Dan Wilson performed Tuesday at the Electric Fetus

When you're Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer Dan Wilson, where do you go to celebrate the release of your first solo album in seven years? Of course, the Electric Fetus.

That's where Wilson made monthly trips to buy music when in lived in Minneapolis for all those many years. But he moved to Los Angeles nearly four years ago to further his songwriting/producing career, working with the likes of Adele, Taylor Swift and Pink, among others.

Between sessions with all those bold-face names, Wilson managed to complete his "Love Without Fear," his second solo effort. On Tuesday, he was up early chatting on 89.3 the Current, doing interviews in the afternoon (as well as lunching with his singing brother Matt Wilson) and then singing and signing autographs at the Fetus in the evening.

Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar at the Fetus, the sweet-voiced Wilson performed four songs from the new album (including the title track and the new single "A Song Can Be About Anything") and one number from "Free Life," his 2007 solo debut. There was nothing from his Semisonic or Trip Shakespeare days – or his Grammy-winning-collaborator-for-hire resume.

Wilson did slip into his "Words and Music" mode – the usual VH1 "Storyteller"-like format of his solo concerts – and talked about his songwriting process and what sparked a couple of songs in particular. He will give full concerts June 4, 5 and 6 at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis – with a different approach each night, though "Words and Music" will be the first show.

At the Fetus, Wilson got about150 people to sing along to "All Kinds," from his first solo disc. Mid-song, he politely called their singing "super-nice but super-quiet," which made us wonder if that's a euphemism for semisonic.

After the half-hour set, Wilson spent an hour posing for photos and signing CDs (the deluxe version contains a hardcover book featuring lyrics that he wrote in calligraphy).

We didn't stick around to see if Wilson did any shopping but, in a pre-performance interview, he told us he'd transferred his monthly habit of shopping at the Fetus for "a handful of jazz records and new pop releases" to the sprawling indie chain, Amoeba, in Los Angeles.

"I do there what I did at the Fetus – I bought old Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, Brad Mehldau, Beck, Sun Kil Moon."

[Photo: Leslie Plesser]