Jeff Tweedy, The Hold Steady, Fugazi featured on benefit compilation for Minneapolis venue First Avenue

The complete lockdown on live music during the Covid-19 pandemic has hit live music venues particularly hard. With dramatically reduced means of making income, they’re having a hard time making ends meet. One of those venues is Minneapolis’ iconic First Avenue (which you’d probably recognize from Prince’s Purple Rain), though to help keep the venue alive, a number of bands—many of them Twin Cities natives—are contributing songs to a subscription-based compilation titled First Love 1.0, proceeds from which will be donated to First Avenue/7th Street Entry.

Among the bands who have lent their songs to the compilation are The Hold Steady, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy, Drive-By Truckers, The Jayhawks, The Mekons, Fugazi, Young Fresh Fellows, Atmosphere, Dessa, Semisonic, Soul Asylum and more.

A statement about the subscription reads, “FIRST LOVE is a project conceived by MPLS creatives, musicians and concerned citizens to help keep the doors of First Ave open for another 50 years. First Ave is vital to the creative pulse of MPLS and is where rock history has been made over and over again. It’s where bands got their start. It’s where fans could watch those bands grow to national and international stars. It’s the common memory of the decades of shows that links an entire community.”

Subscribe and check out the first round of tracks here.