The Replacements family tree

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We are just days away from a new chapter in the Replacements’ history as the band—which currently consists of founding members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, plus stand-ins Josh Freese and David Minehan—prepares to play their first show in 22 years this Sunday in Toronto.

The unexpected reunion has already gotten us reminiscing here at the Current, and led to us compiling a beginner’s guide to the Replacements earlier this week. Now, we’ll peel back another layer and get into the band’s position in the larger Minnesota music community.

Like so many sections of our music scene, the corner that the Replacements dominated is full of overlapping members, cross-pollinations, and regenerations. To get the full sense of their position in the Minneapolis rock scene, we mapped out a flowchart that traces the band’s family tree out onto each limb and back down to its roots.

As you’ll see in the infographic below (which can be enlarged by resizing your browser or by downloading a .PDF or .PNG version), the tree isn’t comprehensive by any means—once you get to the outer ring you could keep expanding, and expanding, and expanding. The goal of this project, rather, was to show just how many of the band’s connections manage to circle right back around to the beginning again; even the band’s newest collaborators, Freese and Minehan, had already shown up once or twice already in the band’s past.

Behold: the many twists, turns, and tangles of the Replacements.

And for more ‘Mats, stay tuned to the blog and my Twitter feed this Sunday night for live coverage of the band’s first of three Riot Fest shows.

Previously:

Download a .PDF or .PNG version of the family tree.