David Huckfelt talks protest music, Minnesota pride and the joys of tricking Dave Moore ahead of his James Theater debut

Collage by Kellan Doolittle/Little Village

Everything is crumbling, but David Huckfelt, a Midwestern folk musician and activist, is putting out a new album, just eight months after the last one — a scoop he shared with Little Village.

The Spencer, Iowa native built his dexterity as a songwriter and guitarist around campfires with folks like Dave Moore, Greg Brown and Iris DeMent. His most recent album, I Was Born, But…, was a love letter to the artists who inspired him, and featured songs written up to 150 years ago. He’ll play songs old and brand-new at the James Theater in Iowa City on Sept. 18, accompanied by Jeremy Ylvisaker, who previously collaborated with John Prine, Bon Iver, Grace Potter and other icons. Iowa guitar virtuoso Dustin Busch will open for the duo.

LV and Huckfelt kicked off our conversation with some light banter about the state of journalism, politics, the music industry and, of course, the weather, before diving into all things Iowa and its music scene, then and now.

What’s life like these days?

You know, Minnesota’s had a beautiful summer. I’ve done a lot of touring. Slow mornings like this [are] pretty perfect once the intensity of the heat goes away … we’re delicate flowers when it comes to heat. In the cold, we’re like Viking warriors. Hot? Start complaining. [This was the] hottest July ever recorded in Minnesota and around the planet. Cross your fingers, I guess.

You grew up in small-town Iowa, right? Spencer?

Yep. Northwest corner.

Do you have a different view of Iowa now that you’re outside of it?

There’s an earnestness to Iowans. A work ethic thing. This old feeling that if you’re a good person and you work hard this world will take care of you.

Well, we handed over the reins to billionaires and corporations, and so it’s not necessarily the case. Iowans are some of the kindest, most generous people, but it’s almost like they’ve been told to be afraid of everybody, so they don’t know who to be generous toward or something.

I think that work ethic has been turned against them to some degree. Like, there’s no room to just be or be yourself, however weird you are, you have to toe the line, you know. My own opinion there.

David Huckfelt. — Photo by Graham Tolbert, courtesy of the artist

I’m curious when you started to find your way as a poet, and then as a songwriter.

I started writing when I was just a little kid in Spencer, making up stories and writing poems, but then I got sort of clobbered with that expectation to be an athlete and get serious.

Then I moved to Iowa City to study creative writing, and… to be honest with you, I didn’t start playing guitar till I was about 20. People smile at you if you sing a song to them. If you speak a poem to them, they get uncomfortable.

I was around all these campfires with folks like Greg and Dave, Dustin Busch, Joe and Vicki Price. I learned hundreds of songs.

I’d love to hear a bit about Magic Dust [the 2025 all-star tribute to Dave Moore at the Englert]. I don’t mean to throw Sandy Dyas under the bus here, but she told me, “When David sat down to play, ‘I’m a Dog,’ he stole the show.”

The word reverence comes to mind, and not just my reverence for [Iowa musicians], but their reverence for the craft of songwriting, the art of having music plugged into community, and acknowledging it has a role there.

To get to play a Dave song on a night when they tricked Dave into doing his own tribute — it’s such an honor. Money can’t buy it. Fame can’t touch it.

Any chance it’ll turn into a record?

I’ve heard some murmurings. I know that all the artists would be for that. You know, Dave has hundreds of songs that he won’t turn into a record, even though we all want him to.

How’s it been rolling out your most recent record?

It’s a nightmare. There’s a great satisfaction in making a record and writing songs with your friends. And then there’s this feeling of handing it over to heartless billionaire tech companies so that they can just throw it off a bridge and sink it in the bottom of the ocean. So, that’s a little dramatic.

I heard you say once that you don’t really like protest music, and yet you also are constantly, in life, pushing back.

I feel some protest music can be a little subtle. And honestly, it’s not subtle at all. You listen to Nina Simone. I’ve never heard anybody chanting her songs in a protest, but it’s all there, you know?

In Greg’s music and Pieta’s music and Iris’s music, certainly, it’s all there. So I think there’s a way to be authentic and still put your shoulder to the wheel. I’ve shown up places 20-below in northern Minnesota, and played my own songs by the river with the Indigo Girls [a benefit concert to support Boundary Waters protections].

David Huckfelt playing on the banks of the Mississippi River at Palisade Resistance Camp in 2021 — Courtesy of the artist

I’m amazed that guitar strings can work in negative 20.

Not for very long, they don’t. I’ll send you a photo.

There are songs that help reinforce the idea that nothing is wrong with you. Songs can actually do that.

We need to be reminded that nothing fundamentally is wrong with us, you know? This phone here is gonna tell you the opposite.

Coming back to Iowa City, what are you looking forward to?

Well, I never played the James. I’m going to be bringing all these new songs that we just recorded. I’m really excited that Dustin Busch is opening.

Time moves way too fast. My friends have children who are older. A lot of what I look forward to is relationships, and just checking in on people and seeing them face to face.

David Huckfelt and Jeremy Ylvisaker — photo by Graham Tolbert, courtesy of the artist

Is there anything that used to be here in Iowa City that you miss?

It’s pretty hard to talk about anything but The Mill. We were always trying to save The Mill. I worked there as a cook and played my first open mic there.

You started playing around 2002. When did you first become involved with Indigenous causes?

I met John Trudell, the poet and activist when I was 19. Seeing him speak on the Pine Ridge reservation planted so many seeds that wouldn’t really take root till later — to travel around as a folk singer and think, man, this is hard. And then to see these Native artists who were discriminated against, who were tokenized and put on side stages and never paid.

Native music has been around a lot longer than anything else on this continent. So it’s resilient to the nth degree, but I like to see artists get lifted up, you know?

I wonder also, what was it like for you in Minneapolis during the ICE raids? I read your piece in Little Village, which I really loved. We’re really grateful you did that, by the way.

I think I’ve never been more proud to live anywhere.

I mean, Minnesota’s blue, Iowa’s red, but I guarantee you that if Iowa had what was happening in Minneapolis going on in their towns, they would have felt the same because nobody would accept that brutality. It doesn’t matter if you’re liberal or conservative, you would respond to protect your neighbors.

It was all over the state. It was in red counties where local law enforcement was refusing to carry out orders and things like that. It was very unifying.