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Magnetized

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    Let’s Go Reviews and Discussion

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Oh I’m sorry everybody. That was a little wink wink, nudge nudge to Tim. I don’t know of any advance copies.

     

    I’m really eager to read it too. I ordered through Bn.com with express shipping and it says arrival on Friday, 11/16.

     

    BUT I also ordered the spoken word version on Audible.com and that is still scheduled to be released on Tuesday, 11/13.

    Let’s Go Reviews and Discussion

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-tweedy-on-building-a-lasting-career-while-avoiding-the-nostalgia-act-trap-1541512928

     

     

    Jeff Tweedy on Building a Lasting Career While Avoiding the Nostalgia-Act Trap

    The Wilco frontman strikes an introspective chord with a new solo album and memoir

     

    By John Jurgensen

    Nov. 6, 2018 9:02 a.m. ET

     

    When is the right time for an artist to step back and look at the life and work he has created? For Jeff Tweedy, leader of the rock group Wilco, it was when someone offered him a book deal.

     

    Writing his memoir, “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back),” the 51-year-old came to better understand what has sustained him throughout his career, including a compulsion to create and the thrill of exposing raw emotions through song.

     

    Mr. Tweedy grew up in Belleville, Ill., a town near St. Louis where he picked up guitar, sought out punk records and with high-school classmate Jay Farrar formed the band Uncle Tupelo. In the early 1990s, their blend of punk and American roots music fueled a new sound dubbed “alt-country.” Mr. Tweedy would later shed that label with Wilco, the band he formed in 1994 after Uncle Tupelo broke up.

     

    ‘There are some musicians that reach a point where they’re pretty happy to be a nostalgia act,’ Mr. Tweedy says. ‘I don’t think I’d be happy for very long doing that.’

    ‘There are some musicians that reach a point where they’re pretty happy to be a nostalgia act,’ Mr. Tweedy says. ‘I don’t think I’d be happy for very long doing that.

     

    Wilco has since released 10 studio albums and in 2005 won a Grammy for best alternative album. In his book, Mr. Tweedy writes about the band’s path and collaborators, including Mr. Farrar and soul singer Mavis Staples, as well as his struggle with prescription painkillers, which he used to blunt chronic panic attacks and migraines.

     

    A solo album, “Warm,” set for release Nov. 30, includes some of Mr. Tweedy’s most autobiographical songs yet and serves as a musical companion to his memoir, out next week.

     

    “It’s an opportunity to answer a lot of questions you never get asked,” he said in an interview at the Loft, the nickname for Wilco’s gear- and guitar-filled headquarters in Chicago. He spoke with the Journal about songwriting without words, how addiction affected his work and his aversion to the term “dad rock.” Edited excerpts follow:

     

    Before this book, what was your position on retrospective stuff such as reissuing old albums and performing them on tour?

     

    It’s probably smart to underline and enhance your previous work, but the majority of our energy gets spent on what’s next. I don’t know how this applies to other art forms, but there are some musicians that reach a point where they’re pretty happy to be a nostalgia act or a legacy artist. That doesn’t seem like a terrible way to live your life, as a troubadour, but I don’t think I’d be happy for very long doing that.

     

     

    For every band there’s a turning point when people seem more excited about the music they created in the past than the stuff they’re creating in the present.

     

    A new piece of music isn’t going to be someone’s best friend right away, in the way that a record over time can become someone’s companion. But a lot of times artists give up on their new material too soon because of that fact. They’d be better off sticking to their guns and not just sneaking in a couple new songs in a set. When we started playing “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” [the 2001 album considered one of Wilco’s best], people f—ing hated it. But it’s a good issue to contend with. It means you’ve managed to stay around for a while.

     

    Even when your painkiller addiction was at its worst, you would time your drug intake to make sure you had some clarity when recording or performing. Was that out of pride, fear of embarrassment or what?

     

    Some desire to do a good job, not let people down, not be embarrassed. But also to maintain my delusion about my own condition, my thinking that I was using drugs to be normal, not to party. Those types of thoughts were what kept me ill. I made a value judgment about what kind of addict I was. Ultimately all addicts are the same.

     

    How important is self-confidence to your creative process?

     

    I’ve managed to hang onto something that most people get—I don’t want to say beaten out of them—but it usually disappears for them. When you’re a little kid, you make stuff, and it’s good enough because it was fun. I still have that same kind of glee about just making something.

     

    How do you get into that mode when you’re not feeling it?

     

    That doesn’t happen very often. I get here [to the Loft] in the morning about 10 a.m. Usually there’s something obvious that I’m working on, and [with engineer Tom Schick and studio manager Mark Greenberg] we jump back into it. If not, I’ll listen to iPhone demos to see if there’s something I can start building on, or listen to things from countless other sessions to see if something inspires me to pick up another instrument or start to write some lyrics.

     

    You’re not coming in waiting to be struck by lightning: “The greatest song ever written will be written today!” It’s more like, “I wonder what is going to happen today?” You have to like work.

     

    Before you write lyrics, you record a rough draft with wordless singing. Do those vocals ever feel more emotionally potent than the lyrics that replace them

     

    Yeah, sometimes I have to try three or four times to get the lyrics, the actual words, to feel as good and create the same emotion that the “mumble track” did. The words can break the spell. In them I hear myself being clever, or I misunderstand how important a certain sound is to one part of the melody. There are several verses on things I’ve released over the years that are not words. It’s just the original mumble track that I’ve already translated elsewhere in the song.

     

    In the book you say that writing songs is an effort to get closer to people. Do you have an image in your mind of who the listener is?

     

    Commercially or marketing-wise, it makes sense to because you can see them in front of you on a night-to-night basis. But it’s a stereotype that doesn’t help me at all artistically, because I want to sing to everybody. That’s one of the things that have always made it sting to be critiqued in that way. There’s a general shorthand for comedians about what the whitest band is and Wilco is often used as that. The Dave Matthews Band is in there, too.

     

    I can take it. It’s not racism or anything. But what am I supposed to do? They’re painting a picture that might make someone who hasn’t heard us think that our music is not for them. “Dad rock.” On one hand, it’s super thin-skinned to complain about jokes like that. On the other hand, it’s a legitimate complaint. I should be fiercely protective of my right to sing to everybody.

     

    You see a distinction between “Wilco fan” and whoever you’re singing to?

     

    Ultimately, I’m only singing to myself. For any artist, that’s all you have at the end of the day. You don’t get to have anyone else’s consciousness. As simplistic as it sounds, I want to get closer to everybody, but I’m all I’ve got.

     

    WHO IS HE?

     

    Name: Jeff Tweedy

    What He Does: Singer and songwriter

    How He Got There: In Uncle Tupelo, the band he and Jay Farrar co-founded as teenagers, he shared songwriting and singing duties with his bandmate. With Wilco, which he started after the acrimonious end of Uncle Tupelo, he came into his own as a songwriter and frontman.

    His Big Break: Though already known to roots-music fans, Wilco achieved mainstream success with its fourth album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” It released the album free online, a radical step in 2001, after its record label rejected it. The band was picked up by another label, which released “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” commercially in 2002.

    His Obsession: Haiku. “They’re designed to paint a picture with what isn’t in the words. I’ve been trying to get closer and closer to get words in my songs to do that. Just getting imagery to appear like it was written in invisible ink.”

    Jeff Tweedy — 27 October 2018, Live From Here with Chris Thile on NPR

    in After The Show

    Posted

    Jeff made a wide ranging appearance on Live From Here last night, singing a total of 5 songs throughout the show. The highlight was an absolutely goosebump-inducing Hell Is Chrome. You can listen to the archived stream at the Live From Here website.

     

    In the first hour he sang Some Birds and later in the hour Having Been Is No Way To Be (with strings) followed by a very pretty You and I. In the second hour he sang Let’s Go Rain. Chris Thile remarked that although it sounded like a happy tune, it seemed to have a darker edge. Jeff said “It’s a plea for the sweet relief of death, yes.” This led to a barely veiled sociopolitical discussion followed by a breathtaking Hell Is Chrome. Both of these last songs were accompanied by Chris Thile’s band.

     

    I don’t remember a single musical guest on the show having as much airtime as Jeff got last night.

    Jeff Tweedy on WTF with Marc Maron

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Wow, this would be a dream. I honestly think I would rather listen to Marc Maron interviewing Jeff than even Terri Gross. He can be an amazing interviewer and I have also tweeted at him to do a segment with Jeff.

     

    Did you all realize he was actually at a Jeff living room show a couple of years back? It was the one that went for a fortune and Scott what’s his name from Earwolf was also there.

    A Wilco Related Live Show

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Add Nels Duo and Autumn Defense concerts in the Studio Freehold, NJ dec 2 such a cool venue! 50 capacity and pot luck afterwords!

    I’ve already bought my ticket! I saw Autumn Defense there last year and it was an awesome experience.

    What Do You Want?

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    One of my favorite things Jeff ever said in an interview a few years ago was that it's his job to stay curious and that's the most important thing for him. I found that inspiring and decided in some ways it's part of my literal job, but more so part of my career as a professional life-liver, to stay curious.

     

    This is a really long-winded way of me saying that I really like Wilco following whatever twists their creative life takes. To me Schmilco might be a slightly lesser Wilco album, but I love that they followed that path to explore making a weird little intimate record. I'd take two more albums that are unique little three and a half star records provided that they're all authentic and fully realized.

     

    I will echo the sentiments above that it's hard when they take a year off. I love seeing what they cook up next.

    I like what you said about Schmilco. To me both that and even Star Wars might be considered slightly “lesser” albums, much in the way that Woody Allen would direct big movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan but then do smaller little gems like Broadway Danny Rose and The Purple Rose of Cairo. I don’t consider those smaller movies as less than, more like personal, more intimate explorations. Maybe they’re not going to reach as wide an audience but they can be appreciated by the aficionado just as much. This is not a perfect comparison but maybe something to consider.

    Jeff Tweedy — 28 April 2018, Chicago, IL (Vic Theatre) [Benefit For Education; Night 2 of 2)

    in After The Show

    Posted

    It is actually almost unbelievable what Jeff does at these shows. He doesn't have an inkling of what 30 songs he might be playing at 8:00pm until around 4:30 at the earliest. Then he has to narrow down and de-conflict song choices from around 55-60 songs (each person having submitted a first and second choice, with inevitably a few duplications), determine the set order, brush up on lyrics and music, and decide which guitars work for which songs. The mind reels at how much concentration that must take, and he always, always delivers. He knows these songs are meaningful to the requesters and I always get the sense that he tries to bring something special to each song. It's an amazing feat. 

    Jeff Tweedy — 28 April 2018, Chicago, IL (Vic Theatre) [Benefit For Education; Night 2 of 2)

    in After The Show

    Posted

    I’m not the fully observant reporter that Paul is but I was right there when Susie mentioned the possibility of a change in format. She announced, seemingly out of nowhere about midway through the first 30 requesters, that this might be the last year for this exact format. (She didn’t say the shows would continue at all for sure, but then again these shows are never promised in advance, and Jeff said a couple of reassuring things from the stage about seeing us next year.) She said if the shows continue they might not do them exactly this way again—they might make some tweaks. Then again, she said, maybe things will stay exactly the same. No promises, no threats, but Susie doesn’t make random pronouncements as a rule, so I for one paid attention. It seemed she was just trying to deliver the message that they were considering making changes in the future. She mentioned that they’ve followed the exact same format for 14 (?) years. I took her message as an invitation to fully soak up the singular experience of the night to come, knowing that things might possibly evolve in the future.

    Jeff Tweedy Writing Memoir!

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Re book signings--if you ever get a chance to see David Sedaris doing a reading, go! And be sure to hang around afterwards for the signing. He's known for taking a nice leisurely time with each and every person in line, even if it takes hours. He's so unusual! Seems to be genuinely interested in every person he talks to. 

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