STEREOGUM: Did you feel like you’d artistically fulfilled everything that you wanted to do with a band, or were you unsure if this was actually gonna replace that for you yet? There wasn’t really a great model for it because none of my other rock musician friends had made a transition like this, but it turns out a bunch were doing it around the same time as I was: Linda Perry, Kevin Griffin from Better Than Ezra. And while I was home a lot more, I turned my attention to songwriting and thinking about how to become a songwriter for other people. The baby ended up driving the bus for a while in that way.
I had a personal change my wife and I had a daughter who was born into a set of disabilities that were pretty complicated and I needed to be home more than I was able to when I was touring. I wasn’t tired of it, but I’d had a lot of it. WILSON: When Semisonic stopped touring, we had been touring for seven or eight years and I’d had a lot of time in front of big audiences singing the songs that I wrote with my band. STEREOGUM: Tell me about the transition between fronting a rock band and chasing stardom yourself and becoming a more behind-the-scenes person, taking a backseat to your own songs. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I was kind of overwhelmed by my own past. WILSON: I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but it’s been a very powerful experience. STEREOGUM: What was it like looking back at your whole career in macro on Re-Covered? Now 56, Wilson spoke to Stereogum about what it was like making the leap from a face on VH1 himself to a behind-the-boards role on a few of the biggest songs in recent vintage. With Semisonic, Wilson was one of the brainier and warmer voices to share airspace with Matchbox 20 and Creed at the tail end of the ’90s the onetime alt-rocker’s songs now effortlessly veer from John Legend albums to Dierks Bentley albums to Josh Groban albums. Wilson’s new solo album Re-Covered (out this month via Big Deal Media/Ballroom Music) may help bridge that divide, as he interprets his own tunes for other artists, effectively making sure that any interested parties know he’s the only person ever to work with both Taylor Swift and ex-Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty.
Most of the world is familiar with Adele’s brokenhearted new standard “Someone Like You” and the Dixie Chicks’ Bush-era Molotov cocktail “Not Ready To Make Nice.” But people may not be aware that the guy who sang the ’90s’ last-call epic “Closing Time” is behind them. The public isn’t unaware of Dan Wilson’s exploits over the last decade and change.
Welcome to the second installment of “ Tracking Down,” a new Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
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