Soul Asylum reteams with a producer it rode in on for new fall album

As he sorted through music gear with his bandmates and a couple of crew members last month for their tour that would start in two days, Dave Pirner took a minute to talk about the favorite new item he's bringing out on the road with him this fall.

"We're having a little 'chair-off,'" the Soul Asylum frontman said with a chuckle. "I went to REI and got a new chair."

OK, Mr. Runaway Train. Please explain.

"We end up spending a lot of time just sitting in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere," Pirner said. "Sometimes you have a day off and wish you could go to a museum or whatever, but you're really in the middle of nowhere. So I was like, 'OK, let's see who can go get the coolest lawn chair.'

"Mine is pretty nice. And I bought up a light-up Frisbee, too. That should ease some of the tedium."

Now in his fourth decade as a touring musician, Pirner actually has something else he's much more excited about bringing on tour this fall: Soul Asylum's first new record in four years, "Slowly but Shirley," which comes out Sept. 20.

Even while he's found a fun and profitable niche pairing up his Grammy-winning band with other '90s-era alt-rock hitmakers such as Stone Temple Pilots and Juliana Hatfield — with whom Soul Asylum is doing shows this month and next — the 60-year-old singer/songwriter remains fully committed to putting out new music and keeping the personal, expressive side of his band alive and well.

The latest instance of this emphasizes the "alive" part.

Showing off the chemistry he and his remade lineup of Soul Asylum have generated with all their gigging in recent years, Pirner paired the band up with the same guy who produced one of the old Soul Asylum lineup's best-loved albums, 1990′s "And The Horse They Rode In On" — recorded live in the studio with all four musicians playing at once.

That producer happened to become the Rolling Stones' new drummer in the time it took Soul Asylum to work with him again.

"I knew what he was going to want, and I wanted to give it to him," Pirner said of Steve Jordan, who replaced Charlie Watts in the Stones after the original drummer died in 2021.

The first time Pirner worked with Jordan, he said his band wasn't ready for it. That is one of the reasons he jumped at the chance to do it again.

"Back then, we were still pretty punk rock," he said. "I think we did 67 takes of a song, and I don't think that's an exaggeration, but we finally got it. That was exhausting."

This time around, Pirner proudly noted, "With this [lineup], I think we did one, two, three takes, and that was pretty satisfying."

Talking at the studio where much of the new record was made, the Terrarium in northeast Minneapolis — the band reconvened there last month for tour prep and to record some acoustic promo videos — Pirner bragged many times about the current lineup of his band.

Melismatics frontman Ryan Smith has settled into the guitarist/co-vocalist role left when co-founder Dan Murphy quit the band in 2012. Milwaukee's Jeremy Tappero is the latest to step in for the late Karl Mueller on bass. And former Prince/New Power Generation drummer Michael Bland, an SA member since 2005, played on the new record but is swearing off the roadwork (Noah Levy of the Brian Setzer Band and Honeydogs filled in for him this summer).

Pirner credits Bland for putting him in the mindset to keep the band going even as the only original member.

"He kind of made me understand that people can be replaced, for lack of a better expression," the singer said.

"In his world, that's pretty common. When you come up as a punk-rock band and there's four of you and you're best friends and all that, you kind of think it's your little tribe. Michael comes at it more as, 'There's good musicians, and not so good musicians, and you get with the good ones.'"

You can hear how well the remade lineup has jelled throughout "Slowly but Shirley," from the classic-sounding rouser of an opener "The Only Thing I'm Missing" — partially inspired by his late mom and his flown-the-coop adult son — to the more melancholic, "Runaway Train"-like "Freak Accident" and the funkier ode to slackerism, "Freeloader." The latter was a hit when the band played it live at the Minnesota Yacht Club festival in July.

As much as ever, you can also hear where Pirner is at in his personal life on the new record, whose title and cover art are a nod to pioneering drag racer Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney ("What a world she lived in where all these men were like, 'Women aren't allowed to do that?'" he said).

New songs like the touring-as-life anthem "High Road" and "Freak Accident" find the singer slowing down to face the errors of his ways and/or smell the flowers of what's good in his life. This all coincided with his return to living in Minneapolis full time from New Orleans, where he co-parented his son, Eli.

In Minneapolis, he has settled back into hanging with old friends and a steady new girlfriend, a contentedness that comes out in the forward-looking "If You Want It Back" and other new tunes.

"I'm very hopeful and happy, and I got a great girl," Pirner confirmed. "I probably don't like talking about it because I don't want to jinx anything."

As for the rest of his album's upbeat tone, he said, "I spent 25 years in New Orleans trying to understand that just because music came from a punk-rock place for me and was a way for me to express how pissed off I was about everything, there were people making music out of joy, even in the most depressed situations.

"If you're going to be a punk-rock person for the rest of your life, you're going to turn into a curmudgeon — which I know quite a few of. Just to try to find the joy and the upside and try to be optimistic."

Soul Asylum may not be a punk-rock band anymore; Pirner's nice, new REI chair may be another indicator of that. But this new record proves it's still the kind of hardworking, well-greased, live-as-hell rock band it's always been.

Look for Soul Asylum to play its usual December homecoming gig at First Avenue, exact date TBA. "Slowly but Shirley" hits shelves and streaming sites Sept. 20.