My brother Matt and I talked with the City Pages about our upcoming shows at the Bryant Lake Bowl and Pantages Theatre. Read about our love for the Twin Cities, our admiration for Prince’s selling tickets to his drummer audition, and of the complexities of having siblings in a band.

ON Jan 24th I’m going to play a “Words and Music by Dan Wilson” show at Room 5 in Hollywood. These “Words and Music” shows are a chance for me to play songs I rarely get to play, and to talk a little more than usual about aspects of songwriting and my path as an artist. The last one was fun for me and hopefully interesting and/or inspiring for those of you who were there, and I’m excited to do it again.

Today I would like to share with you, in what seems to be the beginnings of a new holiday tradition, my illustrated video for “Are You Lonely Tonight, Mrs. Claus?” It’s a song I wrote a few years ago with Craig Wright of the Tropicals, and I will be showing it to you every year until they shut down the internet. I hope you dig it.

I greet you from bright and absurdly temperate Los Angeles, where I’ve now lived with my family for more than two years. For a couple of months I’ve been taking the lack of winter for granted. But today as I strolled across a parking lot to my car, it suddenly struck me very strange to feel the sun warming my shoulders on December 6th.

Christmas sneaks up on a Minnesotan in a hot clime. Living in southern California, my body misses the progression towards the holidays: the slow change in the trees and in the air from summer to fall, then the first delicate snows on brown grass, then an inward turning of the psyche into a wrap of protective melancholy, and then the comforting sound of hopeful, super-sad of Christmas carol melodies on tinny speakers of commercial zones.

Here’s a good reason to buy a physical CD. Everybody gather ’round. I’d been listening to and loving the new Ben Fold Five album, “The Sound of the Life of the Mind,” but listening to it online. Back in the spring, Ben and I got together for several days to play music, listen to stuff, and talk. We didn’t write any songs, but a lot of good talk happened, partly about his upcoming BFF album, and partly just telling tales and comparing notes about being musicians. Anyway, the other day I went into Amoeba Music and bought the album, and was delighted to see this credit in the insert. “Philosopher.” I’ll take it.

Here is a song I’m really proud of, “The Great Escape.” Pink and I wrote it together in a funky and cool hippie hang-out studio in Venice, CA, and every time I listen I’m blown away by her vocal performance. I produced a whole 60s country AM radio version of the track, a la Skeeter Davis, but in the end she wanted me to make it vocal/piano/orchestra. A good call in the end.

Well, the show at Largo was the best ever. Sean said from the stage that it had been more than a year since I’d joined them. Good to be back!