Califone at Turf Club (April 8, 2026)

Turf Club has been slaying with their April scheduling, and so I found myself back at my favorite haunt in St. Paul yet again, with Califone in town.

Zak Sally Sings The Bee Gees got things started. Sally was the bassist for several bands, including a decade long stint with Low. He’s also a comic book artist with his own press, La Mano. On this evening, he was playing six songs by the Bee Gees because as he mentioned before starting, “they’re so f-ing good”. We got started a little late and Zak Sally entered as a duo singing and on guitar with a drummer and obviously, this was a different, more reflective version of those pop songs. To Love Somebody was elegiac, with pedal effects further driving the guitar and Sally nearly screaming at points, then into scorching instrumental solo supported by the crashing drums. Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You was super dark, and the drummer got to play chimes with the slowcore, reverb guitar, but If I Can’t Have You was nearly revelatory as a depression filled, gauzy rocker. Walker’s drums were so very good and he worked from quieter rhythm support to raucous percussion filled noise as needed. A fairly tense monologue on the state of things was broken with “I’m glad we can all be together”, as they headed into their final two numbers. Run to Me was a sweeping slowcore ballad, letting Sally slowly ratchet up volume and underlying fuzzy guitars and was an excellent finish for the opening set.

Califone is described as an “experimental rock band” and was formed in Chicago in the late 1990’s. With Tim Rutili the central figure, the band has had many incarnations with regular and added musicians as needed. There are some concept albums in this mix of electronic and layered rock, and the most recent albums, 2023’s Villagers and 2025’s The Villager’s Companion are good examples of the band. The quintet (vocals/guitar/keyboards, guitar, bass, and two drums, with plenty of back up vocals and electronic music) had elements of folk, electronica and more, but all within the central alt rock feel. Rutili had an inviting vocal style, and Funeral Singers was a great opener. The Orchids definitely had more of the experimental noise layered in for the lengthy middle section, but it really added to the effect of the song rather than feeling like a weird add-on. A bit of banter led to “we’re starting gentle, but I don’t think we’ll stay there for long…everyone has a different threshold of gentle”. And gentle really was an apt descriptor for this early going, with Michigan Girls a fabulous number that held that calm at its core, even as the reverb and surrounding music intensified for that very lengthy number. 

Rutili got to keyboards on Comedy, and that flourished opening was so good even as it was hard to describe exactly why. Those keys provided a different sound and let the adjoining guitar and bass take a much more central role, and that closing repeated lyrical question of “are you my enemy” left a vaguely threatening tone in the air. The wildest interaction about Joey Chestnut (yes, the competitive eater) being from Minnesota (he’s from Kentucky), made for a great band-crowd interaction that led to A Confederacy of Dunces joke (guessing about ten percent of the crowd caught that), confirmation that the Joey Chestnut book is “not good”, and ultimately had Rutili killing the audience with “observational humor”, while also setting up a running gag regarding Kentucky for the rest of the evening. And that this interlude didn’t kill the musical vibe was perhaps all the more impressive. Habsburg Jaw was a crunchy, guitar driven piece that really highlighted the dual drummer/percussion set up. The song ox-eye was preceded by some more silly humor (“I keep trying to stop this kind of thing!”) as we also rolled past ninety minutes. The music continued to hit a sweet spot, with Rutili back on electric guitar, creating a lot of feedback and perhaps the heaviest sound of the set. Finishing up with Villagers (though it rolled directly into a connected “encore” song of Frosted Tips), Califone brought a terrific set to an end with their rock and had connected with the crowd through humor and song in a way that I think many needed.