Dave Pirner has been touring with Soul Asylum for around 40 years, but there’s one item he continually loses on the road, so much so that he joked about adding it to the band’s merch.

“I still can’t keep track of a toothbrush,” he said.

With all the touring Soul Asylum has done this year, who can blame him? There have been shows with Meat Puppets, as well as a recently concluded run with Stone Temple Pilots and Live. The veteran Minneapolis band will hit Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale on Oct. 24 for their tour in support of their recently released album, “Slowly But Shirley.” They’ll be joined by the Juliana Hatfield Trio, which will play their “Become What You Are” album in its entirety.

Being on the road with the band — known for songs like “Runaway Train,” “Black Gold” and “Misery” — puts Pirner in his element.

“It’s weird because you’re sort of in a claustrophobic space where everyone’s really tight together all the time,” he said. “On the other hand, it can be lonely, so there’s this kind of dichotomy going on where it’s really interesting. Well, let’s just say you try to make it interesting.”

Produced by Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan, Soul Asylum’s new album still feels exciting to Pirner.

“We kind of went into the studio and cut it before we had time to think about it, which was Steve Jordan’s intent, to a certain degree, to get it while it was fresh,” he said. “So it literally, for me anyways, it gets better every time I play it. So just getting the motor function happening and all that kind of stuff, it takes a few tries, but it’s starting to be comfortable.”

In a recent call from Seattle, where the band had just wrapped a live performance for KEXP-FM, Pirner talked about a dream tour, more on the new album and band milestones.

You were just out with Stone Temple Pilots and Live. Is there anybody that you’d still like to tour with that you haven’t got a chance to yet?

I’d like to go out and open for the Rolling Stones. (laughs) I opened for Keith Richards, and now Steve Jordan is in the Stones. I guess I’m trying to be realistic. … It’s not like I would turn down opening for the Foo Fighters, you know.

The new album “Slowly but Shirley” just came out a few weeks ago. Have you been satisfied with the response to it so far?

So far so good. People seem to be really into it. It’s really interesting in the way that, especially because our last record came out and covid happened. I don’t even like talking about it. I can’t even say the word, but now we’re able to play the new songs for people and see what kind of response we get. And it’s been good. It’s been a while since we’ve recorded a record, put it out, went right on the road and playing new stuff and seeing if people go to the bar waiting for the song they know, which they don’t. It was kind of funny I was thinking about it, like some people, they’ve heard “Runaway Train” so much it’s like they go to the bar when we play that song. And on the other hand, there’s probably some people there that are just there to hear the stuff they know, so maybe during the new stuff they go to the bar. But I don’t know. It’s nice. It’s really cool. People are great, and I think we attract a pretty decent crowd, pretty cool people.

In regards to the song “High Road,” are you finding it easier to take the high road in life nowadays?

Yeah, I think. Starting out as a punk rock band, I was angry about everything and just pissed off. Spending 24 years in New Orleans brought a certain sense of full circle or something for me where there’s joy in the music. I really got into listening to gospel music, Black specifically, which I can’t understand why. White gospel music, I just can’t stand it. But sometimes in Black gospel, it’ll be super fast and I believe all that stuff, that’s where rock ‘n’ roll comes from. … Living in New Orleans for all that time, there’s a certain amount of joy in music that I think I was missing, and I noticed that all these musicians were smiling and enjoying themselves and playing for the sake of playing in a way that I did when I was 18. I was playing, part of the frustration came from, I’m not very good (laughs), so it just turns into this sort of expression of anger. So, yeah, I suppose I have a bigger and a better perspective on things and I try not to be so cynical about stuff, even though I still am sometimes. I try not to be so angry, but I came back to an Elvis Costello line: “I used to be disgusted. And now I try to be amused.” And I thought that’s pretty good. That was on his first or second record, so he’s still pretty young when he said that. (laughs)

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How do you know when it’s the right time to let go of a piece of a song, or does today’s technology basically just help you hold on to it even longer?

That’s a really, really good question. I was just thinking I’ve got so many Pro Tools files and I’ve been using that for a long time and I’m like, are these drives gonna die on me? But I just have this huge backlog of songs that are my demos, where I’m playing every instrument and it’s weird but kind of cool in a way that you can go, oh, I can’t remember. Because a lot of the times I won’t have the title when I start out with the music, so I just give it some (expletive) title and then I kind of forget about it. Every now and then, I’ll go, oh what the hell is this and I’ll go OK, whatever. But every now and then I’m like, I should work on that some more. That’s a little bit more fluid than tape, cassettes and two-inch tape and things that require more mechanics to listen back to things and identify things, so that part of Pro Tools is pretty cool.

It seems like there’s been a lot of milestones for you this year: You had the new album, you turned 60 this year, it’s the 40th anniversary of Soul Asylum’s debut album, “Say What You Will.” Moments like that, do they give you the opportunity to reflect back on your career?

A little bit, and not a lot. I’m not a very nostalgic person at all. Usually it just surprises the hell out of me. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for this long. And so it’s cool that they reissue stuff on vinyl that never came out on a record. It was just CDs or whatever back then. And that’s nice. There’s been moments where I was like, oh, we’re going to remaster this record, put it on vinyl. And then I listened to it, and it sounds better than the original record. So, that’s a thrill. So some of that stuff is pretty good.

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