Video: Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys in The Campfire – “Dream”

From Wronger, out June 2 via Cobraside.

I hate music. It’s got too many notes. Tommy says so.

That’s my favorite Replacements song. You can picture 13- or 14-year-old Tommy Stinson in somebody’s basement or garage, in a band with older kids, complaining about having to learn his bass parts. It totally reflects that teenage frustration with doing anything hard. And Paul Westerberg was smart enough to capture it. It’s perfect.

Forty years and a several interesting music careers later and Stinson seems more than comfortable with all the notes. His latest project, Cowboys in The Campfire, with his longtime friend Chip Roberts, is well-crafted singer-songwriter Americana, and it sounds great. Stinson’s voice is soulful. And you believe him when he sings, “It don’t take much to coax these ghosts from the box.” There’s a longing and a hopefulness that makes you root for him and hope those dreams come true.

Stinson says, “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. 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.’”

That no bullshit attitude is exactly why we all love this guy!