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Music: Violinist Greene out with the Foo

Jessy Greene went from waiting tables to touring arenas with Dave Grohl.

August 17, 2012 at 9:04PM
Jessy Greene onstage with Dave Grohl (rear) and the Foo Fighters.
Jessy Greene onstage with Dave Grohl (rear) and the Foo Fighters. (Margaret Andrews/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

"Play that violin, Jessy Greene!"

Foo Fighters were midway through a two-hour show last month, and Dave Grohl had called out Minneapolis' best-known rock violinist twice.

Later, during the encore at Dallas' American Airlines Arena, Greene got her third and biggest call: She and Grohl sang the band's first megahit, "Big Me," as a boy/girl duet. "Me and Jessy Greene sing this one together real nice," Grohl told the 15,000 fans, who seemed to agree.

Not bad for a working Twin Cities musician who, a year earlier, made a deflated return to Minneapolis after trying to make it in Los Angeles.

"I love Minneapolis, even if I'm behind on the bills a little and working at the Gasthof," the northeast Minneapolis German restaurant where she worked as recently as last spring. Just as she settled into a life-is-good mentality last summer, life got so much better. That's when she got the call.

The invite came last June from Rami Jaffee, who joined the Foo Fighters on tour as a keyboardist in 2006. "Rami called and was like, 'Is there any possible chance you'd be interested in touring with the Foo Fighters?' " Greene recalled, her mouth agape to mimic her reaction.

According to Foo bassist Nate Mendel, "Jessy proved to be really a bad-ass. She's an excellent musician, she knows how to tour, how to be around seven guys who treat her like another guy. We should maybe be better gentlemen and acknowledge that there's a woman around, but she just rolls with it. She's probably used to self-centered male musicians."

Greene's first few gigs with the band last August in England amounted to a crash course. "My first show was performing on the BBC to millions of viewers -- live, at 8 in the morning," she recalled. "The next was the V Festival playing on stage to 50,000 people, and a couple more festivals like that. It was unbelievable and intense."

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Originally from western Massachusetts, Greene, 38, played in the great L.A. band the Geraldine Fibbers after college before moving to Minneapolis in 1997, when she started touring with the Jayhawks.

Greene has bounced through a succession of her own music projects locally, including the short-lived trio O'Jeez (featuring Dave Pirner and then-boyfriend Kraig Johnson) and the rock band VioVoom. She has recorded two solo CDs, each heavily reliant on electronic beats and ambient sonic loops. Lately, she has also dabbled in hip-hop, enlisting members of Heiruspecs as a backing band and collaborating with Doomtree rapper Dessa.

"It took me a long time to get to where I am, to feel comfortable in my own skin, which is important when you're touring with a band like this," she said. "I really credit Minneapolis for a lot of that, getting to work with so many different people and types of music."

about the writer

about the writer

Chris Riemenschneider

Critic / Reporter

Chris Riemenschneider has been covering the Twin Cities music scene since 2001, long enough for Prince to shout him out during "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)." The St. Paul native authored the book "First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom" and previously worked as a music critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.

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