Wise Enough

Yuh-huh!!! I've had SUCH an awesome trip. Nearly over now unfortunately, go home Wednesday. In San Francisco seeing crowded house tonight. Problem is I had such a great time, if I came back and did it again next year it could only disappoint. You should totally do it next year though. Just plan a long self indulgent trip, with as many concerts a you can fit in and fill the rest of your days witb as many cliche tourist dstinations as possible.

One thing I would change is more time in the berkshires. I want to go tubing on a river...

This is going to sound stupid, but the music isn't everything. It wouldn't have mattered who was playing, it was about the people, the vibe, and an awesome setting (not even talking MoCA, I mean the berkshires).

You get big name bands, you also get big numbers, and lose the vibe. I shared peoples blankets, got invited to campsites to roast marshmallows (didn't go, but nice offer anyway), and was always running into my friends. And do I really need to mention the dunk tank again????

Okay, it's late so I'm just going to note down a few random musings while I have free wifi.

- fucking awesome weekend!!!!

- what happened to pecan pie???

- crowd was so polite. Excpet for worlds worst mother who parked the stroller in the sun while she sat in the shade.

- the dunking booth. Looooved it. Saw John and mikael in there, didn't get Jeff. Did anyone else have a go?

- so great to see Jeff solo. I've not had the chance before and I wasn't disappointed. New Madrid.... Sigh. He's a funny bugger too.

- met lots of fabulous people. You know who you are.

- hearing mike mills sing happy birthday on a fans guitar in a bar tonight.

- free wifi on site. International roaming is nasty, so I appreciated it even if I look like a nerd now.

- all the volunteers who told me everything like where to get icecream to which flavour I should get. So helpful.

- got lost in the museum, it's quite scary. I never did find Glenns drums. I was just happy to find the exit. Art scares me.

- that being said, the guitar strings strung through the room impressed me way more than the stompboxes. Nothing against the stompboxes, it's just the guitar strings were amazing.

Anyway, think I'm close to babbeling now. Huge thanks to everyone involved in organising it. You've just ousted the grand canyon as the highlight of my US trip. Thanks everyone for being so friendly to a girl far from home. Still ten days left of holidays, hooray!!!

So hardcore I'm back in my hotel in bed.

wise enough (Rebecca)

coming from Melbourne Australia

travelling with a friend but not sure if she's coming.

See you there!

I'm coming from Melbourne, Australia. Spending a month in the US, mixing up the cliche touristy stuff with some concerts. Staying at the Holiday Inn with an American friend I met at the 7WC2 shows in Auckland last year. If you hear an Aussie accent, there's a 50% chance it's me.

Did anyone enter the photo contest? I wanted to but couldn't get my act together.

I entered. Not the greatest photo, had to make do with one I had already taken as its not summer in the southern hemisphere.

The link

For those who can't be arsed to follow the link:

Most percussionists can only dream about having the kind of career Glenn Kotche has. He’s most famous for his work with Wilco—in which he’s played on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born, Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album)—but Kotche also has a sideproject band, On Fillmore, and has collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, Loose Fur and the Minus 5. He’s also composed his own scores and written articles for Modern Drummer.

Kotche can effortlessly switch from playing with one of the world’s biggest bands to releasing an album he composed himself. He also recently took some time to speak to Encore before coming to New York for On Fillmore’s performance on July 15 at Le Poisson Rouge.

How did the idea of the Solid Sound Festival first come about? Was it a group decision?

That’s a little foggy, to be perfectly honest. We’ve talked in years past about doing a festival we’d able to curate ourselves, and I think there was a general feeling that we’d like to make it something that reflects our band. We wanted to make it more interesting than a festival tour.

A couple of years ago, we played Tanglewood and had a great show and experience there. We thought it might be a good idea to do something in that neck of the woods. And I think our management company thought it’d be a good idea for it to be held at MASS MoCA. The guy who heads that up, Joseph Thompson [MASS MoCA’s director], basically let us have free reign. I think there’s a lot of similarities between the ways they approach what they do there, just making it really interesting, and the way Wilco operates. This year, it just all came together.

How were the artists for the festival chosen? I know Mavis Staples works with Jeff Tweedy a lot, but what about the other non-sideproject groups?

Everyone made a wish list of bands that they wanted to have, and it came down to finding who’s available, and since we’re doing it all ourselves, there are budgetary restrictions. I think it turned out to be a diverse lineup that reflects the different interests of all of us in Wilco. But everyone’s pretty much chosen by someone in the band. That’s one aspect that I think is pretty cool. There’s not too many bands, but there’s just enough for some variety, and there’s also all the great galleries and comedy shows. A couple of us have exhibitions, too. I think there’s going to be a lot of cool stuff for the people who come out.

You mentioned the different exhibitions, including your “drumhead project.” What should people expect from that?

I make these prepared drumheads that I use when I play solo shows, and it’s kind of the same idea as a prepared piano. All I do is take different wires and springs and chords and put them through the drumhead, which acts as a resonator, something I can hit but also something that’s a vehicle for these other sounds. The drums have mics on them, so the little microscopic sounds can compete with the drum sounds. And this is something I came up with and utilize in my solo shows. I’ve used them on Wilco records, too. I get a lot of questions about them because they’re a little left field from what people are used to, and so the idea was proposed that Solid Sound might be a good time to show people firsthand what they’re about. I’m basically just going to build a lot of different prepared drumheads on different sets of drums, and it’ll be set up in the Sol LeWitt gallery with little contact microphones in the amps. People will be able to come in and play them.

On the second day of the festival, both Wilco and On Fillmore are playing. Are there any difficulties you face in playing with two bands on the same day?

I don’t think so. When the idea first came up, I thought, “Can I do this?” Then, “Yeah, it’ll be great!” The sets are so far apart and so completely different. With On Fillmore, I’ll be playing a lot of percussion and some drumming along with that, but it’s really different than Wilco. It’s nothing that’s going to wear me out. If anything, I think [On Fillmore has] played so little because of my touring schedule and we live in different cities, so this will be such a great opportunity for more people to hear us. I’ll be so happy after the show that I’ll have a bunch of energy for the Wilco show.

Who are some of your drumming inspirations?

We could seriously be here all day if I list all my inspirations. I’m an admirer of the philosophy of John Cage, and the way that he worked. I gotta say, and this may sound a little cheesy, but also our friend Jim O’Rourke, who produced a couple of Wilco’s records. He’s one guy who I find consistently inspiring, with all the different styles he works in and how well he’s able to do it. I think he consistently turns out really great, great work. John Luther Adams, the composer, too. He’s a down-to-Earth guy and doesn’t think in terms of popularity and doesn’t play the political game at all.

When you play a song off Summerteeth or any of the pre-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot albums that you didn’t originally drum on, do you try to add something new to it? Or do you use the way it’s recorded as a blueprint?

I do use it as a blueprint because there’s something about the feel and personality of those performances that have an impact on the overall song. I set up to play pretty close to what Ken Coomer did, at least in terms of the groove and the feel, and of course all the fills and other little things. But my personality is going to come out, and I think it naturally morphs itself into sounding like me, even though they’re his parts. With any song, even the songs I recorded in the last 9 or 10 years, once we play it night after night, little things evolve in the songs.

Do you get a sense of why this Wilco lineup has worked so much better than any of the other previous ones?

I’m sure it’s a lot of factors. I’ve never really questioned it, other than knowing it feels great and we get along. It seems like we can get through any issue that comes along. And that just wasn’t the case with previous lineups. It’s just not the case with a lot of bands. I don’t know if we just got lucky with this combination of people, or the way that everything’s set up to wrong works well enough that it’s keeping us all sane. I don’t know. I just know it does work, and Jeff and John, the original members of the band, say that this is the definitive lineup. It’s the longest running lineup, and this is what Wilco is, in their minds at least.

You guys have certainly been in the news a lot this past week ever since Nels’ interview. Is there anything you know about the possibility of starting your own label or if anything else has been decided?

I didn’t read exactly what Nels said, but we’ve talked in the past about exploring different options, rather than a traditional record deal. At this point, there’s anything decided upon if we’re starting our own label, or if we’re looking for another label. I think the first priority is to make the next record. We start in July, and we’ll be recording all fall and winter. So I think in the coming months we’ll know exactly how we want to do this. To be perfectly honest, I think everything’s up in the air right now.

On the new album, is there a sound that Wilco will be going for? Will it more along the lines of Wilco (The Album), or something closer to A Ghost is Born?

I know it won’t sound like any of those records because after any record comes out, we play those songs on the road a lot, so the last thing we want to do is go back in the studio and put out another record that sounds exactly like it. And I think we’re all anxious enough musically that we want to try different things. We’re all very happy with the last few records we’ve made, but there’s a lot of different areas that this particular lineup is perfectly capable of exploring that we haven’t yet. We’re going to try a lot of different ideas, and not restrict ourselves at all to a certain sound.

Tickets for On Fillmore’s July 15th show at Le Poisson Rouge can be purchased here.

Information on the Solid Sound Festival can be found here.

DANG! A day (or six years) late and a dollar short, again.

No no... this was a 'media stunt'. Your idea is 'art'. I say we go ahead.

I was sure the Festival was announced as being "curated by Wilco" and not "only Wilco." I tell my friends that this is a "Wilco Convention," like a Star Trek convention -- where half the fun will be being among other Wilco nerds. (That means YOU.)

 

But that IS an interesting concept to have the band play for the whole weekend! I can't imagine any band having that kind of stamina, though. It was already pretty amazing to read about the 3 hour long shows some of you in the US got to see.

 

It would make an awesome performance art installation, to have a band "perform" for a whole weekend on stage, but where they play a little music, eat and sleep, read or watch TV, and be "normal" and talk to each other, answer their mobile phones, get interviewed, and tend to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. And fart around.

 

And we get to watch everything (except toilet breaks, etc.) Like a reality show, but LIVE! On stage! I think it would be a comment on the voyeurs we've all become. It would be ART. I would call it "Rockstars, in Captivity."

Regurgitator went that route. Wikipedia sums it up better than I can:

Regurgitator created and participated in the Band in a Bubble project in 2004, a new reality TV-inspired media stunt sponsored and broadcast by Australian music channel, Channel V. The band entered a small glass recording studio, built in Federation Square in the centre of Melbourne, to record their new album. Pedestrians could look into most rooms of the "bubble" and could watch the band work, or tune in to a 24 hour digital cable television channel and watch their work on that. Nobody could enter or leave the bubble, a la Big Brother. In addition to the three band members, Australian producer Magoo, engineer Hugh and Channel V host Jabba were all also locked into the bubble with the band. This project resulted in 2004's Mish Mash!.

And for their very own festival, with everyone there "superfans"? Holy shit, just imagine being able to feed off all that crowd love.

That's sure to be one kick arse crowd singalong for Jesus etc. Maybe we'll even get the words right!

I'm contemplating going to the show, maybe from Chicago. On travels in the US then and seeing if I can fit it in without pissing my friend off too much by leaving her in another city. What time train were you guys thinking about catching?

Photos on fasterlouder, so those who weren't there can all appreciate Jeffs shirt.

http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/gallery/15833/1/Wilco-.htm

I loved the 2nd Melbourne show, but was utterly pissed off by the lack of respect that many fans display to the band and to other members of the audience by TALKING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE SHOW! What's the point of paying to go to a concert and then f...ing talking throughout? I went to see and hear the best band in the world and not to listen to tales of relationships, boyfriends, work hassles etc. Am I just being a grumpy old 59 yr old man or do others find such behaviour a pain in the butt? And what can be done about it? And to be yelled at to sit down when we couldn't see over the folks in front was the icing on the cake! Maybe it's the fault of the venue, or the availability of alcohol, I don't know. I love live music, I want to go see my favourite artists, but I wonder what's the point if my listening experience is totally compromised my idiots. I'd love to hear opinions on this. Cheers, Neil

Were you in the sitting down section or standing section? Its one of the reasons I like to be at the front, generally talkers are towards the back. Excluding stupid bogan woman this time though. I can honestly say aside from that I had no talkers bothering me in the 5 shows I went to. And she wasn't a talker as much as a yeller.

Review from The Age... really doesn't say much but it is glowing.

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/wilco-20100509-ulmt.html

It was great to meet you too Froggie, will maybe see you at 1927. Seriously fun people in line, you feel like your old friends by the time you get inside. Hope those flying home today have safe journeys.

Thought of more likes:

- Jeff giving up and joining the crowd in singing the wrong words to Jesus etc, if you can't beat them join them.

- Dancing so badly I hit myself in the eye with my necklace.

- The Walken guitar

- Nels shag pile guitar strap

And I actually have thought of some dislikes (!):

- The huge blister on my foot from afore mentioned dancing that I have named Wilco.

- Whilst waiting at stage door for my friend to get her album signed I suspect I was mistaken for a hooker by some random old guy. "She might have only been the bakers daughter but she needed the dough"????!?!?! What the hell does that mean?? Its seriously put me off my favourite pair of red heels.

Nah, that chick wasn't a feminist, she just wanted to make the show about her. She had been obnoxiuos for a while. Shouting out she wanted to have their babies etc. I don't even think she was drunk, just one of those people that probably does need to be beat up by Jeffs wife. A few people around her would probably pay for the airfare....

I thought Glenns drum tech (not sure on correct title) did a great job on Liams Second Chance.

I see Dreamer was on the set list again as the last song and again got dropped. Guess I have to leave myself something to hope for! Maybe in August?

The last week truly has been one of THE funnest of my life. 3 cities, 6 concerts (including Nels and Glenn last night). Too many songs I had never seen done before live... Life is good. Huge thank you to the band and crew for making the effort to come all this way.

Here's what I liked:

- Finally figuring out who makes what sound on stage. After listening to many live shows, I never knew who did what part. Each night I would stand in front of a different person and realise what they added.

- Hearing I Got You 3 times.

- A member of the road crew who gave me a set list at the last show and said "Thanks for coming to every concert".

- Meeting new friends in the line outside. I'm going to be your new friend thats impossible to shake not matter how hard you try. And now I have an American friend for the Solid Sound Festival! YAY!

- When Jeff, John and Pat all step back from the mic at the exact same time. So synchranised.

- Mikaels random use of a toothbrush on stage. I don't have to understand to like it.

- At least thats what you said. I remember when I first heard it at the 7 Worlds Collide show and it still floors me everytime.

- Nels' crazy-leg-sitting-down-dance. You know what I mean.

- Glenn. I could watch him drum all night. I feel like he should be wearing safety glasses.

- Pat throwing the marraccas in the air and catching them without even really looking. My hand eye co-ordination is somewhat lacking so I'm super impressed by this.

- Kicking Television. Never thought I would hear that one live.

- John doing Its Just That Simple.

- Jeffs abililty to make anything funny. Even a bogan woman being a dick. Though I guess thats kind of like shooting fish in a barrell.

- The guy who requested Just a kid who was nice enough to move up so my friends and I could stand together.

- The fact the band not only didn't issue a restraining order, but were incredibly nice to me.

What I didn't like:

.

Has anyone got any idea what the set times are for tonights show? I have a jazz festival show before hand and am trying to work out when i'll need to leave.

 

And whats the merchandise like for this tour? Wilco always seem to have cool posters, but crappy (love police...) tshirts. Is it much of the same?

The Tshirt with tour dates on them has a rather ugly moose on the front, with the antlers spelling out Wilco. But its kinda hard to make out, a friend thought it said "Willie". Why a moose?? We don't even have moose in Australia.. Do we not have enough native animals of our own that can spell out Wilco?

Roughly, and VERY roughly because I wasn't really paying attention, Liam is on around 8-3.30 and Wilco have been starting around 9ish and finishing after 11. But please double check, I wouldn't want you to miss something because I told you the wrong time.

Fritz you summed it up perfectly! Even with all those rarities thrown in my highlight was ALTWYS.... That kicked some serious arse. Outtamind outta sight was there, sorry I missed that in my set list. Think that's when the vocals may have disappeared. At the end it was relentless, just hammering one song after another. Loved watching Glenn sing along as he plays, he just looks so happy.

I can't believe you guys thought I was shitting you with that set list... Where's the trust now days? I did looove me some kicking television. You have to remember every person at that gig had been at the state theatre concert, the only way to get in was buy a premium ticket. They couldn't double up on much, just a few key songs that we never get tired of hearing. And I AM having a fabulous holiday. Though mildly miffed no one believed my set list!

My ignorance has let me down, didn't recognise hoodoo voodoo or the last two (does that make me a bad fan?). I decided while Glenn was playing for Liam that after 29 years of telling drummer jokes, I wanted to become one. Then I had 2 hours+ standing dead in front of Nels, and now I want to learn to play my guitars.

 

Btw, how do I delete my topic on an iPhone? Will remove vital evidence from existence.

don't worry , I didn't know laminated cat, had to ask the guy behind me. Need to finally listen to those CDs I bought a few months ago. I felt so ashamed....

Meant to also say vocal sound kinda disappeared towards the end. There was a giant wall of sound with just bits of vocals being heard. Thought it was just me maybe, my ears going after too many concerts but outside the others also noticed. I have nothing against a giant wall of sound however... Though as I'm trying to sleep nothing masks the ringing in my ears....

Fucking. Awesome.

Best yet. Considering having my feet amputated as they are getting so sore! Met heaps of fabulous people in line, man there are some interesting wilco fans. The line seems so much more interesting when you stand next to a woman who owns a brothel and happy to share stories. Got there way earlier than I needed to be but man lines can be fun!

Set list

ashes of American flag

bull black nova

I'll fight

company in my back

sonny feeling

war on war

at least that's what you said

country disappeared

handshake drugs

impossible Germany

sunken treasure

less than you think

laminated cat

you and I

box full of letters

nothings ever gunna stand in my way

shot in the arm

Jesus

theologians

man who loves you

Monday

don't forget the flowers

California stars (with Liam)

red eyed/I got you

hoodoo voodoo

kicking television

-----

thank you friends

street (not sure on name I know it as that 70s show song)

On the set list and not played was dreamer in my dreams, would have been great to hear that but with a set list like that I have no complaints. Audience was great, quite funny, pointing out Jeff had the same shirt on and asking if he had showered (actually that shirts had 3 nights in a row) but Jeff says he has 100 of them. Some one then suggested he take it off and the band began playing stripping music - rather well actually.

Two more shows left. John Mayer tommorow night.. No, make that tonight. And Liam Finn solo Tuesday night. 8 concerts in 8 days...3 down.

Liam was great again too, very happy to hear betchadupas Army of birds and gulls. Glenn played drums again on second chance, it will always seem inferior now when he's not there.

Sorry on iPhone and couldn't scroll down to end of message...

It was a seated show which nearly killed me, wel, more accurately nearly killed my seat. Spiders got too much for me and I moved off to the side of stage and "danced". Jeff encouraged everyone to get up at the clap bit and the front of stage was swamped, the way a concert should be. Enjoyed it so much more standing up. One woman in the audience kept telling Jeff to "hurry up", some woman asked if Jeff was on steroids (????) and a kiddie at the front made a request that didn't fit with the set. Didn't hear what it was but I don't think anything would have killed the vibe in the crowd.

Looking forward to tommorow night, apparantly the factory only holds 800 and the stage is small. No accoustic set I believe, but I am curious to see what they play given everyone was at tonights show.