mountainbed

The Sky Blue Sky songbook has very detailed tab, solos, notes as to open tunings for particular songs, etc. Several of the songs have tabs for multiple guitars. In response to questions...yes, it has the solo for Impossible Germany, and the tab for that song is 12 or 13 pages long so it is pretty detailed. The tab for Please Be Patient With Me is very detailed too. I had a ton of fun working through the tab for the solo in Sky Blue Sky last night. And the tabs do vary from what has been posted to this site by its members in the past.

The Wilco Songbook (which was released last year and is available on wilcoworld.net) is disappointing. I've got it and rarely look at it. It is chords only, no tab. And you can generally find much more accurate chords on this website than you will find in the Wilco Songbook.

I was able to pick up a copy of the Being There songbook off eBay a couple years ago. I bought it from someone in the UK, and I paid close to $70 USD for it, but it was worth it. If you can find a copy, snag it.

I received the Sky Blue Sky songbook this afternoon, which contains chords and tab for every song on the record. Somehow I missed that this was coming out, but it was released October 1 and is available at Amazon (doesn't appear to be available at wilcoworld yet). As far as I can tell at this point, the book contains tab that appears to be very accurate (and it certainly sounds that way to my ears). After just an hour or so of noodling around with it, I highly recommend it.

Not sure if this has been discussed, but I noticed that Breedlove is introducing a Jeff Tweedy limited edition guitar.

Very limited run (25 guitars with Indian Rosewood back and sides; 5 guitars with Brazilian rosewood back and sides), very steep retail price ($6,000 for the IR, $8,500 for the BR).

http://www.breedloveguitars.com/instrument...weedy/index.php

The new songbook arrived today. It is difficult for me to say this, but I'm very disappointed.

There is no tab. Just words and chords. Which would be cool, if the chords were accurate. But I'm pretty sure that they are not, especially when compared against what we've all seen at the shows and what we've read other places. For example, the new songbook shows that "At Least That's What You Said" is played with the chords of Am, G and C...no capo. We've all seen Tweedy play it with the capo at the 5th fret, dropped D tuning, out of Em. I understand that capoing at the 5th fret and playing the Em chord shape is an Am, but I also know that it sounds different than when you play the song using the open Am. And I recognize that maybe the band mixes it up...recorded the song on the record one way and then adapted the song for the live show to fit another chord structure. Even so, I don't think the new songbook is "right." Another example: the songs from "Being There" that are contained in the new songbook are very different from the versions that are contained in the "Being There" songbook, which I also own. I think the versions in the latter sound much more accurate than those in the former. I can give other examples (e.g., Heavy Metal Drummer out of D with no capo? The Late Greats out of F with no capo?), but I'll spare you.

Moreover, the book has a "piano-centric focus" that is slightly annoying to the guitar player in me. The book is written for piano and guitar, as indicated on the cover. Let's use "I'm "Always In Love" as our example here. The book indicates that the song is played with a capo on the 4th fret using the G chord shape as the starting chord. But, instead of showing the letter "G" over the the first word of the song (i.e., "Why, I wonder..."), it shows the letter "B." Of course, if you capo at 4 and play the G chord shape, you are playing out of the key of B...but I don't think most of us casual guitar players think that way. So I've got to do the quick mental calculation...the books says B, but I've got a capo at the 4th fret, so that needs to be a G shaped chord. To me, that is a bit irritating. (I know that this board is full of true music theory studs. I'm not one...I wish I could be...I admire you for being one. Please don't flame me for my explanation or because I find this aspect of the book irritating.)

Now, to be fair, the book isn't a complete failure. There are a lot of fun things about it. "Hummingbird" is a blast. And it was fun to see how the bridge in "Poor Places" should be played (after I used a pencil to write the guitar chords next to the stupid piano chords above the words!). And, quite honestly, a lot of the songs are probably easier to play in the songbook than we've ever made them out to be, even if they aren't true to the way Tweedy plays them now.

In summary, I don't regret spending the $25 on the book. I support the band every chance I get...live shows, records, DVDs, books, posters, t-shirts, etc. But I do feel like the Via Chicago community (I'm a long time lurker with very few posts during my tenure) has been far more beneficial in learning Wilco songs on the guitar than the new songbook will ever be. Do I think you should buy the new songbook? Absolutely...I believe we should support this great band every chance we get. But, after you buy this book, I'd encourage you also to find a copy of the "Being There" songbook on eBay. And I hope we all keep contributing to this board and stimulate the great discussion that we share about how songs are played, how each of us plays them, etc. And let's all keep our fingers crossed that the band puts out an accurate and comprehensive tab anthology covering all songs they've ever recorded...I don't think I'm alone in wanting this.

That weekend we saw them three times: Stubb's on Saturday night, ACL Festival on Sunday night, ACL taping on Monday night. It was an awesome weekend.

To answer abuharabi's question, only one band plays at the taping. For the 2004 taping, the band played 16 songs...setlist is below from WilcoBase.com. Of course, only 5 or 6 songs made it on the show. I have hope that the entire set will be released in the future on DVD or CD as part of the Live from Austin, Texas series, but whether that happens is anyone's guess.

1. Muzzle Of Bees

2. Company In My Back

3. Hummingbird

4. Hell Is Chrome

5. Handshake Drugs

6. At Least That's What You Said

7. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

8. A Shot In The Arm

9. Jesus, Etc.

10. Ashes Of American Flags

11. The Late Greats

12. I'm The Man Who Loves You

13. I'm A Wheel

14. Theologians

15. Poor Places

16. Spiders (Kidsmoke)

At the Austin shows, he used the 12 string Martin for One by One and Hesitating Beauty on Tuesday night and Bob Dylan's Beard and Heavy Metal Drummer on Wednesday night.

I'm almost certain that the Gibson L-00 he played on Tuesday night in Austin is a new Gibson "1937 L-00," which is part of Gibson's Legends Series that was introduced at the NAAM show last week. Gibson made and sold a handful of those guitars in 2006 as part of a pilot run and I bet Jeff picked one up then. He only played it for one song on Tuesday night (can't remember which song) and didn't pick it up during the Wednesday night show.

I was surprised to see that he had 2 of the Santa Cruz 12 fretters on stage. Also was surprised to see that he didn't bring along the Gibson B-25 that he's been playing for the past couple of years.

There were actually two up at the time. I won one of them and the other one got pulled early. Mine came in the mail today. I've been looking for that book for 6 or 7 years. Those last 10 days of waiting almost killed me.