Like many Minnesotans, it’s clear that brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum of The Cactus Blossoms share a certain sense of hometown pride.
Raised in Northeast Minneapolis, the harmonious country-folk duo’s legacy in the local music scene runs deep, with a career spanning nearly 15 years. They found their footing playing in Twin Cities venues (like the Turf Club and the now-shuttered Kitty Cat Klub) and quickly became popular among local audiences—eventually, they secured a month-long residency at the Turf Club that has since become an annual tradition.
Photo by Aaron Rice
Nowadays, the band’s success extends far beyond Minnesota’s borders: They’ve recorded alongside acclaimed musicians and producers in Nashville and Chicago, and have toured across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
But Torrey and Burkum haven’t forgotten where they came from. The band’s new album, “Every Time I Think About You,” comes out Aug. 30, and offers many nods to their Minnesota roots.
It was recorded at the historic Creation Audio in Minneapolis with longtime bandmates Jeremy Hanson (drums), Jacob Hanson (guitar), and Phillip Hicks (bass), who are all based in the Twin Cities. The album cover features an abstract landscape painting of Lake Superior by George Morrison, a renowned Ojibwe artist from Minnesota—the painting, titled “Spirit Path. New Day. Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape,” hangs in the Minnesota Museum of American Art.
Cover painting by George Morrison
The band will travel around the U.S. again this fall for the “Every Time I Think About You” Tour before returning to Europe for some winter dates. They’re kicking things off with a hometown album release show on Sept. 13 at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.
In advance of the new album, we caught up with Torrey and Burkum about their early influences, hitting their stride as a duo, and how they kept this project close to home.
Your music feels so reminiscent of the countryside and rural Minnesota. Growing up in the city, where did you find the country-folk influences that are so prominent in your sound?
JT: We raided the library a lot. Buying country records at the thrift stores. Bob Dylan was a huge influence, and also Koerner, Ray & Glover, an awesome Minneapolis folk trio. So, we just kind of stumbled into it, I guess.
PB: We definitely grew up listening to all kinds of music, and I grew up hearing all the alternative rock and grunge on the radio as a teenager. We both fell into this group of local musicians who were into folk music, and I almost don’t know how it happened. We kind of just found our people at the same time as we were discovering much of this music… old country and blues music, and stuff that we just had never heard. I didn’t grow up hearing 1940s and ’50s and ’60s blues and country, so for me, it was like a whole new world. Even stuff going back to the 1920s—it turns out, there was tons of music that actually had this great rawness to it that we really liked.
Although you’re brothers, you weren’t always a musical duo. If we could go back to the beginning for a moment, when did it click that the two of you should be playing together?
JT: It’s kind of just another thing we stumbled into. I was playing a little bit of music, trying to play out at bars and stuff when I was pretty young. We had started singing a couple songs together at home, around fires when we were hanging out with friends. At some point, I was playing a gig that I knew no one would be at, and I asked Page, ‘Hey, do you want to come and sing a few with me?’ That was, I think, the first time we played together at a bar. There were at least a few people there, and they dug it, and encouraged us to keep doing it.
PB: I think we both love music and listen to tons of music, and I had different family members who were playing in bands and things like that. So, the idea of being in a band wasn’t like, a totally foreign idea, but I didn’t think I would ever do that. I definitely was a shy kid growing up, so I had no drive to get on the stage and be in front of people. Some of the first gigs I played were playing drums with other people. But then, when I finally got on stage with Jack, singing, I realized the front of the stage is way different than the back of the stage, as far as feeling eyes on you. I just about left my body, I think, the first couple of gigs singing with Jack. It was a fun, intense feeling.
Your album, “Every Time I Think About You,” comes out on Aug. 30. How are you both feeling about this new release?
JT: We’re feeling busy. But it’s good, it’s fun to get new music out there. I think this is our first time releasing something in the summer, which is kind of a different experience.
You’ve said this album feels a lot like home, from recording at the iconic Creation Audio in Minneapolis to using cover artwork by George Morrison. What other elements of the project brought you back to your roots?
JT: We booked quite a bit of studio time in a row, like eight days or something in the studio. It was kind of the first time we’ve done that long of a session and everyone could leave, go home, and come back to the studio the next day. So, it was different than when we recorded in Chicago and were staying in a hotel or Airbnb or something. It was a homey experience to make it, getting to be in Minneapolis and making coffee in the studio every day. We got to hang out a lot in the process of pulling the songs together. We’d just hang out in the morning in Page’s basement and had the sun shining in, working on these new song ideas. So, we just had kind of a laid-back experience, which was great.
PB: And playing with our regular band lineup that we’ve been touring with the last few years now, and all those guys live right in the area, too. It’s kind of the opposite of going to some other city… let’s say we went to Nashville and just played with Nashville players, that would be like the complete opposite of how we’re doing things. We’re just kind of keeping it local.
I feel like this is your most Minnesotan album.
PB: Yeah, I think so. There’s the most Minnesotans playing on it. For the last several years, we’ve played a residency in January at the Turf Club, and we’ve done this for six years now, or something crazy like that. Right before we recorded this album, we were playing every week with our band. So, that kind of led right into the recording time. It was all a very fluid thing.
That’s sort of where things took off for you, at the Turf Club, where you recorded your first live album. How does it feel going back and performing there a decade or so later?
JT: It feels pretty special. When we started playing at the Turf Club, I don’t know why they let us. It was a really cool opportunity for us to get to play every week, and basically practice in public and play songs we didn’t even know yet. It was a really great experience. So, it’s pretty wild all these years later to have it be a packed house. It’s kind of mind-blowing.
PB: I think for me, in some ways, a lot has changed, but in a great way, nothing has changed either. We started our band just to have fun and really just for the love of the music, there was not a huge intention to conquer the world with our music or anything like that. And we haven’t conquered the world. We’ve toured and we’ve gone to a lot of places since then, but coming back to the Turf Club is a good reminder of where we came from. And it’s just really cool to have so many friends and local folks who have supported us, who were coming out to our very first shows—it’s pretty awesome and sweet of them to come out and see us year after year.
