Like most of us, Rainer Fronz and Conan Neutron hadn’t planned on a global pandemic bringing the world to a halt in 2020.
Unlike most of us, they had planned on hosting a big punk music festival over Memorial Day weekend.
“It was all booked,” says Fronz, who has been active in the Twin Cities music scene for decades, and who now runs Learning Curve Records. “We were going to do it at Palmer's, Part Wolf, the Turf Club, and Terminal Bar. It was going to be upstairs and downstairs at the Turf Club. It was going to be pretty crazy.”
After their plans fell through, you could forgive Fronz and Neutron for stepping away from the idea. But the DIY spirit is indomitable and the dream of Caterwaul would not die; the organizers rebounded in 2022, scaling down just a bit and confining themselves to Palmer’s and Mortimer’s. The following year they added the 331 Club to the lineup. Caterwaul is now in its fourth year, growing just a bit with each iteration.
Fronz was initially inspired by the PRF Barbecue in Louisville, an annual event that gathered bands from the broader area and acted as a kind of “family” reunion. There was also a more selfish reason, he jokes: “I was getting older and thought, 'Instead of going to shows all the time, why don't I just do one big show?'”
And Caterwaul has indeed become a big show. This year 40 bands—including locals like Unstable Shapes and Upright Forms (they are different bands, get ’em straight!) as well as prominent touring bands like Young Widows and FACS—will play over four days at three separate clubs. The latest addition to the venue roster is Zhora Darling in Northeast, which will host a late night bill on Saturday.
This year, Fronz was excited to snag Pissed Jeans, the Pennsylvania hardcore band with a history of missing Minnesota shows. ("Every time they were supposed to play here it was either their van broke down or there was a blizzard or something,” he says.) But like any festival, Caterwaul isn’t just a chance to catch your favorite bands, but a shot to experience one-of-a-kind moments, like Shannon Selberg fronting San Francisco hardcore legends Flipper in 2023. And sometimes those moments are serendipitous.
“When Tongue Party’s bass player was out sick, they didn’t cancel. Instead, they pulled off an impromptu noise/dance/beat set with Wes from Burlesque Design,” Fronz recalls. “What could have been a setback turned into a wild, improvised stew of rhythm and chaos. It was both awesome and a total ‘fuck it, we do what we want’ move.”
Nikki Post, singer/guitarist for In Lieu, who’ll play Zhora this year, lights up recalling a 2024 set by CNTS.
“They just started chucking out little plastic ball-pit balls just everywhere,” she says. “And they were just flying. I felt like I was in a gumball machine at one point. And it was just such a funny thing to have during the set outside at Palmer's just everybody continuously chucking these things. I kept one because I was so excited.”
One of the younger acts to play Caterwaul this year, In Lieu first attended as paying customers in 2023, “Chatpile played in the smallest spot I think I'd ever see them play,” Post says. The band played Caterwaul for the first time in 2024, at Palmer’s, and found even the setbacks—like intermittent storms—added to the experience.
"They'd have to move a set inside and then it would clear up and they'd move it back outside and then it’d rain again they'd have to keep doing it,” Post says. “So, for the last few sets, we were just watching and the whole crowd just moved from room to room.”
The “outdoor summer festival” vibe that creates frenzied moments like that is something Fronz wants to preserve. And there’s another reason he wants to keep Caterwaul a largely open-air event. “Three days of heavy, loud, abrasive music in your face in an indoor setting can be a lot—even for me, and I like all this stuff.”
Caterwaul
With: A whole lotta bands
Where: Mortimer’s, Palmer’s, 331 Club, Zhora Darling
When: Friday, May 23-Monday, May 26
Tickets: $180 for a four-day pass; individual days priced separately; find more info here.
