nalafej

Enjoy. Let me know what you think of Meat Hair if they open up.

Meat Hair isn't on the bill anyway (Faux Furrs & Big Syn are). I will be interested to see if they put a Wilco cover back in their set.

Deep Sea Diver

 the boys appreciated the rowdiness in Cincy.

I love it when Wilco (or other bands too actually) get referred to as 'the boys'.  Thank you!

The optics on the tour just feel super douchy. 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/black-crowes-2020-reunion-tour-dates-910124/

Wilco fans in the early 2000's used to love the brief stint of Wilco as a four piece and Jeff had a laptop on stage doing this kind of thing.

I saw Pearl Jam in 28 degree weather 14 years ago. It was pretty miserable and memorable!

I still don't get why they book seated venues and then complain about it. 

Totally! And this has been going on for years now.

 If I might ask, what pray tell prompted you to go back and seek out that old recap?

I grew up in Detroit suburbs (My first Wilco show was HORDE tour, 1995 in MI) and pay extra attention to MI reviews. I had recalled poor audience reports on many recent shows in Detroit Metro area (includes Ann Arbor). I found my memory to only be slightly off. 

Looks like the SVE sets will be solo acoustic, which is kind of a bummer.

Yes indeed. Just received an email from the promoter and both Chicago openers are indeed "solo acoustic"

Wilco finally debuted Citizens tonight before a crowd that probably didn't deserve that honor.

Well, consulting the VC historical record as original reported by one bbop, at the last Wilco Hill Auditorium show (2015), Wilco didn't deserve the crowd, per Jeff Tweedy. So maybe things are even now?

Earlier Jeff had also said something about how the crowd was so nice and how he felt like "we don't deserve you. I wanted to ask if everyone was having a good time, but that seemed too desperate." As I mentioned, I didn't really have much of a sense of the crowd but if I had to guess, it just felt very respectful. 

Whoh!! Great opening acts.

High Water Festival has the biggest price stratification between levels of any festival I know of. General admission $125, VIP $469, Platinum Pearl $1500. The GA price is a stone cold bargain.

Totally agree that $125 for two days is a steal. Wilco in Chicago costs $110 and I'm guessing they play a long headling set during the fest. It's a great linup too.

"High Water 2020 will mark the debut of The Platinum Pearl Experience in which festivalgoers can witness an intimate Jeff Tweedy set at the historic Eternal Father Of The Seal Chapel and enjoy complimentary beverages and food, get access to the pit and other amenities." 

yikes

The band is confirmed for the Black Deer festival in Kent, UK this June. Expect we'll see dates popping up near there before and after.

Hopefully West Coast US dates prior?

Glenn's drumming / percussion sounds on those new songs are everything that everyone says they are, and more.  He has a TON of "accoutrements" that he uses to make all the sounds.  For at least one song, he uses a Cabasa (kind of a wooden wheel on a stick with steel balls on the outside, which is usually rotated in your hand) which is attached to a pedal that he plays with his foot while all 4 of his hands are busy otherwise.  

 

All 4 hands! That's just not fair!

I was a little disappointed it was Navy Blues and not One Chord To Another or Between The Bridges, which I think are stronger albums. But the songs sounded great live, that album really does hold up. There's a few really good songs on that album like Stand By Me, Yeah that you would never otherwise hear. After they did Navy Blues they left the stage for about 20 minutes and then came back and did maybe 15-20 songs from throughout their career, with every album from Twice Removed to 12 represented (sorry Smeared). The crowd was really into it and sang along to every song, even the non-singles and deeper cuts. The whole thing was a blast and probably the most fun I've had at a show in a long time, even my wife who's not a huge Sloan fan thought so.

Sounds really fun. Thanks for sharing your experience. I am now 2x more likely to attend in Chicago.

Nice they doing Navy Blues? I’m seeing them play that in Feb!

I was wondering about this. I'm a Sloan fan, but I'm not sure I would dig a Navy Blue album show as much as a typical show. How was it?

The book is great for all Crowes fans. The stories make it. The writing is somewhat sophomoric with a lot of lame foreshadowing at the end of each chapter. Tons of Chris bashing and surprisingly (to me anyway) a fair amount of shade thrown at Rich too. He does a fair amount of talking about the early days, mostly getting to know and be friends with Chris though. I think you'd like it.

There was someone doing a Wilco live show streaming site. But I think it is gone. I never really messed with it. 

sooutoftune.org - it was great and I miss it. 

good listen although it is really annoying that they edit it and remove blank space...

Yes, I realize it’s unlikely. You said the album sounds like On Fillmore + Jeff. Hence, my question if Darin is on it, because he’s the other half of On Fillmore with Glenn.

Probably beating the dead horse with this clarification, but...Just like some people say Art of Almost sounds like Radiohead, I'm saying OTJ sounds like an On Fillmore album. Not that all members of On Fillmore are on it. 

Your nepotism comment notwithstanding, I think it’s safe to say that rather than a falling out where they’re not friends anymore, it’s maybe just more of a thing where Darin lives downstate (like a five-plus-hour drive from Chicago) so to rehearse for occasional one-off gigs, it’s just more of a hassle to get the band together. Obviously Darin was brought on when the band was gonna be a regular touring act for a while during the Sukierae cycle, but now that it’s more of a one-off band, it was just easier to keep it to folks who are local?

 

And maybe, musically, Darin and the rest of the band aren’t as compatible as they could be. He obviously comes from a much more experimental, improvisational background and since they’re not gonna be touring for the foreseeable future, perhaps it made sense to just quietly cut the chord now.

 

I saw Darin recently at a small solo show/interview he did in Chicago and while he didn’t say anything directly about the Tweedy band, Jim Elkington stopped by and things seemed cool. So I wouldn’t necessarily read anything more into it other than that Darin probably won’t be playing with the Tweedy band for the foreseeable future. But what are they gonna do, send out a press release about it? Things like this happen with touring bands all the time...

That all makes sense including criticism of my nepotism comment I've always been a fan of Darin's playing. Almost pulled the trigger on William Tyler tickets for tomorrow and would have loved to seen DG perform with him again.

Hold on, they had a falling out?

I guess it could be jumping the gun, but he didn't make it to Solid Sound for the first time in 2019 and hasn't been playing with Jeff's solo band (I like to call it Jeff Tweedy & Nepotism) in quite a while. He also hasn't tweeted about Wilco or Jeff in a long while and didn't put his association with Jeff in a few recent gig bios.

So, Darin Gray is on this album?

I'm not buying the album to get the liner notes to confirm - and you are likely joking anyway - but a Darin appearance seems unlikely given Jeff and Darin's apparent falling out. I meant to imply that the record has adventurous percussion as a base.

Who said Pat is pissed?

Quotes from aftershow threads:

A couple of people have pointed out to me how Pat doesn’t seem to be smiling very much on stage of late, in general, and I hope that doesn’t hint at anything being amiss.

No eye contact with the rest of the band even during the 3 guitar thing at the end of IG. He was mopping over his keyboards in what appeared to be a half-hearted way most of the time.

Agree that Pat looked a bit disconnected/bored early on