June 2015 - Come To Hide - by Tommy Stinson
.........What a rock-n-roll life! Tommy Stinson is an original - and still - member of The Replacements (since age 15). He’s had his own bands, Bash & Pop and Perfect; he played bass with Soul Asylum for years and is currently the bass player for Guns N’ Roses. What the hell! What a career! And I guess just for the hell of it he puts out a great solo album.
A couple of things right off the bat about this album: If the Replacements put out a new album you’d want it to be this album. If Tom Petty put out a new album you’d want it to be this album with a little more Benmont Tench. If Dylan put out a new album and this was it, people would be raving about Dylan’s new album. And Jakob Dylan wouldn’t mind having put out this album, but I’m glad he didn’t because it would be an overproduced album.
There. There you have your standard “sounds likes”. High praises that I’ll stick by. All said however, this album is not derivative. Tommy Stinson is all over it; from snarky Minneapolis quips: “Match Made In Hell” to worldly, jaded turns of phrase: “Come To Hide.” And, Stinson has a phrasing style all his own. So you hear the above influences, but you hear them happily, and uniquely. It’s stuff the aforementioned would have loved to put out. But who did it? - Little Tommy Stinson, bass player. What we have here are fully-realized songs on a fully-realized rockin, fun, emotional rock record album delivered with grit and soul and a lot of style.
Let’s not be too surprised though; Stinson should know how to write a song; after all he hung out with Westerberg. Stinson’s own albums have always had a few gems. He shares writing credit with Axl on a Gunners song. In fact his prior record “Village Gorilla Head” is good too, if not slightly skewed by drum machines and a generally slicky, smooth feel. Let’s face it, Stinson is raw. All Minneapolites are raw. Rock-n-roll is raw, and here Tommy lashes together a beautifully raw, rock-n-roll record completely and totally worthy of the Minneapolis sound.
And yet as wonderfully raw as it is, it is sophisticated as well. I mentioned Stinson’s unique phrasing; and here, the melody, word play, and imagery are outstanding in song after song. There’s no experimenting here, these songs know what they’re doing. They are well written, well arranged, and lyrically as compelling as any from the greats mentioned above. A good song is not a novel. A good song, if I may, gives you a specific detail or two and then a lot of abstraction. A good song leaves you wondering, thus allowing you to fill in with your own imagination, thereby causing you to relate to it. These songs do that. They are precisely vague and filled with all the emotion you can imagine.
I might stick my neck out however and suggest an over-arching theme. I guess we could say Stinson is an aging rocker, although with The Stones still touring that statement might be 20 or so years premature. Hell, he’s only late 40s. Still, Stinson knows a lot of ‘Rockers’ who saw big success then saw it dwindle. Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, Paul Westerberg, and Bob Mould, just to name a few Minneapolis cats. Hanging with Guns & Roses puts him in even higher echelons Rock, where many have seen fame flow and then ebb.
Here, in his most mature song writing, he studies a subject intimately familiar – faded fame. In “Come To Hide” he sings “Always laughing about L.A…. Did you hear them laughing as you crawled back into your old life?” In “Seize The Moment” he sings, “Look like a star that’s traded all the lusters for scars”. And certainly “Match Made In Hell” written with Paul Westerberg is actually about Stinson and Westerberg. Stinson has lived it, and like Joe Strummer or Ian Hunter, he’s moved by it and shows he’s equally as capable as they are to write about it.
Lets walk through some more cool lyrics:
Don’t Deserve You – “Been taking lives, like you take your liquor”
It’s A Drag – “Just another poor bastard born under a bloodshot moon”
Meant to Be – “Baby were just walking hazards, maybe we always knew when to duck”
All This Way For Nothing – “You came across the desert with your trailer full of ghosts”
Zero To Stupid – “She…..didn’t like drinking hard liquor or fast cars, now she’s going down to the bar to watch Nascar”
One Man Mutiny – “I won’t rest until I’m free of your phony empathy”
A few notes: On “Come To Hide” keys are played by Dizzy Reed, long time Guns N’ Roses keyboardist. Pocket trumpet is played by Joan Jones. Also, Rich Fortus, Guns N’ Roses guitarist, plays on the song “One Man Mutiny.” For St. Louis readers you may remember Rich Fortus as the guitar player for Pale Devine.
To sum up, Tommy Stinson has made a great Rock-N-Roll record; just the right amount of sloppy; just the right amount of soul, swagger, and sophistication. A rocker chick once told me that “bass players are the coolest dudes in any band”. Stinson’s been proving that since he was 15, and with this album he reiterates it in spades.
CHECK OUT:
http://tommystinson.com/
Tommy Stinson is an advocate for and major contributor to Timkatec. Please visit this link to see how you can help:
http://www.timkatec.org/
A couple of things right off the bat about this album: If the Replacements put out a new album you’d want it to be this album. If Tom Petty put out a new album you’d want it to be this album with a little more Benmont Tench. If Dylan put out a new album and this was it, people would be raving about Dylan’s new album. And Jakob Dylan wouldn’t mind having put out this album, but I’m glad he didn’t because it would be an overproduced album.
There. There you have your standard “sounds likes”. High praises that I’ll stick by. All said however, this album is not derivative. Tommy Stinson is all over it; from snarky Minneapolis quips: “Match Made In Hell” to worldly, jaded turns of phrase: “Come To Hide.” And, Stinson has a phrasing style all his own. So you hear the above influences, but you hear them happily, and uniquely. It’s stuff the aforementioned would have loved to put out. But who did it? - Little Tommy Stinson, bass player. What we have here are fully-realized songs on a fully-realized rockin, fun, emotional rock record album delivered with grit and soul and a lot of style.
Let’s not be too surprised though; Stinson should know how to write a song; after all he hung out with Westerberg. Stinson’s own albums have always had a few gems. He shares writing credit with Axl on a Gunners song. In fact his prior record “Village Gorilla Head” is good too, if not slightly skewed by drum machines and a generally slicky, smooth feel. Let’s face it, Stinson is raw. All Minneapolites are raw. Rock-n-roll is raw, and here Tommy lashes together a beautifully raw, rock-n-roll record completely and totally worthy of the Minneapolis sound.
And yet as wonderfully raw as it is, it is sophisticated as well. I mentioned Stinson’s unique phrasing; and here, the melody, word play, and imagery are outstanding in song after song. There’s no experimenting here, these songs know what they’re doing. They are well written, well arranged, and lyrically as compelling as any from the greats mentioned above. A good song is not a novel. A good song, if I may, gives you a specific detail or two and then a lot of abstraction. A good song leaves you wondering, thus allowing you to fill in with your own imagination, thereby causing you to relate to it. These songs do that. They are precisely vague and filled with all the emotion you can imagine.
I might stick my neck out however and suggest an over-arching theme. I guess we could say Stinson is an aging rocker, although with The Stones still touring that statement might be 20 or so years premature. Hell, he’s only late 40s. Still, Stinson knows a lot of ‘Rockers’ who saw big success then saw it dwindle. Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, Paul Westerberg, and Bob Mould, just to name a few Minneapolis cats. Hanging with Guns & Roses puts him in even higher echelons Rock, where many have seen fame flow and then ebb.
Here, in his most mature song writing, he studies a subject intimately familiar – faded fame. In “Come To Hide” he sings “Always laughing about L.A…. Did you hear them laughing as you crawled back into your old life?” In “Seize The Moment” he sings, “Look like a star that’s traded all the lusters for scars”. And certainly “Match Made In Hell” written with Paul Westerberg is actually about Stinson and Westerberg. Stinson has lived it, and like Joe Strummer or Ian Hunter, he’s moved by it and shows he’s equally as capable as they are to write about it.
Lets walk through some more cool lyrics:
Don’t Deserve You – “Been taking lives, like you take your liquor”
It’s A Drag – “Just another poor bastard born under a bloodshot moon”
Meant to Be – “Baby were just walking hazards, maybe we always knew when to duck”
All This Way For Nothing – “You came across the desert with your trailer full of ghosts”
Zero To Stupid – “She…..didn’t like drinking hard liquor or fast cars, now she’s going down to the bar to watch Nascar”
One Man Mutiny – “I won’t rest until I’m free of your phony empathy”
A few notes: On “Come To Hide” keys are played by Dizzy Reed, long time Guns N’ Roses keyboardist. Pocket trumpet is played by Joan Jones. Also, Rich Fortus, Guns N’ Roses guitarist, plays on the song “One Man Mutiny.” For St. Louis readers you may remember Rich Fortus as the guitar player for Pale Devine.
To sum up, Tommy Stinson has made a great Rock-N-Roll record; just the right amount of sloppy; just the right amount of soul, swagger, and sophistication. A rocker chick once told me that “bass players are the coolest dudes in any band”. Stinson’s been proving that since he was 15, and with this album he reiterates it in spades.
CHECK OUT:
http://tommystinson.com/
Tommy Stinson is an advocate for and major contributor to Timkatec. Please visit this link to see how you can help:
http://www.timkatec.org/