The Ballad of Slim Stone
The rise and disappearance of the best Americana act you’ve never heard of
Slim Stone, 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, 2019. Photo by Dan Lee.
I was recently researching international artists for an upcoming article, and an exciting Americana act from Japan surfaced. Pirates Canoe was a rootsy string band with a genuine old time folk/country sound and pretty harmonies. I found more articles and videos, but I started to notice something disappointing: They were all five to ten years old. The digital trail went cold in 2015.
I started researching individual members in hopes of finding they’d moved on to another band or a solo career. Elizabeth Etta, Sara Kohno, Kanako Keyaki, Kazuhiko Iwaki and Daisuke Nakai were all amazingly talented and apparently stopped performing around the same time, or at least the Roman-alphabet spelling of their names stopped appearing online.
Pirates Canoe had moved on to other adventures that I couldn’t access, so I sadly abandoned my search. The deflated feeling of a wildly talented act disappearing for no discernible reason brought back one of the biggest heartbreaks of my recent musical adventures: when I became probably the number one fan of Slim Stone, a towering Minneapolis talent who exploded onto my radar and then just as suddenly disappeared from view.
Rico “The Butcher” (l) & Slim Stone (r), 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, 2019. Photo by Dan Lee.
I first saw him at our diviest of dive treasures in Minneapolis, the Terminal Bar, whose interior is as gloomy as its name but which sometimes yields the rawest, purest music entertainment around. I’d brought my friend Cory on a whim after seeing a poster that promised a slate of country acts I’d never heard of. It was an off night at first, but when Stone and his bandmate Rico “the Butcher” took the tiny stage, everything changed. After half a song Cory, who may have been previously regretting his decision to come with me to see unknown acts, leaned over and murmured, “Oh, Carol, he’s good!”
I wasn’t sure what to think of the tall, skinny, rat-tailed guy in sunglasses attacking his guitar with punk energy yet generating honkytonk sounds, his voice spanning a wide range but containing a quaver in the middle of that range, like a rough version of what David Bowie’s voice does. Meanwhile Rico coaxed pedal steel-like sounds out of his guitar and stomped a foot drum emblazoned with Stone’s name. Looking back at Instagram, this was my summation: “Unusual duo, but there is something about them that’s quite enjoyable.”
I didn’t think much about it until I happened to see Stone’s name on the bill opening for someone at the Hook and Ladder. It was kind of a “why not?” reaction. Cory agreed to go and I dragged my wife along too.
It was a bigger stage and a better sound system (no offense to the Terminal—their sound guy works hard!), but it was announced that Rico the slide/drum guy couldn’t be there. Stone looked a little small and unsure for a second as he stood alone. Then he seemed to steel himself, and from the first few notes it was clear he could command an entire stage on his own. This time I found myself recognizing a snippet of verse, a snatch of melody, and really appreciating his lyrics, which were about a hard-drinking, hardscrabble existence full of heartbreak and despair, but delivered with a swagger and an intense delight that was contagious. My Instagram review of that night: “The undeniably strange and talented Slim Stone. All his songs are about being drunk or dying yet they feel so good to listen to.”
And then...he left! By then I was following him on social media so I knew that his lack of shows was due to the fact that he’d gone to California for an indeterminate amount of time. I was more disappointed than I should have been from seeing someone twice, but I had no CDs to fall back on and I hadn’t thought to record anything from the shows I’d seen. I found an EP on Bandcamp of four home-recorded songs (The “Castillo de Huesos” Recordings), and I went into a clickhole and found four more songs someone else had put up on Youtube, and I listened to them over and over.
Six months later, suddenly, he was back! It was a dreadful February night even by Minnesota standards, but my wife and I braved the ice to hit a nearly deserted Nomad (now Part Wolf). I was glad I had—Stone had brought with him a raft of new songs. I was no fool this time—I recorded several of them. The video is awful because I was being surreptitious—back in early 2019 I was still not really sure what artists thought about people videoing them. (Most I’ve talked to since then don’t mind, but I’m still reticent about publicly posting unreleased original songs.)
Carol Roth (l) & Slim Stone (r), outside First Ave, Minneapolis, 2019. Photo by Dan Lee.
We officially met that night, although we’d connected a bit on social media, and struck up an acquaintance. I was surprised to find under all the punk swagger of his stage persona a genuinely nice and humble guy. I may have knocked him back on his heels with the ferocity of my fandom but I meant every word of it. (My Instagram has become my journal of this time, and my post from that night was “Slim Stone is a goddamn force of nature and I’m so glad he’s back in the Twin Cities. Expect to hear a lot more about him.”) Anyone who can bring the same energy and commitment to a snowed-out empty bar as they do to a packed venue has already won my respect, but on top of that I was already deeply in love with his performance style—and his songwriting.
Stone’s lyrics were delightfully specific to the geography of Minneapolis, particularly the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood more commonly known as the West Bank—in one song he mentions the hippie-punk cafe Hard Times, and his song “Sorry, We’re Open” is all about the “strong pours” at Palmer’s Bar (which I can attest to, having been caught out by them more than once!). But the emotions and stories in them are universal, so you needn’t have ever stepped foot in Palmer’s or been on the banks of the Mississippi in Minneapolis to find them resonant. (Random example from “Itchin’ for Extra Scratch”: “Beg steal or borrow / make it til tomorrow / the devil is a friend of mine / got a pocket full of regrets / cashin’ only thin checks / brother can you spare a dime?”)
Rico “The Butcher” (l) & Slim Stone (r), 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, 2019. Photo by Dan Lee.
I resolved to see him whenever I could after that, and it was a glorious seven months or so. He was playing out frequently in the Twin Cities—often playing small venues or opening for others, but it felt like he was building momentum. Going from the Terminal to the 7th Street Entry (First Avenue’s adjacent kid-brother space) in less than a year, especially with having taken several months off, seemed like a great leap. He produced an incredible T-shirt (with a two-headed crying chicken! I dare you to find a cooler shirt!). His studio-produced album was coming along and he even let me help him with bio copy for marketing efforts. I don’t know if any of it was actually used for anything but I had LOTS of thoughts about his music and not enough people to tell them to, so it was a great outlet for me. (Tangentially, it was the first time I’d really tried to write about music and may have been the seed that eventually grew into this site!) Plus I got to learn more about his “real” identity, David C. Steffens, and his other projects, including the punk/blues/rock band Liquor Beats Winter.
I dragged everyone I could to his shows—my sphere of music influence was very small back then but I did what guerilla-level publicity I could for him. The album became an EP (Stone Broke) due to lack of funding, but I got a sneak peek of some of the tracks and they were amazing. A release show was scheduled, appropriately, at Palmer’s in September 2019. My excitement was through the roof. And then, as he was publicizing his show on social media, he announced that his release show would also be his farewell show: “because I AM stone broke and I gotta go make some money.”
It was a bit of a gut shot but, having been through a five-month sabbatical of his before, it didn’t seem like the end of the world. The day of the show came and it was every bit as epic as I could have hoped. Palmer’s was packed. The Cactus Blossoms were in the audience! His friend Birdie McLeod opened for him and I instantly fell in love with her music as well. (Seriously. Check out her EP Goodbye Daylight on Bandcamp. It’s incredible.) Stone was on fire. After the show I wished him well on his adventures, feeling pretty sure he’d come back.
Birdie McLeod, 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, 2019. Photo by Carol Roth.
Five months passed and he didn’t return, or post much of anything. Then a show popped up for April 2020 and it seemed he was coming back! But then, well, you know what happened to shows scheduled for April 2020. It evaporated into nothing and that was the last I heard or saw about Slim Stone shows.
So, damn. I don’t know what else to say, except hold your favorite acts close, because you never know! If Stone hadn’t skipped town, Adventures in Americana probably wouldn’t exist because I’d still be his unpaid intern—that’s how into his music I was. I see him randomly tagged in posts once in a while, from California to Panama, and we still exchange polite messages once in a while—last time, I believe he was drinking beer with McLeod in a Texas Wal-Mart parking lot, which sounded both really fun to a pandemic shut-in like me and also super on brand for Stone. But it doesn’t seem like he has any definite plans to return to the Twin Cities or his artist persona. Is this a pandemic glitch or the end of it all? Lots of artists have gone radio silence for the past year that I think (hope!) plan to get back to it when the world opens up, but given Stone’s itinerant lifestyle, in this case I’m really not sure.
EP Album Cover via Slim Stone on Bandcamp
I could review his studio EP and his home-recorded one, and tell you why I love each and every song on them. But it’d feel like an incomplete review without the songs that didn’t make it onto either record—many of which I don’t know the exact title of. “O Mississippi,” a wailing ballad that’s my second-favorite ode to the iconic river besides The Cactus Blossoms’ “Mississippi.” “Roulette,” as down-and-dirty a song about desperation and rage as there ever has been. “The Motel Song,” which paints a picture of that aching feeling when you have everything you need to be happy but you just aren’t. The tongue-in-cheek self-aggrandizement of “The Ballad of Slim Stone.” “If I Don’t Die Soon,” one of his first songs that stood out to me because the lyrics “If I don’t die soon I tell you what / I’m probably gonna die tryin’” reminded me of Hank Williams Sr.’s tragicomic masterpiece “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” “Gone Just Like Everyone Else,” which is just as bleak and brilliant as my made-up name for it suggests. “I Wish You Harm,” a petty revenge anthem for the ages. And a kinda sleazy (but oddly endearing) tune about consensual casual sex that he’s said he’ll probably never perform again.
I still believe it’s an actual crime against humanity that these songs aren’t out there in the world. I still think his music is special—I think you should check out the few songs that made it onto his incredible EPs and if you’re like me and that’s nowhere near enough, hit me up for some bootleg show footage with all his other mind-blowing songs. And then, light a candle at the altar, burn some sage, draw a pentagram, whatever—help me pray for the eventual un-disappearance of Slim Stone.
Listen to “Ain’t No Fool” from Stone Broke:
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym @taberkeley!
