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n three decades, Dave Pirner has been many things: Minneapolis punker, alt-rock poster boy, Top 40 Grammy winner, even soul artist, releasing a 2002 solo album influenced by the down-low music of his New Orleans home. The discovery that bandmate Karl Mueller was dying, however, brought Pirner back to his anthemic rock roots. Soul Asylum's new album, The Silver Lining, is a return to form that will please fans left high and dry by 1998's uninspired, critically panned Candy From a Stranger. Released July 11, The Silver Lining was recorded while Mueller battled throat cancer — he died in June of 2005 — and recently, the legendarily great live band has embarked on their first tour without him (Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson plays in his place). We talked to Pirner, forty-two, about his days as a reluctant pretty boy, the annoying persistence of being Mr. Winona Ryder, and what he's learned from Dolly Parton. — Sarah Hepola

So I was reading about you online today, and I noticed a pattern: a lot of girls write about having crushes on you.
Still?

When they were growing up. Is that something you were comfortable with? Being a heartthrob?
No. I mean, it sounds pompous, but I had this experience in Germany where I got mobbed by young girls, and it was terrifying. And I later found out the record company was promoting me that way. Putting pictures of me in the teen magazines. I certainly have come across people who have a meaningful relationship with my music. They know every freaking word. And I can be onstage and think I'm gonna forget the next line and see someone out there in the audience singing it. If that's what it's about, then that's great. If it's just about having crushes on people in magazines, it's completely meaningless.

Wait. Why does everybody say being mobbed by girls is so terrifying? Shouldn't it be cool?
Remember these were German girls. No, I'm kidding. Well, they were pulling my hair out. Really invasive. This huge guy was trying to hold them back and someone had my hair and I threw my beer into the crowd to get them back, and it hit this guy in the face. It sounds comical now, but at the time, all I was registering was fear. I watched the Monkees when I was a kid, so it's not like I didn't know that existed, but I don't get it. I feel like I kind of flunked that whole school.

I ended up looking to people like Dolly Parton, of all people, to make sense of it. She loves every fan, and they love her. She has this earnest relationship with them. I read her autobiography, and I couldn't believe how positive she is. I even got it on tape, and man, it was great hearing her read it. I was never really a fan of hers, but I was drawn to her earnestness with her fans. It made me change the way I felt, because to me it felt phony and corruptive. I'm sure it's partly a punk-rock thing. Autographs seemed lame to me. And being nice to people I didn't know seemed lame to me. I thought it was cool to be removed from it. Now I think it's sort of snobbish.

At the time, you seemed ill-cast for the role of celebrity.
It was very alienating, and I didn't know how to do it right. You feel like a chump because you're being nice, or you feel like an ass because you're being rude. I didn't grow up with MTV and all this behind-the-scenes stuff. There was this great mystique to records you were listening to — you imagined what these people were like, and you made up your own references based on the music.

Of course, some people still think of you as the guy who dated Winona Ryder. Does that bother you?
Sure. People aren't allowed to ask me about it, and they never were. It was a very strange time in my life. And people who say that are the same people who are probably following Brad and what's-her name around. I'm not passing judgment, but that ain't me.

So you were in New York recently for a benefit show at the Bowery Ballroom [for Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller, who died in 2005 of throat cancer]. What was it like playing without Karl?
I was very riddled with fear about it. I had this paranoid feeling of looking to my right and thinking I'd see Karl but seeing someone else. I just thought that wasn't gonna work. But every time I looked at Tommy [Stinson, formerly of the Replacements, who replaced Mueller], he would stick out his tongue or do something silly, which was a good approach. So by the second show it was less shocking, and more fun. I remember feeling really good about the Bowery, and it's always a big deal to play New York, because it's New York. You don't want to suck.

What made you so anxious about playing?
Well, there's a lot of heavy-handed emotions, but mostly just not having my anchor there. And having this feeling that it wouldn't be Soul Asylum without Karl. I couldn't fathom it. But I do believe that this is what he wants us to do. He does not want us to crap out.

You thought about retiring?
Of course. There's been countless times when you're like, fuck this, it's too heartbreaking and fucked up and whatever. I've been doing this too long. Why bother? It's hard to find motivation with all the indifference. Sometimes it gets so incredibly frustrating. Why do I put myself through this? That's a frequent feeling. I don't remember a time when it wasn't like, fuck this. Karl was never that way. He loved the band. He never had the fierce cynicism that Dan [Murphy] and I did. He had this undying enthusiasm for it.

This is such a different musical climate from the early '90s. Rock and rock radio have become somewhat marginalized.
I feel like I'm dating myself when I say this, but it hasn't always been this way. In the heyday of what-the-fuck-ever they were calling that thing, when indie was no longer indie, the door had blown open for the Meat Puppets and the Butthole Surfers and bands I grew up playing with, and it seemed like people were getting an ear. It was much more meaningful, to me, than this Britney-American Idol-thing we're experiencing today.

And this is a very straight-ahead rock record. So where do you guys fit in?
Well, we don't. [Laughs.] When I moved to New Orleans, I fell in love with instrumental music. And I started wondering, if I don't want to hear a singer, then why would anyone want to hear me sing? It was a conundrum. But instead of trying to become a jazz musician — which I wish I could do — I have to realize that I have a special talent of my own. It sounds corny, but I have to tell myself: You're a singer-songwriter dude from Minnesota, and you're not gonna be a jazz musician from New Orleans, and your trumpeting is really mediocre. And maybe I could get better — I know I could get better — and I could sit in with a band one day. But there's a thousand genius trumpet players in New Orleans, so maybe I should do my thing. So that's how I feel about music today. Trends will come, and they will go, and I have to continue doing what I do. And hope it offers something to the bigger picture.

Speaking of living in New Orleans, where were you during Hurricane Katrina?
We were in Minnesota, and we were about to head back. We decided we'd wait. If we'd left, we probably would have driven into the city right when the storm hit. With a two-year-old [son], you're much less risk-taking. But it was very difficult not to be there. And once we got there, we realized how misleading the television reports were.

What do you mean?
Just the emptiness and the smell and the expressions on people's faces. Everywhere I go, to this day, people are still telling a story about the storm. It's incredible. You can still go to the neighborhoods that are practically the same as they were right after the storm — houses on cars and cars on houses, and it's really emotional, especially if it's a neighborhood where we used to drive through and see people sitting on their porch. You can't feel how big the devastation is, and it's incredibly removed if you're getting some newscaster's indifferent take on things. But it is a city that still needs help. There are a lot of people who can't come back. We were incredibly lucky.

I guess the good news is that a lot of people really love that city.
They should. It's so important to American music and American culture, and that's why I moved there. It makes me sad when I hear people who don't have that kind of understanding, somebody who's never visited. Or who visited for Mardi Gras and never really saw the city.  n°

Click here to buy The Silver Lining

© 2006 Sarah Hepola and hooksexup.com.