When it comes to an acoustic show, Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner can rattle off the pros and cons compared to their normal full band performance.
“Well, it’s not as loud. When you talk about intimacy, it can be really nice and relaxed, or it can be really frustrating. There will be times where there’s something going on, where somebody’s talking really (expletive) loud, and I can hear it over my singing, which is very difficult to negotiate. I don’t have that problem when the band’s coming off the stage at a million decibels,” Pirner said with a laugh. “So it’s a little more nerve-wracking in a way. It’s just a little more naked up there, and I don’t have the wall of sound to push things forward.”
The stripped down version of Soul Asylum — just Pirner and guitarist Ryan Smith — will play a sold-out acoustic show on April 13 at City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District. Living Colour singer Corey Glover will open the show.
Soul Asylum appeared on “MTV Unplugged” in 1993, where they played hits like “Runaway Train,” “Black Gold” and “Somebody to Shove.” A 2023 vinyl release, “The Complete Unplugged NYC ‘93,” captures that performance.
While Pirner said he prefers playing with the band, the Minneapolis native appreciates the acoustic shows because they keep him engaged.
“This keeps me on my toes because mistakes are much more noticeable,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a challenge, I suppose. It’s a different kind of energy in a way, where I’m not as exhausted when I get off stage, but mentally, I’m kind of frazzled.”
In a phone call last week from Minneapolis, Pirner spoke with TribLive about the mood in Minneapolis, translating electric songs to acoustic and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
Minneapolis has been in the news a lot recently, so what’s your take on what happened there? Was it encouraging to see the response from the music community?
Yes, just recently there was an outdoor thing right at the spot where Alex Pretti was shot, and the Dropkick Murphys came to town and a bunch of local bands played. For my money, an outdoor, free concert — and it did rain and it wasn’t too cold, but it was great. The whole vibe of the thing was very much I could feel that there was a bond that was built up between everyone that lives in this (expletive) city. Because it’s the ICE thing and it just put everybody through something that sort of brought people together, and then you couple that with you can tell that spring is coming just because of people’s mood. It was just a community thing where there was no commercialism to it at all. It was also loosely to get people to go to the restaurants in the neighborhood so they weren’t selling anything on the street.
It was just fantastic, and I know I moved to New Orleans for 24 years because I thought Minneapolis was a little too (expletive) milquetoast for me or whatever. I don’t even know what that means, but here I am. I come back and I get George Floyd and ICE shooting people on the street, school shootings and there’s been a lot of terrible (stuff) that’s been going on in this town, and it’s just such a different thing. I made it through Hurricane Katrina, but this is really close to home. So when I heard about Alex Pretti, I was like aw (expletive), another person got shot by ICE.
Then I found out where it was that this happened, and it was not only very close to where I live but where I came up as far as the band is concerned. We used to practice right across the street, and the Twin/Tone offices are right in that area, so I spent a lot of time in that neighborhood. That really made it sort of personal. So I mean, try it man, try to go to a protest when it’s 10 below zero. It’s so (expletive) weird because you can’t believe that you’re there, much less all these other people. It really does say something about the severity of the cause. And the last benefit concert that I did, there was rumors or they’re telling us, and the presence has gone way down, that ICE was leaving. At that point. I was kind of like holy (expletive), all this protesting is working, which is kind of an interesting feeling because I’ve been involved in plenty of protests, and you don’t often get visible results. It’s been really tragic and really sad, and it’s been a tough winter, I’ll tell you that.
Are you excited to get back on the road pretty soon?
I am. Well, it’s a strange way to make a living, let’s put it that way. I was just talking to a friend about how not glamorous the road is. People seem to have this tendency to think that when I go out on the road, it’s just a party, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth. It led to a conversation about that’s why people in bands get so involved in drugs and alcohol and (expletive) because there’s so much downtime and there’s so much travel and there’s so much just (expletive) waiting. People don’t see that. You’re on stage for 90 to 100 minutes, but the other 23 hours of the day are just getting there and then waiting and that’s it. That’s going on tour. So it’s hard to get, “Oh my god! I can’t wait to go sit at an airport and sit on a plane and sit in a (expletive) town where I don’t know anybody and try to find a record store or something.” (laughs)
You had a big appearance on “MTV Unplugged” back in the day, so when you look back at that appearance, what sticks in your head all these years later?
I think that was really kind of timing wise, I had decided to employ the acoustic guitar for “Grave Dancers Union” and before that, it was just that it was punk rock all the way. We didn’t even consider the acoustic guitar. So I just started using it and that coincided with playing on “Unplugged,” and that sort of proved to us that we could pull this off and things were happening. We have a song called “Somebody to Shove,” and I never would have imagined that that works acoustically. But because we got this opportunity and I could use cellos to do the sort of chugging part in the song and this, that and the other thing, it worked really great. Then I realized I don’t need the cellos either. So it’s an interesting back and forth between what works really good acoustically and what doesn’t. But I’ll often be pleasantly surprised when I take something that just sounds like it could only be an electric song and it works acoustically. That’s pretty cool. A lot of the songs in the set just happened to be songs that were written on the acoustic guitar, and it’s a pretty big catalog at this point.
When you were coming up with a setlist for this tour, did you find any of your songs that you don’t feel translate as well acoustically?
Ryan’s pretty much game to try anything so there’s plenty of material. I’m trying to think of the songs. There’s a song on the new record called “High Road” that I just never would have guessed works acoustic because it’s a different sort of a thing, it’s not a strummy-strum-strum kind of a folk song at all. Once you do convert it to acoustic, it feels different than the other acoustic songs, kind of in the same way that “Somebody to Shove” does, and it works. That offers the set some pretty good variety. I have a real fear of anything that resembles all songs resembling each other, where everything sounds the same. (laughs) It’s good to keep it mixed up, for me anyways.
You have three albums that are turning 40 this year, and you’re still playing “Closer to the Stars” off “While You Were Out”, so what do you like about that song?
I think I like that it, as with a lot of songs, once I’m probably through the first verse, I’m already – what’s that thing they do on “Star Trek”? They turn into liquid and they teleport – I’ve teleported into the person that wrote the song at the time. It’s really strange. I’m just singing about my experiences 30 some years ago. For four or five minutes, I’m kind of occupying that head. That’s always an interesting experience for me. I can’t not go there, because I need to understand the emotion and that’s what sort of guides the way I’m singing and et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure that some of these things are sang a little bit differently over time. They probably sound more wary or something. But it’s a song about growing up, and it’s a song about looking back and what’s to come and getting your (expletive) wings.
This tour is gonna be you and Ryan (Smith), and you’ve been playing with him for 10 years now. What do you appreciate about his guitar playing?
Everything. This is a man who has 60 guitar students and is just incredibly busy with all things guitar, and there’s just things that have happened over the years that he’s so talented and so adaptable. I can go, hey man, do you think you can play the tambourine with your foot on this song? And he goes yeah, let me try, and it works. And I’m like great, OK. With the writing of the material that I’m working on right now, I can play something on the piano and then he’ll come over and listen to it, and I go, ‘Could you translate this to guitar?’ He’ll go, sure, and I’ll have it. We don’t have a piano player, but it enables me to write on the piano and not worry about it because he’ll just play the piano part on the guitar. So he’s really that good and he sings great, and he is a great ally and a great friend and just somebody I couldn’t ask for a better disposition or attitude or talent or just all-knowingness about all things guitar.
You’ve obviously been to Pittsburgh before, so do you have any memories from shows here in the past?
Yeah, I really, really like Pittsburgh, and I think it didn’t take me too long because it looks cool. It feels cool, and, this is a long time ago, and then I went to the Warhol Museum and somehow that tied things together for me as far as, I like this (expletive) town. (laughs) So I like Pittsburgh quite a bit. It’s got a lot of that, sort of the things that I like about New Orleans and the things that I like about Minneapolis and the way that it’s not huge, but it’s got enough sort of city (stuff) going on. Unless they cleaned it up since the last time I was there, being overly gentrified or whatever the case may be.