Photo Credit: Joe Mabel via Wikipedia
Steve Wynn’s long-brewing house show tour finally is making its way to Milwaukee this week. Originally scheduled for April 2020, the tour was postponed by, well, you know. Booked by Tina Dunn, who has planned similar “intimate unusual venue shows” for Tommy Stinson, Lou Barlow, The Posies and others, the Milwaukee show takes place Saturday at URSA, a lifestyle and home decoration boutique in Bay View.
While in Wisconsin, Wynn will also hit Madison on Thursday and Green Bay on Wednesday. He is no stranger to Milwaukee, of course, having played solo shows in the city and with his bands Dream Syndicate and The Baseball Project.
Wynn says it is The Baseball Project, his supergroup with Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, Linda Pitmon, and Mike Mills that performed the national anthem at then Miller Park in 2016, that truly “ramped up” him performing more often in Wisconsin.
“Baseball has been very, very good to me,” he says, echoing Garrett Morris’s SNL character Chico Escuela.
Non-Traditional Venues
Wynn explains he enjoys performing in houses and other non-traditional venues because they are always different and reflect the personality of the host. He also likes that the crowd at house shows often include both fans and people who have never heard of him.“That adds a nice element of surprise,” Wynn says.
A boutique is certainly not Wynn’s most unusual performance spot. He says he played in front of nuns and donkeys in Sicily and for prisoners while still with the Dream Syndicate.
“If it’s unusual places, where do I start and where do I end?” he says.
The always prolific Wynn released Decade, an 11-disc, 166-song set in 2020, capturing his work between 1995 and 2005. The year also saw him release a new album with Dream Syndicate, their second since reforming a few years ago. The group plans to release another in 2022, he says. A new album from the Baseball Project is also forthcoming.
Writing Songs
Without a doubt, songwriting is an essential part of Wynn’s life. Storms in late August in New York City, where he lives with wife Pitmon, left him lamenting on Twitter, “Every day I can’t go out walking is a song that doesn’t get written. Damn this storm.”
But Wynn says the extra time at home over the last year because of the pandemic has not resulted in more songs for him because of the difficulty of trying to not overtly address the pandemic itself in his writing. Even still, he jokes, he should name the upcoming Dream Syndicate album More Songs About Masks and Vaccines. “That would be a good album title,” he says.
When he wasn’t writing, he says he used to the time to paint and start a memoir.
Noir themes are often present on the Decade collection, which includes “Cindy, It Was Always You,” the co-write he did with crime novelist George Pelecanos, who had referenced Wynn and Dream Syndicate in his books. But Wynn says he doesn’t agree with the viewpoint that he’s “Raymond Chandler with a guitar.” The focus of his songwriting has evolved, he says. “I think I write now more about the human condition. It’s more personal than character-driven.”
He encourages everyone who attends his show at URSA to yell their favorite songs. Plan to hear songs from his solo records, Dream Syndicate, Gutterball, the Baseball Project and more. “I know all of them,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “If I don’t, there my songs, and it’s my prerogative to change the lyrics.”
Steve Wynn performs Saturday, Sept. 11 at URSA, 2534 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite.
