----

Stinson is negotiating with a number of labels to release the yet-untitled disc in February. But don’t expect a full-fledged promo push to follow. Stinson insists that despite Guns N’ Roses problem-plagued 2002 tour, he and the band will be back on the road next summer in support of their 10-years-and-$9 million-in-the-making epic, Chinese Democracy.

"It’s gonna be tricky," he says, "but if I can work it out I’ll be doing both GNR and my solo thing pretty solidly for the next couple of years."

----

One band fans shouldn’t expect to see Stinson playing with is the Replacements. Last winter the Internet was alight with rumors of a Stinson/Paul Westerberg tour — one that would, in typically perverse fashion, have retraced the steps of 1959’s tragic Buddy Holly/Ritchie Valens/Big Bopper "Winter Dance Party" package.

"It got as serious as one kind of funny phone call," recalls Stinson of the Westerberg-proposed jaunt. "We joked about it and I came back and said, ‘I really don’t have time to do it right now, but thanks anyway.’ And that was the end of it. Then somehow that turned into ‘Axl wouldn’t let him do it!’ and all this bullshit that [Paul] put out in the press. It was really fucked. I can’t say it made me real happy; it didn’t make Axl very happy either. But in reality it never got any further than the one conversation."

The rest of the article can be read here.