Stephen Kellogg Setlist

Curtain Call ¹
Old Friend
Sweet Sophia ¹
The Waitress
Mabeline ¹
The Bear ¹
Good Red Wine
Almost Woke You Up
Lost and Found
Shady Esperanto and the Young Hearts¹
Gravity¹
High Highs, Low Lows
Big Easy¹
See You Later, See You Soon¹

— Encore —
Kiss the Ring
My Favorite Place¹
¹ Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers song

False spring was ushered out in a hurry as an unexpected snow storm chased off the 50+ degree weather and plopped several inches of snow back on the ground. Into that crazy mix of snow and ice, Stephen Kellogg was playing at the Turf Club in St. Paul.

gutter sinatra (alter ego for Don Miggs) is a solo side project for the singer, songwriter and producer (other proejects include Whole Damn Mess and MIGGS). Initially undertaken and with an album recorded during the pandemic, Miggs let it sit for years, but finally released the self-titled debut and is now touring it. Starting in the far back left corner of the stage behind keyboards, Miggs set things up for the set with a somewhat plaintive, but very effective solo number. Ending the song with some ad-libbed lyrics, “but there’s a snowstorm…and I’m not from these parts” was pretty great. That number ended with the rest of his band (guitar, bass, and drums; turns out guitarist and bassist are engaged!) taking the stage. The second song had soaring lyrics and the music to back it. A brief interlude to fix an issue with the drum setup had some fine humor before gutter sinatra jumped back into things. With the bassist (Nick Diiorios who has played with Doja Cat) and guitarist (Constance Day who played with Demi Lovato) on back-up vocals (but at the front of stage), gutter sinatra had subconsciously turned expectations on their head. And just when it seemed like that was how the set would go, Miggs bailed from the keys, grabbed a guitar and took center stage flanked by his fellow guitarists. That change in arrangement also came with a tonal shift and the song You Don’t Think I Know was a pure rocker. The drummer (only on the fourth of fifth show) was an absolute beast on Started with a Kiss (incidentally Miggs’ wife’s least favorite song; “She’ll be in Chicago and will have to hear it there!”). The talent level dripping off this band was absolutely bonkers.

I love good humor from a band and gutter sinatra had that in spades. Miggs has clearly been at this long enough to have mastered the banter and in a way that didn’t detract from the music. Guitar work in a latter set song, Mechanical Romance, was haunting and a great center for the dual vocals to contrast. As he mentioned, these were pretty dark and sad songs lyrically, but they were running high on energy. Back to the keyboards didn’t slow things down, and Miggs was hurling guitar picks out into the crowd and he was bouncing in his seat throughout. The band was also having a blast and that always make a performance better. A repeated lyric “I could use three wishes and a genie to grant them” was a good summary of the bitterly funny material. A cover medley was pretty inspired and the big finish of Pull Me Under was exactly that. gutter sinatra closed out their set and had shown the album was well worth releasing.

I briefly chatted with Miggs after the show. There are artists who are nice, there are ones who are polite, and then there are musicians who are simply kind. Miggs is in that last category and his willingness to indulge my somewhat inane questions was Merriam-Webster definition of kind. He spoke so lovingly of his band mates, to the willingness of the relatively small crowd to brave the winter storm on a Wednesday night to connect, especially when all of these musicians have been part of sold out arena tours, and to genuinely be happy about this evening’s experience was refreshing. That kindness extended to other fans who were there for merch and photos and Don Miggs is simply the kind of person you would want in your corner. I now have a whole backlog of music to track down.

Headliner Stephen Kellogg (appearing as Stephen Kellogg & The Homecoming) was up next. His bio includes the fact that he is counting down to his 3,000th show (we were informed the Turf Club show was 2,991), which is impressive even if he has been at the gig since the early/mid 1990’s. He’s also been a productive artist with his released music, with over twenty albums including 2025’s To You, Old Friend. The band (vocals/guitar, back up vocals/percussion, guitar, bass/guitar, keyboards/bass, and drums) started with an a capella song Curtain Call with all band members singing. This was dead in the folk rock Americana and Kellogg’s earthy vocals were right for the material. Kellogg mentioned that although he had a lot of sad songs, he wanted to give St. Paul an uplifting evening for “all that you’ve been through”. Sweet Sophia, an early song, certainly met that criteria and let the band soar. The blend of folk rock and more Americana was a really good space for Kellogg and team, and Kellogg showed off his humor (he has a comedy special called Maybe This Will Work from last year) and had the audience laughing hard even over tough material. Mabeline was dedicated to his Uncle Andy and you have to hear the specifics of the context to believe it.

The inevitable appearance of harmonica on The Bear and some near yodeling work from the back up singer pretty much checked all of the boxes for the set and we weren’t even ten songs in. The layering in of multiple vocalists (always two, routinely three or four) gave the band a singing depth that matched the instruments. The entire band came down to the floor and had the audience surrounding them for the next three songs, with Shady Esperanto and the Young Hearts being a real delight and the audience in full vocal support. And even after that, the rest of the band went back to the stage, but Kellogg worked his way across the entire venue for High Highs Low Lows. The main set ended with See You Later, See You Soon also had Don Miggs up to sing along. The encore started with a textbook definition of a narcissist and sadly, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel in these United States, and Kiss the Ring was brilliant on that front. Closing on the pitch perfect My Favorite Place, Stephen Kellogg and The Homecoming had connected with a fervent crowd and made the evening a special one to remember.