Few Minnesota bands have made it as big as the one coming to Rochester this weekend
When Soul Asylum last played in Rochester, the sun was shining on a perfect opener to 2016’s edition of the Down by the Riverside concert series. On Saturday, the temperature will hover just above freezing — a far cry from mid-July in Minnesota, but not cold enough to keep the Minneapolis punk-rock stalwarts away from Mayo Civic Center.
Soul Asylum was founded in 1981 and quickly gained a following in the burgeoning Minneapolis punk scene, along with groups like The Replacements and The Suburbs. After touring for the better part of the 1980s, the group found national success off their 1992 record Grave Dancers Union, which went triple platinum and earned them a Best Rock Song Grammy for the song “Runaway Train.”
Ahead of their show on Saturday, we talked with frontman Dave Pirner about his songwriting process, his forthcoming book, and what made the 1980s’ Minneapolis music scene something special to be apart of.
Med City Beat: First and foremost, welcome back to Rochester! I know you have played here before; do you remember the first time Soul Asylum played in Rochester?
Dave Pirner: Honestly, I don’t remember! We’ve played here a lot throughout the years, and what I can remember is that we’ve always had a good time playing in Rochester. We love being here, the people have been great, and we’re super excited to be back.
MCB: What was it like to go from practicing in a friend’s garage, touring all over the country, and then finally making it to the top of the music industry and winning a Grammy?
DP: I mean, it kinda sucked. It felt like it took forever. We spent 14 years on the road, just playing wherever would have us. It was a really long trip from one place to another. I’m really more comfortable in my own skin now. At some points it was overwhelming; everybody wanted a piece of my time, they wanted me to do this, that and the other thing. As long as it was for music it was great, but when you’re spending all your time doing photo shoots and all these other things, it gets a little overwhelming. You know, it was an interesting experience. And, you know, a Grammy means nothing to some people and it means a whole lot to others. I gave it to my mom, then she gave it back to me, then I gave it to my kid, he took it to show-and-tell, and I have this vision of it hanging out the window of a car because he left it in the car one time. If it impresses people, you know, I’m in.
MCB: Do you think all those photoshoots and more monotonous things are worth it, to be able to perform and play music every night?
DP: You know, I always saw it as part of the job. I associated it with cleaning the fryers, because I was a short-order cook and that was part of the day. Cleaning the fryers kinda sucked, but you couldn’t make the food without cleaning the fryers. It’s just stuff like that. If you want to get to the gig, you gotta sit in a van for 10 hours. It’s not all pretty or fun, it’s just part of the job. I can think of worse things than having to have my picture taken, I just never really had any aspirations to be a model. It makes you feel weird, a little self-conscious.
MCB: Let me ask you this: what about your music, do you think, resonates with your fanbase?
DP: Well, it’s like I’m talking to myself in my lyrics and hoping that someone will understand what the hell I’m talking about. It feels like there’s a general understanding of my lyrics, and I think that people all over the world who can identify with certain parts of it. In some ways, it took 30-some years to come across at all. And, you know, to other people, it’s just noise. It’s very clear that half the crowd is going to be curiosity seekers, and half the crowd might know a lot of words to the songs. That’s normally the situation, and you have to play to both people. You have to play to people who have never seen the band before, and you have to play to people who have seen the band 30 times before. I don’t know which one makes me more nervous. You don’t want to let down the people who have supported you your entire life, but at the same time, you know, you want to show yourself. No matter who those people are fans of, I hope they can see what we’re trying to do.
MCB: That’s an interesting point, the duality of playing to two different groups of people in the same crowd. That’s a tight line to walk.
DP: Yeah, it’s a balance. It’s changed a lot over the years, as far as having more material people are familiar with and not being as irreverent about playing live. We just played a show in Oklahoma, and we went off script a bit. I started playing some covers, and the rest of the band was like, ‘wow, that was fun.’ We don’t do that as much as we used to, and part of the reason is that we just didn’t care before, but it’s mostly because not everyone had a camera back then. You don’t really want to be held accountable for destroying a bunch of songs just for the hell of it. Out of context, it just seems like you’re f—ing around. It can get out of hand pretty quickly.
MCB: You alluded to the live show changing over time; let’s flip it to the other side of being a frontman and writing songs. How has your writing changed since you first started out?
DP: I used to just fill notebooks up constantly — and I still do that, just writing and not really knowing why or what I’m doing. I think over a period of time, I started to understand how the music and the words were going to come together a little bit more. I’m a little it more efficient about it. That being said, I like to stay open for accidents to happen, spontaneity, all those things.
MCB: Where do you think your best material comes from — those moments of spontaneity, or a more structured process?
DP: I don’t know. That’s a really good question, because sometimes it just kind of happens and sometimes I’ll labor over something for years; trying to get a song right for six years, and you keep moving little bits around, changing the arrangement, changing the words, and it never seems quite right. There are some songs like that, where it’s like a garage full of cars that I’m still working on. At the same time, it’s really satisfying when something I’ve spent 10 years trying to work out comes together. It’s kind of ironic; sometimes it’ll just come out of me in one sitting. That’ll be something the rest of the band responds to, just as likely as something that I’ve been sitting on for years.
MCB: Do you have any new music on the way? Any new projects to share?
DP: We do — we have a new record that’s really close to being finished. We’ve been working on the artwork for that, and I have a new book that’s pretty close to being finished too. Those two things should be coming some time in the new year.
MCB: I’m interested in how you wrote this book — that’s a very creative process too, but in a different way than writing for an album.
DP: I’d always wanted to put out a book with my lyrics. I’d never been interested in telling my road story, because by the time I’d read the Jack Kerouac book, On the Road, I’d been on tour for four or five years. It’s a story that’s really fascinating, until you’ve been there — it kinda sucks being on the road. I don’t like reading other people’s stories about it, so that was never my intention to write about that stuff. I just wanted to put out a book of my lyrics and try to take a different approach than just explaining what it’s like to be in a rock band. It’s a book of all my lyrics, and I write commentary on certain inspirations for different ideas and songs. I’m trying to put the lyrics in a light that shows the most personal parts. I can’t say anything about myself that I haven’t already tried to express in one of these songs.
MCB: Growing up in Minneapolis, your band was a part of a very cool music scene in Minneapolis. What about that scene is special to you?
DP: I mean… everything. I’m coming out of high school at the time, starting to learn about my local music scene, which was a revelation to me. I was so into the music — I started out on trumpet, then switched to guitar — and then I realized that not all rock music came out of the radio. There were these bands in Minneapolis that were doing it on a local level, which you sort of have to figure out for yourself. I started to follow them. There was a record that came out called Big Hits of Mid-America, Vol. 3, and it was a Twin/Tone record with a compilation of a lot of local Minneapolis bands happening at the time — The Suburbs, The Suicide Commandos, such and such, and that turned my head around. I was like, ‘holy s—. These bands are from Minnesota!’
I’m still pretty intimate with that community. I still see Chris [Osgood], I still hang out at the record stores and the club, I’m going to see Run Westy Run tonight, one guy lives at my house, and we’ve been friends forever. A lot of the people I grew up making music with in Minneapolis are still friends of mine. Whether they’re still making music in the capacity that they were at the time or not, it doesn’t really matter one way or another. You know, it was a special time. There were a lot of bands... I mean, a lot of bands. The weirder the band was, the more interesting it was to me. These were not bands who were trying to hit the big time. These were bands that were unique, punk rock, and crazy. So, I met all these really interesting people — artists, poets, people like that — and you don’t meet people like that in high school! It broke me out of my shell. I finally found out there was a world outside my bubble. The punk rock scene in Minneapolis became my family, for lack of a better expression.
MCB: Thanks for spending some time talking with us. Anything else you want to say or tell the people of Rochester before this show?
DP: Just bring your rock shoes… and your rock pants… and your rock shirt. That’s all we require.
Soul Asylum will perform this Saturday, November 2 in the Dr. Charles H. Mayo Presentation Hall — Mayo Civic Center as part of the 2019-20 Riverside Presents series. Additional details, along with ticket information, can be found here.
Story written by reporter and musician Isaac Jahns.
Published in partnership with:
