Jim Walshspent several years singing in Twin Cities bands before turning to rock journalism. In 1990 he became the music editor atCity Pages, an alternative weekly in Minneapolis. Three years later, he joined theSt. Paul Pioneer Pressas the pop music columnist and as a feature writer, and in 2002 he left Minnesota to study at Stanford on a John S. Knight Fellowship. Walsh returned to Minneapolis in 2003, where he lives with his wife and two children, and performs and records as his musical alter ego, The Mad Ripple ( www.myspace.com/themadripple and www.myspace.com/madripplemusic ).
Laurie Maniotis is former coeditor of the Texas School Administrators' Legal Digest and currently an attorney in private practice in Fort Worth.