From the archives: Soul Asylum

Wildly underrated and undeniably undeterred.

A version of this was initially published four years ago in The Riff on Medium (thanks Kevin Alexander), but I was listening to Soul Asylum today, and, as I always am, reminded of how good the band is. So, I thought I would revisit this and continue to spread the gospel according to Dave Pirner et al.

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Although I have called the East Coast home for over 30 years, being born and raised in flyover country, I will forever remain a Midwesterner. You can take the man out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the man.

And if there is one thing that we Midwestern folk pride ourselves on, it’s our work ethic.

That’s not to say that a solid work ethic is absent from other regions; it’s most certainly not. Having lived there, the West Coast, and the East Coast, it’s been my experience that it’s just different - neither better nor worse, just different.

Even so far removed from the region of my birth, my work ethic is still one of the things I hang my tuque on. I also look for it in others, regardless of profession …or gender.

I was once dating someone who asked me what I liked about them. I enjoyed many things about her, including her intelligence, sense of humor, and the usual qualities. Now, I could’ve said something shallow or snarky like “breasts,” but after a couple of seconds, the first thing out of my mouth was: “Well, you have an excellent work ethic.”

She wasn’t pleased.

It's hard to imagine that a woman wouldn’t see “work ethic” as an attractive trait or a high compliment.

Soul Asylum's star on the outside mural of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue..

Once upon a time…

The Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) in Minnesota was a hot music scene. At one particular moment, the scene was pulsing with Prince, Husker Du, The Replacements, and Soul Asylum, as well as a host of bands that never reached a national audience (not for lack of effort). But as any music fan knows, these scenes are transient (see Seattle, Athens, Austin, etc.).

That said, I imagine being a musician and songwriter from Minnesota must be tough, not because of the winters, but because of the musical pedigree.

The ultimate literary rock God, Bob Dylan, is from Hibbing, Minnesota. In the Twin Cities, you had the genius of Prince and the scrappier, but no less literary or intelligent, Bob Mould of Husker Du and Paul Westerberg of The Replacements.

For reasons that elude me, Dave Pirner and Soul Asylum are rarely spoken about with the same reverence as their contemporaries. Their bands came up together, but for reasons that escape me, Soul Aylum often gets overlooked when considering the great rock bands from Minnesota, or even worse, they get marginalized.

After banging out one EP, three full-length albums on Minneapolis indie label Twine/Tone, and then two albums on A&M Records, the band couldn’t get any traction. It may have been a career misstep when they took a jab at the industry’s attitude towards them by titling their final A&M Records album …And the Horse They Rode In On. A&M dropped the band.

Columbia Records threw Soul Asylum a lifeline. And then, the stars aligned, and they released the multi-platinum Grave Dancers Union in 1992 (aka, the one with “Runaway Train”).

From a Rolling Stone article in 1993, just after Grave Dancers Union’s release:

“You see, over their 11-year existence, Soul Asylum has been called many things: America’s best live band (check); music-industry misfits (check); punk poets (check); insightful adults trapped in terminal adolescence (check); the last great gasp of life from the early-’80s Minneapolis music scene (check). They’ve even been toe-tagged as dead and gone.”

While Soul Asylum’s commercial success may have yielded only two platinum albums (1992’s Grave Dancer’s Union and 1995’s Let Your Dim Light Shine), and the only original member remaining is the lead singer and principal songwriter, Dave Pirner, the band has yet to be toe-tagged.

But when considering the pantheon of well-known Minnesota musicians, Soul Asylum always seems to be the afterthought. After everyone lists Bob Dylan, Prince, Bob Mould, and Paul Westerberg, it takes a Soul Asylum fan to throw up their arm and say: “Hey, what about Soul Asylum?”
" Oh yeah, they’re great too.”

Everyone knows Bob Dylan and Prince are flat-out geniuses. Bob Mould is a genre-bending musical and creative polymath, and Paul Westerberg is one of the most respected, arguably one of the best, songwriters of my generation.

I feel like Dave Pirner has been incorrectly left off that call sheet.

When the lyrical grand pooh-bah of rock and roll is fellow Golden Gopher Bob Dylan, and your contemporaries are Prince, Mould, and Westerberg, it’s going to take A LOT of talent to rise above the noise. Many bands in Minnesota attempted it, and tens of thousands around the country tried as well.

Soul Asylum succeeded.

It wasn’t just tenacity and the band’s work ethic that helped break Soul Asylum. Like it almost always is, it’s the convergence of many things, but the origin is always the song.

Dave Pirner is a wickedly underrated songwriter. He’s clever, funny, reflective, open …he’s pretty much all the things that make a great writer.

If you close your eyes and listen to “String of Pearls” off Let Your Dim Light Shine, it's like a 4:30 Robert Altman film.

If one had a singular criticism about Pirner, it might be that he has stayed in his songwriting lane all these years. But that’s not really a criticism. Pirner writes what he knows, and he writes his songs in his voice— that’s what makes a great writer.

You wouldn’t expect a transgressive book to be unearthed from the Hemingway estate or Bob Dylan to release a hardcore rap album any more than you would expect Dave Pirner to make an experimental noise album.

So what gives? Why can’t Pirner and Soul Asylum get the respect their fellow Minnesotan brethren get?

The history is there, the performances are there, the songs are there, the work is certainly there, and yet somehow, the respect isn’t.

I had been familiar with Soul Asylum, but my inroad was …And the Horse They Rode In On. From there, I worked my way backward. Shortly after I’d exhausted their back catalog, Grave Dancers Union dropped. And boy, howdy did it. It was and remains a great album. The success of that record was hard-fought and well-deserved.

Unfortunately for Pirner and co., right after Grave Dancers Union, grunge hit. And that genre and the industry’s approach to it took no prisoners. Even though the guys in Soul Asylum had always worn jeans and flannel (you will recall that they’re from Minnesota), straight-up rock bands like theirs became a casualty, despite Columbia Records’ attempts to label them as “grunge.”

Their follow-up to Grave Dancers Union, 1995’s Let Your Dim Light Shine, was also an excellent record that found its platinum success in the fumes of Grave Dancers Union. Even though it was a terrific follow-up album, it just wasn’t the sound “of the moment.” That’s the record’s only problem.

In the throes of the post-grunge era, Soul Asylum released one more record on Columbia Records, Candy From A Stranger, in 1998 before being inevitably dropped by the label.

Dave Pirner and co-founder and lead guitarist Dan Murphy drifted apart, other members left or were fired, and one passed away (bass player Karl Mueler in 2005).

But Soul Asylum still wasn’t ready to be toe-tagged.

Like a phoenix rising, the band dropped The Silver Lining in 2006. Arguably one of their best albums. They enlisted fellow Minnesotan drummer Michael Bland (Prince, Paul Westerberg) on drums. When original bass player Karl Mueller grew too sick from cancer to play, they brought in Gen X’s own Keith Richards — Tommy Stinson (The Replacements) to finish up recording and to stand in for Mueller on tour.

This line-up (Pirner, Murphy, Bland, and Stinson) was the one I saw in 2008 on a triple bill with Everclear and Cracker at Webster Hall in New York City. I persuaded a couple of friends to go with me.

I swear to you, there was no better rock band on that night in NYC. The proof is that about 40–50% of the audience left after Soul Asylum's performance. They were the middle band; the headliner was Everclear.

One of my friends left immediately after Soul Asylum, and the other and I stuck around (she was an Everclear fan). But even after a couple of their songs, she leaned over and said: “Yeah, let’s go.”

Since that show, things have changed for the band. In 2012, Tommy Stinson left to do Tommy things (including a Replacements reunion), and co-founder/lead guitarist Dan Murphy retired from music.

But did Dave Pirner quit? Nope. Retire? Nope. He did what Soul Asylum does — continued the work.

I dragged another friend to see them in 2015 at the Brooklyn Bowl. She had no interest, but in the middle of the show, she leaned over and said: “I know all of these songs.”

As we stood outside afterward smoking a cigarette, she said: “That was amazing.” Just then, Dave Pirner walked right by us toward his tour bus, carrying a beer and smoking.

Never one to be shy, she said: “Great show!”
He stopped and turned: “Huh?”
She said again: “Great show! We loved it.”
Pirner’s smile was big and genuine: “Oh, thanks a lot, man!”

[Fun Fact: When I saw Soul Asylum with Everclear and Cracker, the ticket was +/-$50. I saw them in 2015, and the ticket was $25. I saw them again in 2020, just before the pandemic, and the ticket was still $25. Thank you to Soul Asylum for keeping rock and roll affordable.]

Dave Pirner and Soul Asylum are as solid as anything you’re likely to encounter because he is:

• A solid songwriter

• A solid guitar player

• A solid singer

• A solid frontman

• The leader of a solid workingman’s band

In other words, he’s carried that Midwestern work ethic into his art, and it’s one of the things that makes him so reliable. You know he’s always going to deliver, be it live or in the studio. Will he be excellent 100% of the time? No. He’s human. And that’s also part of the beauty.

It genuinely makes me wonder where the love for this band lies. Sure, they haven’t sold millions and millions of records, but neither have Bob Mould or Paul Westerberg.

Soul Asylum is like the Rodney Dangerfield of Rock and Roll — they get no respect.

But if, after 40+ years in the music business, with a few million albums sold, you’re still alive, sounding good, articulate, creatively viable, and working? Hell, that’s success in any industry, let alone rock and roll. That should command some respect, especially when your catalog is as deep and rich as the Soul Asylum catalog is.

A weaker band, one without their tenacity, would have imploded after Let Your Dim Light Shine.

Dave Pirner may not carry the gravitas of Bob Dylan or Prince or even Bob Mould or Paul Westerberg, but he’s no less talented. He and Soul Asylum deserve a seat at the table. Pirner and company haven’t earned it through just hard work; they’ve made it through the work AND the talent.

The goal of any creative life is to create. And you can’t make great work without doing the work.

“Youths write to me all the time and tell me their bands will get nowhere because of all the bands in the world. I tell them there has always been awful music and that no great band ever wasted time complaining, they just got it done. Their ropey ranting is just a way to get out of the hard work of making music that will do some lasting damage.” — Henry Rollins.

That rings true for Dave Pirner and Soul Asylum. The band did and continues to do the hard work. And the quality of the work and their work ethic have allowed them to do “some lasting damage.”

That means something.
Well, it should mean something anyway.

Soul Asylum STILL isn’t ready to be toe-tagged.