Lynn Blakey obit

Beloved Indie Rock Musician, Inspiration for the Replacements’ Alt-Rock Anthem ‘Left of the Dial,’ Dies

Lynn Blakey, who played in the bands Let’s Active, Oh-OK and Tres Chicas, has died.

 She was not on the list.

Lynn Blakely, an indie rock musician who played with Let’s Active, Oh-OK and Tres Chicas, has died. Her cause of death wasn’t immediately known. In 2025, she was fighting a recurrence of cancer. She was in her early 60s.

The news of her death was reported on social media by Bob Mehr, author of the acclaimed book Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, who noted her role in the Replacements’ college rock anthem “Left of the Dial.”

“On one level ‘Left of the Dial’ celebrated the ’80s American indie scene and paid tribute to the tiny-watt college stations at the far end of the FM dial, where the Replacements got most of their airplay. But it was also a love song, an evocation of Paul Westerberg’s infatuation with Blakey,” Mehr wrote. “They first met when the ‘Mats & Let’s Active shared a bill at San Fran’s I-Beam in late ‘83. He bummed cigarettes off her & they spent hours walking & talking in the rain. ‘I think Paul decided he had a crush on me,’ said Blakey. As Westerberg recalled: ‘I was in love with the idea of being in love with her. I used that to pine with.’”

The phrase in the song “sweet Georgia breezes” refers to Athens, Ga., Mehr added, where Blakey moved and joined the band Oh-OK, which also featured the sister of R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, Lynda.

“The song is about that first year of Paul and I meeting and hitting it off and logistically it not working out,” said Blakey, Mehr shared in his post.

“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,” said Westerberg told Mehr. “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.”

The song’s lyrics, “If I don’t see ya in a long, long while/I’ll try to find you, left of the dial,” directly referred to that situation, Mehr noted.

In 2024, Blakey returned to the University of North Carolina, Greensboro to pursue a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. Then 61, Blakey had attended the university three decades earlier and was pursuing a communications degree before she left school during her junior year to join Let’s Active.

Last March, Blakey’s friends in the band the dB’s posted on Instagram that Blakey’s cancer had returned and shared a link to a GoFundMe to raise money for her treatment. At the time, Blakey’s husband Ecki Heins had been diagnosed with colon cancer.