Music

The muse for a classic Replacements song has died

Lynn Blakey inspired one of the Minneapolis band’s most revered rock anthems, “Left of the Dial.”

By Chris Riemenschneider

The Minnesota Star Tribune

February 9, 2026 at 4:00PM

Lynn Blakey was touring with Let's Active when she met the Replacements' Paul Westerberg in 1983 and later inspired one of his best-loved songs. (University of North Carolina)

The name Lynn Blakey won’t immediately ring a bell for most Replacements fans, but the lyrics she inspired will forever be ringing between their ears:

And if I don’t see you

In a long, long while

I’ll try to find you

Left of the dial

Blakey, 63, died Feb. 6 near her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., after a recurrence of cancer. A figure in the North Carolina and Athens, Ga., music scenes, she was the muse behind one of Minnesota’s most revered rock songs, the 1985 college-rock anthem “Left of the Dial.”

The story goes that Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg and Blakey first met and hit it off in San Francisco in late 1983 when his band shared a bill with the group in which she performed at the time, Let’s Active (led by R.E.M. producer Mitch Easter). They exchanged phone calls and letters for a while, but tours and geography kept them apart.

Then one night while on tour Westerberg randomly heard Blakey being interviewed on a college radio station (“Weary voice that’s a-laughing / On the radio once”). The resulting song became an unrequited love song as well as an ode to the low-watt stations on the far ends of the FM radio dial, which were the only outlets to play their kinds of bands in those days.

“I figured the only way I’d hear her voice was with her band on the radio on a college station. And one night we did,” Westerberg told Bob Mehr, author of the possibly big-screen-bound biography “Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.”

“We were passing through a town somewhere, and she was doing an interview on the radio. I heard her voice for the first time in six months for about a minute. Then the station faded out.”

Blakey talked endearingly about the song over the years: “I think Paul decided he had a crush on me,” she told Mehr. She continued performing in several bands, including the 2000s-era band Tres Chicas with Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown). In 2024, she re-enrolled in the peace and conflict studies program from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the school she dropped out of in the early 1980s to tour with Let’s Active.

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Blakey’s family obituary mentioned “Left of the Dial” as “a testament to her impact on her peers. Her artistry extended beyond performance, encompassing a deep commitment to her craft and the independent music community.”

One of Blakey’s musician friends, Jefferson Hart, shared a story Blakey posted in 2023 to Facebook about hearing “Left of the Dial” come on the speakers at her local co-op right after she began chemotherapy treatments.

“It was a pivotal funny/lovely moment,” Blakey wrote. “I was just at the beginning of this process and it was a nice wink from the heavens. … Voices from the past are perfect in the right moment.”

about the writer

Chris Riemenschneider

Critic / Reporter

Chris Riemenschneider has been covering the Twin Cities music scene since 2001, long enough to earn a shoutout from Prince during "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)." The St. Paul native authored the book "First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom" and previously worked as a music critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.