When singer, songwriter and indie rock pioneer Bob Mould embarked on his last tour with a full band, he called it “The Last Dog And Pony Show” and vowed never again to undertake such a trek.
So when he is asked if that makes the upcoming tour “The Bob Mould Is A Lying Weenie Tour,” Mould deadpans, “Yes,” without hesitation. He then looks up and directs his intense stare at the reporter, “And I don’t hear anyone complaining.”
For years, fans have clamored to hear Mould play songs from his previous bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar. But he has historically been ambivalent about nostalgia, particularly Hüsker Dü, the seminal 80s Minneapolis punk band whose influence can be felt in bands such as Nirvana, Green Day and White Stripes.
Sure, Mould would dig out some Hüskers chestnuts at solo acoustic gigs, but when he toured with a band in the past, the focus was almost exclusively on his solo projects.
At 44-years-old -- 18 years after the breakup of Hüsker Dü amid deep tensions with Grant Hart, the band’s other principal songwriter, Mould has clearly mellowed. “I’ve reconciled my past,” he said, looking relaxed in his publicist’s office.
“I guess I thought that Hüsker Dü was kind of sacred. Then I watched how other people in the band trashed it. And I just said the hell with it. I still like my songs.”
While Mould plans to air out some Hüsker Dü and Sugar songs with his current band, his eyes are fixed squarely on his latest album “Body Of Song,” which was released Tuesday on Yep Roc Records.
The lyrics of “Body Of Song” will sound familiar: emotionally naked, often passionate, sometimes forced, but always intense.
But while many have focused on the return of the guitar to the forefront of Mould’s new music, most of the songs have a danceable pulse that characterized some of the electronic music he’s been playing on and off for the past seven years.
The album was originally intended to be part of a trilogy with two albums released in 2002, “Modulate” and “Long Playing Grooves” under the pseudonym LoudBomb, in which the music driven largely by tape loops, keyboards and electronics.
The third album was supposed to hearken back to the more acoustic sound of his 1989 solo album “Workbook.” But when he went in to record in May 2002, he was unhappy with the results.
“I felt like I hadn’t written enough and I wasn’t playing very well,” he said. “I tried re-recording some things in October 2002, but by then I was so unfocused. I thought, ’I’m just not hearing this at all. I know some of it’s good, but I sit here and pick at it, I’m going to kill it.”
Bob blogsSo he took some time off and formed BlowOff, a deejay project with electronica artist and remix producer Richard Morel in Washington, where Mould currently lives.
“When I moved to Washington, Richard was one of the only people I knew,” Mould said. “All of my stuff was in storage. He had a studio and deejay rig and we just started writing music together.” The two have completed a new album, which Mould is hoping to release early next year.
Another key tool in Mould’s creative process turned out to be a blog, or Weblog, (http://modulate.blogspot.com) that he started in 2003 as a way to unlock his writer’s block.
“I felt like I was at a loss for putting words together properly,” he said. “I was chopping up audio files on screen and in my head and I was losing the use of language. So I started the blog to force myself to write. And sure enough it did what I wanted which was to unblock and then all of the sudden the songs came pouring out.”
Mould got his start in 1979 in Hüsker Dü, a powerful trio that began as a hard core band. The band would perfect a blend of noise -- layers of compressed feedback and distortion -- with pop melodies that drew as much from the Beatles as the Ramones.
They proved to be pioneers, not only in their sound, but in their business dealings when they become the first of the post-punk bands from the 1980s to get a major label deal. Unfortunately after two albums with Warner Brothers, relations between Mould and Grant Hart became too strained to continue.
The two men, who have remained at odds with one another over the years, shared a stage for the first time in 17 years last October at a benefit for Karl Mueller, the bassist for Soul Asylum, who succumbed to cancer in June.
Hüskers fans, however, should not hold their breath for a reunion. While the two men chatted amiably backstage at the benefit, they have not spoken since.
“We have a lot of unfinished business from the Hüskers,” Mould said. “SST (one the band’s early record labels) owes us a lot of money that they’re never going to pay us. There’s a way to remedy that but all three of us have to be on the same page. The odds of that happening are so unlikely. I’ve written it off and I’m focusing on the future.”
He has fonder memories of his second band Sugar. “The Hüskers was an emotion,” Mould reflected. “It was visceral. It was physical. And it was moment. It spoke of the 1980s and the Reagan years and all that stuff.
“But the Sugar songs are the sh--,” he added. “That’s what I’m really looking forward to playing. I didn’t have to deal with any other songwriters. There was none of the crap. It’s where I could shine and not worry about anything.”
‘Not all of us should be role models’The band would go on to sell four times more albums than Hüsker Dü and led to exposure that Mould had never seen.
It was during this time that he became the subject of a somewhat controversial article in Spin magazine in which he acknowledged he was gay, but was far from comfortable discussing the issue and making it clear that he wanted his art to be evaluated on its merits and not through the prism of his sexual orientation.
“Not all of us can be the good gay,” he said with a slight but serious smile. “And not all of us should be role models. Some of us can be a little f---ed up at times. Back then, I was worried about was the recontextualizing of my work.”
But there were other considerations as well, he admits. “In 1994, to be gay would knock me off of a lot of commercial radio stations,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened. I understand that’s how business works. Commercial radio stations in the south have to answer to advertisers that didn’t want ’that faggot music.’ I heard people say this in a couple of markets.
“But I was fine with that. But there are lots of considerations. For example, my parents live an town that doesn’t understand things like this. But there comes a point where I have to put myself ahead of things like that. Over time, I have.”
These days, he is more comfortable in his own skin, becoming active in the gay rights Human Rights Campaign and addressing gay issues directly on his blog.
“I’m a much better gay now,” he said with a smile. “We’re all works in progress. The difference between me in 1994 and now is staggering. The difference between me last year and now is staggering. I’m grateful to be here and I’m like where I am. But sometimes I wake up in the morning and look around and thing, ’This is not where I thought I was going to be.”’