Interview: Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum - Page 3

The music has aged with you?

Yeah, exactly. The tempos are a little more adult, which is a good thing for the drummer who's playing for ninety minutes. (Laughs) It just seems to me like there never really was a breaking off point.

If there was really one in our career, it would be Grave Dancers'. Originally that record was going to be an acoustic one. We were just so tired of playing clubs and it was so loud, it seemed like our message was getting lost in the verbosity of the guitars. We were all having hearing problems from doing so many club tours. So that, to me, is the only record consciously put together different in our whole career.

And then we kind of chickened out on that. As you know it's not an acoustic record, but originally the demos for that "Without a Trace," "Black Gold," "The Sun Maid," all those songs were acoustic, and that's what we shopped to record labels with the first six songs.

So, was it the labels that shot your idea down?

Oh no-no-no! Everyone wanted it. At that point, everyone we talked to wanted to sign us, because everyone thought "Runaway Train" was a hit. It's kind of someone else's idea of a good time to have the industry driven by pop-hit radio. That song (Pause) I think it's a great song, but it's like an aberration I think more than something that's going to be on every record.

Has the way you're approaching marketing changed with this album from the way you've done it in the past?

I just don't know. There's all the internet stuff. I know we're going to do the Bill Maher show. We're going to California tomorrow, and I know you have to go to Amazon.com… it's a little window that pops up. There's no doubt about it, if you are a fan of a band there is so much more information out there, which is a good thing.

Marketing has never really been our bag, really. Sometimes it seems, and this may be my ego talking, but if you're record is strong enough you shouldn't have to do that much marketing. You get the songs on the radio, or be consistently good live, and hopefully word of mouth takes over. That's the way we did it originally. When we were on Twin Tone and A&M we just packed our stuff into a van and went city to city and built a following.

Article Author: Connie Phillips

Wife, mother, aspiring novelist, and music editor at BC Magazine, Connie Phillips spends most of her time in a fantasy land of her own creating. In reality, she writes about music, television, and the process of writing, when she's not cheering on her kids at equestrian events. …

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