Famed Replacements, Guns N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson coming to Tarentum

A small venue in a small town like Tarentum is not necessarily the place where you would expect to find a musician of Tommy Stinson’s stature making a tour stop.

But on Tuesday night, the former Replacements and Guns N’ Roses bassist will play an intimate, acoustic show at Dry Bones Boutique on East Sixth Avenue. It’s the last stop on Stinson’s 13-city tour as he makes his way back to his home in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York.

In a Tribune-Review interview, Stinson said he’ll be playing songs from his latest project, a rock ensemble with Chip Roberts called Cowboys in the Campfire. The duo is set to release an as-yet unnamed album this spring.

“Most of it is just stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll in a way, two guys with guitars making as much racket as they can,” said Stinson. “I guess without pigeonholing any of it, it could be called loud Americana.”

There will also be selections from Stinson’s solo albums, “Village Gorilla Head” and “One Man Mutiny,” as well as from Bash and Pop, the group he joined after his heady days as a member of The Replacements, an alternative band Stinson co-founded in 1979.

With Paul Westerberg as the group’s lead singer, The Replacements created a transformative sound with a string of albums that peaked in 1989 with “Don’t Tell a Soul” and the hit single “I’ll Be You,” which topped the Billboard Modern Rock chart.

Stinson remembers the process of recording the album and its success as a bittersweet experience. Looking back, he wonders if the band might have been trying to be “something that we were not” as The Replacements strayed from their punk rock roots in an attempt to reach mainstream success.

“There was too much time spent on trying to appease the company (Sire Records) so that we could get on radio and things like that. We might have thought about it too much and it was becoming increasingly confusing,” said Stinson. “But, ultimately, there’s some good stuff on that record that I still like a lot.”

The Replacements broke up in 1991 and, in 1998, Stinson joined Guns N’ Roses for a 16-year run. His bass playing is featured on “Oh My God,” which is part of the soundtrack to the movie “End of Days.”

As he looks to the future, Stinson said he’ll take what comes.

“I don’t have a genre that I fit into or care to. I kind of mess around with a little bit of everything at any given time,” he said. “At my age (55), I’ve been doing this for so long that I pretty much get to do whatever I want on my own terms and I like that. I have fun with it. I do as much or as little as I want and, you know, it pays the bills.”

Stinson said for safety reasons related to the pandemic, the audience for Tuesday’s show at Dry Bones is being capped at 60 people. Proof of vaccination is required for entry and patrons are strongly urged to wear masks.