Since the beginning of time (OK, fine, the '60s), musicians and their various social/political/ethical causes have been inextricably linked. Taking that tradition of activism into the 21st century, we give you the newest trend (not involving Barack Obama) in musical stumping: network neutrality.
In the fall, legendary rocker Neil Young will begin a North American tour toting two of alternative rock’s biggest, most college-y names. Death Cab for Cutie will play at the first concert Oct. 14 in St. Paul, Minn, and Wilco will take over the opening act during the second half of the circuit, beginning Nov. 29 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Los Angeles indie rock trio Everest joins the powerhouse playbill on every date of the tour.
Apparently, Jeff Tweedy "kinda hate[s]" all six of Wilco's albums to date. That's right, according to Billboard.com, Tweedy recently told Albany N.Y. radio station WAMC, "none of them are a statement that I would be comfortable making right now at this point in my life. They all served their purpose, and in that respect I'm proud of all of them." What does he plan on doing about this newfound distaste for all things Wilco pre-mid-2007? Record another album, of course.
Much like love, Jay Bennett-related material tends to come in spurts. The timeline of releases:
Above: Bang Camaro
Now that their Alaskan tour has finished, the members of Wilco are turning their eyes to greener pastures. It's not so much about a place as it's about how they get there. Sure, a lot of rockers talk a good game about "reducing their carbon footprint." A band can go as green as they want, but what about the thousands of screaming fans burning fossil fuels to and from the show? In an effort to reduce transporation pollution, Wilco has established a ride board dubbed "Passenger Side," to help fans coordinate with other Wilco-heads to "reduce costs, consumption, and potentially make new friends." You know, our parents warned us about rides with strangers, but for Jeff Tweedy, we think we're willing to make an exception.
Summer has a way of feeling light, as if you can float along aimlessly as you please like a feather in the wind, or maybe a hummingbird. And there are few more pleasant soundtracks to summer than the soothing melancholies of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco.
First time’s a charm for the inaugural Jackson Hole Music Festival. The two-day affair set in Teton Village, Wyoming, will not be a minor-league production. The line-up, not even complete yet, already includes Wilco, music legend Brian Wilson and Medeski, Martin & Wood on day one, and The Black Crowes, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and The Avett Brothers on day two.
Wilco recently announced more (and more) tour dates into May, and even as far down the road as August. The band has also been rumored as a headliner for this year's Lollapalooza, speculation lighting up the Internet just last week.
The next part of Wilco's tour follows a five-night stint in the Windy City, during which the band played every single song from all six of its studio albums. Cross your fingers that the poor men don't die from exhaustion before they leave the Midwest and head down under to the Land of Oz.
Fans of Jeff Tweedy may also be interested to hear that he's now writing for the new New York Times migraine blog, which can be found here.
Watch Wilco perform at Bonnaroo:
Dates:
March
18 - Newtown, A.U. @ Enmore Theatre
19 - Brisbane, A.U. @ Tivoli Theater
20 - Byron Bay, A.U. @ East Coast Blues & Roots Music Fest
23 - Wellington, N.Z. @ Front Room
26 - Melbourne, A.U. @ The Palace
27 - Melbourne, A.U. @ The Palace
April
30 - Rochester, Minn. @ Mayo Civic Center
May
1 - Fargo, N.D. @ Fargodome
2 - Winnipeg, M.B. @ Burton Cummings Theater
4 - Bozeman, Mont. @ Emerson Theater
5 - Missoula, Mont. @ Adams Center
7 - Grand Junction, Colo. @ Avalon Theatre
8 - Colorado Springs, Colo. @ Pike's Peak Center
9 - Albuquerque, N.M. @ Popejoy Hall UNM
11 - Austin, Texas @ Stubb's BBQ
12 - Austin, Texas @ Stubb's BBQ
15 - St. Louis, Mo. @ The Pageant
16 - St. Louis, Mo. @ The Pageant
August
7 - Charleston, S.C. @ North Charleston Performing Arts Center
Related links:
Wilco on MySpace
WilcoWorld.net
New York Times: Migraine Blog
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
We here at Paste know that you couldn't possibly be tired of year-end "best of" lists. No, forget whatever emotion of extreme exhaustion just hit you upon reading that sentence, it's simple: You just aren't tired of these yet. Take a look to your right at the MOST READ articles side bar. This is your fault! You absolutely loved reading about how Garrison Keillor's son's lacrosse teammate really dug that Shins album, didn't you?
That said, we gave you our initial onslaught of "best of" overkill back in November. Remember those greener pastures when Radiohead just had a website and not an actual CD? Well, it's January now, and we aren't slowing down. Either way, our metaphorical Connect 4 would not, well, connect four without you. Yes, you, dear reader, and your cherished opinion.
We are now proud to present the 2007 Paste Signs of Life Readers Poll:
MUSIC
1. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
2. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
4. Feist - The Reminder
5. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
6. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
7. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
8. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
9. The National - Boxer
10. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
11. The White Stripes - Icky Thump
12. Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
13. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
14. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
15. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
16. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
17. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
18. Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
19. Peter Bjorn & John - Writer's Block
20. The New Pornographers - Challengers
Write-in votes were varied, to say the least. For instance, sorry folks, Bon Iver doesn't come out until later this year. Hold your horses. Also, Dick Prall fans, we're on to you. We're sensing an unauthorized Rock The (Write-In) Vote attempt. Dick Prall fans, you've been warned!
Topping the write-in votes were Jesca Hoop, Blitzen Trapper, Levon Helm, Interpol, Neil Young, Gogol Bordello, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Pinback, Crowded House, Luke Brindley, The Hives, Chuck Prophet and the Once soundtrack.
FILM
1. The Darjeeling Limited
2. No Country For Old Men
3. Knocked Up
4. Superbad
5. The Bourne Ultimatum
6. Hot Fuzz
7. Juno
8. Ratatouille
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Once
BOOKS
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
2. I Am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert
3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4. A Thousand Splendid Sons by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
6. What Is the What by Dave Eggers
7. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
8. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
9. Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk
TV SHOWS
1. The Office
2. Lost
3. 30 Rock
4. Heroes
5. Pushing Daisies
6. House
7. Chuck
8. Dexter
9. Scrubs
10. Weeds
In an October interview with Josh Ritter, some dude at the Idaho Statesman referred to Paste as "the niche music magazine for white guys who love Wilco."
It's a valid point, really. This publication does, in fact, employ some Caucasian males. And yes, some of them enjoy the musical stylings of Jeff Tweedy and company.
Come to think of it, Wilco is a quintessential Paste band: earnest, intelligent, rewarding over the long-term and restlessly creative. So you can bet we're excited about the latest tour from Wilco, one that includes a five-night residency at Chicago's Riviera Theater that will explore the group's full discography.
“Over the five nights, we will attempt the ‘complete Wilco’ and try to clear out the dusty corners of the catalog that we haven't attended to in a while," Tweedy said in a statement.
After the Wilco nostalgia series, the group will then take off through the Midwest, East Coast and South.
Here's the complete itinerary:
February
15 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
16 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
18 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
19 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
20 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
22 - Cleveland, Ohio @ Lakewood Civic Auditorium
23 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ Tower Theatre
24 - New Haven, Conn. @ Schubert Theater
March
2 - Nashville, Tenn. @ Ryman Auditorium
3 - Mobile, Ala. @ Mobile Civic Center
4 - New Orleans, La. @ Tipitina's
5 - New Orleans, La. @ Tipitina's
7 - Houston, Texas @ Verizon Theater
8 - Tulsa, Okla. @ Cain's Ballroom
9 - Des Moines, Iowa @ Val Air Ballroom
Related links:
WilcoWorld.net
One of Paste's white guys slavishly adores Wilco's Sky Blue Sky
YouTube: Wilco - "Impossible Germany" live at Bonnaroo '07
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
It’s cosmopolitan courtesy, when visiting foreign lands, to do as the natives do. Sometimes, this means eating monkey brains. For Wilco, poised to embark on a half-canceled European tour, it means pulling an Elvis Costello by going deluxe with a special “tour edition” of Sky Blue Sky, the band’s latest release on Nonesuch Records. True, England itself will miss out on the live experience because of “scheduling conflicts,” but the expanded record will be available throughout the UK (and elsewhere in Europe).
NME writes that the new Sky Blue Sky is due Nov. 12, and features five bonus tracks – all of which will be free to those who live outside the UK and already own the regular old home-country version. Not exactly sure how that’s going to work, but hopefully there is a secret code, undetectable by low-quality pirated .mp3s, buried in one of the tracks. Like, a series of notes just shy of bat call frequency. And you have to translate those notes into number (A = 1, etc.), and then subtract the resulting figure from the number of birds on the album cover.
Anyway, here are the bonus tracks, followed by a list of upcoming and sort-of-far off dates:
Sky Blue Sky deluxe:
1. The Thanks I Get
2. Let's Not Get Carried Away
3. One True Vine
4. Impossible Germany (live)
5. Hate It Here (live)
November
6 - Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal
8 - Barcelona, Spain @ Razzmatazz
9 - Madrid, Spain @ Riviera
10 - Zaragoza, Spain @ Sala Oasis
11 - Bilbao, Spain @ Euskalduna
14 - Dublin, Ireland @Vicar Street
15 - Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street
18 - Sydney, Australia @ Enmore Theatre
March, 2008
19 - Brisbane, Australia @ The Tivoli
20 - Byron Bay, Australia @ East Coast Blues Festival
22 - Auckland, New Zealand @ New Zealand Festival
23 - Wellington, New Zealand @ Front Room
26 - Melbourne, Australia @ Palace Theatre
Related links:
WilcoWorld.net
Wilco on MySpace
Nonesuch.com
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
Although Wilco had to cancel some shows in Britain due to scheduling conflicts, the band is still on course to play dates in Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
There is no news on when these called off shows will be rescheduled, but the band has stated that it will hopefully return soon.
New Wilco tour dates:
November
6 - Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal
8 - Barcelona, Spain @ Razzmatazz
9 - Madrid, Spain @ Riviera
10 - Zaragoza, Spain @ Sala Oasis
11 - Bilbao, Spain @ Euskalduna
14 - Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street
15 - Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street
March
18 - Sydney, Australia @ Enmore Theatre
19 - Brisbane, Australia @ The Tivoli
20 - Byron Bay, Australia @ East Coast Blues Festival
22 - Auckland, New Zealand @ New Zealand Festival
23 - Wellington, New Zealand @ Front Room
26 - Melbourne, Australia @ Palace Theatre
27 - Melbourne, Australia @ Palace Theatre
Related links:
WilcoWorld.net
Wilco on Myspace
YouTube: Wilco - "What Light"
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
Wilco has added many a new date with Dr. Dog to its already extensive tour, seemingly embracing the experimental side of its "experimental alt.rock" categorization. The tour has already carried the band from Iowa to Spain (practically indistinguishable from each other, when you think about it), but the people of Colorado, Texas and Canada need just as much Tweedy and co. as the people of Davenport and Benicàssim. What's an extra state here, an extra country there?
The group’s sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky debuted on Nonesuch Records at number 4 in May on Billboard's Top 200. Meanwhile, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline recently released an album titled Draw Breath on Cryptogramophone.
August:
14 - Duluth, Minn. @ Bayfront Festival Park
15 - Winnipeg, Manitoba @ Burton Cummings Theatre
17 - Calgary, Alberta @ Jubilee Auditorium
18 - Edmonton, Alberta @ Jubilee Auditorium
20 - Vancouver, B.C. @ Malkin Bowl
21 - Seattle, Wash. @ Marymoor Park
22 - Troutdale, Ore. @ Edgefield
24 - Berkeley, Calif. @ Greek Theatre
26 - Santa Barbara, Calif. @ County Bowl
27 - San Diego, Calif. @ SDSU Open Air Theater
29 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Greek Theatre #
September:
1 - Denver, Col. @ Fillmore Auditorium
2 - Denver, Col. @ Fillmore Auditorium
11 - Madison, Wis. @ Overture Hall *
12 - Chicago, Ill. @ Pritzker Pavilion *
13 - Southaven, Mis. @ Snowden Grove Amphitheatre *
14 - Dallas, Texas @ Palladium Ballroom *
16 - Austin, Texas @ Austin City Limits Festival
18 - Little Rock, Ark. @ Robinson Auditorium *
19 - Columbia, Mo. @ 9th Street Summerfest *
21 - Louisville, Ky. @ Louisville Slugger Field *
October:
26 - New Orleans, La. @ Voodoo Music Experience
*w/ Dr. Dog
Related links:
WilcoWorld.net
Wilco on MySpace
DrDogMusic.com
Paste review: Sky Blue Sky
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
Wilco frontman takes a more direct lyrical approach on striking new album
Jeff Tweedy has never been much of a lyricist, but his cryptic words do provide occasional clues to his rich, puzzling music. On Sky Blue Sky, the best Wilco album since 1999’s Summerteeth, Tweedy provides such a clue in the song “Impossible Germany.” “But this is what love is for,” he warbles in his reedy tenor, “to be out of place, gorgeous and alone, face to face.”
“Out of place, gorgeous and alone” is a good description for much of Tweedy’s music. His effortlessly lovely pop melodies—echoing such role models as Brian Wilson, Robbie Robertson and Paul Westerberg—consistently draw us in, but the songs never allow us to get comfortable. There’s always something about the quirky arrangements, the lo-fi vocals and/or the willfully obscure lyrics that keep listeners at arm’s length.
Such alienation seemed to be the point on Wilco’s overly arch art-rock projects Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, but on Sky Blue Sky Tweedy reaches out from his solitude in hopes of meeting his listeners—both the woman in the song and the strangers buying his CDs—face-to-face. He succeeds, not because of the lyrics themselves, but because of what the lyrics point to—music that throws off formalist experiments to embrace Tweedy’s Americana past, his gift for harmonic pleasure and an audible desire to connect.
On “Impossible Germany,” the two-and-a-half minutes of vocals are merely the set-up for the three-and-a-half-minute instrumental coda that delivers the emotional impact at which Tweedy’s words have already hinted. Most of this coda is a guitar duet between Tweedy and Nels Cline. Their twin melodic lines diverge and converge again and again like lovers seeking both individuality and intimacy, a combination as elusive as “an impossible Germany, an unlikely Japan.” Whether it’s a combination worth pursuing is argued by the two guitars, so striking in their divergent melodies and so satisfying in their convergent harmonies.
Cline was best known for his noisy avant-garde contributions to both jazz and indie rock before joining Wilco in time for 2005’s Kicking Television: Live in Chicago. But he reveals his inner Ry Cooder on Sky Blue Sky, playing hillbilly and rock ’n’ roll licks with unexpected restraint and lyricism mirrored by Tweedy himself. Melody has always been Tweedy’s greatest gift, and in the understated, rootsy arrangements on this album, these tunes have more room to unfold than ever before.
Tweedy’s lyrics do have admirers. There are those who are so entranced by the seductive sound and bewildering mystery of lines such as “I am an American aquarium drinker; I assassin down the avenue,” that they’re willing to overlook the fact that the couplet is empty of meaning and completely divorced from the way human beings actually talk. By contrast, the first lines on the new album are, “Maybe the sun will shine today, the clouds will blow away; maybe I won’t feel so afraid.” That’s fairly generic pop songwriting, but at least it sounds like a real person expressing a real feeling—and the music behind the lyrics is so evocative that these ordinary words open up to heightened emotions.
Just as self-indulgently obscurantist lyrics shackled Tweedy’s music on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, so did the artsy arrangements on those two over-praised albums. It’s easy to throw words together if you’re not worried about meaning or plausibility, and it’s no problem to heap random sound effects on your tracks if you’re not worried about groove or melody. Wilco’s two prog-rock projects seduced listeners with the sheer novelty of their sound, but once the novelty wore off, there was little of substance to return to. By contrast, the best songs on Being There and Sky Blue Sky will show up on mix CDs, at guitar pulls and on cover-band set lists for years to come.
The lyrics on the new album’s opening track, “Either Way,” declare that the singer will accept whatever happens—sun or clouds, love requited or not—and there’s a sense that Tweedy is equally open to however the music might evolve. There’s no evidence that a preconceived idea has been imposed on the song; instead the pretty guitar arpeggios patiently explore possible paths and finally blossom into a solo that exemplifies the unhurried stoicism suggested by the words.
The album’s title track contrasts our “rotten time” of broken windows, stumbling drunks and marching military bands with such reasons for optimism as a blue sky and another day of survival. Five years ago, Tweedy might have emphasized the rottenness, but now he reinforces the optimism in his country-guitar strum, backed by Cline’s steel-guitar fills and in an elegant, slow-motion guitar solo. The fragility of such hopefulness is obvious from the thin, note-missing vocal, but the tune’s loveliness convinces us we can cling to hope with some confidence nonetheless.
Sky Blue Sky could be described as Tweedy’s return to the alternative-country of his first band, Uncle Tupelo. The vocal harmonies on “You Are My Face” clearly resemble the Carter Family’s hillbilly hymns. “Sky Blue Sky” pits weeping steel guitar against country-swing rhythm guitar. “Please Be Patient with Me” opens with a Doc Watson-like acoustic-guitar figure. The strum-along rhythm and nasal bray of “What Light” resembles an early Dylan folk song.
But Wilco hasn’t gone country so much as it’s gone pop. Consciously or unconsciously, Tweedy sensed that if he wanted to increase the connectivity of his songs, he had to rely more on the emotional voltage of his wonderful melodies—and to do so he had to simplify both his lyrics and arrangements. Once he removed the artsy cleverness from his music-making, it was inevitable that the foundations of his musical instincts—country, rock ’n’ roll, gospel—would return to the foreground. The great thing about pop music is the way it provides a license to grab from anything and everything to make a good song.
No band was better at such grabbing than The Beatles, and Sky Blue Sky recalls The Beatles far more than the Flying Burrito Brothers or Sonic Youth. This is most obvious on “Hate It Here,” which begins as a better-than-average country lament about constantly cleaning the house to distract oneself from a departed lover. About two minutes into the song, however, the distraction no longer works. Casting stoicism aside, Tweedy suddenly erupts into a raucous, choppy guitar riff and the howling complaint, “I hate it here when you’re gone,” sounding exactly like John Lennon circa The White Album. Wilco’s Glenn Kotche even captures the loosened-skin thump of Ringo Starr’s drumming.
Tweedy will never be the lyricist Lennon was—the Wilco leader is more like George Harrison as a lyricist, annoying when he tries to be poetic, acceptable when he’s straightforward—but he does share Lennon’s instincts for melody and the drama of a four-minute song. Like Lennon’s, Tweedy’s music can be sad without being whiny, optimistic without being smarmy and accessible without being dumb. With Sky Blue Sky, he reclaims the pop-rock potential he flashed on Being There and Summerteeth.
Wilco heads out on the road to support the May 15 release of its new album, Sky Blue Sky, later this month.
Read more about the album here, and also check out Paste Editor-at-Large Jay Sweet’s interview with Mr. Tweedy.
2007 Wilco tour dates:
April
6 - Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre (Jeff Tweedy solo)
16 - Brisbane, Australia @ The Tivoli
18 - Melbourne, Australia @ The Palais Theatre
19 - Melbourne, Australia @ The Palais Theatre
21 - Sydney, Australia @ Enmore Theatre
22 - Perth, Australia @ Metropolis Fremantle
May
19 - Somerset, England @ Butlins Minehead (All Tomorrows Parties)
20 - London, England @ Shepherds Bush Empire
21 - London, England @ Shepherds Bush Empire
23 - Cologne, Germany @ Live Music Hall
24 - Berlin, Germany @ Kesselhaus
25 - Hamburg, Germany @ Grosse Freiheit 36
26 - Dresden, Germany @ Alter Schlachthof
28 - Stuttgart, Germany @ Longhorn
29 - Paris, France @ Le Bataclan
30 - Gent, Belgium @ De Vooruit
31 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
June
2 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound Festival
13 - Davenport, IA @ Adler Theater
15 - Indianapolis, IN @ Murat Theater
17 - Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo
19 - Atlanta, GA @ Chastain Park Amphitheatre
20 - Charlotte, NC @ Ovens Auditorium
22 - Red Bank, NJ @ Count Basie Theater
24 - Northampton, MA @ The Pines
25 - New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom
28 - Boston, MA @ Bank of America Pavilion
29 - Shelburne, VT @ The Green at Shelburne Museum
30 - Toronto, Ontario @ Massey Hall
July
7 - Kongsberg, Norway @ Kongsberg Jazz Festival
12-15 - Suffolk, England @ Latitude Festival
20 - Benicassim, Spain @ Festival Internacional de Benicassim
Related links:
WilcoWorld.net
Wilco on MySpace
Music blog Indietastic.net posted a link yesterday afternoon to three of the tracks off Wilco’s forthcoming LP. Click here to listen to “Either Way” and “You Are My Face” in their glorious entirety.
As previously reported, Sky Blue Sky will hit stores everywhere May 15 via Nonesuch Records.
Sky Blue Sky tracklist:
1. Either Way
2. You Are My Face
3. Impossible Germany
4. Sky Blue Sky
5. Side With The Seeds
6. Shake It Off
7. Please Be Patient With Me
8. Hate It Here
9. Leave Me (Like You Found Me)
10. Walken
11. What Light
12. On And On And On
Related links:
Wilco World
Wilco on MySpace
As previously reported, Sky Blue Sky, the first Wilco release to feature guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, will hit stores May 15 via Nonesuch Records.
The new album was recorded at The Loft, the band’s now famous Chicago studio, and though the tracklist has yet to be finalized, “Shake It Off,” “Side with the Seeds,” “Glad It’s Over,” “Either Way” and “Walken” are among the 18-plus candidates for inclusion.
Stay tuned for a tracklist, tour plans and all other things Wilco.
Related links:
Wilco World
Wilco on MySpace
According to a report on PitchforkMedia.com, Jeff Tweedy announced during a solo show in Nashville Wednesday evening that Sky Blue Sky, Wilco’s much-anticipated follow-up to 2004’s A Ghost Is Born, will hit stores May 15 courtesy of Nonesuch Records.
Tweedy will finish up his solo tour at the end of the month. At least for the time being, the only upcoming Wilco shows are scheduled for three days in Australia during mid-April, but that leaves an awfully long break before then. Stay tuned for up-to-date touring plans.
Related links:
Wilco World
Wilco on MySpace
Wilco, whose tedious studio ventures are documented in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, has been busy crafting its next batch of production perfections. The band just wrapped up a three-week recording session in Chicago and, if all goes as slated, the still-unnamed new album should be released in Spring 2007.
With about a dozen tracks laid down so far, and another session planned for November, Wilco will fill out the rest of its 2006 calendar with a short tour of college towns, mostly throughout the Midwest and Southeast. The music DVD Sunken Treasure: Jeff Tweedy Live in the Pacific Northwest will be released on the band’s home label, Nonesuch Records, Oct. 24. Go to WilcoWorld.net to see the trailer.
Wilco has also released its first in a series of Wilco podcasts, featuring Glenn Kotche, also at WilcoWorld.net.
Wilco Tour Dates:
10/4 West Lafayette, IN ELLIOTT HALL OF MUSIC - PURDUE
10/6 East Lansing, MI MSU CONCERT AUDITORIUM 10/7 Cincinatti, OH TALL STACKS FESTIVAL
10/8 Louisville, KY IROQUOIS AMPHITHEATER EARLY DAY MINERS Support October 4, 6 and 8.
10/9 Huntsville, AL VON BRAUN CENTER CONCERT HALL
10/10 Oxford, MS GERTRUDE FORD CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
10/12 Ft. Worth, TEXAS WILL ROGERS AUDITORIUM
10/13 San Antonio, TX SUNSET STATION
10/15 Wichita, KS THE COTILLION
10/16 Springfield, MO SHRINE MOSQUE THE ALTERED STATESMEN Support October 9 thru 16
10/18 Morgantown, WV MOUNTAINLAIR BALLROOM 10/19 WASHINGTON DC 9:30 MELOMANE Supports October 19 in Washington DC
10/20 LATROBE, PA CAREY CENTER GYMNASIUM
11/24 Chicago, IL AUDITORIUM THEATRE 11/25 CHICAGO, IL AUDITORIUM THEATRE
Wilco has announced several summer tour dates in Canada and the Northeast, including an appearance at this year's Lollapalooza festival in the band's hometown of Chicago on August 6. They'll also be appearing on a Chicago edition of Late Night With Conan O'Brien May 12.
The band is then planning to hit the studio before taking some much-needed time off.
For a complete Wilco tour schedule, click here.
Live And Kicking: Surprisingly terrific live CD from predictably terrific live band
Wilco’s set a way-high bar with its live performances, of which there are roughly 10 million bootlegs, many quite good. So is its first official live CD a proper initiation for newcomers, and do longtime Wilco fans really need another show on their hard drives? Aside from being a fine introduction for perverse coworkers who haven’t even heard of Wilco, Kicking Television is a particularly awesome recording, from the grace notes and righteous rage of 1996’s “Misunderstood” to the bigger, gladder swagger of “Late Greats” from 2004’s A Ghost is Born.
Despite Wilco’s colorful evolution and diverse catalog, there’s a definite through-line holding everything together, causing “Misunderstood” to sound, in retrospect, like an obvious grandfather to the band’s more adventurous later material. This collection is a vivid document not only of how far Wilco has come, but also of how distinct its vision has been all along. If you didn’t know the band, you’d have a tough time guessing the chronology of the songs, due largely to the current lineup’s onstage cohesiveness.
Wilco is Jeff Tweedy’s band, and he’s hung a lot of constellations around that warped, gorgeous heart of his. When seminal member Jay Bennett left the band (forget the documentary—Bennett was a major boon during his tenure), I worried Wilco would never recover that simultaneously drum-tight, lefty-loosey dynamic that made its shows so ‘Holy smokeballs, are you hearing this, too?’ (to the guy standing next to you at the club who did, in fact, hear it, too). But the current lineup’s got it in spades. If there are 50 more incarnations of Wilco, and there probably will be, this is the one fans will look back on and get all wistful about.
The climax of “Radio Cure” produces new chills, “Via Chicago” is lovely and carefully deranged, and “Airline to Heaven” sounds like something you’d hear during a pleasant daydream of your own funeral. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” has a truer velocity live, sounding more like a rock song than an art-rock song. A lot of the picks from Ghost improve here, sounding crisp and immediate compared to their cottony studio versions (“Hell is Chrome” being a prime example). And the Foxtrot tunes sound vivid as ever, from the jubilant “Heavy Metal Drummer” to the dark fever-dream of “Poor Places.” Plus you can never have too many versions of “Jesus, Etc.,” and this one’s loaded with subtle ghosts and flourishes.
I could’ve done with fewer of Tweedy’s burning-magnesium guitar solos. Their abrasiveness is theoretically interesting, especially in contrast to some of his more delicate melodies, but they’re a little too “white-hot rawk” for their own good. I’d also have picked a slightly different tracklist. The selection, culled from a four-night run at the Vic Theatre, draws heavily on the band’s more recent LPs, so it can’t really be considered a best-of. Not that it needs to be. While favorites like “California Stars,” “She’s a Jar,” and the recent and wonderful “Theologians” didn’t make the cut, you’re still left with two full discs of terrific music, lots of it essential.
When Jeff Tweedy cobbled together Wilco in 1994, nobody expected much. But from the release of raggedly disarming 1995 debut A.M., and Wilco’s earliest performances, there was clearly something special about the low-key former second banana of Uncle Tupelo. And in the decade since that surprising first chapter, Tweedy and his ever-shifting lineup have consistently been one of rock’s most fascinating, beloved and creatively restless bands—who would’ve believed 10 years ago that Wilco would become Radiohead’s shaggy Heartland counterpart?
Wilco’s appeal has always been rooted in Tweedy’s utterly convincing persona, an unlikely amalgam of artistic provocateur and shy guy for whom the very act of performing involved struggling his way through a deep-seated reticence. It added up to a bizarre sort of charisma. If Wilco fans find Tweedy lovable no matter what he does, his cohorts have frequently found him maddening, and some of those with whom he’s parted ways continue to harbor bitterness. But their deep dismay at being cut loose is yet more evidence of Tweedy’s improbable magnetism—indeed, his appeal might be the most intriguing and complicated since Neil Young, an artist to whom Tweedy can readily be compared on a number of musical and psychological levels.
I’ll admit to a certain degree of ambivalence about a number of Tweedy’s stylistic and personnel shifts over the years, fearing he’d veer far off what I’d seen as his natural career path—as a tradition-honoring American writer/artist in the manner of Tom Petty—and choose instead a sort of aberrant Alex Chilton-like course. But 2004’s A Ghost Is Born, while still knotty in places, suggests Tweedy hasn’t abandoned classic songcraft. Since then, along with kicking the painkillers he’d abused, he’s stabilized his band’s lineup with the addition of virtuoso guitarist Nels Cline and sound-manipulator Pat Sansone to the core of bassist John Stirratt (the only other Tupelo alumnus or remaining original band member), drummer Glen Kotche (in place since 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and keyboardist Mike Jorgensen (who joined in time for Ghost).
The first documented evidence of this new, chopped-and-channeled Wilco is the recently released double-live album Kicking Television, a record I play and admire, despite the fact that my wife—who went to many Wilco shows in the early days and adores Tweedy—asks me to play something else whenever the dissonance overrides the beauty. This is what it means to be a Wilco fan; one has to continually shuffle perceptions of where the band has been, where it stands at any given moment and where it may go next. Perhaps one reason Tweedy challenges his fans to such a degree is that he is, at heart, a fan himself. That’s probably also why he has never underestimated or patronized them.
The following is my first official interview with Tweedy since we met at Hollywood’s Cello Studios in 1996 during the mixdown of Being There—Wilco’s interior-epic second album and the first clear evidence of Tweedy’s extensive ambition. He was noticeably more at ease this time, and certainly more upbeat.
So why a live album now? Does it have something to do with Wilco being 10 years old?
It had more to do with feeling really, really good about this lineup of the band, and feeling like it would be fun to record some shows on 24 tracks and be able to mix it and have a little bit better-quality document of what the band sounded like. And I think the other justification in our minds was that we felt like the material off the last couple of records, which is what this band has been focusing on, is a lot more vibrant, and a lot of the songs have really evolved and are just better live. I mean, the live record is kind of brutal in some ways, but in other ways, I don’t know… One of the things that people have said about our last few records, a lot, is that they’re experimental and weird, and we don’t feel that way at all. And maybe playing the songs live illustrates that a little bit better—that they’re rock songs.
You just used the term “brutal” in describing the performances on Kicking Television. Are you referring to the way so many of the songs get distressed in their codas?
Yeah, basically the way the noise sounds—the abrasive qualities of sections of certain songs that incorporate noise elements, to me, sound a lot more violent than on the records, which is cool. I think they’re just a lot more visceral. It’s people making a bunch of noise in close quarters with each other [laughs]. In the studio, most of the time that’s not really what’s happening when there are noise elements; they’re being added or arranged into songs.
And Kicking Television isn’t an actual set but an idealized set.
I think each disc plays out as kind of following the same arc as a Wilco show might. They generally end in a much, much more rockin’ place than where they begin; the introspection seems to go out the window. I always kinda think of it as the mist evaporating, and it becomes a lot clearer that we were put on this earth to play rock music and jump around and act like idiots and not think so much.
Yet, the very last song on the album is the Charles Wright cover, “Comment,” which is not a raucous song but a message song.
I just adore Charles Wright—it’s just the best shit I’ve ever heard. I’ve listened to more Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band records than almost anything else in my life. It’s just my favorite shit. I mean, I think “Express Yourself” is the best song ever written. I don’t really think there’s anything else that music needs to say other than that. I think it’s a miraculous recording. I really love the spontaneous quality of his records. I mean, he’s definitely got some half-baked stuff like anybody, but that song is just beautiful. I think he’s a pretty overlooked piece of the puzzle.
You really put yourself emotionally into the heart of that song. In fact, it could be argued that you sing “Comment” with more passion than you sing your own stuff on this record.
[Long pause]… There’s definitely something pathological there [laughs], you know? That’s very familiar to me in the past as a self-criticism. I think it has a lot to do with feeling a lot more autonomy as a fan than as the focus of attention. I love being able to put my full hundred percent into something like a Charles Wright song or a set of Woody Guthrie lyrics. And I think most of my music, lyrically, is kind of driven by this idea that, uh, why is that? I think most of my lyrics are about wanting to feel as comfortable in my skin as I do as a member of… fandom.
That’s fascinating. It’s something I’ve always suspected about you as a performer. There’s a certain fundamental reluctance about you that becomes part of your dynamic, psychologically, as a performer.
Well, I couldn’t beat it [laughs]. I mean, I’m still intent on beating it—it’d be great. I look forward to the day. I’d sing hallelujah. Y’know, shedding all of this self-consciousness and being uncomfortable is something to aspire to. I’m certainly working towards that, and I think I’ve gotten a lot better at it—being more comfortable as a performer and as a songwriter. And it’s kind of been through acknowledging something that I can’t really change. Look at the last few records—every song is like, “I’m a Wheel,” I’m this, I’m that, I’m not this, I’m not that. But it really takes other people’s music in a lot of ways for me to be comfortable.
That leads to an obvious question: Where do you see yourself pointing this vehicle next?
I really don’t know. One of the things I have gotten comfortable with is not knowing. Because it’s been really f—ing fun. And I’m much healthier than I’ve ever been in my entire time making music; in my life I think I’m about as healthy as I’ve ever been. I’ve been able to enjoy a lot of things much more than I ever have, and I really don’t care where it goes [laughs]. I used to not care because anyplace had to be better than where I was. Now I don’t care because I think that it’s kind of not really up to me, ultimately, where it all goes. I’ve been able to feel a lot less troubled by the illusion that I actually have some kind of control over it. I have control over some things that I’m happy with and I enjoy doing and I get better at as I get older. But the other things, I’m pretty firmly committed to the idea that I don’t have any control over what people think of my music or what the world is gonna say about it. All of those things will drive you f—in’ insane.
You have the continuation of one ongoing relationship, with John Stirratt; he’s got his guy in Pat Sansone; and all the pieces now allow you to not have to exert control over every little deta
