Musical healers Cloud Cult are ready for their 'Metamorphosis' with Minnesota Orchestra

The long, strange trip of Cloud Cult's riveting new album could be summed up by one of those "How it started / How it's going" memes.

How it started: Bandleader Craig Minowa holed up by himself in a one-room, Amish-built cabin in the hilly woods of southwestern Wisconsin to write and demo the new tunes.

How it's going: Minowa and his bandmates will perform the new material in the grand confines of Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall, standing in front of 60-plus members of the Minnesota Orchestra over three nights March 31-April 2.

"These songs have gone on quite a journey," Minowa succinctly put it.

Part of that voyage, of course, involved the pandemic. Cloud Cult was supposed to release its album in conjunction with orchestra concerts in April 2020. The shows got put on hold, of course. Twice.

In the interim, the record — fittingly titled "Metamorphosis" — changed in shape and tone. Minowa now sees it as the darkest and most troubled-sounding of the 11 albums in his eight-member band's impressively self-managed, eco-friendly, multifaceted 25-year career.

Some alterations came via the band's cultish fans, who reacted to the new songs in frequent online sessions during the pandemic. Minowa kept up appearances on Cloud Cult's Patreon.com membership site to "keep the lights on, and keep us all feeling connected," he said.

"There was a period where I felt like we were in group therapy," he said of those sessions, talking three weeks ago from his home in scenic Viroqua, Wis.

"It's this group of people who are really comfortable talking about bigger, deeper life crises and challenges. The topics each week would vary from the stresses of parenting in the pandemic to depression and addiction. The more I opened up, the more it seemed OK to just put it all out there in the songs and be honest about the bad stuff."

A prime example of this metamorphosis is "The Best Time." An early version was released before the pandemic, timed to 89.3 the Current's birthday party. At that time, the song "just seemed to be about trying to be present in everyday life," Minowa said.

During the pandemic, though, "I really had a breakdown and recognized many years of alcohol dependency." He came to realize that's what he was writing about in that song.

Sample lyrics: "It's a perfect day to remind myself to feel / I'm always busy pushing rocks uphill / With a pillowcase over my head / Couldn't see that this might be the best time of my life."

Said Minowa, "It was through me sharing my struggles on Patreon about it being specific to addiction that it became so much bigger than what the original song was, because so many other people shared that struggle."

'We have their back'

The Owatonna-reared singer/songwriter, 49, offers many more intimate revelations and calls for self-improvement on "Metamorphosis" — from working to up his parenting game in "Back Into My Arms" to mourning his own dad in "Victor" and "Ascension" to coping with suicide in "A Strange World (Know That I Love You)" and "One Way Out of a Hole."

Issued as a single in January — with a ride-along music video that shows off some familiar Twin Cities scenery — "One Way Out" sounds like an anthem for anyone climbing out of a pandemic hole. It was actually written before COVID, however.

"It was about someone in my life who was handed some unfair life challenges," Minowa recounted, "and then everybody was handed unfair challenges."

Minowa and his wife, Connie — a co-vocalist and one of the band's two onstage artists who create paintings during performances — took in some foster children during the pandemic to join their own three distant-learning kids, now ages 4 to 16. The couple suffered the death of their first child, Kaidin, at age 2 in 2002, a tragedy that's still a backdrop to many of Cloud Cult's healing-minded, spiritual-seeking songs.

With the kids taking over the house, Craig moved his home studio out into the one-room cabin.

Over the years, Cloud Cult's records have grown more and more musically layered and orchestrally based, utilizing the multitasking talents of Twin Cities-based band members Shannon Frid-Rubin (violin), Sarah Perbix (keyboards/French horn) and Shawn Neary (bass, trombone).

Minowa knew these new songs would eventually be performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, with whom Cloud Cult first paired up in 2018 for two concerts, performing older material. (The new album is the band's first since 2016.)

Much of his writing for "Metamorphosis," however, was stripped down and acoustically based.

"Usually, our albums are done with a lot of live-tracking, but in this case it was a lot more of just me in the woods with an acoustic guitar," he explained.

"So then to take these songs from that raw form and blend them with the biggest band imaginable — a whole orchestra — has been a pretty interesting process."

His chief collaborator in that process, Andy Thompson, described it as "payoff for the trust we had all developed" from those 2018 concerts.

Thompson's skills as an arranger and composer helped make Dessa's groundbreaking 2019 live album "Sound the Bells," recorded with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, a great creative success. The Twin Cities producer/multi-instrumentalist has also orchestralized recordings by Taylor Swift, Dan Wilson, Belle & Sebastian and longtime bandmate Jeremy Messersmith.

"Anytime the orchestra gets to do something that's more than just sort of background-padding, it's optimal for everyone," Thompson said, "and that's certainly true of these songs.

"Craig has his own strong orchestral voice, but he left a lot of room for interpretation and put a lot of trust in the process."

Next week's Orchestra Hall run — scheduled Thursday through Saturday — will precede Cloud Cult's return to the road. The group also has concerts coming up in Duluth (April 20), Viroqua (April 23) and La Crosse (June 10), in addition to shows on the east and west coasts scattered from May through August. Fans who can't make it in-person can watch the Friday, April 1, performance with the orchestra live via TPT-2 on TV or TPT.org.

Given the band's propensity for creating deep, emotional connections and uplifting moments with its audiences, Minowa recognizes a greater sense of mission now that the group is finally performing again.

"The ultimate goal for this band has always been to make music that can be medicinal," he conceded, "and obviously that's as important as ever now."

"Over the years, we have really tried to remind ourselves of bigger intentions than just going out on stage looking like rock stars. The people in the crowd are not just strangers looking at us on stage. Each one of them is coming in carrying something with them.

"We want them to put their walls down and to feel like we have their back, and everyone in the crowd has their back."

In other words, these new songs still have a long way to go on their journey.

Cloud Cult & Minnesota Orchestra
When: 8 p.m. March 31-April 2.
Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.
Tickets: $40-$96, minnesotaorchestra.org