Ignorance and incorrect assumptions had kept me from listening to Trampled by Turtles until I got a mix with their song "Stranger" on it—from that point on my mind was opened up to the fact that they were not a jam band at all. As the Duluth natives manage to meld bluegrass, country, and folk, they avoid fitting into any of those genres singularly. From their wistful, backcountry sounds, the slowdrive progression that ended their 2007 album Trouble was another example of how they inventively evade definition. Friday's show at the Cabooze fixes to be a rousing warm-up to an enviable spring-into-summer adventure on the road with the sheer volume of festivals they're playing—anything from bluegrass fests to the State Fair to events across the sea in Belfast. They'll pack along with them the old and the new and the even newer, with their spot-on banjo, sublime fiddle, mandolin madness, and finely tuned, dreamy harmonies for an amazingly atmospheric rush to the senses. With Pistol Whipping Party Penguins. 18+. — Jen Paulson

Quilting has long been an art form that spans both ends of the practical-whimsical spectrum. Sure, they're great for cuddling underneath on cold nights, but they also brighten rooms, commemorate life events, document family history, and build community. But, as the Fiber Arts Study Group at the Textile Center has discovered, even tradition cannot escape contemporary concerns. Ten members of the group are exhibiting their climate change-centric quilts. Focusing on the psychological effects of global warming, much of the work is, not surprisingly, bleak. Kimber Olson's Point Zero looks like a Doppler radar triptych trimmed in caution tape in which all the landforms are masses of gray and black. More surprising is the streak of hopeful, bright colors that runs through some of the pieces such as Dawn Carlson Conn's Wind, which features dark silhouettes of wind turbines against a pastel sunset. But perhaps the deeper irony is in the very nature of such a show. Will there be a day when quilts serve only as decorative reminders of cold winter nights? Opening reception 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, April 18. — Rhena Tantisunthorn

"I think I made people laugh in the office," Greg Warren says about his former job at packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble. "Especially toward the end because I didn't take my job very seriously." He adds, "Though I'd like to tell you I worked very hard up until the end." Most of Warren's comedy is character based, and comes in short bursts. In one bit he describes listening to sports talk radio, doing the voices of both caller and host. "I used to know this guy named Mike. He played football. Whatever happened to him?" To which the host replies, "His name is Mike Jefferson, he played for the Jets in the '80s, they cut him during the strike season, he now works for Subway sandwich shops in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Makes a good ham, not a good turkey, next caller." For a while Warren lived in California and took acting classes between tours. "I went out on some auditions," he says, but he decided to move back to St. Louis and concentrate on standup. "I don't really think I'll ever want to stray too far from standup. That's why I left a really good job at P&G, because I just love performing." — P.F. Wilson

One doesn't need a use Twitter account, an emoticon on a LiveJournal entry, or a link to Google maps to understand that the ways we express and comprehend the meaning of "where" is changing with new technology. This is the general premise of Intermedia Arts ongoing show, "W(e are)Here," a multimedia exhibit that explores the new frontier of "place" physically, technologically, and emotionally. Works include artistic visualizations of hard data, interactive elements, and emotional renderings of location. This Thursday, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., guests can partake in a "Psychogeographic Mapmaking Party," which, while it sounds like a mouthful, is really more of an adventure. Participants will be sent off in small groups on tours where routes will be dictated by a rolling of dice. Using a wall canvas, Google Earth, a wall projector, and some booze, tour details and memories will then be layered onto one another to create a map of experiences. An art party featuring live music, food and drinks, and a presentation of the final map will be celebrated the next day from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. — Jessica Armbruster

It's sometimes hard to understand how Nancy Drew Crew, a three-piece hip-hop troupe that evokes the Shaggs on a 909, can manage to be so dry and yet so exuberant and gleeful, all in the same rhyme. MC Smells, Mayhem, and Skullbuster may be winking at their audiences along the way, but their hooks keep fans busy shaking ass and sweating through their Descendents shirts. Theirs is a style of benevolent forthrightness, and in songs like "Feminist Anthem" and "College Incorporated," they manage an act of smirking dissent that is efficiently infectious. Tonight at the Triple Rock, they further flex their altruistic biceps, as money raised will go to the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group that sticks up for the rights of field workers victimized by fast-food plutocrats. Opposing fast food may be a breach of the hip-hop manifesto, but let's not be essentialists. With Single Speed, Guerrilla Blue, and Las Palabristas. 18+. — David Hansen

John Perkins used to be a corporate hotshot. As a young man he was what he calls an "economic hit man." In The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World he exposes corporate misdeeds and influence spanning the world.

CP: Explain what the title of your book refers to.

JP: Well, I think it's fair to say that we've created the world's first truly global empire, and for the first time we've created an empire primarily without the military; we've done it with economics. Perhaps the most common method is that we will identify a third-world country that has resources that corporations covet, like oil. Then we arrange a huge bank loan to the country from the World Bank. However, the money doesn't go to the country. Instead, it goes to our own corporations, which build things like power plants, industrial parks, highways; projects that benefit a few rich people in the country and our corporations. They don't help the majority of the people who are too poor to buy electricity, don't have the skills for industrial parks, don't own cars to drive on the highways, but the whole country is left with this huge debt; they can't afford to pay it. So we go back in and say, "Listen, you owe us a lot of money, so sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next critical UN vote, or send troops in support of ours in Iraq or some other place of the world." In that way we've really managed to create this empire without people even realizing we've done it.

CP: Could you just give me a thumbnail sketch of how, in your experience, the world functions as a whole?

JP: The world is run by institutions whose primary goal is to maximize profits regardless of the social and environmental cost. That's extremely dangerous. It's very shortsighted. But I'm also extremely hopeful that we can change this. The fact that we have a world empire that's been created primarily without the military means that for the first time in history, we probably don't have to defeat it with the military. We can defeat it, change it, transform it by how we shop and by the way we relate to businesses. These corporations are vulnerable to us as consumers and workers. For example, we've forced corporations to clean up polluted rivers, or to get trans fat out of food at KFC and McDonald's. We need to convince corporations to change their overall goal. Rather than maximizing profits regardless of social and environmental costs, maximize profits within the context of creating an environmentally sustainable, socially just, peaceful world.

CP: Part of the subtitle is "How to Change the World." What do you suggest the average American do to change the world?

JP: Shop more responsibly. Don't buy things made in sweatshops, do a little research. Don't buy water that's sapping the aquifers of Fiji. Cut back on things. We all have to be less consumption-oriented and realize that real joy doesn't come from buying things in stores, it comes from the way we relate to our friends and neighbors and the world around us. We can all walk down different paths as long as all those paths are headed toward a destination of an environmentally sustainable and peaceful world. Every executive I've ever known has been a decent human being. I've never met an evil executive. But they're living in an old paradigm that says maximize profits regardless of the social and environmental costs. We need to change the paradigm of our leaders and ourselves.

John Perkins reads at Borders tonight. — Ben Palosaari

Lush imagery derived from the natural world again infests Laura Veirs's fresh crop of intensely literate songs on Saltbreakers, her third Nonesuch release. The briny sea is Veirs's primary muse this time around, and the songs are littered with references to whales, waves, flying fish, sails, and even a merman fishing for human females. But also laced into these Sargasso reveries are evocations of the shifting tides of human emotion, reflecting Veirs's personal upheavals. "Sorry I was cruel," she sings to kick off the album, pouring salt in somebody's wounds, but ultimately seeking self-preservation. Backed by her regular band (which won't be along for this solo gig), as well as viola master Eyvind King and guitar monster Bill Frisell, Veirs crafted an intricate, often reserved folk-pop soundscape on Saltbreakers that seems to drift with the ocean swells, alive with the teeming life below the surface. The most dramatic break from that is the squally rocker "Phantom Mountain." Opening will be New Zealand's Liam Finn (son of Crowded House/Split Enz's Neil Finn), whose acclaimed debut, I'll Be Lightning (Yep Roc), overflows with clever, intriguingly convoluted indie-pop that flexes scores of insidious hooks. — Rick Mason

Ever wonder what secrets of the past are buried underneath downtown St. Paul skyscrapers? How about Nicollet Mall or the U of M campus? When thinking of archaeological dig sites, it might be easy to go to extremes, imagining the cinema-friendly stereotype, an Indiana Jones-type character carefully making his way through a long-lost ancient temple in search of a jewel the size of a pillow. Perhaps not as dramatic, yet still very interesting, this Sunday archaeologist Kent Bakken will be discussing upcoming and ongoing archaeological digs around the concrete-laden areas of our cities. In conjunction with National Archaeology Week, the talk will touch on various projects, including excavations at Mill Ruins Park and in the Elliot Park neighborhood. The Elliot Park excavations are a community-based project now in its fifth year. Volunteers each year are invited to a specified site where people unearth things like broken pitchers, bits of what once was a porch, and other items kept in the backyards of the 19th-century houses that once existed in the area. Yes, history is still alive, despite sometimes being hidden beneath gravel or a slab of concrete. — Jessica Armbruster

When an artist specializes in drawing people in furry suits and designing plushy toys, it's probably pretty easy to veer off into the realm of "too cute." Erin Currie manages to avoid this world of pastel overkill by culling inspiration less from Hello Kitty and more from old (and very dark) folklore tales. "Curster's Fantastico," her first gallery show, features paintings and fiber sculptures of imps, octopuses, and balloons filled with plumes of colors. Just like cruel, old-fashioned fairy tales, some images feel safe, happy, and celebratory while others have a certain wariness and unease to them. Aesthetically, imagine a fantastical dreamscape where The Life Aquatic, Where the Wild Things Are, and Stewie from Family Guy all meet. As a child Currie dabbled in the art of rosemaling, a traditional Norwegian decorative painting style, which combined with her ominously bright and cute subjects creates an odd carnival mix of old world and new. — Jessica Armbruster

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." So goes one of Mark Twain's most frequently quoted maxims. The second part of this idea is probably not true in modern American society. The first part, however, is worth debating. Are clothes a reflection of the wearer, or is the wearer influenced by current fashion? The Minnesota Center for Photography uses the work of six contemporary photographers to examine this very question with its latest exhibition, "Fashioned." As varied in style as the clearance rack at Macy's, the show features works focused on different elements of how we dress. New York-based artist Jessica Rowe's images don't feature a single person. She photographs dead women's clothing spread out on a flat surface. Separated from both their owners and closet, the items' new context is as fashion relics; things to look at and study, but certainly not to wear. Nick Kline's images of clothes are also lacking wearers. His series focuses on clothes hanging in plastic on racks in dry-cleaning shops. St. Paul photographer Linda Brooks uses a straightforward strategy of composing simple color images of young adults; words the subjects wrote describing themselves surround the images. After looking at what people choose to wear, or used to wear, you'll probably spend a good long time standing before your full-length mirror when you get home. — Ben Palosaari