How Drag Racing Inspired the New Soul Asylum LP
Dave Pirner dishes on Slowly but Shirley
When looking for the right title for Soul Asylum’s 13th studio album, Slowly But Shirley (set for release on September 27 via Blue Élan Records), frontman Dave Pirner looked to his own childhood for some nostalgic inspiration.
The “Shirley” in question is trailblazing drag racer Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, who had a profound effect on him, so he wanted to honor her in this way.
“When I was a real little guy, I collected dragster cards; I was really into dragsters, and I can’t really explain why,” says Pirner, calling from a tour stop in Florida. “It’s a very interesting sort of a sport, in that it lasts for about 33 seconds. I love the hotrod aesthetic; I love design more than I’m into engines and stuff. That just really appealed to me, that you would make a car with huge back wheels that looked kind of like a rocket.
“I was into these fellas named Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme and a few other guys,” Pirner continues, “and then along comes Shirley Muldowney in a pink car, and that just changed my whole perspective on everything. I mean, I was pretty young, so the revelation that, ‘Wow, a woman can compete with these guys’ was really impressive. Nowadays, it’s really impressive when I think about what a guy’s world that must’ve been when she was coming up. And that’s what makes her such a hero to me, besides the fact that she can drive one of those things faster than just about anybody. It seems like she’s got a lot of cojones!”
Pirner tried to follow her bold example with his own work, making sure he broke new ground with his songwriting instead of revisiting anything he’s already done, all while still staying true to the introspective alternative rock that has made Soul Asylum so beloved for decades. It was, he says, “just a process of processing, if you will. Trying to keep up with myself, as far as not repeating myself, but also engaging in what I’ve learned since the last record. And then it sort of folds into my general attitude.”
Pirner says he was deliberately trying to make Soul Asylum sound different even when he founded the band in 1981, when he was still in high school in Minneapolis. His adventurous approach to music had actually started well before that, though, when he began playing the trumpet when he was in the third grade. That, in turn, led him to explore jazz music.
His focus quickly shifted to rock, though, when another trumpet player at his school loaned him a copy of Jimi Hendrix’s classic 1967 album Are You Experienced. “I think that’s the point where I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna learn how to play guitar,’” Pirner says.
From there, he discovered punk bands such as the Ramones and the Vibrators. Their music seemed more feasible for a young musican to play, and this inspired him to begin writing his own original songs.
For lyrics, Pirner drew inspiration from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed – and also a more unexpected source: “I often credit my high school English teacher, who was an older woman, and people were afraid of her,” he says. “She was very difficult. It was a hard class to take, and if you could get out of it, you could get an easier teacher, and probably get a better grade. But I gravitated towards it. Her passion for poetry and things like that just inspired a lot in me, just as far as how words work. She was a great teacher. You wouldn’t expect that someone who comes off as an old, mean librarian to really make a connection, but that’s what happened. And through the material, she really inspired me to work with words in the way that I work with them.”
By combining all of these elements, Pirner created a highly distinctive songwriting style that contrasted heartfelt lyrics with edgy rock. This unconventional pairing immediately resonated with listeners: when Soul Asylum released their debut album in 1984, Say What You Will… (which was produced by Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü), it earned considerable critical praise.
Soul Asylum continued releasing albums through the 1980s, but they finally broke through to major mainstream success in the following decade when they released Grave Dancers Union in 1992. That album contained the single “Runaway Train,” which reached the Top 10 in the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries, and it went on to win a “Best Song” Grammy award. It helped propel Grave Dancers Union to achieve triple platinum sales status.
Even with all that success, Pirner admits that he’s still somewhat mystified about how he has ended up as a professional musician: “It’s such a crazy sort of thing: I was writing something yesterday, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I chose this, or if somehow this chose me.’’”
He also admits that even after four decades of fronting this band, creating the music isn’t necessarily getting any easier. “It’s a lot of banging your head against the wall,” he says. “It’s a lot of writing a lot of songs that never see the light of day, and that could be for any reason. It could be that I aborted it before I brought it to the band, or I brought it to the band and no one reacted favorably. It could be that I was like, ‘You know what? This sounds like something I’ve done already, so forget this.’ So you just keep starting over until you come up with something that feels authentic and unique.”
As for why his music resonates with listeners the way it does, Pirner is philosophical. “It’s probably some very basic set of human emotions that I share with everybody else on the planet,” he says. “There’s so many ways you can express yourself. There’s so many ways you can talk about it. But if you can figure out how to sum things up a little bit and make it go down with a spoonful of music, I guess that means I’m not crazy. Or everybody is, not sure.”
In the end, Pirner is just glad it worked out the way it has with Soul Asylum. “For myself, I’ve created a job — which never seems possible,” he says. “For the band, that’s kind of the same thing. We’ve got the ability to go out and play, so why not do it? It’s what I always wanted to do.”
VIDEO: Soul Asylum “Freak Accident”
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