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Having experienced something of what tour life can be like, sometimes I think it would be fascinating to work for a booking agency or pick the brain (and get honest responses) from someone whose job it is to figure out things like tour routing and why performers seem to play certain cities or venues all the time, while others seemingly get passed over with regularity. I'm sure there are logical answers for these things most times — and they're often obvious — but sometimes there aren't. At any rate, being American, I think I understand these things better in my own country and I don't pretend

More housekeeping from (hopefully) the last date on this European run that I couldn't make it to in person. I've actually been to the End Of The Road festival before, when Jeff played solo a few years back, and really enjoyed it. But since they don't sell daily tickets, it's basically impossible to catch just one day of the festival. Which is fine, since it's kind of a big commitment to getting out there and camping out for four days...even though the music lineups and other programming are usually excellent. Anyway, Wilco headlined the main Woods stage on the first night of the fe

The 30th of August 2023...this will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see the end of the Rebellion. Wait, that's not right. The 30th of August 2023...a date which will live in infamy. Yikes, nothing anywhere near that dire. The 30th of August 2023...another Wilco Wednesday, the band's first show in the British capital in more than four years and another pivot point as Jeff and his bandmates head into the home stretch of this current European tour. OK, I think we finally got it. Oh, and it might also have been the 46th anniversary of the arrival o

Ah, right! Thanks for filling in the blanks for me there. And to bring it kinda full circle, Nels’ actual middle name is Courtney!

Yes! Thank youuuuu for sharing!

With this pair of shows in Utrecht being the lone two-night stand of this European tour, there was at least some conjecture among some of the people attending both gigs about exactly what to expect. I seemed to remember there being something about no repeated songs at some point in the fine print of a tour dates advert/listing — perhaps when ticket sales for the Sunday/Monday shows had been a bit sluggish? — and some of my colleagues recalled reading a similar promise on the TivoliVredenburg Web site. So after we successfully negotiated a rather disorganized queue, followed a few l

Jeff on acoustic, no harmonica. I guess it was more the OG slow jam. FYI, they did play it a couple times in Spain, so it wasn't a tour debut or anything.

Night One of a two-night stand within the familiar confines of the sprawling TivoliVredenburg complex in Utrecht meant a return to normalcy in many ways for Wilco and its crew. After a couple of weeks of mostly outdoor gigs with unpredictable weather conditions in countries where English wasn't the first language and little things like styles of coffee and cooling systems were just a little different than what we are used to in the good ol' US of A, being back in this charming Dutch city that the band has played in a number of times over the years felt like a welcome return to a home away from

Happy birthday to Jeff, who probably didn't get the Shroud of Turin for his 56th birthday, but maybe the Shroud of Tweedy instead? At any rate, this second of two Italian dates on this 2023 European run was apparently more of a festival in the traditional sense, with Wilco headlining the main music space on the first day of the three-day TOdays Festival. Jeff and Co. played about 90 minutes, it seems, beginning at 22:30 and preceded by King Hannah, Les Savy Fav and Warhaus. Once again, hat tip to the Wilcoworld authorities for the setlist: Spiders (Kidsmoke) I Am M

Just doing the usual housekeeping here, since Italy wasn't in the cards for me on this run. This was, from what I can tell, not a festival in the usual sense of a multi-day event with numerous bands, but rather a seasonal series of concerts organized at the same venue (and presumably with the same promoter(s)). It was also the first show of Wilco's current tour with support from Courtney Marie Andrews, who has joined the band on vocals for California Stars in the past but I'm not sure if she did at this show or not. At any rate, I am as usual borrowing the setlist from the good fol

See what you started, Tatlock? Also, it just dawned on me that Wilco totally missed the opportunity to play Someone To Lose.

Well, I thank you for your consistent tas because a ta a day keeps the doctor away. And as for that clip, boy that’s a Tatlock jam now isn’t it? Those crunchy guiTArs and all! I only wish I had had time to visit a casino whilst having run low on funds and also listening to Beck…because then I could have been a loser who had nothing to lose in Toulouse. But since we’re on the punk tip, I offer you another great one

Maybe it took a show in a different country (sorry, Spaniards), or an intimate, indoor concert after a run of festival-like outdoor performances, or a relatively low-stakes Tuesday night gig that didn't even come close to selling out, but whatever the reason, Wilco finally got around to playing Evicted as a band for the first time tonight. There was some question of whether they would perform anything off the forthcoming Cousin before the record officially drops next month, but given that Jeff has been playing the song at his solo shows for a while now and and that the Tweedy Show sort of rese

Honestly I'm not really sure how to report on this show except that it was, well, weird. Not that the vast majority of the attendees probably noticed anything super out of the ordinary, but this is where if you've seen the band more than a handful of times, you could probably tell that something was up. And if you've seen Jeff and Co. as much as this correspondent has, well, you pretty much know that things aren't quite right. The first clue was that Jeff came out wearing his Daniel Johnston baseball cap and kept it firmly on his head throughout the night, except when doffing it to

I wasn't able to make it to Wilco's lone 2023 date in Portugal after all, but it looks like they had about a 75-minute slot on the Vodafone stage from 11 p.m.-12:30 a.m., just before Day 4 headliner Lorde closed out the four-day festival. By all means, please chime in if anyone was there and has any details or observations to add. Fortunately, the good folks at Wilcoworld have provided the following setlist report: Spiders (Kidsmoke) I Am My Mother Cruel Country Handshake Drugs I Am Trying To Break Your Heart Random Name Generator Hummingbi

Wish I could, but I gotta catch (two) flights to Galicia! No rest for the harried correspondencia.

Yeah, I think some of the more hardcore Spanish fans were hoping for at least that one. But Glenn or Nels, I forget who, said on a local Catalan news story about the band that they didn't plan to play any of the Cousin songs until the record was actually out. To me, it's kind of funny that Jeff shared so many new, unreleased songs on the Tweedy Show, which I commented on at least once, but he said his stance at the time was, "Well, I don't know when — or if — I'll ever get to play them, so why not?" But since the pandemic times have ended and things have somewhat gone back to norma

Well I guess at this point in Wilco's touring history, it wouldn't be a proper Spanish tour without a show in a bullfighting ring, right? And for good measure, they may as well be in relatively tertiary markets, too. Last year, the band played just such a gig in Murcia. This year's edition took place about an hour's drive away in the very steamy southern coastal city of Alicante, in a setting that was almost a carbon copy of the one from Murcia. While I don't think you could describe this show as particularly well attended — if they sold more than 1,200 tickets, I'd be surprised —

Takes one to know one!

I drove in Iceland!

Well, there ain't (de) nada otra persona apparently.

In the interest of full disclosure, until a few weeks ago, I completely intended to skip tonight's show at the scenic Starlite Occident complex in the hills above Marbella. There were several reasons for that, including the odd routing of this gig vis a vis the one before and the one after it as well as the advance word I had received from my local sources about the general vibe of this concert series, but ultimately I'm glad I was able to make the little bit of extra effort required to get there. A little peek behind the curtain, perhaps, but typically I don't like to rent cars wh

Circling back, at long last, to try and recount a delightful late afternoon and evening spent in the holiday beach town of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, which is about an hour's drive from Barcelona on the beautiful Costa Brava... We arrived in time to head to the city center and have a look at the charming beachfront and harbor area as well as a quick drink at a nearby café, but then it was time to head a bit further inland to the Porta Ferrada complex where the 61st edition of its summer series of concerts was taking place. The sprawling complex featured two sides, essentially — one wit

Second stop for the band on Euro tour '23 was a Spanish festival in Aranda de Duero, near Burgos. The Wilcomen evidently had time for just a short set, playing second fiddle to a famed Spanish duo called Amaral, who were celebrating their 25th anniversary. Thanks again to the Wilcoworld authorities for the following setlist: Handshake Drugs I Am My Mother Cruel Country I Am Trying To Break Your Heart If I Ever Was A Child Hummingbird Misunderstood Love Is Everywhere (Beware) Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull Impossible Ger

Well I can assure you I wasn't at this kickoff show of Wilco's 2023 European run, which was apparently a 90-minute set in a parking lot (Grote Kaai) in Flanders as part of the 10-day Lokerse Feesten festival. I cannot provide any more details about the set, except to say that Jeff and Co. were scheduled to play on the creatively titled Main Stage from 21:45-23:15, following someone called Sylvie Kreusch and before a band called Balthazar. (Actually now that I think of it, I might follow someone on Instagram who was randomly at this show and made a comment about the stage being really high...so