CDL Welcomes Tommy Stinson to Song Fest
By Chris Berggren, CDL Administrative Assistant

Tommy Stinson, CDL’s 2022 Song Fest headliner, can chart his musical path directly through his brother, Bob. At 11 years old, Tommy picked up a bass guitar in Bob’s room. Bob asked if he wanted to learn how to play it and Tommy answered, “Sure.” He later attempted to change his mind, realizing the strings hurt his fingers, but Bob needed a bass player for his neighborhood band, and so he was able, through bribery and coaxing, to get Tommy to stick to it. “Which obviously was a savior of my life,” Tommy admits. “I’d already been to jail like three times… so I was really going down a bad path.”

The band that Bob Stinson started in south Minneapolis in 1979 eventually became known as the Replacements, one of the most revered bands of the 1980s. “The Replacements was just a group of dudes from the neighborhood,” Tommy recalls. “Paul (Westerberg; guitar and vocals) lived down the street from Chris, Chris (Mars; drums) lived down the street from us.” The band crammed itself into a corner of the Stinson’s basement and would stay down there for hours, making as much racket as they could. Bob was proficient on guitar, but the entire band was figuring it out as they went, particularly Tommy, who was seven years younger than the other three members. They played parties and dive bars to cut their chops and were eventually signed by a local label, Twin/Tone Records. Tommy credits the band’s chemistry, particularly that between his brother and Westerberg, for the early success. “They were grateful opposites in a way,” Tommy muses. “If you listen to that first Replacements record (Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash), my brother’s guitar against Paul’s sort of punk rock, raw-nerves thing—the juxtaposition of those was pretty astoundingly nuts.”  (more…)