Tommy Some folks just attract trouble magnetically . Take ex-Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson , for example – when the coronavirus hit him , post-lockdown , it smacked him upside the scruffy head and just kept knocking him senseless .
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as well .” ‘ Kiddo ,’ of course , being the operative parental term for his 15-year-old daughter Talulah , or Lulu , whose raising has come to mean more to Stinson than all of his frequent moonlighting obligations combined , including gigs in Guns N ’ Roses , Soul Asylum , Perfect , Bash & Pop , and occasionally a newly-rejuvenated ‘ Mats whenever Paul Westerberg gets bitten by the tour bug again . He ’ s also played with The Old 97s , Dinosaur Jr ., and recently popped up on Lucinda Williams ’ s courageous new post-stroke set , “ Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart .”
But the only project Stinson is currently pushing – or the only one he has time for – is Cowboys in the Campfire , the folksy duo he formed with Pennsylvania-bred guitarist Chip Roberts , the uncle of his second ex-wife . Their debut disc , “ Wronger ,” is an acoustic , banjo-
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Tommy Stinson & Cowboys in the Campfire |
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“ That was horrible , and I ’ m still reeling from it ,” the rasp-throated rock rapscallion recalls from his rustic home in upstate New York . “ And I ’ ve had Covid a couple , three , maybe four times now , and it was brutal every single time . But luckily enough , it didn ’ t kill me , obviously , and I ’ ve taken every booster they ’ ve had to offer , and I ’ ll take the next one when they offer it to avoid getting it again . And lucky for my kiddo that she was able to live through it , |
buttressed affair that splashes streaks of the pedal-steel country across a few forlorn Nashville schematics (“ We Ain ’ t ,” “ Here We Go Again ,” “ Fall Apart Together ”) but plugs in prickly punk riffs when you least expect it , on “ That ’’ s It ,” alongside Byrdsian jangle (“ Karma ’ s Bitch ”) and even lute-delicate folk . X firebrand John Doe played bass and sang on several tracks , but the sheer rickety underpinnings of Stinson and Roberts ’ material make |
touring with it especially easy – no sprawling bus required . “ I ’ m gonna be touring into the next year on this one ,” Stinson reckons . “ And I ’ ve got a studio here in New York that I work out of , so I ’ m either there working on my own stuff or working on producing other records . So I kinda keep myself busy , keep moving around .”
IE : Last time we talked , a few years ago for Bash & Pop , you ’ d decided to devote your life just to raising Talulah . Everything else – even Guns N ’ Roses – excluded . TS : Yeah . And you know , I had to . That ’ s kind of where I was at in life at that point , and I ’ m still pretty much here . I get out and do stuff with Cowboys in the Campfire now and some
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solo stuff , but I ’ m basically Dad Guy now . And I got to a point where I had to walk away from that gig with Axl , because I couldn ’ t be gone for four , five , or six weeks at a time anymore to tour with them . So I had to say I couldn ’ t do two or three tours , and by then it got to just be obvious that my position wasn ’ t going to change , and I had the courts telling me that I couldn ’ t have my sister look after my daughter – it had to be or it had to be her mother , but then her mother was in and out of trouble , sooo …
IE : Are you allowed to still record with Axl if he needs you ? TS : Oh , yeah . But he ’ s got Duff now , he ’ s got , Slash . So my guess is , if he was gonna do any-
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