The Halifax Urban Folk Festival is officially stoked that Tommy Stinson – original member of the much-Halifax-beloved band The Replacements, interim (over ten years) guitarist with Guns & Roses and brilliant songwriter (Bash & Pop, Perfect, Cowboys in the Campfire) in his own right – will join us at this year’s HUFF to play solo and with a Halifax All Star band, along with an opening songwriters’ circle featuring Mary Gauthier, Bobby Bare Jr. along with The Novaks’ Mick Davis, at The Carleton on Sunday, Oct. 1st. Show time is 7 PM and tickets, while they last, are $67.50 + HST. A lot of people have been waiting a long time for this…
The All Star Band for this show consists of: Mick Davis (guitars), Paul Boudreau (bass), Scotty MacCulloch (drums) and Leith Fleming-Smith (keys).
In plain words, Tommy Stinson is a great American musician.
You can needle-drop at any juncture of the Minneapolis native’s four-decade-plus career and find a moment of great significance. Stinson was a founding and lifetime member of the Replacements. He was a key second-generation ingredient in Guns N’ Roses and served a seven-year tenure with Soul Asylum. He also led two essential bands of his own — the aptly named Bash & Pop and Perfect — appeared on recordings by the Old 97’s, MOTH and BT and played bass on the Rock Remix of Puff Daddy’s “It’s All About the Benjamins.”
Stinson’s latest venture is called Cowboys in the Campfire — a duo with good pal Chip Roberts — and its debut album, WRONGER, is perhaps the most American album the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer has ever made.
“I’m not one to be pigeonholed — but I’m not putting a lot of thought into it that I DON’T want to be pigeonholed,” Stinson, who now resides the out-of-the-way environs of Hudson, N.Y., says with a laugh. “For me it’s always been that the songs pretty much tell you what they’re going to do. I can sit there and work a song into the ground, forcing my will on it, or you can listen to the song and go, ‘What does this want?’ and do that. I’ve always done it that way.
“Ultimately it’s more about, ‘Let’s try and get the best 10 and take what we’ve got and make them the best they can be.”