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
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 …
Lennon Law
How Leon Wildes helped John Lennon stay in the city he loved“I didn’t expect I’d be talking about the Bible this morning,” says Leon Wildes, but it hardly slows him down. “I was going to be a rabbi,” he continues, “and in college I studied the Bible. And in the Bible, in some 34 instances, probably the most repeated mandate is ‘Love the stranger.’ I have found that as a kind of byword in my professional life.” Wildes wound up founding, not a temple, but Wildes & Weinberg, an immigration firm that takes to heart not only that …
The Republican from Harvard
Don't try to pigeonhole Chris Ward; you're sure to get him wrongAnyone attempting to track the meandering trajectory of Chris Ward's legal career would be well-advised to use a telescope with a wide lens. Ward, who focuses on complex appeals and Supreme Court litigation for Yetter, Warden & Coleman, in Austin, has followed an impressive—if unorthodox—path to legal success. Consider: He is the biracial child of an unwed mother, adopted as an infant in 1969 by a white United Church of Christ minister and his wife who had been active in the civil …
Three Kings and a $25,000 Pot
Rick Daly found a novel way to finalize the deal—pokerWhat would you get if Sergio Leone met Denny Crane? Meet Rick Daly. Daly, a young hot-shot attorney with Houston's Caddell & Chapman, was negotiating a mid-six-figure settlement with one of several defendants in a lawsuit he filed on behalf of a couple who had lost their son in a grain elevator accident. After much negotiation, both sides were $25,000 apart. The defendant instructed the lawyer to offer the last $25,000 up for chance. "Flip you for it," said the lawyer. "Why?" asked Daly. …
Into Africa
Angela Spivey finds meaning half a world awayFive years ago, Angela Spivey wasn't feeling it. "It was a lack of fulfillment," she says. "You set certain goals in your career: ‘I want to make partner, I want to make equity, I want to do this.' And you conquer them all and then you find yourself still feeling a little unfulfilled. You want something more meaningful." That impulse led the 36-year-old products liability litigator for McGuireWoods in Atlanta to embark on missionary work in Africa. For the past five years, Spivey has taken a …
I Remember Mamaliga
For Andrei Iancu, the good ol' days are nowRead this intellectual property lawyer's list of successes, and you'd swear you were summarizing the long career of a silver-haired veteran of the bar. Large-scale, big-money victories representing TiVo and Immersion Corp. and defense of St. Jude Medical and eBay in various patent infringement cases have made Andrei Iancu, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella, one of the leading IP lawyers in California. He also just turned 40. A native of Bucharest, Romania, Iancu came to …
America’s Two Favorite Pastimes
Where sports and business intersect, you'll find Adam KleinAdam R. Klein seems to have the dream job of every sports junkie and Monday morning quarterback in this game-happy nation. The guy serves as outside counsel to the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls, and as close adviser to their owner, Jerry Reinsdorf. He also represents the Oakland Athletics, the Chicago Fire and the San Jose Earthquakes. But Klein, 37, a partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman in Chicago, whose main practice area is securities law, isn't overly impressed with himself. "Quite …
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