guy. Thanks for everything, bro.
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