A Taste of Scandinavia with Thomas Kivi

“I am a product of Craig’s list,” singer/songwriter Thomas Kivi declares when I arrive at his rented pad in the Seward neighbor. “I found this apartment there. I found my roommates there. I found my job there. The only thing I haven’t found on Craig’s list is a girlfriend.”

“That’s one thing you don’t want to find online,” I say. “Believe me.”

Thomas Kivi does not look like a “thinking man’s songwriter” described on his MySpace page. He looks like a grown-up Dennis the Menace crossed with a Swedish jock. If his appearance doesn’t unmoor me enough, Thomas flips my usual interview routine on its head. He wants to play first, eat later. He leads me upstairs to his bedroom and we sit on mattresses opposite one another.

Thomas pulls out his laptop and puts on what may be his only upbeat song.

“If anything of mine is going to get airplay, it’s this,” he says.

He’s right. The tune is quirky, effervescent pop with a chorus that goes:

You can’t do everything with all of your tomorrows/But you can do anything today

“Aside from this song, I feel like I don’t belong in any particular genre. Am I really a folk artist? Who would I open for? Who would I share a bill with?”

Thomas’s influences include Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, and Townes van Zandt. His aural idol is (surprise!) Bob Dylan. (Even he rolls his eyes when he tells me this.)

“It took me a long time to get off him...but Dylan helped me understand what a song is and what it can do. And he did everything right.”

Thomas must be doing something right himself. He’s played plenty around town and his tune “Freedom Dues” was praised by music critic Jim Walsh as "a heartfelt mélange of complicated images and emotions that seeks to define the times, and succeeds. No mean feat."

“I think of my songs as vignettes,” Thomas says. “I’m painting what I see with words.”

It wasn’t always that way. A self-described “odd ball”, Thomas is the former goalie of a high school hockey team that won the Wisconsin state championship. Shifting from corporeal to cerebral achievements, he went on to college but became disenchanted with education after spending his junior year in England. Being in a completely new environment made him come to grips with how dissatisfied he was with his old life.

“That trip made me question everything. Why bother memorizing information if you’re not going to take it with you into the world? What’s the point of writing a thesis on a topic so particular that only twenty people on campus are going to understand it? Academia was based on blowing smoke in lecture halls and it had stopped all of my creative activity.”

Once he began songwriting, Thomas knew it would be impossible to go back to the way things were.

“You can’t just save truth for the classroom,” he says. “If you believe in something, you’ve got to do it. You have to be willing to take yourself out of a comfortable position.”

(I wish I could giggle at the pun potential of "just doing it in uncomfortable positions", but this doesn't feel like the place for that kind of repartee. Unfortunately.)

Thomas sighs, seemingly exhausted just by the retelling of his school troubles.

“Those days seem so far away now,” he says.

These days, the most important thing to Thomas is making music. Meaningful music. “And I think people want that…because as a listener, I want that. My goal is to provide a way for people to address uncomfortable issues, like suicide and depression. They’re not going to be the kind of songs that you want to listen to all the time, but at the right time, a song can act as a bridge between two people. If you’re riding in a car with someone and a song about a tough subject comes on, it might start a conversation.”

It seems like a sentiment way too mature to come out of a 24-year-old. I tell him so.

“I feel way too old,” Thomas replies. “But I like those subjects. They’re challenging.”

Even more challenging for Thomas is the publicity side of the music industry. “Everyone has a recording these days. Every band has a website. It takes a lot of ingenuity and creativity to make it. You have to find a unique way to promote yourself. Even if you hire someone to help you, that person might be invested in the band, but they don’t have a relationship with you.”

Thomas does have a few people on his team, though. He’s recorded with one of my former interviewees, Dan Zamzow, is working closely with Matthew Griswold, and his debut album (recorded in a dining room on Grand Avenue) is being produced by Johnny Parker.

“The album is not what it would have been had I done it on my own,” Thomas says. Which is a good thing…but it still lacks a title. I ask what the top contenders are.

“Fair Warning or Fight or Flight. But I also like I Know because it can mean different things depending on the context." Thomas shrugs. "I don't know. Hey--maybe it should be called I Don’t Know!”



Thomas has plenty of time to debate; the album won’t be released until next year. This fall, he’s going to be touring Europe with his friend and fellow musician, Sarah Pray. When they return, Thomas is planning on renting out The Varsity Theater for his release show, which is, as far as venues in the Twin Cities go, rather optimistic.

“Image is everything,” he says. “It’s like getting the new Suburban even if you don’t have the family to fill it yet.”

Long-term, Thomas’s musical aspirations are more humble. “I want to be supported enough to focus solely on music. As long as I have a place to stay and food to eat, I’m good.”

Until then, he’s keeping his day job: waiting tables at Taste of Scandinavia, a suburban bakery and cafe. Speaking of which, my stomach is composing its own symphony right now…yet Thomas seems excessively hesitant to proceed with the culinary portion of our interview.

When I ask why, he says, “I don’t cook much because I eat at work.”

Downstairs, Thomas shows me his cupboard as proof. It is perhaps the most pathetic collection of edibles I’ve seen thus far: artificially flavored cereal in freaky hues, a jar of olive oil, coffee filters…and that’s about it.



“I like good food,” Thomas says. “But I’ll eat anything.”

Luckily, nothing he’s preparing for me comes from that cupboard. Today, Thomas is going to recreate the Norwegian Lefse Breakfast from his workplace…but not without a hearty side of nervousness. He gathers the ingredients clumsily, clatters pans, and asks me more than once how high to set the burner. When my past interviewees told me they couldn’t cook, it was usually their humility speaking. In Thomas’s case, it’s completely true.

Thomas plops one large round of lefse in a skillet over low heat, grabs a couple eggs, then looks at me for guidance.

“Um…you should probably scramble the eggs first,” I tell him. “In a separate skillet.”

Thomas unearths the proper equipment and cracks a couple eggs inside.

“How do you scramble eggs?” Thomas asks. He’s totally serious.

“I don’t know if there’s a technique…” I say. “I just move them around with the spatula until they’re cooked.”

“I suppose that is the definition of ‘scramble’,” Thomas says, dropping hand-torn hunks of ham into the pan. “I got in trouble for cutting on the countertop," he admits meekly, pointing to several long scars in the woodwork, earmarked by a post-it that says, Please use cutting board! Thank goodness we're doing this in his kitchen, not mine!



"Hmm…" Thomas says, staring into the skillet. "I think it’s gotta be cheesier. Like a quesadilla. You can’t go wrong with a quesadilla. Right?”

Let's hope not. Thomas dumps almost an entire bag of shredded mozzarella into the pan. After barely saving the lefse from burning, he scrapes the cheesy eggs and ham from the pan and folds them inside the folds of potato tortilla, then slides the monster Scandinavian creation onto a plate.

“Half of the appeal of food is how it looks,” Thomas tells me.

In that case, this should be pretty good. And it is. But as Thomas’s roommate, who passes through the kitchen just long enough to taste test says, “It needs something…”

The three of us silently savor and brainstorm.

“Onions, maybe?” the roomie suggests. “Basil?”

Thomas mentally takes inventory of what kind of condiment would be the magic bullet.

“A-1? Taco sauce?”

“Don’t go there,” I say.

He does…by dumping “a lake” of BBQ sauce on his side of the plate. I audibly disapprove, but Thomas nods approvingly at his improvisation.



Perhaps I’ve just had too many eggs at this point in the Rock Star Guest Chef series, but I’m not terribly egg-cited about this lefse melt. It desperately needs a little spice (make whatever sexual associations you feel would be inappropriate here). Then again, everyone’s palate is different, and what’s a “meh” for me might be a “wow” on somebody else's tongue.

That’s not an insult to Thomas’s cooking skills (or lack thereof); I mean, no one can be an egg-spert at everything. (Have you heard me sing?) And, considering that Scandinavians are sort of bland in temperament and taste, perhaps according to their standards, this might hit their spot. But Thomas is not hitting mine...in the clean or dirty context.

“There’s an experience to cooking,” Thomas muses as he polishes off the rest of the wannabe quesadilla. He seems proud of his edible accomplishment. “That lefse melt filled me up. In a good way.”

But only temporarily. Within minutes, Thomas turns to me and asks, “Is it wrong that I want a big bowl of Fruit Loops right now?”

“Yes!” I say.

“How about sherbert?”

I shake my head. This bachelor’s diet is bad. And not even in a good-bad way.

“Hey, one of my roommates used to eat Hot Pockets,” Thomas tells me. “That’s a step below frozen pizza. That’s a travesty.”



It took me over a week of procrastination to write this post. Since I don't believe in writer's block, I tried to analyze why (because we all know how effective over-thinking is). Eventually, I realized that resistant this fierce is usually a sign that I’m avoiding confrontation with some uncomfortable truth.

So what was it about this interview that mirrored my current circumstances too closely?

Well, save for a few brief flirtations (Hello!!! The Goondas!!!), life has been excruciatingly quiet lately. There’s a big, aching emptiness (and I’m not talking anatomically, though there is that, too) where a boyfriend used to be.

That’s not a cue to boo-hoo. I’m actually pleasantly surprised at how little I miss New Dude. And while the Universe has been kind enough to balance out the boyfriend-less-ness by surrounding me with hordes of men, none of those relationships are sexual (yet…heh heh). Perhaps there’s a lesson for me there...like how to be intimate with the opposite sex and still stay fully clothed. I will admit, it is nice to have guy friends I can count on, who show up when they say they will and stroke my ego without expecting a blow job in return. (I must say, though, I might like you better if we slept together. LMFAO.)

Perhaps my interview with Thomas was a reminder to value the blandness of certain interactions…because it doesn’t always have to be habanero hot to be nourishing. I can only hope that giving my taste buds a break from all that sweat-inducing spiciness will help me appreciate it that much more when it, ahem, cums around.

So that’s my ah-ha moment for this post. Below, you’ll find my approximation of Thomas’s recipe (with a few tweaks from the original), but you’d probably be better off going to Taste of Scandinavia and having Thomas serve you something hot and fresh from their kitchen instead.

A clip of Thomas’s song “Bridalveil Falls” (about the consequences of untreated mental illness) follows; if you’d like to hear him croon in person, he’ll be performing at The Fine Line on August 30th and his send-off show with Sarah Pray is at The 400 Bar on September 18th. Beyond that, you can visit his MySpace page for more info on his European tour.

Finally, to view the photo album from the Lefse Melt afternoon, visit Man Eater's Facebook Page.



THOMAS KIVI’S LEFSE MELT

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
6 eggs
6 ounces ham, diced
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
2 large rounds lefse
½ cup salsa
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Ingredients

• Melt butter in skillet over medium heat.

• Crack eggs into bowl and whisk until uniform. Pour into skillet.

• Add ham to skillet; scramble.

• Meanwhile, warm lefse rounds in separate skillet on low heat.

• When eggs are set, sprinkle with cheese and transfer to lefse. Top with salsa, salt and pepper, then fold lefse in half and press edges to seal. Remove from heat and let rest until cheese has melted and eggs have cooled enough to eat.

• Have at it. But don’t get too eggcited. It’s so NOT Scandinavian to show emotion.