Beej Chaney, the founding guitarist of local band The Suburbs who was known for his raucous punk-rock energy during live shows, died Sunday.
The musician, born Blaine John Chaney in Deephaven, was 68 and reportedly drowned while swimming in the Pacific Ocean near his home in Southern California.
Onstage, playing “beejtar” with The Suburbs in the 1970s and ’80s, Chaney was intense. Whether he was running around shirtless or swinging from the rafters, he looked, as Semisonic member Dan Wilson told the Pioneer Press a few years ago, “like he might explode at any moment.”
Offstage, friends said, this intensity showed up as a deep sensitivity and laser-focused caring.
“When you had his friendship, it was 100% of him,” said musician Robby Vee, a longtime friend and collaborator on Chaney’s post-Suburbs musical projects, and the son of ’60s teen idol Bobby Vee. “He was there for you, for the hard moments and for the happy moments. He was in it for the long haul.”
Chaney met future Suburbs vocalist/keyboardist Chan Poling when both were teenagers, and they formed The Suburbs in 1977 with drummer Hugo Klaers, guitarist Bruce Allen and bassist Michael Halliday. The Suburbs first broke up in 1987, and Chaney moved to Los Angeles a few years later. There, he released some solo music and bought the recording studio Shangri-La, where groups like Weezer and Metallica recorded albums before Chaney sold the studio to producer Rick Rubin.
Although Chaney briefly rejoined The Suburbs for their 2013 comeback album “Si Sauvage,” their first release in nearly three decades, he officially quit the band soon afterward.
He kept in touch with band members and Minneapolis friends, though, especially in recent years. When the band played the Whiskey A-Go-Go in California a few years ago, Chaney was in the audience, and in online tributes, friends and fans remembered reuniting with him in the summer of 2024 at The Revolution show at First Avenue for the 40th anniversary of Prince’s “Purple Rain” album and film.
“To share a stage with him was an honor,” said singer Janey Winterbauer, who joined The Suburbs shortly before Chaney left. “There’s something about the Suburbs family that, no matter whether someone has left or gone away, it always felt like a nice little family. And it still does.”
Poling told the Pioneer Press he was processing privately and would be unavailable for an interview, and said in an online tribute on The Suburbs’ Facebook page that Chaney “was a true rock star from the day I first met him when we were kids.”
“From the first time we saw them play ‘In Combo,’ we were intoxicated with the band,” said Lori Barghini, who used The Suburbs’ song “Love Is the Law” as a theme for the long-running MyTalk 107.1 talk show “Lori and Julia” that she hosted with Julia Cobbs.
Throughout her 20s, during the band’s late-’70s and early-’80s heyday, Barghini said she and her friend group never missed a local concert. She quickly became close friends with the band members and, when Chaney married Cargill scion Sarah MacMillan, Barghini and her friends crashed the couple’s medieval-themed wedding.
“We had some wild partying times — let’s just say it was the ’80s and we don’t need to say everything that was going on — but offstage, he was just the loveliest person,” Barghini said. “I don’t want to say shy, but there was a sweetness about him.”
‘Shake It All Up’
Last January, Vee called his old friend Chaney.
Musicians Beej Chaney, left, and Robby Vee pose in a recording studio on June 24, 2024. The pair had recorded a rockabilly-meets-punk album that was set to be released in early 2025 but has been put on hold following Chaney’s death on Jan. 5, 2025. (Photo courtesy Robby Vee)
Chaney had been in treatment and had not been making music since finishing the program, Vee said, so Vee pitched an idea for the pair to collaborate on a one-off rockabilly-meets-punk single.
“He flew (to Minnesota), I flew to L.A.; every Tuesday night, we would FaceTime and write songs,” Vee said. “It started out we were just going to do a song or two, but it was so much fun and we had such a great routine that we just kept going.”
The full album they eventually recorded, “Shake It All Up,” was set to be released this week.
Over the weekend, Vee had flown to California for a meeting with Chaney that was scheduled for Monday; Chaney died the night before. Vee got the news in the airport, he said.
“I think the record was kind of a new beginning for him, a revival for him,” Vee said. “Every element of what was great about him as a person, he was living that. He was being that person again. He had a little bit of a dark chapter before this that I felt like he was rehabilitating himself back into being that soulful person, and he was achieving it.”
Plans to release the album are currently on hold.
“Changing gears into a memorial and a tribute to his life is not something I can begin to fathom, it’s hard to even say that, but that’s what it will be,” Vee said. “When it comes out, I’ll have to wrap my head around that story, but it’ll be a tribute to his legacy.”
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