"Never Play Any Club That Does Not Stock Your Brand Of Booze!" 17 minutes on the phone with Tommy Stinson

Freddie Kruger came to SXSW, and was kind enough to pose for pics: Me and my twin from another mother Tommy Stinson, 3-15-17

Note: This was to have run in The Austin Chronicle online, an expansion of a brief piece whipped-up for SXSW coverage. Space and time limitations conspired to have it, instead, be posted here. The paper's loss, our gain, eh? *grins* To read my review of last night's Bash & Pop showcase, click all this gray shit.

Q-and-A: Tommy Stinson of Bash & Pop

By Tim Stegall

Click onto Wikipedia, it'll tell you “Thomas Eugene (Tommy) Stinson (born October 6, 1966) is an American rock musician.” Which doesn't even begin to capture how important this Minneapolis-bred singer/songwriter/bassist/sometimes guitarist is to modern rock & roll. How many of you can claim membership in both The Replacements, the kings of sloppy/literate/heart-on-sleeve punk 'n' roll, and Guns N' Roses? Between those two bands, he formed Bash & Pop, whose 1993 debut LP Friday Night Is Killing Me embodied all the lessons Stinson'd clearly learned at the elbow of Paul Westerberg, The Replacements' bruised romantic songwriting engine. Hence it's intriguing that after The Mats' two-year reanimation-cum-victory-lap, Stinson'd kickstart Bash & Pop again in a completely new lineup, issuing a rowdy-n-right new LP titled Anything Could Happen via garage blues indie Fat Possum. One viewing of new video “On The Rocks” (framed hilariously inside a cracked-screen Smartphone) proves none of Stinson's gifts are lost, including his wink-and-grin way through life. Hence, after informing us seconds into this call from his Philadelphia hotel room the fire trucks his neighbors reported in front of his Hudson, NY home were a false alarm (“Not a call you want first day of the tour....”), we had to ask if he was planning on breaking up Bash & Pop again after two years, reforming his post-B&P band Perfect, and then rejoining Guns N' Roses....

Tommy Stinson: [laughs] Oh, you're funny! No, it wasn't really that thought-out, to be honest with you. The only reason I called this Bash & Pop was because this new album was more of a band record. My last two solo records (Village Gorilla Head in 2004, 2011's One Man Mutiny), I just kinda piecemealed together. I played way too many instruments and wore way too many hats, and overthought quite a bit of it, honestly. I wanted to make more of a band record, the exact thing I was going for when The Replacements fell apart the first time. This record became more of a band record because I now have a band (Steve Selvidge, lead guitar; Justin Perkins, bass; Joe Sirois, drums) that can actually play, that can add something, that looks good enough, that sorta thing. It just made sense, and the people I played it for said it sounded like a Bash & Pop record. So, I just kinda went with it.

Tim: It is exactly what you have always done best: Straight-up rock & roll with highly literate, heartfelt songwriting, exactly as you have done since you were a teenage kid playing bass in The Replacements. It sits exactly at the crossroads between the Faces and Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers.

There you have it. I'll take all of that crap. [laughs]

It has to be asked: What happened? It seemed like The Replacements were going very well a few years ago. Is this something you can talk about?

Well, yeah – we were going well then. Then we got to a point where, “Well, that's not going very well anymore!” [laughs] So we put the kibosh on it. For the most part, I think we had a really good run. We probably played a little longer than we shoulda. But all things considered, it worked out fine. We had fun with it, then when it wasn't fun, we stopped. That's just how we do things.

I got to see the two ACL shows. You blew my mind, that first show! It was like seeing The Clash when I was 14! The second show was more like the gig I saw in your heyday, where you showed up completely tanked and played 162 covers you'd never played in your life...

[laughs] Exactly! More shenanigans were thrown in that time....

It would've been nice to have gotten a new Replacements record, other than the benefit record for Slim (Dunlap, fallen 2^nd Replacements guitarist).

We set out to do a record when we did that reunion tour and stuff. We tried three times in three different studios, and none of the situations were right for it. We kinda gave up quick on it. To be honest with you, I don't think Paul was that jazzed on making a new record to begin with. I think he has a lot harder time than the rest of us competing with his past, his legacy. I think it stuck in his chassis, the longer he thought about it.

Do you think you guys will work together again in the future?

Yeah! We've always done shit together, even between Replacements stuff. We've played on each others' solo records and shit. We're just drawn to each other, for whatever reason. We'll see. We've gotta walk away from this mess we made. “Eh, let's do this gig and go home!” [laughs] “Later! Talk to ya down the road apiece....” That's about as much thought as it got.

Well, that was the spirit of the band, to begin with. I always said that The Replacements didn't give a shit better than anyone!

[laughs] Yeah, I'll definitely buy that....

We should talk more about Anything Could Happen. How long have you had these songs waiting to be recorded?

A good handful of them have been around awhile. The oldest song on the record is probably 25 years old. I've attempted it a couple of times. It just took forever to finally rear its head. Half of the record's been around awhile, the other half we wrote on the spot. Some of them got recorded when we recorded all The Replacements stuff when we were heading out on those tours, and they just didn't work out. So I took 'em back and recorded 'em in my house with my friends and called it Bash & Pop.

You're primarily known as a bass player, but you play guitar in Bash & Pop. Do you prefer one over the other?

No, not really. I have a short attention span for anything, so I switch around all the time, just for shits and giggles. I haven't played drums in a band in a buncha years. But I kinda get off on playing all that shit. This time around, I didn't want to wear a buncha different hats. I wanted a more spontaneous record, have more of a band vibe, rather than sit around and wear myself out noodling around on a guitar for fuckin' months on end. It was all done in my basement, all playing in the room. A couple of times, I couldn't conjure a bass player, so I played bass myself. But it was all done as live as possible, drums and all.

Do you think you'll continue as Bash & Pop?I think so. It's a more enjoyable way to make music. So as long as these guys want to continue to play, we'll keep it going. Everyone seems to understand each others' playing, so it works out pretty good.

Can you talk a bit about having been in Guns N' Roses? That must've been a hell of an experience.

It was a good gig. It served me well, until I couldn't play anymore. I had personal issues at home that prevented me from touring with them - a little kid and a soon-to-be-ex-wife and all that kinda nonsense. So, I had to walk away from that, but it was on good terms. And it was the right time. Now they're doing their reunion tour, havin' a ball doing it. So I served them well, as well.

"They're ALL Mistakes!" What The Austin Chronicle Left Out Of My Cheap Trick Piece

TIM: "Say, Rick! Whaddaya say we blow this joint, grab a couple 7-11 chili dogs and some Nesbitt Orange Soda, and listen to Move outtakes all night?" RICK NIELSEN: "Who IS this freakin' nutjob?!" (Pic: Todd Wulfmeyer)

First of all, Happy July 4th! I'll probably celebrate my freedom by hitting the neighborhood 7-11 for a Quarter Pound Big Bite with chili, mustard, and onions and a Mexican Coca Cola, which should just about clear out the five bucks I have 'til midnight. Livin' on the edge in America, baby....

Secondly, thanks to the 147 of you who have hit my post on the HB2 hearing in the Texas State Legislature on Tuesday. That's 147 readers since it was posted at 8:30 PM last night, making it the largest audience this blog has had in the shortest amount of time. That piece was my first attempt at long-form news and politics coverage, and I felt I had to get down my impressions. There was just too much rich journalistic material at my disposal, just by reacting in my natural fashion to what I saw and getting it on paper. I knew I was surfing straight into Hunter S. Thompson territory there, whether I write that well or not, or if I'm even worthy of it or not. But it turned out good, and your feedback just confirms it. Maybe I have a future at gonzo journalism? Is there an outlet for me to do this? 

Last week, the Austin Chronicle website ran an interview I did with Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen in anticipation of his band's return to the ACL Moody Theater here in Austin last Tuesday night. (Yep, the same night Sen. Wendy Davis and several thousand pissed-off Texans stood up to the bastards in the Lege and vocally shut down SB5, a mile from my East Austin home. I, of course, was at Cheap Trick, unaware how heated it was getting in the statehouse.) I was happy in general with what got run, although my editors chopped off the best part of the interview! I also preferred my original, unedited intro. So, in the interest of my self-interest, I present both to you, my loyal readership:

THE ORIGINAL INTRO: 

If it's 1979, and you're a 14 year old boy trapped growing up in a small South Texas town, Cheap Trick means everything. Apparently, that was the case for plenty of other people, too: Enough to propel them to record stores all over by the millions after hearing the live take of “I Want You To Want Me” that took over the airwaves that summer. That single, and its parent album Cheap Trick At Budokan (still the best audio document of Japan's love of anything skinny, white, and loud), made the Midwestern rock 'n' roll act stadium-filling and chart-topping stars after years of hard work. And it finally spelled the end of the disco era and a chart return to high-energy rock 'n' roll, if only for a moment.

Cheap Trick At Budokan defined a certain brand of rock 'n' roll excitement: One that embraced both The Beatles and The Who, as well as punk's blitzkrieg approach, high energy plan, and economy of structure. They certainly didn't look like your standard issue rock band: There were two 16 Magazine-style pin-ups, a zany lead guitarist who dressed like Huntz Hall and spazzed out behind a prodigious guitar collection, and a drummer who looked like a chain-smoking accountant staying up all night filing taxes. That wacky guitarist, Rick Nielsen, also happened to write songs that reflected a warped worldview, one that could produced a “My Generation”-in-reverse called “Surrender” that would become as immortal as that Who song: “Mommy's alright, daddy's alright/They just seem a little weird....” And who can forget the verse about catching Mom and Dad on the couch, rolling joints on your Kiss albums?

Cheap Trick has survived the usual career ebb-and-flow and has remained a hard-touring, meat-and-potatoes rock 'n' roll band that occasionally still issues solid records as strong as any of their '70s classics. They'll be at ACL Moody Theater on Tuesday. Rick Nielsen checked in with us by phone from where you'll usually find him: The road.

FROM THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

RICK NIELSEN:  I've always liked live bands. My favorite live band of all time is The Who. They were always great live.

TIM: And I've always heard a lot of The Who in what Cheap Trick does.

RICK NIELSEN: Yeah, our mistakes are real! (laughs)

TIM: Well, sometimes, those mistakes become songs, don't they?

RICK NIELSEN: (laughing) They all do!

And now, let me leave you with a patriotic ditty from D.O.A. (Yes, they're Canadian. Shut up!)

Happy birthday, Jerry Lee Lewis! But since you guys don't look at my blog unless I post GOP corndog pics....

Of COURSE, it's really Rick Perry eating a corndog on the campaign trail in front of a reproduction of a certain Michelangelo painting! NO, it's not what we're all thinking it is! That's it, Republican assholes! Keep giving me hilariously smutty pics to post! It's the only thing that seems to drag in readers by the truckload, as they seem to prefer dick jokes to rock 'n' roll.... *rolls eyes* (Thanks, Donna Dougherty, for sending this one my way.)

Meantime, now that I have your attention, it was 76 years ago today that the earth split open in Ferriday, Louisiana, and spit forth Jerry Lee Lewis. Yes, I honestly believe the Killer is that much a force of nature: The very wild-eyed, elemental spirit of rock 'n' roll itself made flesh, here to lead your children into a life of sin and whiskey. You can see it right here in his first network TV appearance, promoting his breakthrough hit, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," on The Steve Allen Show in 1957. And adult America thought that greasy hillbilly named Presley was bad enough, fucking his guitar and mic stand on TV....

Now fast-forward from a savage young Jerry Lee to a few years' older Jerry Lee. His career has been ruined by the UK press discovering he's married to his 13-year-old cousin. And now he's back on English TV, at a time that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are selling music he helped pioneer back to American children. And he's out for blood. England doesn't know what demon's been unleashed in their midst. Same fuckin' song, too....

And this, my friends, is what they call rock 'n' roll. Accept no substitutes. Happy birthday, Jerry Lee Lewis. Long may you rage.

BTW

That last post was tapped out to the sublime strains of Grinderman 2. Nick Cave and his boys know a punishing riff when they write one!