First Ave's Best New Bands star Laamar proves you can come home again

After more than a decade of studying and singing about post-Civil War era racial issues, Geoffrey Lamar Wilson returned to Minneapolis from New York in 2016 wondering if and what he might write songs about in the hometown he idealized.

"And then Philando Castile happened," he remembered.

The opening salvo in the Twin Cities' recent reckoning with racial injustice and police violence became the start of a new era of music-making for Wilson.

A day after a police officer fatally shot Castile during a traffic stop, Wilson wrote the song "Say My Name." It was his first about modern times, not old times. It also started his trajectory performing under the moniker Laamar.

Blending a rich Americana sound and the traditions of folk music with a hard nose for injustice his softly soulful voice — part Ray LaMontagne, Jackson Browne and Bill Withers — Wilson has quickly become one of Minnesota's most promising new songwriters. He wrote the theme for — and was featured on — Nora McInerny's podcast tour, "Terrible, Thanks for Asking," and has opened for Arlo Parks and Durand Jones.

On Friday, he and his band — which shares his Google-friendly pen name Laamar — will make their debut on the First Avenue Mainroom stage as part of the club's annual Best New Bands showcase.

Wilson said of his reinvention in his late 30s, "I took a very roundabout way of becoming a singer/songwriter writing about personal experience.

"I was kind of a late bloomer when it came to playing guitar and writing songs by myself holed up in the bedroom. And when I finally got around to doing it, I wasn't interested in writing about myself per se."

"Say My Name" is the first of four songs written for Laamar's elegantly melodic and lyrically moving debut EP, "Flowers," which offers Wilson's personal reflections on being a Black man living in Minnesota amid the Castile and George Floyd tragedies.

Over lightly strummed guitar and gospelly background vocals, he sings, "Now I see you lying in your burial suit / Hands up, don't shoot / What's a brother to do? / Now that I see you on the TV screen / Something's moving in me."

In the EP's deceptively sweet and warm title track, he relays a memory of his mother "lighting candles and putting flowers on the boulevard" in memory of another dead man of color. In the standout track getting airplay on the Current, "Home to My Baby," he relays his personal fears of getting pulled over by police.

"I'm so tired of being Black and looking over my shoulder," he sings. "I'm just trying to get home in one piece to my baby / Isn't it strange how a minute might change your whole life? / One wrong move and a man might turn out the lights."

Raised in north Minneapolis — where he lives again with his wife and two young sons — Wilson raves about his youth there. He had a piano teacher right across the street. He studied dance and music at Perpich Center for Arts Education and other schools. His dad, Patrick Wilson, drummed in soul and rock bands, including Terraplane and Box of Soul, with whom Geoffrey (pronounced "joff-ree") sometimes jammed on sax.

At 18, though, Wilson headed off to New York to major in jazz composition and African American studies at Bard College and later attended New York University for music therapy. While there, he met his fellow Minnesotan wife-to-be, Hannah Jensen, and started the band Jus Post Bellum with her, which mined his studies of Black Americans' experiences during and after the Civil War.

"At the time, folk music was having a revival of sorts, and people were interested in song circles and Americana traditional music," he explained. "For me personally, I didn't grow up playing folk music, and I had to try to figure out how a person of color could find a meaningful way into it."

Singing about antebellum racial issues certainly fit the mold of both "Americana" and "old-timey" music.

Ultimately, though, he said the concept of Jus Post Bellum "became too creatively restrictive," plus he and Jensen "got jaded about New York, as happens when you're turning 30 and thinking of starting a family."

They picked Minnesota not only for the proximity to family, but also because "I knew there was a strong music community there," he said.

That community included his new in-laws. Ubiquitous singer Wendy Lewis (Bad Plus, Little Lizards) is his mother-in-law, and sax and bass vet Michael Lewis (Bon Iver, Happy Apple) is her nephew.

Wilson's mother-in-law laughed about her initial response to hearing her daughter was dating another musician: "Ugh, how long will I have to show support if it sucks?" she remembered thinking. That dismay quickly disappeared, though.

"Geoffrey is a quiet, well-read and observant man who is capable of creating poetic forests that we as listeners have the pleasure and pain of walking through," Lewis said, pointing to the duality of his music: "He lures us with lilting melodies, [but] his lyrics contain dark discomforts."

After hooking up with drummer/manager James Taylor (a talent booker at First Ave) and guitarist Steve Bosmans, Wilson began recording the songs that became the "Flowers" EP in 2022. He has since stockpiled an album's worth of material that they are recording and planning to release next fall.

Asked about the lyrical content of the new material, Wilson said, "I've been putting myself in the songs more.

"I'm writing about raising kids, going to therapy and learning to be a better person and better partner. It's been liberating, not only writing about experiences with racial injustice."

Still, it seems he still has an eye for other people's struggles more than his own. One of his new songs, "My Lover, My Man," was inspired by a National Public Radio broadcast he heard about a gay couple trying to live out of the closet in the 1970s.

"Not exactly more lighthearted," Wilson quipped.

"As a person, I tend to be fairly upbeat and optimistic, but in my songs I skew dark. It feels cathartic to me. As weird as it is, it feels good to get those feelings out and connect with what other people are going through."

When: 7 p.m. Fri.

Where: First Avenue, 701 1st Av. N., Mpls.

Tickets: $12-$15, axs.com.