In short, the diverse range of music heard on Wronger will probably not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Stinson’s career and the various styles he’s incorporated into his own songwriting or performed in various other settings.Ī relaxed and funny conversationalist, Stinson is open to a number of topics, including his collaborative process with Roberts, his current favorite contemporary musicians, and his determination to continue striving to be a better, more formed artist. The influences on the record range from the classic rock sounds that Stinson was weaned on, including punk and English rock ‘n’ roll to the likes of Tanya Tucker and Conway Twitty.

Parts of the album were tracked at Stinson’s home in Hudson, New York, a place he’s called home for several years, having long since left behind previous digs in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. It seemed only natural that Stinson would take the project into the studio and so he and Roberts tracked a collection that culminated in 10 songs, five produced by friend Christine Smith and four featuring bass and backing vocals from John Doe of X. Not only did it afford the veteran musicians a chance to get out of the clubs and into art galleries, coffee shops and fans’ houses, it meant that they could draw on virtually anything for material. Suddenly, Cowboys in the Campfire took priority and he and Roberts booked some successful shows, often in non-traditional performance spaces. The timeline went something like this: The Replacements, a band he was first a member of when he was barely in his teens, had enjoyed a brief reunion but folded once more he’d left his longtime posts in both Soul Asylum and Guns N’ Roses in part to care for his young daughter Bash & Pop and his solo career were momentarily on hiatus. Stinson concedes that the project started “as a joke at first,” nearly a decade ago but took on a new life roughly seven years ago as other ventures he’d been involved in cooled.

The duo is a long-running collaboration between Stinson (The Replacements, Guns N’ Roses, Bash & Pop, Soul Asylum) and Chip Roberts and, unsurprisingly, features many of Stinson’s songwriting/performing hallmarks: Lyrics that alternate between sweet and acerbic but which are never less than heartfelt vivid guitar orchestrations that command repeated listens reminders that the human condition is often as funny as it is sad, as celebratory as it is mournful, and that as painful as it can be it’s one of the best gigs there is.

Deep Down Popular by Phoebe Stone