Tag Archives: Belfield North Dakota

Kaycee Hutzenbiler, “Hop”, Belfield, North Dakota

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Recently I was at an event where the Outlaw Sippin Band and the Sawdust Band performed.  I have watched Outlaw Sippin play at Alive @ 5, First On First, Buffalo Gap, and the High Plains Cultural Center.  I think that they are a good band and I have written about them several times in this blog.  I have seen the Sawdust Band play several times, and they are pretty good, but they don’t have Emil Anheluk playing accordion and fiddle.

I believe that I have seen every performer at Alive @ 5, and First On First in Dickinson 2014, 2015, and 2016.  I recognize and acknowledge that Gwen Sebastian and Kat Perkins are very talented and well liked.  I also like the two sisters with their band Tigir Lily.  The first time I heard the Zeona Road Band from South Dakota, I was very impressed, and I thought that they have a very good chance to be as well known, well liked, and as commercially successful as Miranda Lambert, somebody like that.

When I was at this recent event with Outlaw Sippin and Sawdust, I didn’t expect to see anything new or different.  Beni Paulson was playing the drums, which I had never seen him do before, that I can remember.  He did good, didn’t seem too uncomfortable, but I don’t think this is his favorite thing.  When Sawdust was going to play, Beni got up from the drums and let this small girl take his place.

This girl was in her early twenties, about 5′-4″, 110 pounds, medium length black hair, she was cute.  She seemed a little timid at first and through the first couple of songs.  She kept the beat O.K. , but was lighter and softer on the drums than a guy would have been.  After maybe about ten to fifteen minutes, she sang lead vocals.

She has a very good soft voice. I was trying to think of who to compare her voice to, and I think that it is most like Belinda Carlisle, but as I listened and paid attention, I think that her voice is better than Belinda Carlisle’s voice.  I would also compare her voice to Natalie Merchant in its niceness and smoothness.  I think that she would sound great singing Belinda Carlisle or Natalie Merchant songs, not mimicking them, but singing just as her own voice is.

I was thinking that she would also sound good singing Blondie songs.  As I was considering these things, I realized that she was more into her drumming now, probably because she had warmed up and had loosened up.  She was a good drummer.  She sounded different than male drummers.  I could hear it in my head before I could figure out why she sounded different.  Guys have heavier arms, shoulders, and hands, and I am thinking that their drum sticks come off the drum milliseconds later than her. You can hear it especially when she is working on just one drum, her sticks are getting off the surface quicker and you can hear the difference, it is clearer and sharper.

I was thinking that this quick, sharp, lighter handed beating, was something that a rabbit would do.  She drums like a rabbit with rabbit paws and feet.  My favorite drummer looks like a gargoyle, plays drums like a gargoyle, and is the most recognizable drummer that I have seen.  I like the band he is in, because of him.  This girl is cute, pretty, has a very good voice, plays drums well, and like a rabbit, you can hear the difference.  I will go to see Sawdust, just because of her.

I went and asked people who she was, and they told me her name was KC.  I said that she has a very good voice, and everyone agreed, and added, “She looks good too.”  I wanted to tell her after she got done playing that she sounded very good, but when she got off her stool, she was gone, and out of there.

I looked up the Sawdust Band on the internet when I got home.  Her name is Kaycee Hutzenbiler, and she is from Belfield.  From the little that there is to read about her, I am worried and concerned that she has been overlooked, and her talent not recognized locally.

Back in the 1980s, the band the GoGos became popular and successful just because of their good sound, I don’t think that any of the GoGos had years of training, they just went out and played, and everybody liked them.  That is exactly what Kaycee needs to do now, just get out and perform.  Now, don’t wait!

I did some research about rabbits playing drums, and there was a 2011 movie about a rabbit who plays the drums who moves to Los Angeles to be in a band, the name of the movie is “Hop”.  This is a good name for Kaycee, “Hop”.

Belfield, North Dakota Is Like Small Towns In Florida Forty Years Ago

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Belfield, North Dakota is twenty miles west of Dickinson, on Interstate 94.  Probably a million oil field workers have exited the interstate in Belfield to get on Highway 85 to go north to Williston.  According to the year 2000 Census there were 866 people living in Belfield, and the 2010 Census said there were 800 people, but I think that there were probably twice that many people because of the Oil Boom.

Most of the people driving on Interstate 94 and Highway 85 do not know that Belfield has a downtown because you can’t see it from these main roads.  If you drive 1/8 of a mile westward from Highway 85 you will find the residential neighborhood with the houses, schools, and churches.  Most of the houses and buildings were built between 1920 and 1980.  The houses and buildings are not fancy, they are simple and modest.

In the middle of the town of Belfield, there is Main Street and 1st Avenue.  In this area there is the Post Office, an old movie theatre which has been remodeled recently to serve as a civic center, and about four bars which also sometimes serve food.

Belfield has had its ups and downs.  Remember, there was an Oil Boom in western North Dakota in the 1950s, the late 1970s, and most recently 2007 through 2014.  Sometimes local residents have had high incomes, but most of the time the local people did not have high incomes.

I had to go to Belfield recently and spend some time there.  I didn’t think about it much beforehand or driving there.  When I drove through downtown Belfield, the residential area, it was quaint and pleasant looking.  There is a very nice green belt beside a small river that runs through town.

When I had to start dealing with people, I was worried that they were going to be hostile towards me because I was not from there, and the people were rough looking.  Some of the local residents asked me where I was from.  I answered, “I lived in Florida until I was 30, then I lived in Arizona for five years, then Idaho for five years, then I came to North Dakota when the economy got bad.” Everybody of course asked me why I left Florida.  I told them what I always tell everybody, that Florida got too crowded.  Nobody would ever believe me that most of the towns in Florida when I grew up forty years ago, were exactly like Belfield is now, with maybe about a thousand people.

I was worried that these people in Belfield were going to pick a fight with me, because I was not from there, and the people were rough looking.  They did not pick a fight with me.  I had been observing that the people were not fancy, fashionable, or stylish in their appearance.  I began to realize that they did not care.  I think that they had all lived together for so long, known each other for so long, that they had no desire to try to impress each other, so they just went everywhere, as they were, whether they had been doing yard work, house work, car repair, farming, or truck driving.  Not only did they not care about impressing their neighbors, they didn’t care to impress anybody.

Because the local people had been asking me where I was from, and I had tried to explain it to them, I was realizing more and more that Belfield was like the small town I had grown up in forty years ago.  In that town, most of the people did not make a lot of money, everybody knew where everybody worked, so there was no use in anybody trying to pretend to be something they weren’t, so nobody did.  The result was, everybody was much calmer, and much more laid back.  The other thing was, everybody had to try to get along, because you were stuck together, so people just adapted a manner of civility, because you had to.

I remembered that one of the things I hated when I moved away from my small home town, and had to live in places like Tampa, was that everyone was trying to be somebody they weren’t, and everybody was trying to impress everybody else.  Yes, it was a “rat race”, everyone competing and trying to out-do everyone else, in a ridiculous way, spending more money than they earned, making themselves stressed and pressured needlessly, except because of their own vanity and desperation.