by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

It’s so tempting to write “Souled American is back!” But that’s not only cheesy, it’s also not what’s happening; yes, the celebrated Chicago band credited as progenitors of both “alt country” and “slow core” just released its first new album in 30 years and have embarked on an equally rare nationwide tour. But the truth is Souled American never went away, it just retreated into a kind of unintentional semi-reclusion, and is now reemerging to a world that needs what it does more than ever.

Guitarist/vocalist Chris Grigoroff and bassist/vocalist Joe Adducci formed Souled American in 1986. Rough Trade released its first four records, beginning with “Fe” in 1988. In the three decades since its sixth album, 1996’s “Notes Campfire,” the band has played a few one-off gigs, overseen the rerelease of its first four records and an anthology, and have had new songs on two compilations. Souled American hasn’t been inactive, but it has certainly kept a low public profile.

That was until last month when Jealous Butcher Records released “Sanctions,” Souled American’s first album in 30 years. A national tour, including a Saturday, May 16 stop at the Folk Music Center in Claremont, is now underway.

Souled American’s co-founding guitarist/vocalist Chris Grigoroff. Photo/by Christopher Bruno

And while the band is ecstatic, don’t call it a comeback.

“That kind of bothers us when we hear that, just because we never stopped working our asses off. Never,” Grigoroff said. “That bicycle was always being pedaled … The real problem is that nobody wanted to put it out. And so we just kept writing songs and trying to get things. We have a lot of things that are still in wait.

“But we never ever stopped, we just had nobody interested in putting us out or thought maybe we had something to say.”

The response to “Sanctions” has been universal.

Pitchfork, NPR, Spin, Dusted, Chicago Reader, Under the Radar, Uncut, and even Parade have published raves for “Sanctions,” which is described at souledamerican.net as “… a work of immediate relevance, elevating their unique style of ambient Americana into a life-altering experience full of feeling and drama, like some ink-stamped elegy fresh off the printing presses of Walt Whitman.”

Unlike some of their late 1980s contemporaries, Souled American’s back catalog has aged remarkably well. It still sounds completely unique, fresh, and deeply soulful. There’s always something new to discover in its sideways approach to country, folk, and even reggae. It seems the world may just be finally ready to give it its due.

The band’s profile may have seemed low to nonexistent to causal fans over the past three decades, but its importance never wavered among the two generations of musicians, songwriters, and critics who have drawn inspiration from Souled American’s idiosyncratic songs and fearless dedication to lyrical and musical authenticity. Fan and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy wrote about the “weird little band” in his 2023 book, “World Within a Song”: “I’m always sort of upset when I find out that not that many people know who they are … Souled American is due for some reissues and some reappreciation.”

An unfortunate by-product of the band’s extended sabbatical from public view is that it coincided with the total collapse of the “music business” circa 1996. Mid-level acts like Souled American are now expected to do their own promotion, produce their videos, book their tours, make and sell their own merchandise, and if they want to level up, consistently keep their “brand” in front of eyeballs on social media and YouTube. Compact discs are essentially business cards now, and as such mechanical royalties from record sales are no longer a thing for the thousands of recording artists slugging it out in clubs and theaters. It’s a new world, and not necessarily one Grigoroff, 69, and Adducci, 63, are well suited for.

Fortunately, Tom Adelman is. The acclaimed writer of books about baseball, who under his pseudonym Camden Joy has written about music and released several of his own records, has a long history with the band, going back to his 1997 street poster project, “Fifty Posters About Souled American” in New York City. Adelman began managing the band in 2023. Under his Camden Joy handle he administrates Souled American’s Facebook and Instagram pages, facebook.com/groups/43215200819 and instagram.com/souled_american_official, and is the foremost outside catalyst for the group’s 2026 resurgence.

Adelman “had been writing about us for years, and he contacted us and wanted to write a book about us,” Grigoroff said. The book, “35 Days of Fe,” came out in 2025. “He comes and he’s asking us why aren’t we putting anything out, and we said we don’t have anybody. It’s just been me and Joe. And then Tom says, ‘Well, I can help this; there’s something out there for you. You gotta know that.’ We kind of knew it, we just didn’t have anybody that did it. Joe and I are musicians. We’re not really people who did business.”

Souled American’s co-founding bassist/vocalist Joe Adducci. Photo/by Christopher Bruno

“When Tom first met us it was in Chicago,” Adducci said. “And he walks in and he’s looking around and he sees all this recording equipment. We’re in the middle of an album that I don’t even know if he was sure we were making at the time. He’s like, ‘We gotta get this out.’ And he helped us get it out.”

“When [Adelman] came, it changed our lives,” Grigoroff said. “All of a sudden there’s a light in our lives that hadn’t come into it since the Rough Trade days.”

One aspect of the musicians’ life that hasn’t changed all that much in 30 years is touring: for Adducci and Grigoroff that means getting in a van and driving across the country, just like they did in the 1980s and ‘90s. But with both members in their mid- to late-60s now, the rigors of the road are much more of a consideration than they were in the early years.

“I think Joe and I both agree on this: it was daunting,” Grigoroff said when asked about touring again. “But the last little few gigs we did in New York and then we came back and did Space in Chicago, we could start feeling — because we got a new guitar player in Brian Smith — so we’re feeling better.”

Smith, a long-time fan of the band, also played on some Souled American recordings in the early years.

“And then [Smith] started to play parts on his guitar that were played on an accordion or something, and it’s like, my God, you really know all these intertwining melodies,” Adducci said. “He knows the density of what we do.”

So why now? Why the Souled American renaissance, 30 years after most fans last heard from them? Could it be the world is really just finally catching up to the singular sound the band makes?

“I don’t know,” Grigoroff said. “But the critics who are writing about us seem to think that, and they seem to get what we’re writing about. So I don’t know, maybe we’re just communicating better. I’m not sure. But either way, we love it.”

Souled American’s 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 16 show at the Folk Music Center, 220 Yale Ave., Claremont, is presented in conjunction with Dirty Opera. Tickets, $25, are available at the store, by phone at (909) 624-2928, or at the door if available.

The band begins a six-date West Coast tour May 11 in Seattle. In June they’ll do 10 Midwest and East Coast dates, including what promises to be a triumphant performance at Wilco’s Solid Sound music and arts festival in Massachusetts on June 27.

More info is at souledamerican.net.