Local music: Yesterday's Trash, today's EDM ringleader

News flash: Electronic dance music is in again. So says the latest Deadmau5-adorned cover of Rolling Stone and everyone else calling the genre by its ubiquitous new acronym, EDM.

Probably nobody in the Twin Cities should be happier about the genre's revival than DJ and event promoter Jack Trash. He's busier than ever but not all smiles.

Through his decade-old company, SIMshows ("SIM" for Sound in Motion), the Trash man has a hand in basically all of this summer's biggest dance music events:

• He organized the Silent Disco lineup with Live Nation at the River's Edge Music Festival last month and last week's well-attended concert at Epic featuring Skrillex protégé Porter Robinson.

• Next week, he is involved in the three-night Global Dance Festival at the Brick, part of an AEG Live-produced tour that kicks off here Wednesday with such trance, house and dubstep musicmakers as Above & Beyond, Dillon Francis and Knife Party.

• Trash's biggest gamble is as co-promoter of Summer Set, the new festival coming Aug. 24-26 to Somerset Amphitheater with an all-things-danceable lineup: rap giants Nas and Black Star, jam-band stalwarts Umphrey's McGee and Big Gigantic, plus such electronic stars as Pretty Lights, MSTRKRFT and Israel's Infected Mushroom.

Trash saw the writing on the wall last summer when tickets to his Skrillex show at the Skyway Theater sold out far ahead of time, as did Avicii in January at Epic. Advance sell-outs otherwise used to be as rare as 8 p.m. start times at dance shows. "Things have changed so drastically over the past year, and especially the last six months," he said. "It's really been incredible."

He's not saying things have changed for the better, though. At least, not locally.

"Things have gone so mainstream and corporate, the price of everything has gone up. That's made it a little difficult for us here in Minneapolis," Trash said. "I've had to turn down a number of artists because I don't think we can support the kind of numbers their agents are expecting to get."

One SIMshows co-production that fell by the wayside was a bigger Avicii concert, originally slated for Target Center in May but then moved to the Minneapolis Convention Center for September and finally canceled. Part of the problem is the lack of midsize venues in the Twin Cities. After Epic and Myth, dance acts either need to move up to arenas or to the unpopular Roy Wilkins Auditorium (where April's Tiesto show tanked).

Some of Trash's peers in the local EDM scene also say the music's mainstream revival has required a lot of adjustment locally.

"Now, everyone is trying to get into it," said Alex Brouwer, the dubstep whiz-kid from Savage making waves nationally under the DJ name Vaski. "There are a lot of new groups, clubs and festivals that are pouring a lot of money into marketing themselves as being part of electronic music. Competition is fierce."

Still, Brouwer added, "It's good to see groups like SIM and TC Dubstep doing well for themselves, because they were the ones who helped our scene grow to the point it is now."

A former Radio K jockey and dance-night booker at First Ave and the Quest, Trash clearly hasn't lost any love for the music amid all this craze. He still finds time to DJ regularly, including Thursdays at Crave in downtown Minneapolis. That's in addition to his duties as a dad and full-time elementary schoolteacher known as John Tasch.

"Summer is supposed to be the time of the year I catch my breath," he wryly noted.

Not this summer.

Big one at Patrick's After its hotly received inaugural last year, the Roots, Rock & Deep-Blues Festival is back with an expanded lineup (30 bands total), an additional stage (making it three) and heavy involvement from its new neighborhood brewery (Harriet Brewing Co., which is making a specialty beer just for the event). The music itself remains a unique brew.

Mississippi blues scion Kent Burnside will stomp around with such gritty local rockers as Bloodnstuff, the Goondas and last year's standout Poverty Hash, plus acoustic pickers Charlie Parr, the Cactus Blossoms and Steve Kaul & the Brass Kings and rootsy boogie stalwarts Davina & the Vagabonds. Others include Grant Hart, the Sans Souci Quartet, Nick "The Feelin'" Mrozinski, Black Audience, the Japhies and many more (noon-10 p.m., Patrick's, 3036 Minnehaha Av. S., Mpls. $10 advance, $15 at door, PatricksCabaret.org).

Random mix Friday night's headliner at the 331 Club, Man Is Doomed, has plenty of reason to come up with a more hopeful moniker. The group is the electronic-dance stage incarnation of local boys Bryan Casey and Danny Burke, who were honored in Los Angeles two weeks ago at the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards for their theme music to the Discovery Channel series "Alaska: The Last Frontier." The duo, who previously performed as Glorious Monster, also composed commercial music for Coca-Cola and BMW, among others, with local jingle shop In the Groove Music. Ghost in the Water opens their show (10 p.m., free). ...

While his My Purple Heart Concert with his old bandmates on Valentine's Day came off like a family reunion, former Prince & the Revolution drummer Bobby Z is rounding up some actual family members to perform with him at another Heart Association fundraiser Wednesday at 7th Street Entry (8 p.m., $20). He and his three sons, plus one nephew, are performing as the Rivkinz (his surname is Rivkin), with cousin Eli Fhima's rap Kids Like Us and cousin Noah Paster's band Hello Blue opening. ...

Teen indie-folk sensation John Mark Nelson, who is already getting some mad love from 89.3 the Current, set the date for his album-release party: Aug. 12 at 7th Street Entry. ... Local hard-rock band 3 Pill Morning isn't just opening for Sevendust at First Avenue on Thursday but is actually on a two-week tour with the Atlanta alt-metal favorites. The tour is well-timed with the release of 3PM's latest album, "The Black Tie Love Affair," recorded in Nashville with producer Jon King (Augustana). ...

Remember the one-time buzz band Yer Cronies? Co-leaders Casey Garvey and Greg Reese have teamed with former Alarmists drummer Ryan Mach in a promising new band called Demographics, which performs at Cause on Saturday with the Hunting Club (10 p.m., $5). The quartet just issued its debut album, "If Ever," a moody but surprisingly funky collection of headphones-ready slow jams that fall somewhere between My Morning Jacket's electronic dabblings and Air's rockier stuff.

chrisr@startribune.com • 612-673-4658 Twitter: @ChrisRstrib