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
A Better Way
Nancy Zalusky Berg advocates for family law clients and human rightsThe Frida Kahlo painting “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair” depicts the Mexican artist in an oversized men’s suit sitting in a chair, scissors in her lap, strands of long black locks strewn on the floor at her feet. The 1940 painting came on the heels of the artist’s divorce from her unfaithful husband, Diego Rivera, and was followed the next year by Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Braid,” which recasts the wounded woman with a full head of stacked hair, blossoming anew. The paintings …
The Real Deal
How personal injury attorney James Michael Kelley III outwits the expertsIn Sidney Lumet's 1982 courtroom drama The Verdict, Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a down-on-his-luck attorney who brings a medical malpractice suit against a Boston hospital. His client’s family wants justice for the girl’s comatose state due to the doctors’ negligence. The fi lm’s climactic summation scene continues to inspire attorneys of all stripes, including James “Jay” Michael Kelley III, who has handled medical malpractice cases for 20 years. “You know, so much of …
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Courtroom
Labe Richman’s monologue benefits the Immigrant Defense Project“I’ve always had a desire to perform,” Labe M. Richman says. The 56-year-old criminal attorney appeared in high school plays and studied acting in college, and in 2003, he created the course “Effective Trial Communication Techniques: The Application of Advertising, Drama and Psychology to Trials,” which earned him an award from the New York County Lawyers Association for innovative continuing legal education. Then there’s the courtroom itself, where Richman has made a living for …
The Peaceful Warrior
Windle Turley fights for gun controlAsk Windle Turley if he has any thoughts on the Trayvon Martin shooting, and he’ll say he’s got nothing to add to the discussion. Then his answer comes like a spray of bullets. “Starting in the mid-‘80s, for eight or 10 years, we focused on trying to develop remedies in the common law that would curtail the unlimited access to handguns by potential wrongdoers,” says Turley, sitting in the offices of the Turley Law Firm he shares with four other attorneys, including his daughter, …
The Advocate
Jim Schwebel is in the business of rebuilding livesThere’s no observation deck on the top of the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis, so these days the best God’s eye view of these prairie towns is the one from the offices of Schwebel Goetz & Sieben on the IDS’s 51st floor. From here, the naked eye can spy a flat-earth panorama of the Twin Cities that spans Target Field, the State Fair Space needle, the Guthrie Theater, the Gold Medal Flour and Grain Belt Beer signs, the Mississippi River, and, perhaps most significantly, the rebuilt …
Counter Rhythms
Paul F. Cohen hears them in jazz and the lawAlbert Einstein once said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Thankfully, some hardy souls—jazz drummer/vocalist and attorney Paul F. Cohen, for one—have managed to meld the servant with the gift. “It’s all music to me. Music is life,” says Cohen, taking a break from rehearsing for his CD-release party at the Hollywood Studio Bar & Grill for his first …
Professional Calm
Daphne Webb stays level in the emotionally charged area of family law“There is one piece of advice that I would give everybody,” says family law lawyer Daphne Webb, leaning forward in her chair. “In fact, I’d put it across their forehead backward so that when they look in the mirror they’d see it every day. And that piece of advice is: Don’t take things so personally.” The windows of Webb’s orderly ninth-floor office at Stafford Rosenbaum look out over Madison’s two biggest lakes and the state Capitol dome, where a historic fight between …
The Problem Solver
Brian Kabateck’s grandparents survived the Armenian genocide; now he represents the descendants of those who didn’tWhen the author and teacher William Arthur Ward said, “It is wise to direct your anger toward problems, not people; to focus your energies on answers, not excuses,” he could have been talking about Brian Kabateck. Start with the case of Leon Robbins, a retired, African-American railroad worker whose South Central L.A. home was damaged by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. When an insurance representative came around, he assessed the damage at $7,200 against a $7,400 deductible; Robbins was …
The Very Model of a Modern General Litigator
Brian Goodman has fun every summer with Gilbert and SullivanArthur Sullivan, the composer, wasn’t, but W.S. Gilbert, the lyricist, was. And that accounts for some of the themes in their now-century-old operettas. “Gilbert was a lawyer,” says Brian S. Goodman, a general litigation attorney in Baltimore who moonlights as general manager of the Young Victorian Theatre, aka “the Young Vic,” which exclusively performs Gilbert and Sullivan shows two weekends every summer. “Their first operetta together was called Trial by Jury, which was a …
Corner Man
Former cop Ed Harness is empathetic and unintimidatedWhen the going gets tough, Ed Harness looks at his hand. “I can look down and see where I had stitches from somebody who tried to hit me with an axe handle,” says the former military and Milwaukee policeman-turned-bankruptcy attorney, describing an incident from his days on the force. “I hit him in the mouth, and his tooth cut my hand, my finger. Going into dark basements, experiencing near-death, fire scenes, shootings; it puts things in perspective. While helping people with debt …
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