Remembering Soul Asylum's Karl Mueller

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Karl Mueller was the bass player and founding member of famed Minneapolis band Soul Asylum. When he got esophageal cancer in 2004, the Twin Cities came together to support him, raising money with benefit concerts to help with his overwhelming medical bills. Karl lost the fight with cancer a year later. He was only 41 years old. When Karl was diagnosed, his wife Mary Beth started The Karl Fund.
The first benefit for The Karl Fund took place eight months before Mueller's death, with rare performances by the Replacements' Paul Westerberg and Hüsker Dü's Grant Hart and Bob Mould, plus Soul Asylum, with Mueller in the midst of his chemo treatment on bass. Upon Karl's' death, the proceeds from that evening became the foundation for the organization that is Kill Kancer. Karl's widow, Mary Beth created a research endowment ("The Karl Fund") at the University of Minnesota in 2005 and then the prevention organization "Kill Kancer" www.killkancer.org in 2013.

As Soul Asylum continues on, at each show frontman Davis Pirner introduces Karl along with the other players in the band and a song is dedicated to him nightly. So ten years have gone by and Karl Mueller is not forgotten. Dave Pirner remembers and speaks of his bandmate, brother and friend in this episode of On Tour: https://whyy.org/cms/ontour/soul-asylum/
What started as benefit concerts for one beloved musician has become a network of support for an entire community, now called KillKancer, dedicated to doing just that, educating people and killing cancer by working to prevent it.

KillKancer is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to reducing the risk of death by cancer by 90% by any means necessary. Please learn more about KillKancer here: https://killkancer.org