Siri Undlin’s musical journey started at a very young age. The founding member and bandleader of Humbird, an outstanding Minneapolis-based folk project, is the daughter of a Lutheran preacher and she sang in the church’s choir as a child. Piano lessons and guitar tutorials soon followed and, by the time she was in middle school, she was regularly performing in Irish pubs in the Twin Cities as a member of a band called Celtic Club. While she’s been immersed in the arts for the majority of her life, Undlin continues to be driven by music and eager to keep creating.
Recently, during a day off from Humbird’s ongoing tour—which includes an April 21 performance at Anodyne in Walker’s Point—in belated support of 2021’s wonderful Still Life, Undlin spoke to My First Band host Tyler Maas about the tour, the process of making the album in isolation, Humbird’s Patreon page, and what’s to come. Along the way, the conversation touched upon her extensive musical history, formative experiences and relationships she made in the Minneapolis music scene in her teens and twenties, what early tours taught her, and why the process of songwriting will always seem magical.
My First Band is sponsored by Mystery Room Mastering and Lakefront Brewery. The show is edited by Jared Blohm. You can listen to My First Band on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you get podcasts. You can also listen to rebroadcasts of previous My First Band episodes on WMSE every Wednesday from noon to 12:30 p.m. CST. Music used in this episode comes courtesy of Devils Teeth (“The Junction Street Eight Tigers”) and Humbird (“Plum Sky”).