Souled American

Souled American is an American alternative country band from Chicago that was active mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band started in 1986 with a quartet of musicians from Illinois. The initial lineup consisted of rhythm guitar/singer Chris Grigoroff, bassist/singer Joe Adducci, lead guitarist Scott Tuma, and drummer Jamey Barnard. The band made six records between 1988 and 1995; Barnard left the group during the making of the fourth record Sonny, while Tuma departed during the making of the sixth record, Notes Campfire. Since then, Souled American has survived as a duo featuring the original songwriters Adducci and Grigoroff, aided and accompanied by a variety of other musicians.

In 2023, Grammy Award-winning musician Jeff Tweedy wrote about Souled American in his book, World Within a Song. Though Souled American, he explained, were contemporaries of his first band Uncle Tupelo, they never achieved widespread popularity; instead, as Uncle Tupelo shot to stardom in the burgeoning alternative country movement of the early 1990s, Souled American fell from sight. Consequently, Tweedy wrote, this Souled American song he was celebrating, "was likely the hardest track to find of any" he wrote about.

Nor was this Tweedy's first effort to bring attention to this forgotten band. In 2016, in a video for Pitchfork Magazine entitled, "The One Song I Wish I'd Written," Tweedy nominated Souled American's "Before Tonight."

In 2025, to rectify this imbalance, Omnivore Recordings issued Rise Above It, a compilation of twenty Souled American songs. In a highly-starred review published April 25, 2025, Jon Dale of Uncut pointed out how the band used country music as "the shell, of sorts, for a quixotic combination that pulled from all kinds of genres – the heartbreak and melodicism of country and folk; the groove of reggae and dub; and touches of R&B in some of the singing and playing, and in their choice of covers."

This followed an earlier attempt by tUMULt Records to revive interest through the 1999 reissue of their first four records in a remastered CD box set Framed, which inspired reviews and features in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and others.

Novelist/songwriter John Darnielle penned an essay ("How Souled American's Flubber Changed My Life") which underscored what songwriter/musician (Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker) David Lowery told a radio DJ in 1990 that "...in the way The Pixies sorta summed up all the sort of musical undercurrents in underground rock over the last ten years, Souled American did it for a different set of musical undercurrents (namely the American folk roots tradition). They took it and stood it on its head, in maybe the way Beefheart did, but in a more pop/folky way..."