A piece of pie

The disc is the first major release by one of Minneapolis's best-kept secrets: a band featuring Soul Asylum guitarist Dan Murphy (a/k/a David Spear), Gary Louris (a/k/a Michael Macklyn), and Marc Perlman (a/k/a Raymond Virginia) of the now defunct Jayhawks, guitarist Kraig Johnson (a/k/a Jarret Decatur) of Run Westy Run, drummer Noah Levy (a/k/a Leonardson Saratoga) of the Honeydogs, and token Missourian Jeff Tweedy (a/k/a Scot Summit) of Wilco/Uncle Tupelo fame. As Louris explains, "The names are all a joke, but the band definitely isn't."

Actually, Golden Smog began as something of an indulgence for three of the leading lights of the Minneapolis scene: Louris, Murphy, and Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner. "We put together a trio called Skidmark, T-square, and Q-stick to open a show for the Jayhawks," is how Louris tells it. "We just played covers and our friends really liked it. Then we started doing these tributes to the Rolling Stones. One of them was called Exile on Lake Street, which is where the Uptown bar is located, and the other was His Satanic Majesty's Paycheck. That was Dan, Marc Perlman, Kraig, and myself."

The Smog, as Louris calls them, came together at a show where he, Murphy, and Johnson covered some old nuggets. "We did a medley of `Guitar Man' by Elvis Presley into `Guitar Man' by Bread at that show," Louris recounts. "I knew we were on to something because Kat [Bjelland] from Babes in Toyland, who had never talked to me before in her life, came up to me, batted her eyes, and said she thought we were great."

With Perlman and drummer Chris Mars of the Replacements on board, the Smog spent two days in the studio and emerged with the On Golden Smog EP, released in 1992 on the tiny local label Crackpot. It featured straight covers of five classic oldies, including the Stones' "Backstreet Girl" and Bad Company's "Shooting Star," the latter with a guest vocal by Pirner, and it didn't give any indication that Golden Smog were anything more than a fun sideline.

"We listened to that record," recalls Louris, "and realized two things: one, we either had to start bringing something new to the covers we were doing or write our own songs, and, two, we were a damn good band."

Murphy agrees: "It's really hard to get behind doing covers, but I think we realized that if we ever got any practice time together then we'd be like the world's third most dangerous band . . . or something like that."

Unfortunately, the emergence of Soul Asylum and the Jayhawks as commercial entities made it increasingly difficult for Golden Smog to convene more than once or twice a year. But two years ago, when a Jayhawks Australian tour fell through, the band seized the opportunity and booked a five-day block of studio time. The only obstacle was an almost complete lack of original material.

"We didn't have a game plan, we didn't have any songs, and we didn't have any time to rehearse," explains Murphy. "I had kind of called Tweedy out of the blue and asked him to join the Smog as a dare and he was silly enough to take me up on it. We were at a point where just hearing from Jeff that he had written a song about a piece of pie for us was really encouraging. It was like, `Way to go Jeff!' "

Tweedy's loose and twangy "Pecan Pie" isn't one of the more substantial numbers on Down by the Old Mainstream. But as a slice of white-trash, roadside-diner kitsch, it goes down just fine. And now that Wilco, Soul Asylum, and the Jayhawks are all playing in a league where studio professionalism is encouraged, it's refreshing to hear them jamming in a more laid-back setting, harmonizing guitar riffs on an excellent version of the Faces' "Glad & Sorry" (one of only two covers), and pulling together a couple of solid, hook-filled roots-rockers (Murphy's Soul Asylum outtake "Ill Fated," the Jayhawks leftover "Yesterday Cried," and the Murphy/Perlman collaboration "Red Headed Stepchild").

"The luxury of doing a record like this," admits Murphy, "is that you don't have to be a perfectionist. I think Tweedy said it best. We were doing `Pecan Pie' with me on slide and Kraig on mandolin, and we started getting too analytical about the arrangement. Jeff stopped us and said, `Guys, you know what? It's a fucking song about a piece of fucking pie.' We tried to approach the whole record in that spirit."