JoAnn Riedl/Food Menu/GFA

Friday Night - 7:00pm - JoAnn Riedl

JoAnn Riedl, the leader of the all-girl punk rock band The Barrettes, returns to Stumpjack for a solo acoustic concert. Riedl's performances combine elements of folk, punk, and rock and alternate between gentle songs of introspection and aggressive wailers that make you wonder how much longer her guitar strings will survive. The woman also does not use any electronics or amplification for her acoustic sets. She is an uncommonly confident and fearless performer who doesn't need anything more than her voice and a guitar (and maybe an extra set of strings).

Riedl has earned a fiercely loyal following and a reputation as an intense and sincere performer, whether playing before a small bar crowd or before hundreds of fans at large events like Summerfest. Her coffee-shop performances are not for those looking to spend a quiet couple hours reading a book to some mellow background folk music. Her singing and playing demand your attention as she prowls back and forth across the floor with guitar and belts out some stick-it-to-the-man anthem, or sits cross-legged on a chair with a banjo (yes, a banjo) in her lap and sings about love and life.

poster says 8pm but the show really starts at 7pm. Poster by Cheyenne Smith.

JoAnn Riedl is one of those artists who I consider to be a "must-see" musician, as much for her music as for the experience of seeing someone who performs "bigger" than whatever venue (coffee-shop or festival stage) it is that she happens to be in at the time.

Riedl will be performing with special guest David Salentine

Food Menu

As many of you who have lunch with us at Stumpjack know, our menu changes from week to week, even day to day, depending on what we find at the farmers markets or pick from our garden, and even on whim or interesting recipes we come across. We've been working on our food menu for the past month or two, attempting to expand it and bring just a little more consistency to it in some areas. We will continue to do things "of the moment" - there's a lot of pleasure in finding some fresh beets or figs, for example, at the market and coming up with something for the next day's menu.

But we also want to expand the menu into something that we can print and that people can take with them. We used to do that...have printed menus available with all of our drinks and a general outline of food offerings. I'm not exactly sure when or why we got away from that, but we do want to evolve that into more of a menu with some consistent food offerings. And "consistent" will likely be a seasonal term, as for the most part we want to continue to morph the menu around what things are in season and what we can get from local growers and farmers.

Anyway, it's something we're working on and hope to wrap up this month. In the meantime just keep abreast of the Stumpjack Coffee Facebook updates with what's on the menu for each week or better yet just stop by for lunch between 11:00 and 2:00 Wednesday through Saturday.

GFA

We don't yet know if we earned any kudos from Fox Cities Magazine in the Golden Fork Award balloting. But we did do the drawing for the big coffee gift basket for everyone who told us that they voted in the event. I used a cool little random name generator installed on my laptop, called "The Hat," to draw the winning name. Lea Holz, our talented friend formerly of Sheboygan and now in Boulder, Colorado was the name drawn. Lea was scheduled to perform at Stumpjack later this month during a visit to Wisconsin, but she had to cancel her trip for now. She promised to reschedule when she can in fact make the journey, so all you disappointed Lea Holz fans will ultimately be rewarded for your patience.