Pick up the April '09 issue of Bass Player for our exclusive interview with Guns N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson. Here's more from that interview.
How did you come to play with Soul Asylum?
We’re all old friends from high school. After [bassist] Karl Mueller passed away in 2005 from throat cancer, his widow Mary Beth asked if I’d fill in for gigs the band booked before he died. When the band went to finish the record they’d started, she asked me to do that, too. Apparently Karl had a list of people he wanted to take his place in the band, and I was on it. I like those guys a lot—fortunately I’ve been available to do shows with them the past couple years.
You just got back from playing a Soul Asylum gig in Lima, Peru. What was that like?
There’s a lot of turmoil in the government. Around town, you can feel something’s not quite right. It’s chaotic and sketchy, but we met a lot of neat people. They don’t get to see a whole lot of live music. Soul Asylum did a big press conference—it was like the Beatles had come. [Laughs.]
Aside from Guns and Soul Asylum, what else are you up to?
I have my own studio where I do my own music. I couple years ago I scored a movie for Sony Pictures called Catch and Release. That was really fun, and I’m trying to get more into that.
How did you get that gig?
I played on a track of Paul Westerberg for Open Season. The woman who hired him asked to hear some of my music, and they loved it. They couldn’t just give me the contract, since I was a new composer—it was a $40 million movie—so they had to pair me up with someone. I teamed up with BT [film composer Brian Transeau] because he’s a friend of mine, and we’ve worked together before. It was a good fit. The producers gave us ideas like, “We want something that sounds like Los Lobos.” I love Los Lobos, but I would never try to cop them—they are so good! So we’d come up with our own thing. It was a blast, writing things unlike anything I’d done before.
How does film scoring work?
Before filming starts, you sit down and draw up blueprints of where there are going to be musical moments. Then they film it, often with some sort of temporary music in place to help the producers visualize the finished product. It was a great experience … and it paid me a lot of money, which was great, too!
Do you have plans to do more of that?
I do, but it’s a hard racket to get into. And right now is a really hard time for movies. A great way to get back into it is to hit the independent film circuit, but since so many hedge funds have gone bankrupt, there aren’t many indy movies going into production right now. I’ve had to put it on the back burner, but my studio is up and ready for when I do get the call.
I like the idea of having my own studio to score movies, but I can’t really count on those jobs coming in. And I’m going to be pretty busy with Guns for the next year and a half, so I might rent it out or put it in storage. I’d like to say that I’d use it to produce bands, but there’s hardly enough time to do my own music.
What was your involvement in the new Replacements re-releases?
Peter Jesperson and Phil Broussard, Paul’s manager and I did a lot of stuff. In my studio, Phil and I mixed a lot of the extra tracks that weren’t originally mixed. Years ago the analog tapes were dumped to digital files, and we worked with those. The tapes are old, and I didn’t want to be the one responsible for messing up our first record. [Laughs.]
In 2004, you released your own record, Village Gorrilla Head. Do you have plans to do another album?
There are a bunch of songs I’ve been working on for the last few years. I might just put them up as a free download—it’d definitely simpler that way. I can’t be bothered going the record label route; that’s a big pain in the ass, and they don’t seem to know what they’re doing right now anyway.