About Jim Walsh
Jim Walsh is an award-winning author, journalist, writer, and songwriter from Minneapolis. A columnist for the Southwest Journal and regular contributor to MinnPost.com, his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages, and many other publications. He is the author of Fear & Loving in South Minneapolis; Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes: Jim Walsh on Music from Minneapolis to the Outer Limits; Gold Experience: Following Prince in the ’90s; and The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting. A father of two (Henry and Helen!) and sometime teacher at the Loft Literary Center, Walsh is the ringleader behind the longtime singer/songwriter showcase The Mad Ripple Hootenanny. His new band, Jim Walsh and the Dog Day Cicadas, has recorded two releases, “Songs For The Band To Learn” (2017) and “Shout It Out To You” (2022). He lives in Minneapolis with his partner Mary Beth Hanson and their two cats, Rumi and Rilke.
Articles written by Jim Walsh
Model Lawyer
How Kristi Anderson Wells’ life as a Ford model paved the way to a successful family law practiceSince its inception in 1946, Ford Models has been credited with launching the careers of actresses Kim Basinger and Lindsay Lohan, and supermodels Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley. Now add a Super Lawyers selectee. Kristi Anderson Wells, a family law attorney at Gutterman Griffiths in Littleton, didn’t exactly “meet cute” with Ford co-founder Eileen Ford. In 1980, Ford saw the 14-year-old Seattle ballet student at a modeling audition and told her: “You will never be a model. …
The Counter-Balancing Force
Dan Gustafson doesn’t shy away from representing society’s biggest pariahsIn late 2003, 22-year-old University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin was abducted from a Grand Forks mall parking lot. After a search that lasted five months, Sjodin’s body was found near Crookston, not far from the home of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a Level III sex offender who had recently been released after completing a 23-year prison term. Rodriguez was ultimately convicted in federal court of Sjodin’s abduction and stabbing death, and now sits on death row at the U.S. Penitentiary …
Bring Me Your Poor (nah), Your Tired (please), Your Electrical Engineers (maybe)
Nancy Elkind on the dysfunction of U.S. immigration policy“When I first started, there were only a handful of immigration lawyers [here], and people would go, ‘Really? Immigration in Denver? What do you do?’” One of the things Nancy Elkind does these days is explain something about immigration law, since the rhetoric, particularly during election cycles, can get a little heated. Take Donald Trump’s promise to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants in his first 18 months as president. “It’s frustrating, because immigration law is very …
The Man From Luck
Ardell Skow has spent 50 years taking personal injury cases in northwestern WisconsinArdell “Dell” Skow was born and raised and currently lives in the town of Luck, Wis., former home to the Duncan Toys yo-yo factory, population 1,100. “When I’m not there, I like to say I’m out of Luck,” Skow says with a smile. He also says, “You are where you come from.” The childhood he describes is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. “My dad always respected everybody in town. We’d go into town on Saturday night and I’d get a quarter as a kid, and we’d watch …
Finding the Good
Deborah Ellis defends cops and the people arrested by themLast year in early December, Deborah Ellis jumped on the Green Line near her office in downtown St. Paul for the 40-minute trip to the Hennepin County Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. As usual, Ellis—a respected defense attorney and a no-nonsense but acutely empathetic woman whose clients have included killers, child pornographers, sex offenders, child abusers, Hell’s Angels, and police officers accused with brutality—used her travel time to prepare for an appearance in court. As the …
Helping Those Who Help Those
Russell Kemp’s pro bono work with Habitat for HumanityRussell Kemp’s connection to Habitat for Humanity started with one email 13 years ago. It came from the American Bar Association, asking if anyone could work pro bono for Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. “They had a project they needed help on, which turned out to be the first multi-family community condo that Habitat did in Colorado,” says Kemp, a real estate attorney at Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe. “So I got to work on a groundbreaking project.” You could say it was in …
Strength From Loss
Tragedy inspired nonprofit law attorney Karen Leaffer to provide community service and disaster reliefTragedy set Karen Leaffer on her current path. In 1998, Leaffer gave birth to twins, but one of them passed away shortly afterward. “You’re faced with ‘What do I do? What’s next?’” says Leaffer. “I decided that my job is to help, and have a positive impact on the world.” So when the Columbine shooting shook the world the next year, Leaffer worked on creating a fund for the school’s victims and their families. It was just the beginning of her disaster relief efforts. Leaffer, …
Too Sexy for My … Job?
Employment defense attorney Samantha N. Hoffman, scion of a surfing clan, on gender-plus discrimination casesIn 2010, the Village Voice ran a cover story on Debrahlee Lorenzana, a woman who claimed she was fired as a business banker in New York for being “too distracting” for male colleagues. The story, as they say, went viral; it was the most-read Village Voice story of the year. It also brought attention to a growing trend in workplace bias. “They are called gender-plus discrimination cases—the plus being some characteristic that is in addition to gender where men and women are not being …
O Coach, My Coach
What Lester J. Friedman learned from John WoodenIn his mission to best represent his clients, Lester J. Friedman cites the influence of one man. It’s not another lawyer; it’s a basketball coach. “John Wooden was my teacher, and he was a teacher,” says Friedman, who was a student-manager for the UCLA Bruins during the beginning of the team’s history-making 88-game undefeated streak in the early 1970s. “This man would have been successful in any vocation he decided to go into. It happened to be teaching, and teaching young men …
A Hollywood (Hills) Ending
How Gregory L. Bentley and Inner City Law Center helped tenants who didn’t know their rights—or that they had anyWhen Ashley Parris, a senior staff attorney at Inner City Law Center, asked Gregory L. Bentley to help litigate a low-income housing case, pro bono, it didn’t take him long to say yes. “You always feel compelled to help the little guy, and I’ve always admired those that did pro bono work and helped the least of these,” says Bentley, a married father of three whose main work is insurance litigation at Shernoff Bidart Echeverria Bentley. “It’s something I always wanted to do and I …
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