Thursday night kicks off a unique summer music festival in southern Minnesota. It’s the third year of the Minnesota Original Music Festival in St. Peter and it features musicians from across the state.

The director of the festival, Eli Hoehn, joined Minnesota Now to play some local music and talk about how the festival has grown as the city gets ready to celebrate the Minnesota music scene.

The Minnesota Original Music Festival runs July 17-21. See the lineup here.

Two years ago on July 16, 988 became the number to call for people anywhere in the country who are experiencing mental health crises. The suicide and crisis lifeline now also has a text and chat component.

In 2023, 988 call centers in Minnesota answered more than 53,000 calls, chats and texts, according to the Department of Health, which is a 74 percent increase from 2022.

For most of those calls, the situation was considered stable after the call or chat. For about four percent of the calls, a mobile crisis team responded in person, and about one percent of the time the call was transferred to 911.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer was joined by one of the counselors on the other end of the line explain how the resource works in the state.

Jamie Drewlow is the text and chat supervisor for First Call for Help, a call center based in Grand Rapids that responds to people from all over the state. Sidney Frye II also joined the show. She leads Olmsted County’s community outreach team.

Tuesday is day two of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer is set to speak. MPR News senior politics reporter Dana Ferguson joined the show to talk about how Emmer fits into the Republican politics of this moment.

The suicide and crisis lifeline 988 has been live for two years as of Tuesday. We met someone on the other end of the chat and text line and learned more about who responds to calls in person.

In a Minnesota Now encore segment, we looked back on journalist Lee Hawkin’s conversation with a teacher who made a big difference in his life.

Plus, we’ll visit a new coffee shop on the Fond du Lac Reservation. And get a preview of southern Minnesota’s Original Music Fest, coming this weekend to St. Peter.

Our Minnesota Music Minute was “Change of the Seasons” by Beret Finken and our Song of the Day was “Forgiveness” by We are the Willows.