Soul Asylum Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Soul Asylum

Forty Years on a Runaway Train

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

“I don’t think anybody that is in a band in 2022 would have survived what we put ourselves through ... A lot of greater musicians went ‘Fuck this!’”

Back in 1992, when Soul Asylum released their worldwide breakthrough album and debut release for Columbia Records, ‘Grave Dancers Union’, which topped the US Billboard Heatseekers Album Chart, peaked at number eleven on the main US Billboard Hot 200 chart and number 27 on the UK album chart and reached the top ten in various other territories and went on to be certified triple-platinum a year later and gain the band the award for Best Rock Song for its third single, ‘Runaway Train’ at the 1994 Grammys, many would have been forgiven for thinking that vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Dave Pirner and co. had been an overnight success in the wake of the early-’90s Grunge explosion. However, nothing could have been further from the truth, with the Minneapolis, Minnesota outift having spent the previous eleven years touring the world relentlessly, often as a support band, and releasing a string of albums on Minneapolis independent label Twin/Tone (1984’s ‘Say What You Will...’; 1986’s ‘Made to Be Broken’ and 1986’s ‘While You Were Out’), before signing an earlier, far less successful major label deal with A & M Records for the release of 1988’s ‘Hang Time’ and 1990’s ‘And the Horse They Rode In On’.

Fast forward to 2022 and with twelve albums now under their belt, including their latest, ‘Hurry Up and Wait’, released in the midst of mass COVID-induced pandemonium on independent label Blue Elan Records in 2020, Soul Asylum are still out there travailing the ups and downs of the music industry. Earlier this year, they celebrated the 30th anniversary of ‘Grave Dancers Union’ with the

Soul Asylum, 2022. L/R: Winston Roye; Michael Bland; Dave Pirner and Ryan Smith

release of the ‘Deluxe Edition’ on the Columbia Legacy label, have recently been out on the road all over the world, including the UK, with fellow cult American Alt-Rockers Everclear and are currently planning more live dates, and potentially more recording, for next year.

When we catch up with Pirner via Zoom for a fascinating insight into the incredible forty year plus history of one of the world’s hardest working bands, he greets us in his typically self-depreciating style by telling us: “I’ve been busy, surprisingly! I have a very erratic schedule though! I was very busy over COVID, I’ll tell you that! It’s all about timing. I released a book [‘Loud Fast Words’, 2020] and a record right when COVID started. That was terrible timing! [Laughs].”

Firstly, hello Dave and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Let’s start at the here and now, because you have just been out on the road in the UK for an eight-date tour alongside Everclear. It had been a while since you were over here previously, but looking back over the years, is the UK a country which holds fond memories for you?

Yeah, we had toured with Everclear before, so we knew the fellas before touring with them again and it was cool to, you know, have some other Yankees out there, because none of us are very good with English! I kind of need a translator! [Laughs]. Yeah, I have [laughs] fantastic memories of being over there! I don’t know, when you’re in a shitty little Punk band from Minneapolis and you get to go over to England for the first time, it’s a thrill. You feel like, well, now we’re going to show these Brits how we do it and it’s always kind of been that way. I mean, the one band that sticks out in my mind that we did a gig or two with was Gaye Bykers on Acid [Soul Asylum opened for Gaye Bykers on Acid on several UK dates in 1988]. They were fun, they made us feel right at home! That sure was quite a while ago, I hope

they’re doing good.

Recent years have been a really busy time for Soul Asylum, not least with your twelfth studio album, ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ having been released on the 16th of April 2020. The tour in support of that album was interrupted by the pandemic and the album itself was released during lockdown, during which time you and Soul Asylum lead guitarist and backing vocalist since 2016, Ryan Smith hosted online live shows via Facebook and Instagram. Just what was the experience of releasing and promoting an album in the midst of all that pandemonium like?

Oh, it was just really frustrating, because we had been on tour and we were touring a bit more because the record [‘Hurry Up and Wait’, 2020] was coming out and we were in San Diego and I got a knock on my hotel room door and it was my tour manager, Jeneen [Anderson], who’s with me now, and she said, ‘Tour’s over!’ and I was like ‘What?!’ Luckily, we had been on about a three or four week tour and we only had a couple of gigs left on the tour and so then, if I remember correctly, my book [‘Loud Fast Words’, 2020] came out and it was kind of questionable as to would I be able to promote that? And of course, the answer was ‘No’, you know, so me and Ryan [Smith, guitar and backing vocals] and Jeneen sort of started doing a livestream and that was the first time I had done anything like that, but it turned out to be, well, kind of a fun way just to be kind of present, I suppose. Every week, we did a livestream and played a hundred original songs, which was our goal. We played some songs that we don’t usually play and we played some songs that, you know, I had to use a lyric sheet for, but we did end up accomplishing our goal of a hundred songs and people still come up to me and talk to me about it, so I think people kind of ... I don’t know, I guess they appreciated it, because everyone was stuck at home, you know. Yeah, I’m not a big internet person. I’m no Justin Hawkins [The Darkness], if you

know what I mean! We laugh about his [YouTube] show [‘Justin Hawkins Rides Again’] sometimes [laughs], it can be pretty good!

On the subject of ‘Hurry Up and Wait’, a major theme of the album is communication. However, I think it is fair to say that it is references to older forms of communication and communication via the internet doesn’t figure. This leads me to ask, as a musician in a band who have been active since 1981, what is your opinion on the way that you are obliged to communicate and promote yourself in the modern age in comparison to how things were done back in the earlier days of the band? For a start, you were just saying there that you aren’t really an internet person?

Well, I mean [laughs], I kind of accept that, just referring to it as such ... I don’t really say that very often, but I realise I just did! You know, you go out and you play and that’s what you do and you do it as much as you can and it really wasn’t until a little bit later that ... you know, ‘later’ as in after the band had been going a couple of years that we were like, ‘Oh, that’s how it works! You put a record out and then you go on tour and that’s kind of how it works’. We were kind of always learning as we went along, I suppose, but it’s still kind of just the same aesthetic as it’s always been. Like, you get in the van, you get on the plane, you go to wherever it is and you play your show and it’s as simple as that. And then you go home and you make a record and you go back out, you know.

‘Hurry Up and Wait’ was obviously recorded prior to the world going into lockdown and following your return to Minneapolis, Minnesota, utilising Nicollet Studios, where your first three albums (1984’s ‘Say What You Will...’; 1986’s ‘Made to Be Broken’ and 1986’s ‘While You Were Out’) were recorded. How important do you feel returning to not only the city in which Soul Asylum was formed in under the name Loud Fast Rules forty-one

years ago (the band adopted the name Soul Asylum in 1983), but also this particular studio was the resulting album?

Yeah, that was cool too! That was an opportunity to do something that we wouldn’t have normally done and we started working in that studio [Nicollet Studios] I think on the last two records [‘Change of Fortune’, 2016 and ‘Hurry Up and Wait’] and the fella that we’d been using as our producer, John Fields, got a space in Minneapolis. He was living in LA, so me and Michael [Bland, drummer] would go out to LA and bring the tracks back to Minneapolis, but he got a studio in Minneapolis that happened to be in the same building where we recorded our first three records [‘Say What You Will...’, 1984; ‘Made to Be Broken’, 1986 and ‘While You Were Out’, 1986]. Yeah, so we ended up back where we started and it was a very comfortable feeling, you know. It was very much like, you know, you’re just walking up and down the halls or going outside to go and get a bite [to eat], or whatever, and it was a very natural feeling. I think that it [‘Hurry Up and Wait’] really does have some sort of ... I don’t even know what the word is ... it’s not ‘visceral’, but it’s something like that, where you’re probably excited the first time you record in LA or New York and, you know, it takes you out of your elements and that can be a really good thing and then you end up in the worst neighbourhood in Florida for three months and that can [laughs] affect the way things go too, I suppose! So, yeah, there was a real feeling of, you know, bringing it all back home, if you will.

Also in 2020, you released your book, ‘Loud Fast Words’ (the title of which is of course a reference to Soul Asylum’s original name), a collection of lyrics and memories spanning the band’s entire career. Did you notice any sort of significant evolution in your writing over the course of the band’s career?

[Laughs] It’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean, sometimes, I’ll be surprised, like

Soul Asylum in 1992, with Pirner second from right

‘oh, I’d forgotten I had written that, that’s actually pretty good!’ But, I’m kind of my own worst critic, so, I mean, I like to think that my writing gets better all the time, but occasionally, I would surprise myself and other times, I’d be like a bit embarrassed, like I hadn’t really formulated my formula yet, or something. So, yeah, there’s definitely an evolution there!

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of your sixth album, ‘Grave Dancers Union’ and the Columbia Legacy label released the 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the album on the 30th of September. Despite having been together for eleven years previously, it was ‘Grave Dancers Union’ which was your worldwide commercial breakthrough, hitting the top of the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart and number eleven on the main US Billboard Hot 200 chart, but also peaking at number 27 on the UK album chart and reaching the top ten in many other countries across the globe. It also spawned three high charting singles: ‘Somebody to Shove’ (US Alternative Chart #1 / UK#32); ‘Black Gold’ (US Alternative Chart #6 / UK#26) and the track which you would soon become most associated with, ‘Runaway Train’ (US#5 / CAN#1 / UK#7). Grunge had broken in earnest the year previous to ‘Grave Dancers Union’, with Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ in particular lighting the way for many Alternative Rock bands to become commercially successful chart acts. You soon found yourself being labelled with the term “Grunge”, but what was your opinion of this tag at the time and how important do you feel your association with this movement to your commercial success during this period?

It [being associated with Grunge] didn’t really affect the band that much, because it was more of an extension of what had been going on already. So, we had been on the road for ten years when the Grunge thing started

happening, but we had been through Seattle and we had Soundgarden open for us a long, long, long time ago and we had met a lot of the folks, some of them before they had even started bands! So, there was definitely a scene bubbling up in Seattle. And I think, and I’m pretty sure I’m kind of right about this, the Grunge thing ... pretty sure I’m kind of right about it; could I be any more confident?! The Grunge thing goes a little hand in hand with people tuning their guitars lower and I think that’s kind of what is identified with the word ‘Grunge’, which, like so many words, was come up with by a music journalist!

‘Grave Dancers Union’ was your first release for major label, Columbia Records, following three albums on the independent label Twin/Tone (‘Say What You Will...’; ‘Made to Be Broken’ and ‘While You Were Out’) and two albums for another major label, A&M (‘Hang Time’, 1988 and ‘And the Horse They Rode In On’, 1990). You would go on to release two further albums for Columbia Records, 1995’s Butch Vig-produced ‘Let Your Dim Light Shine’ (US#6 / UK#22), which featured the singles ‘Misery’ (US#20 / UK#30); ‘Just Like Anyone’ (UK#52) and ‘Promises Broken’ and 1998’s ‘Candy from a Stranger’ (US#121), which featured the singles ‘I Will Still Be Laughing’ and ‘Close’. When you started the band in 1981 under the name Hard Fast Rules (with yourself on drums and vocals until drummer Pat Morley joined in 1983 and you switched to rhythm guitar and vocals) alongside lead guitarist Dan Murphy and bassist Karl Mueller, were such things as major label deals among your aspirations for the band and having released on an independent label, just how different did you find the experience of being signed to a major label?

No. I mean, we didn’t have any aspirations, to be totally honest, not in a way that we knew what it was we were striving for. I think we knew that we were having fun and we wanted to do it as much as we could, but we

didn’t have a lot of confidence or a lot of big dreams, because major labels weren’t working with bands like us, you know, all the bands that were out there with this do it yourself sort of aesthetic that didn’t even involve the major labels at all. There was kind of a network of fanzines and bands that were, you know, driving around on their own volition in vans and, you know, sleeping around on people’s floors. It was kind of some sort of a blind ambition where you just want to keep going and keep playing and see where it takes you, but we definitely didn’t have any delusions about how far we could go and we were probably as surprised as anyone at just how far we’d gone and that I’m still even sitting here!

In fact, with ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ having been released on the Los Angeles-based independent label Blue Élan Records, things have now gone full circle, haven’t they?

Yeah and I mean, it’s a really good disposition, because nothing ever fazed me. There was no disappointment too large for Soul Asylum! We were just sort of used to floundering and fluffing up, if you will, and just kind of being a bunch of misfits, you know, so we always kind of rationalised it with humour and we rationalised it with just kind of going, ‘Oh well, that sucked, let’s move on’. So, I never had any delusions of grandeur about how things are supposed to be easier, or you’re going to make it some day and you’re never going to have to worry about anything again and none of that is really true! [Laughs].

So, how would you say that being a member of Soul Asylum in 2022 compares to being a member of Soul Asylum in 1992 when ‘Grave Dancers Union’ was released?

Well, hhhhmmm, that’s a good question! It’s kind of more of the same, only you have the experience, so in 2022, I’ve seen it all, you know! The other guys in the band have some of their own unique follies, if you will, and some of their own unique ... I don’t

want to say ‘successes’, but Michael [Bland, drummer, who joined Soul Asylum in 2005 and has appeared on ‘The Silver Lining’, 2006; ‘Delayed Reaction’, 2012; ‘Change of Fortune’ and ‘Hurry Up and Wait’] played with Prince [performing live as part of the New Power Generation and appearing on the albums ‘Diamonds and Pearls’, 1991; ‘Come’, 1994; ‘The Gold Experience’, 1995; ‘Chaos and Disorder’, 1996; ‘Emancipation’, 1996; ‘Crystal Ball’, 1998; ‘3121’, 2006; ‘Planet Earth’, 2007 and ‘Lotusflow3r’, 2009] and that sort of thing, but I don’t think anybody that is in a band in 2022 would have survived what we put ourselves through in the past! [Laughs]. It was brutal! I mean, you had to be kind of eighteen to put up with all that, you know! A lot of greater musicians went ‘Fuck this!’ [Laughs].

On the subject of ‘Runaway Train’, you wrote the song about your battle with depression in the period before ‘Grave Dancers Union’, but the single’s hard-hitting video, which became a staple of MTV in mid-1993, featured images of missing people. Several versions of the video were made for various parts of the world, including the UK. The US version of the video led to twenty-six of the missing people featured being found, but there were quite a few tragic cases. How much say did you have in the video for ‘Runaway Train’ and what are your memories of the director of that video, Tony Kaye and Columbia Records, pitching the idea for it to you and the rest of the band?

Well, people seemed to like the song, so I think that when they put the record out, they had actually already decided ... or part of their strategy was to release ‘Somebody to Shove’ , then ‘Black Gold’ and then ‘Runaway Train’, which is pretty ... you know, it worked. If it hadn’t have worked, we might not have even made it to ‘Runaway Train’. So, you know, it was the era when everyone made a video and I was looking to do something different and what you would get was a whole bunch of VHS tapes of different directors’ reels and you had to look

through them and go , ‘Oh, I think this guy might be a good match with the band’ and then you’d meet this guy and you’d have lunch or dinner and see if you were compatible. And so, I was looking through all these reels and I got Tony Kaye’s reel and I just thought, initially, it was just much better than anything else I had seen within the bunch of stuff that I was looking at, because his stuff really stuck out to me, so I said ‘I wanna meet this guy!’ So, there I am at lunch with Tony Kaye, a very eloquent and brilliant English man and he came up with this idea. He said ‘Milk cartons!’ to me and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he goes, ‘You know how they put kids on milk cartons and try to find them?’ And I went, ‘Oh yeah, I didn’t know they had that in England?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, well, you know, they didn’t in my day’, because he’s a bit older, a little bit and ... he’s also, by the way, made ‘American History X’ [1998] and a great movie called ‘Lake of Fire’ [2006]. And so, he was kind of getting at this thing and he goes, ‘Yeah, let’s ry and find these kids!’ and I was like, ‘I’m in!’ So, it clicked between us really fast, but he put the concept forward and I said, ‘Let’s go with it’ and that’s the way it worked out and he was just making a word association with the word ‘runaway’. So, sometimes ... sometimes ... things work out and that was, fortunately, one of the times it did. And I still think about him as a brilliant and somewhat eccentric director, but Tony Kaye is great. If I was going to make a movie, I would get Tony Kaye to make it! I call him every now and then and he still always gives me a concept! Yeah, he gave me a concept right after the O.J. Simpson thing [the O.J. Simpson trial, 1995] and he was like, ‘How about this? The band’s in a white van driving down the freeway and ... yeah, you can use that!’ It was a good idea, I probably should have used it! [Laughs] I don’t know what we ended up doing, probably not something as good! I suppose I felt like ‘Well, if we’re going to do this right, Tony, I’m going to need you to direct it’ and he was like, ‘I’m busy!’

Finally, if the Dave Pirner of 2022

could offer the Dave Pirner of 1981, when Soul Asylum were just starting out, any advice, what would it be?

Oh, hhhmmmm, let’s see! Keep your expectations as low as possible! Always expect the worst, because if something bad can happen, it probably will and, you know, approach it with a sense of humour, because if you can’t laugh off the tragedies, you’re never going to make it. I mean, you have to kind of have this sense of absurdity to the whole thing to kind of dream your way into going, ‘You know, this could work!’ But, we certainly were ready for the worst and that always kind of helped prepare us, because often, the worst possible scenarios came to be the situation we found ourselves in.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been such a please to chat to you. We wish you all the best with all your upcoming tour dates, the 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of ‘Grave Dancers Union’ and for the future.

Thank you Alice, I appreciate it!

‘Grave Dancers Union - 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition’’ is out now on Columbia Legacy. For news and upcoming tour dates, visit the links below.

www.soulasylum.com

www.facebook.com/ SoulAsylum