Former Replacements guitarist Bob “Slim” Dunlap has died at the age of 73. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Dunlap passed away at home in Minneapolis on Wednesday. He had been struggling with the effects of a stroke he suffered in 2012, which left him with limited speech and mobility.
“Bob passed at home today at 12:48pm surrounded by family,” Dunlap’s family said in a statement. “We played him his Live at the Turf Club (Thank You Dancers!) CD, and he left us shortly after listening to his version of Hillbilly Heaven – quite poignant. It was a natural decline over the past week. Overall, it was due to complications from his stroke.”
Dunlap was born in Plainview, Minnesota, to Jane and Robert Dunlap, the latter of whom served in the Minnesota State Senate. He began playing guitar as a child, and teamed up with Curtiss A in the early 1970s to form the band Thumbs Up and its offshoot Spooks. He also worked as a cab driver and janitor at the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue, where he met his wife, Chrissie.
Dunlap played guitar with the Replacements from 1987 to 1991, replacing founding guitarist Bob Stinson, who’d left the band due to issues with drugs and alcohol. Frontman Paul Westerberg gave him the Slim nickname, in part to avoid confusion. Dunlap went on to appear on the band’s last two albums, 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul and All Shook Down.
After the Replacements broke up in 1991, Dunlap put out two solo albums, The Old New Me in 1993 and Times Like This in 1996. Bruce Springsteen praised Dunlap’s solo work in a 2014 interview with NPR’s Ann Powers, calling the records “deeply touching and emotional.” In the wake of his stroke, Westerberg and Tommy Stinson recorded the 2013 EP Songs for Slim, released as a benefit to raise funds for Dunlap’s medical expenses. Another 2013 benefit compilation, also called Songs for Slim, featured covers of Dunlap’s songs from artists including Steve Earle, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Craig Finn, Jakob Dylan, Frank Black, Patterson Hood, and Soul Asylum. Dunlap released Thank You Dancers!, a live album recorded in 2002 at the 350-capacity Turf Club in St. Paul, in 2020.