Hard to believe, but this year marks Soul Asylum’s 45th year of touring, recording and rocking out. Emerging out of the Minneapolis music scene as Loud Fast Rules in 1981, the quartet pivoted to the name Soul Asylum before releasing their 1984 Bob Mould-produced Twin/Tone debut “Say What You Will…”
Fast forward to 2026 and the band is embarking on a global tour while preparing to release “MPLS Unplugged,” a live album recorded on April 20, 2023 at Minneapolis’ historic State Theatre, nearly 30 years to the day after Soul Asylum’s original “MTV Unplugged” appearance.
Soul Asylum currently features vocalist/guitarist Dave Pirner as the band’s last remaining founding member, with the lineup being rounded out by guitarist Ryan Smith, bassist Jeremy Tapparo and drummer Michael Bland. As such, this upcoming live release was a golden opportunity to not only engage in some recent nostalgia, but pull out all the stops in the process. The band got keyboardist Ivan Neville on board (who played on the original “MTV Unplugged” performance), along with the STRINGenius string quartet and the Robert Robinson Gospel Singers to hop on board for the live recording.
“For ‘MPLS Unplugged,’ we were focused on stuff that was written or put out since the last ‘Unplugged’ thing, and we did have to search for some string arrangements while also coming up with some new ones,” Pirner explained in a interview. “That’s just a thrill for me, to play with string players. We just did a gig here with just me, Ryan and a string quartet along with the addition of some gospel singers, which was really cool. Thinking of it here, it really indulges me and puts an angle on songs I’d never heard before. It’s the kind of thing I’d like to be in the audience for as well.”
Throughout Soul Asylum’s history, the band’s reputation as a live act has always been a big part of its appeal. Credit goes to the fervent music scene from which the band emerged that also included several future influential acts, including The Replacements and Hüsker Dü. Pirner looks back on that time fondly, particularly when he was transitioning from being in his high school band to becoming a nascent punk rocker.
“I’d go see more and more local bands and realized it wasn’t just a thing that comes out of your radio or from L.A. or somewhere else like that,” he recalled. “Kind of through that process, I started meeting all the like-minded people in town. That’s how I met the guys I started the band with. We’d run into each other at these shows by the Suicide Commandos, The Suburbs, and some other local Minneapolis bands. It’s such a great thing because over time I’ve gotten to know these guys and consider them friends. It was a pretty good scene. The hardcore thing was happening at the time, and we were called Loud Fast Rules.
“Some of the objectives seemed to me to just play as fast as you can or be as loud as you can,” he added. “There would be gigs where you’d play at these sh***y clubs, and there’d be 12 people in the audience, and they’d all be in bands. It was very supportive in that way. It was a great sort of community that came when you’re at that age. They became my punk rock family. But the name Loud Fast Rules was too restricting for me because I didn’t want to get locked into this thing. It works if you’re The Ramones and every single song on your album sounds the same. I just couldn’t see myself staying interested in that. I thought I’d sort of broaden things. I kept putting words together until I came up with Soul Asylum. There was a song I’d written called ‘Soul Asylum.’ It wasn’t a very great song, but I thought the title was pretty good.”
With 13 studio albums and counting, along with a wealth of touring experience and a devoted fan base, Soul Asylum’s current live shows present the good problem many heritage artists face in figuring out how to satisfy both concert-goers and the folks playing the songs. Pirner gladly embraces the conundrum.
“My joke is, ‘What songs do you guys want to play? What songs do you guys not want to play? I don’t know — they’re all so”] good,’” he said with a laugh. “It’s hard to pick. We can play a different set list every night for a while if we knew every single song. But certain albums we go back to, like ‘Grave Dancers Union’ obviously. It’s pretty cool actually. The set list takes at least one song from every album, so that’s kind of fun for me to hear it all and see my life flash before me.”
Pirner’s own musical journey started out at around age six when he started out with guitar lessons, only to give it up because his hands were too small to wrap around the instrument’s neck. A switch to trumpet around that time led him to believe it would be an easier hill to climb due to the minimal number of valves to press.
“I switched to trumpet because it seemed less complicated,” he said. “It only has three buttons. But it turns out that it’s that much harder because it only has three buttons.”
Nonetheless, Pirner stuck with trumpet from third grade through high school until a fellow bandmate lent him a copy of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” From there, a six-string reconciliation was inevitable.
“I was kind of in the process of switching to saxophone because at that time, there was a lot of saxophone in rock music,” Pirner said. “When I listened to that record I was like, ‘Dave, you know you just want to play guitar, so just”] do it.’”
With gigs in the States, Canada and South America looming on the horizon — including a stop at The Glass House in Pomona on Saturday, Aug. 17 — along with a new untitled studio album slated for the first quarter of 2027, Soul Asylum show no signs of slowing down. Given the mileage the band has under its belt, Pirner is rather nonplussed when asked about Soul Asylum’s longevity and the changes he’s witnessed over the ensuing decades.
“The joke for me is that you keep seeing these things leaving and coming back and leaving and coming back,” he said. “Now CDs are back, and I just laugh. I’ll never know how all of that has impacted Soul Asylum. As far as the Internet is concerned, it’s an interesting thing that on some level seems to be helpful. Other than that, I think what hasn’t changed is what amazes me, which is that I’m still just playing gigs and being uncomfortable in small spaces with a bunch of dudes. And just forever grinding it out. You sort of get better at it. I think the band has grown in ways that I never imagined it could.”