The hardest working woman in the Twin Cities music scene steps out

After years serving as a sidewoman, talent booker and advocate, Christy Costello returns to the mic with her first solo album.

By Chris Riemenschneider Star Tribune

February 13, 2024 — 6:01am

Christy Costello was in such a hurry to leave the Iron Range and become a part of the Twin Cities music scene that she left home at age 17 and moved in with some musician friends to finish high school in Minneapolis.

"People from the city would come up north in the summer, and I'd get really excited as the small-town girl getting to meet somebody like me now," the Eveleth native recalled.

That was 30 years ago now, and Costello hasn't looked back.

Not when the punky bands she poured her heart into dissolved, including Pink Mink, Ouija Radio and the Von Bondies. Not when her hard work as a talent booker ended at long-gone venues such as the Hexagon Bar and Stasiu's.

Not after she became a parent 10 years ago. Not after she had to advocate for women in the music scene in recent years after decades of enduring harassment.

Not even after the pandemic left her, her bass-playing husband and so many others in the music scene scrambling to find other work.

In fact, the COVID-19 lockdown ultimately benefited Costello in at least one way. For once, the Iron Range castaway — who became and remains one of the busiest musicians, bookers and champions in the Twin Cities music scene — had time to come up for air.

"I kept playing in other bands, and I kept having the itch to write my own songs, but I just never had the time," said Costello, now 47.

"When the pandemic started, I had all this [home-recording] equipment and software. But I'd just been too busy to figure it all out."

Costello has a new album to prove she figured it all out.

Titled "From the Dark," the loud-cranking, hook-laden 12-song collection is her first LP ever issued under her own name — and her first album of new songs since Pink Mink's 2011 self-titled album.

In the interim, Costello has mostly been playing in other people's bands, including "Compression" hitmaker Monica LaPlante's and ex-Phantom Tails leader Orion Treon's new group, Extraterrestrials.

Not surprisingly, LaPlante and Treon — who play in each other's bands, too — are also now serving as backup players on Costello's record, which they're celebrating with a release party Saturday at 7th St. Entry.

"Everywhere she goes, she creates community," LaPlante said of Costello, calling her mentor of sorts "a dedicated and passionate musician who puts so much raw energy into her performance. She has an eye for recognizing and appreciating that in others as well."

"It just works with us!" Costello explained of the three-way gig with LaPlante and Treon, which includes splitting rehearsal space and time for each other's acts.

"We can all talk about our different styles and what we're going for, and we all understand what the other wants. Each of us has our own nuances, but we understand each other's nuances."

Costello's various shades are on bright display on "From the Dark." There's a classic girl-group influence amid all the punk fuzz and rock bombast in new songs like the truly radioactive single "Uranium Baby," the fun Gen-X ode, "Campbell's Soup Kids," and the Smoking Popes cover "Need You Around."

There's also a lot of good-ol'-fashioned angst in tunes such as the 2020-election-inspired "Great Divide" and "In God We Trust Fund," the latter featuring local rap master Carnage the Executioner in what Costello called "the Vincent Price role."

Through it all, "From the Dark" feeds on a discernable amount of pent-up energy and saved-up material after Costello spent many years being a sidewoman.

"I learned to play bass to play with Monica, and that inspired me a lot," said Costello, who's mostly donned guitars in bands going back to Ouija Radio in the late '90s. "I really think I'd become a better musician overall, and that just added to me having the songwriting bug."

She also admired LaPlante's approach as a solo artist, she said: "Monica just came out as herself, under her own name writing songs from her own perspective. I'd always been in bands, never my own thing.

"When you do it under your own name, you can keep playing your songs no matter what — it doesn't matter so much who's playing with you."

She said she'll also occasionally pull in Pink Mink and Ouija Radio songs into her live sets. The Von Bondies, conversely, were a Detroit band that she joined in 2009 as a guitarist after they had already signed a big record deal. Costello spent two eye-opening years touring with them.

"It was a great experience," she recalled, "but I saw what happens with bands on major labels, having different management for different parts of the world. I saw how the wheels are all greased and how complicated it gets, and decided I could never work like that."

So Costello rededicated herself to the DIY scene in the Twin Cities. Around the same time she also became a mom to daughter Hollis, now 10, and a wife to Paddy Costello, bassist for the long-revered punk band Dillinger Four. Mr. Costello guests on one track of Mrs. Costello's record, "Sus," but otherwise the couple mostly keep their musical lives separate now.

Costello still has her day job filling the nightly music calendars and serving as hypewoman at Palmer's and Dusty's. Both of the vintage bars have gained new life under her watch, including the increase in outdoor gigs on the Palmer's patio and the launch of the Dusty Daze block party outside Dusty's in July.

"She works her ass off for Palmer's," confirmed Sarah Dwyer, the bar's owner. "We are blessed to have her on our team. Her talent for booking gets people to Palmer's who might not otherwise venture to the West Bank."

Costello, in turns, raved about the "awesome all-woman team" at Palmer's (also including bar manager Emily Jacobson) and both bars' "support of rock 'n' roll, and me and what I believe in."

After 30 years in Minneapolis, it's pretty clear where Costello's faith lies.

"This scene always sort of refreshes itself," she concluded.

"There's always new people, new life getting into it. There are no smoke and mirrors in it. What you see is what you get. I embrace that and still get excited by it."