A new Soul Asylum set to rock at K-Days
First time here in 1993 a shambles that enraged some of the crowd
Soul Asylum With: Eve 6 and Everclear When: Friday at 9 p.m. Where: Koodonation Stage, Northlands Admission: With admission to K-Days; $8 to $12, available at the gate or from Ticketmaster, 780-451-8000 Info: k-days.com The first and last time Soul Asylum came through town it was something of a shambles.
Armed with bona fide hit, Runaway Train, and album Grave Dancers Union, in 1993 the band was still touring smaller venues, in this case the U of A’s Dinwoodie Lounge. Part of the early ’80s Minneapolis punk scene, Soul Asylum had gone from being charter members of the cool kids punk club to MTV mainstream darlings, though they didn’t seem to realize it yet. Instead of putting on a slick show, they goofed around with cover songs, starting and stopping at random, not taking themselves seriously.
This enraged at least a few members of the crowd, who began chucking objects. Something hit a member of the band and they walked offstage, returning only to put in a perfunctory performance.
Soul Asylum had a few more minor hits after that, but there were diminishing returns. When bassist Karl Mueller, who had been a core member of the original band, along with frontman Dave Pirner and vocalist/ guitarist Dan Murphy, died from throat cancer in 2005, the band was forced to reassess where they were going and took a lower profile.
Murphy left for a quieter life in 2012, leaving Pirner, who now fronts a group made up of ex-Prince drummer Michael Bland, bassist Winston Roye and guitarist Justin Sharbono.
The band returned from a six-year recording absence with 2012’s Delayed Reaction, and Pirner says that they’ve got another batch of songs ready to go; they’ve also released covers of old punk and proto-punk classics like Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division) and Shakin’ Street (MC5) just for fun. The Journal spoke with Dave Pirner about fame, the loss of band members, and whether he holds a grudge against an entire city. Q: I honestly can’t tell if you’ve hated us all these years for having stuff thrown at you 21 years ago. A: I actually don’t remember it. I remember my mike stand getting hit, and a pitcher of beer hitting the neck of my bass player’s bass, but honestly I’m not really sure which flying debris situation is which any more.
Q: This time around you’re playing an outdoor fair, so hopefully the worst you’ll get is a few snow cones. What’s the band playing on this tour? A: We tend to mix it up every night; some of it is standards, but we like to dip deep into the catalogue. This band is so good, and it’s great to play songs that were never in my mind fully realized. Like stuff from (1986’s) Made to be Broken. Q: You have some amazing musicians in your band, but you’re also the last original member. Why not call it Dave Pirner and Friends or something? A: I made a solo record about the time Soul Asylum was slowing down, just wanting to see what would happen if I tried it on my own. In the end my role wasn’t so different than in Soul Asylum, but I just discovered that I like the idea of a being in a band, rather than being a ‘solo artist.’ Q: Is that because you came out of an actual musical community in Minneapolis? I was impressed that when Karl Mueller passed on, you had Tommy Stinson from The Replacements (and Guns N’ Roses) take his place for a period, because he came from that community. A: When we had Tommy play with us it was obvious for everyone because he was great friends with Karl’s widow. I guess it was keeping it in the family, in a sense. Q: When people think of Soul Asylum they automatically think of the song Runaway Train, which doesn’t actually sound like anything the band had recorded before. Now it’s the song that you’re called on to play every single night. Does that rankle a little? A: (Long pause) The best way I can explain it is … I wanted to pull that song for quite some time. Then I found that I was spending all of this time trying to explain why we weren’t playing it, more time than it would have taken to just play it. And people have paid lots of money and in some cases travelled hundreds of miles to hear it, so it’s kind of silly to do that. Q: It changes everything, though, doesn’t it? Some of the Minneapolis bands that you came up with in the early ’80s, like The Replacements and Husker Du, they’re almost unassailable in being forever cool. They never had their magic moment in the mainstream, though. A: Well, it’s understandable. You want to support the bands that haven’t had that commercial success; that’s normal and healthy, I think. But I have no reservations about that song, or any of my tunes, really. They’re all equal to me. I’m just glad I never wrote anything stupid that I’d be forced to sing 20 years later. Way back when we were on tour with Los Lobos, after La Bamba was a hit, I would watch them and could just tell that for them it was ‘whatever.’ The crowd would go crazy, they would roll eyes and play through it so they could get to one of their own tunes. It’s all a continued exploration. It was just a song and if it’s special to someone, well, cool. Q: The video for Runaway Train was as popular as the song. Was it strange, at the time, to go from grungy punks to MTV stars? A: We used to play in Germany all the time, all these little towns, and at some point it became like a Beatles thing, with screaming girls pulling on my hair. Terrifying. My tour manager came up and said ‘Look what they’re doing to you,’ and he throws down a stack of these teeny bop magazines with pictures of me looking cute. I mean, what the hell, I couldn’t understand it. Q: The band had been around for a decade, with little to no real commercial success. It must have been surreal. A: It felt like we were inadvertently selling our credibility down the river … We had this long history of playing all of these clubs, and that was eclipsed. You’re lost, you don’t know where you are anymore. Q: Now you’re in a space where you can do what you want, without the pressure. A: It does feel like it’s run its course, and levelled off to the point where I’m more in touch with where I come from. I’m not always doing photo shoots, now, I’m back to the business of not having it be about the business. There’s a level of purity in the band right now, it feels like we’re getting on with the job.