Bob ‘Slim’ Dunlap memorial May 19 at First Ave to be ‘true celebration of life’

He was a beloved figure in the Twin Cities rock scene who played with one of its blusteriest bands. However, Bob “Slim” Dunlap’s family didn’t just want to put together a rock concert to honor him after his death in December at age 73.

“It’ll be a memorial service and a true celebration of life that will also have a lot of great music throughout the evening,” Dunlap’s daughter, Emily Boigenzahn, said of the event the family has organized for First Avenue on May 19.

Announced on Monday as the Bob “Slim” Dunlap Memorial and Tribute, the service will indeed feature music by Trailer Trash, the Cactus Blossoms’ Page Burkum and Jack Torrey and a crew billed as the Slimboree Singers led by John Eller and Dave Boquist. But it will also feature lots of stories, readings and other tributes because, as Boigenzahn explained, “he was loved by so many for more reasons than just his music.”

Some of the other scheduled guests that night include Curtiss A, Gini Dodds, Germaine Gemberling, Rich Mattson, Terry Walsh, Frank Randall, Lianne Smith, Lizz Winstead, Brad Zellar and members of the Slim Dunlap Band (Brien Lilja, Johnny Hazlett and Jim Thompson).

Oh, and Dunlap himself will be heard throughout the night, too.

“We thought about having a bunch of guest singers do his songs with a backing band,” Boigenzahn explained, “but even better, we thought, would be getting to hear his original songs as he recorded them played over the sound system.”

Expect to hear tracks from Dunlap’s two cult-loved mid-’90s solo records played during photo montages and around the spoken tributes. A lot of the songs that will be performed live at the memorial will instead be other people’s music that Dunlap loved to cover or hear, i.e. Hank Williams (paging Trailer Trash!) or the Cactus Blossoms’ own tunes.

The family also weighed its options of where to hold the memorial, but First Ave quickly rose to the top. Not only did Dunlap play there with the Replacements, Curtiss A and numerous other bands in the 1970s and ’80s, his wife Chrissie Dunlap also worked at the club alongside g.m. Steve McClellan for much of the ’80s.

Also, as most members of Replacements’ legion of nerdy fans could tell you, Bob Dunlap also worked an extra job at First Ave as a janitor in the ’80s, a gig he famously shared with the guitarist he would replace in the Replacements, Bob Stinson.

“Both my dad and my mom have so much history there, it stood out as the most logical choice,” Boigenzahn said.

Tickets for the memorial are on sale now via axs.com for $12. Money raised from the tribute will go toward the Slim Dunlap Fund, which was set up after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2012 that led to a series of all-star recordings to help cover his medical costs (including the reunion EP by the Replacements).

In this case, Boigenzahn said the money will help cover the cost of Dunlap’s burial site at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, the headstone for which will be in place sometime this summer. Dunlap died at home in Minneapolis on Dec. 18 surrounded by family after 12 years of bedridden convalescence following his stroke.