Minnesotan Dan Wilson is coming home ‘extra appreciative’ of Oscar and Grammy noms

Last week, he found out he’s up for an Oscar. Earlier this week, a song of his landed at No. 1 on the country music radio charts. This weekend, he’s headed to the Grammy Awards with two very different nominations.

In the interim, though, Dan Wilson also has two hometown solo gigs to play Friday and Saturday at the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis. Don’t be surprised if he still has something like a deer-in-headlights look in his eyes when he gets here.

“It’s just been an amazing series of surprises,” said the St. Louis Park native of Semisonic.

“In a way, these various honors really came out of the blue for me, so I’m extra appreciative of them.”

The Oscar nomination is for “It Never Went Away,” a song he co-wrote with Jon Batiste from the former “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader’s documentary “American Symphony.” Another Batiste collaboration, “Butterfly,” is up for song of the year at Sunday’s Grammy Awards.

Wilson is also up for best country song at the Grammys with the Chris Stapleton hit “White Horse,” which topped the country radio chart last week.

This material is part of a long string of songwriting collaborations the Minnesota music vet has enjoyed in the decades since earning his first Grammy nod with Semisonic’s 1998 rock hit “Closing Time.” Other artists who’ve enlisted Wilson as a co-writer include Taylor Swift, Pink, Celine Dion, Weezer, Adele and the Chicks, the latter two of whom earned him his first two Grammy wins.

“I’ve had certain things on my ‘maybe someday’ list, but I never had an Oscar nomination on it,” he said, recounting how he found out about the nomination.

“I was awoken in the early hours of the morning California time by people in New York who heard about it. I got a lot of texts at 5, 6, 7 in the morning from a lot of happy friends.”

It wasn’t a total surprise, though. He learned a few weeks earlier the tune had been shortlisted as a candidate for best original song for this year’s Academy Awards. He’ll be at the ceremony in L.A. on March 10 to find out if it wins.

A lovelorn, emotionally raw ballad not unlike Adele’s “Someone Like You” (which Wilson co-wrote), “It Never Went Away” was featured in the Batiste documentary “American Symphony.” Both the movie and the song are based on Batiste’s personal roller-coaster ride balancing his booming music career with his wife’s bout with cancer.

“I think we started with a piano piece Jon had already begun,” Wilson recalled, “but a lot of the lyrics came out of the conversation he and I had about life and the dramatic events that he and [wife] Suleika were going through.”

Between the two tunes, Wilson said, “I’ve traded a whole bunch of texts with Jon of late, most of them along the lines of, ‘Woo-hoo!’”

As for the collaboration with Stapleton, the grizzly looking, boomingly voiced throwback country singer has repeatedly recruited Wilson as a co-writer. “White Horse” now solidifies the Minnesota pop-rocker’s reputation as an unlikely ace-in-the-hole for Nashville stars. He has also written with Dierks Bentley, Keith Urban and LeAnn Rimes, among others.

“How do I go about writing in Nashville as an outsider, as a Minnesotan, as someone who doesn’t drive a truck or have that certain kind of cultural heritage?” Wilson remembers thinking and asking when he first started going to Nashville to work.

“My first writing session there was with Josh Leo, who’d had some hits. And Josh said to me, ‘Oh, Dan, we didn’t bring you here to Nashville to provide any of that content. We’ll provide it if we need it. We’re doing this with you because we want your Beatle-y rock thing. You just be you.’”

“That was super-liberating. From the start, I didn’t have to pretend to be very country. I was just told to be myself. In all this genre hopscotch jumping I’ve been doing, I’ve kept that in mind: ‘Just keep being yourself. Don’t force anything.’”

Semisonic is finally slated to perform again April 6 at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul, which Wilson called “a very long-delayed record release party.” He added, “We’re all busy, but we’re also very focused on trying to play more Semisonic gigs.”

This week’s solo gigs at the Woman’s Club were part of Sue McLean & Associates’ 2023 Music & Storytellers series, but they had to be postponed from November. Wilson thinks they’re coming at a good time now — albeit at a bit of a crazy time, since he has to catch an early flight Sunday morning to make it to the Grammys.

“I’m really excited because I haven’t played a solo show in a really long time, and because I get to play a few songs I haven’t played yet,” he said.

Asked about certain songs of particular note right now, he coyly answered, “The shows are very much songwriter-oriented shows. So yes, they’ll maybe include a couple of Grammy-nominated singles.”

Here are edited blurbs of Wilson discussing two of his three newly nominated songs:

“White Horse,” with Chris Stapleton (Grammy nominee, best country song): “When they first sent a file of the final song to listen to, I loved it, but I was struck by the fact that it was full of things that aren’t exactly hallmarks of smash pop hits right now. It has a long guitar introduction, followed by a second, louder guitar intro. It takes its time to get to the vocal. Then it kind of turns into a southern rock jam. So as much as I loved it, I was surprised it was a single.

“Chris is definitely at a point in his career where people will give his music a shot even if it’s outside convention. But I also still believe people don’t like things they don’t like, and they liked this song.”

Words & Music concerts: 7:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat., Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, sold out.

Grammy Awards: 7 p.m. Sun., CBS.