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April 14, 2026

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Dave Pirner and Soul Asylum (minus their drummer) are out on a throwback "Unplugged" tour and the made a stop at The Kent Stage on Sunday night.  The night was made even more special as Corey Glover, lead vocalist of Living Colour opened the show with a six song acoustic set of his own.

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Glover and his guitarist took the stage first to belt out some original tunes as well as "Love Rears It's Ugly Head" from Living Colour and some great cover tunes that included Bill Withers "Use Me," The Beatles "Here Comes The Son" and the show closing  Prince tune "The Cross."

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Glover's voice is as strong as ever as he effortlessly hit the high falsetto time and again.  This man could sing the phone book and I would pay to hear him.  Hopefully he will come back as a headliner because the crowd wanted to hear more tunes.

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Soul Asylum then took the stage as a three-piece and opened with one of their biggest hits, "Somebody To Shove." 

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Dave Pirner has a unique voice but it fits perfectly with the music that Soul Asylum creates.

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Throughout the show, Pirner would tell a few "dad jokes" that elicited laughs and a few groans from the audience.  This stripped down, acoustic show was the perfect setting for this type of interaction.

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The band sounded fantastic as Dave's six string acoustic matched perfectly with Ryan Smith's twelve string while bassist Jeremy Tappero held down the low end.

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They expertly went through the hits like "To My Own Devices," "Misery" and "Without A Trace" while throwing in some deep cuts and even a few newer tunes like "Freak Accident" and "High Road" from their most recent album Slowly But Shirley.

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In the middle of the set, Pirner got a little political by talking about how Soul Asylum used to rehearse about a half a block from where Alex Pretti was killed.  He went on to say that when they started to have benefit concerts for the Renee Goode and Pretti families and others that needed support, the first song that came to his mind was "Ohio."

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Although he misspoke and said it was a Buffalo Springfield song, everyone in attendance knew it was a CSN&Y song.  It was really moving to hear that song in Kent, where the shootings took place in 1970, to be played by a band from Minneapolis where shootings took place by the government fifty-six years later.

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It was actually chilling.

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The main set closed with "Black Gold" which got everyone on their feet to bring the band back out to do an encore.

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Pirner told the audience, "You didn't think we were not going to play that song?" after tearing into their biggest hit, "Runaway Train."

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The show ended with the rousing and appropriate "Get On Out."

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It was another great night of acoustic music at The Kent Stage.  I'm glade Soul Asylum and Corey Glover decided to mix it up and only bring their acoustic guitars for a more personal "unplugged" show.

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Review and pictures by Greg Drugan

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