Iconic Minneapolis musician Tommy Stinson’s latest venture is called Cowboys in the Campfire — a duo with good pal Chip Roberts — and its debut album, WRONGER (due out June 2nd on Cobraside), is perhaps the most American album the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer has ever made.
WRONGER’s 10 tracks ride a giddy trail of twang and grit, melody and (mostly lyrical) mayhem. The very first song, “Here We Go Again,” sets the tone; Stinson on ukulele, singing about the ardors of creativity, while horns swell and there’s not a hint of percussion other than the perceptible tapping of feet by the musicians in the room. It’s stark and immediate, like sitting right in the middle of the maelstrom. From there we encounter a broad and passionate range of feels, from the rough ‘n’ tumble rockabilly of “That’s It” to “We Ain’t,” a shuffle straight out of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Stinson and Roberts take us from Nashville to Bakersfield on songs such as “Mr. Wrong” and “Fall Apart Together,” while “Schemes,” “Souls” and “Dream” are showcases of an ace pop songwriter.
“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 in 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.'”
Cowboys in the Campfire was “a joke at first,” according to Stinson, dating back more than a decade. Roberts is the uncle of Stinson’s second ex-wife; he hails from the Philadelphia rock scene, where he was a gun-for-hire guitar slinger for visiting musicians who needed accompaniment. “We’ve been really good friends and writing partners pretty much since we met each other,” Stinson says. “We were writing rock tunes to ballads or country or Americana, but we’ve both come from that sort of singer-songwriter thing.” Neither man expected their association to become an ongoing musical concern, especially as Stinson had plenty on his plate.
But the collaboration had legs, and about seven years ago, during a Guns N’ Roses hiatus and before Stinson ventured into Replacements and Bash & Pop reunions, he and Roberts got a little more serious. “It was spring, and neither one of us had something to do that summer,” Stinson recalls. “So we said, ‘Let’s go play some shows. Let’s fuck around.’ That’s what we did. I took some songs he and I had written together, some of my solo stuff, some covers, some other stuff of mine he plays. We’d ad lib on stuff. We started playing shows in the South and stuff.” One of the duo’s songs, “Anything Could Happen,” became the title track of Bash & Pop’s 2017 release, which Roberts also played on. But they still felt that Cowboys in the Campfire — which takes its name from a couple of Roberts’ paintings — might have its own trail. “The running joke was, ‘That’s what our band would be called if we had one,” Stinson recalls. “Finally we were like, ‘We’ve got 10 songs here. Let’s make a record’. It was almost as off the cuff as that. Almost.”
WRONGER began life five or six years ago, when Stinson and Roberts were on tour in Texas. They went into a studio there with a friend, Christine Smith, producing and recording five songs; X’s John Doe was around, too, and played bass and sang backup on four of the tracks. The rest of the album was made at Stinson’s home studio in Hudson, adding occasional contributions from friends where needed — including a string quartet on the track “Hey Man.” Drums, meanwhile, were considered optional and are only used on a few of WRONGER’s tracks, hearkening back to Stinson’s philosophy to give the tunes what they called for.
“
Tracklisting:
- Here We Go Again
- That’s It
- Mr. Wrong
- Schemes
- Fall Apart Together
- Hey Man
- We Ain’t
- Karma’s Bitch
- Souls
- Dream
Live Dates:
June 2 – Nashville, TN – Grimey’s (record release in-store 5pm) *
June 2 – Nashville, TN – House show (record release party) *
June 3 – Nashville, TN – Roots On The Rivers Festival *
June 4 – Birmingham, AL – Lou’s Pub & Package *
June 6 – Little Rock, AK – White Water Tavern *
June 7 – Memphis, TN – Backyard show *
June 9 – WXPN, PA – Free at Noon (live performance) *
June 9 – Riverton, NJ – Backyard show*
June 16 – Asbury Park, NJ – The Wonder Bar ^ (w/ Nicole Atkins)
June 17 – Brooklyn, NY – The Sultan Room ^ (w/ Nicole Atkins)
July 21 – San Jose, CA – Music In The Park ^ (w/ Living Colour, Soul Asylum)
*Cowboys In The Campfire
^Tommy Stinson solo
