David Huckfelt

In 2015 MFRE began offering professional musician trips to our offerings. The result has been amazing. The guests, musicians and MFRE guides all agree that these trips are the best, as there is a way music can connect the group to nature and the canyon itself, not to mention the “tribe” that is formed through music. How do they work? – All musicians have their different style and personality, of course. Musicians play each evening around the campfire, but also at scenic grottos, waterfalls along the way, and even while soaking in a hot spring. It is up to the musician when and where they want to play but it is always coordinated with the MFRE Expedition Leader. Many novice guest musicians ask whether they can play with the musicians as well and in many cases this is allowed and encouraged. If you want to bring an instrument please do and we will bring an extra dry bag for you. Just be sure it is in a hard case. David Huckfelt is a singer / lyricist / activist and founding frontman of Minneapolis indie-folk cult favorites The Pines. An Iowa native and former theology student, Huckfelt attended the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop before turning his attention to songwriting and performing. With musical roots in the same fertile Midwestern soil that produced legendary folk singers like John Prine and Greg Brown, Huckfelt has shared stages with artists from Prine, Mavis Staples, Greg Brown, Iris Dement & Emmylou Harris to Bon Iver, Calexico and Trampled By Turtles. His work with The Pines received record of the year accolades from Mojo & Q Magazine, and garnered praise from David Fricke (Rolling Stone) as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. In 2018 Huckfelt received the prestigious Artist-In-Residence award at Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior, where in sixteen days he wrote the fourteen songs that would become his breakout solo debut “Stranger Angels”. A fortuitous encounter with American Indian Movement leader & poet John Trudell on the Pine Ridge Reservation resulted in a collaboration with the great Indigenous activist, the song “Time Dreams”, hailed by Democracy Now! and the last recording Trudell ever made. Since then, Huckfelt has partnered with an impressive array of Native American artists and activists including Keith Secola, Quiltman, Winona LaDuke and novelist Louise Erdrich in the fight for social justice and protection for Mother Earth. In thousands of shows across the United States, Canada & overseas, Huckfelt’s grassroots following has grown from small-town opera houses, Midwestern barn concerts, and progressive benefit events to national tours and festival stages like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Edmonton and Calgary Folk Fests, and the legendary First Avenue club in his beloved Minneapolis home. He is currently working on two new solo records, due out in 2024.