Back in January, The Replacements’ Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson kicked off their reunion activities with the release of five-song EP benefiting their bandmate Slim Dunlap, who suffered a stroke in February 2012. Since then, everyone from The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn to Deer Tick to Jakob Dylan have contributed to the Songs For Slim campaign, which comes to a close this month with a split 7″ featuring Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy.
Tweedy, his son Spencer, and a few friends contribute a rendition of Dunlap’s “Ballad of the Opening Band”. The song was recorded at Wilco’s Chicago studio and features Spencer on drums. Listen to a snippet, below.
As a press release notes, “Tweedy has a special connection to Slim that is especially appropriate for this song, dating way back to a long forgotten 1991 tour when Tweedy’s former band, Uncle Tupelo, opened for The Replacements on a few east coast dates. Years later, Tweedy famously quipped, ‘Everything we do is based on The Replacements’ right before a cover of ‘Color Me Impressed’ during a legendary 1997 Wilco live show in San Francisco.”
A limited allotment of the 7″ single, backed by a cover of Dunlap’s “From the Git Go” by Lucero, will be put for auction today, September 15th and running through September 22nd. Visit SongsForSlim.com to place your bid. The single will also be available digitally through iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify, and an album compiling all the Songs For Slim releases will be released in the near future.
