bböp

Oh, I can relate!

Little frog in front of John. 🐸

After seeing Wilco wrap up several weeks of touring with Sleater-Kinney and Nnamdi with a big hometown show in Chicago on Saturday night, I have to admit it felt a little weird to be watching them close out a small festival in Columbus, Ohio, just 24 hours later. But such is life for a working band, I suppose: You go where the next gig is, regardless of any narratives or odd routings or other potential challenges. And of course there were bound to be some challenges, given everything that's happened this month as the band has returned to the road. In the Midwest in the summer, weat

Jeff played this song at least once on the Tweedy Show, and I dug it! I think he mentioned that Andy was just over for lunch on one of his visits to the Loft and they just decided to record this one with him playing clarinet. Glad it's getting a release of some sort.

Well I guess, for the most part, all's well that ends well for the It's Time tour. All bands get to play their full sets, unencumbered by the weather? Check. One more on-stage collaboration between co-headliners Wilco and Sleater-Kinney? Check. Wilco not feeling like it had to play all the hits every single night? Check. Jeff finally taking a page from Carrie Brownstein and inviting fans up to the front to provide the show with a jolt of energy? Check. Since the show was being live-streamed again, most of the people who would care enough to read this can probably judge for themselv

Good writing, Tim! Enjoyed reading your take. It's interesting to write stuff on here versus for a more "general" audience. I find that it sometimes goes against my journalistic instinct a bit because I'm not explaining some things or assuming a certain level of knowledge.

Hey, thanks for the report! Seems like this was another of the slightly cursed shows on this slightly cursed tour...BUT at least you got (almost) a full Wilco set! That sucks about Sleater-Kinney, though. This wasn't the first time they've kind of taken one for the team as the middle act on the bill. You feel bad for their fans, or anyone who was really looking forward to seeing them.

I noticed during S-K's set that there oddly weren't any photographers and actually, now that I think of it, I don't really remember any during Wilco's set either. Why? Has that been an issue there in the past?

Hey, did you know it was Jeff's birthday at this show in Maine? From all the social media messages throughout the day to Carrie Brownstein mentioning it during Sleater-Kinney's set to the crowd trying to sing "Happy Birthday" before the first two songs of Wilco's set — forcing Jeff to stop and restart Random Name Generator — it seemed like there was some anticipation that something out of the ordinary might happen. The presentation of a lobster cake, maybe? An on-stage Moxie toast, perhaps? As it turned out, there was nothing nearly that dramatic (unless you count the drunken lady in the secon

Nnamdi’s set has been 30 minutes, give or take. He and his band start right on time or even a minute or three early, so I’d be there by 6 if you want to see them (and it’s definitely worth it, IMHO). Re: the vax checks, it’s varied by venue. Some, like Philly, have seemed a little tighter than normal and other places (St. Louis, Boston) they didn’t even match my vax card and my ID. So as expected, it’s kind of a crapshoot. Who knows how thoroughly they’ll check in Chicago? But it has gone reasonably quickly, in terms of speed. Then again, I’m usually getting there on the early side

Thanks for the reminder, Tim! I amended my After The Show post...lol.

Aww, Tatlock…so kind of you. And happy to give you some reading for your elevenses.

Lobster rolls for everyone tonight in Maine! Jeff's buying, right?

When it came to what songs Wilco was going to play and how much its setlist would change as the band eased back into touring this month, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that the It's Time tour with Sleater-Kinney and Nnamdi wasn't going to be the second coming of the AmericanaRama run in 2013 when you had little idea what would happen night to night (well, that is, before Bob Dylan took the stage). With a 90-minute time slot most nights on this current tour, Jeff and his bandmates — to some people's chagrin — seem to have settled on a set that appeals to the lowest common denominator and

We quibble because we love? 🤷‍♂️ Sorry about KC. I would have liked to have seen that one happen too, since I had a pretty nice spot!

No show tonight, first of all. And second, if they didn’t do a Tom T. Hall cover (or even acknowledge his passing), I don’t think there’s a good chance for the Everlys…though I’ve been proven wrong before!

I actually had to look up “animatronic” to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. Like I said, I’m a dummy. But as far as S-K being robotic or robotlike puppets, I don’t see it. Maybe their band, like the dudes in particular, but not Carrie and Corin, IMHO.

OK, who had show 13 (of 17 on this It's Time tour with Nnamdi and Sleater-Kinney) in the "professional show" pool? I kid, I kid...well, sort of. The truth is it's hard for me to write something about a show like this that I feel accurately represents anyone else's experience but my own. I guess you could say that's true for any given show, but especially for this one, I'm struggling to reconcile my opinion with all of the "Great show!" and "Unbelievable!" comments I overheard on the way out or the friend I talked to who said it was his wife's first real show since the onset of the

Thanks, but uh oh, it sounds like you might not entirely like what I have to say about Philly...

Toward the end of Wilco's rain-shortened set tonight at Forest Hills Stadium, Jeff looked out from the stage at the torrents of rain falling on drenched audience members and told them he wished he and his bandmates could be physically closer to them. The problem was, Jeff explained, that when the band had initially been set up closer to the front of the covered stage, there was a hole in the roof just where he would have been standing and joked that would have been the perfect visual representation for his songs — that of a solitary figure standing there while rain fell on him. In

It's funny, I've never really thought of Merriweather Post Pavilion as a "legendary" venue along the lines of Red Rocks or the Hollywood Bowl or places like that. I'm sure that's probably sacrilegious to those in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area, but even when I lived on the East Coast, I just always sort of thought of it as another in a series of sheds from Maine to Florida that bands eventually play if they reach a certain level. But hey, not every shed gets a landmark album named after it and I recently met someone who told me that they were at this mythical concert back in 1969. And hec

You tea-totalling bastard! (How was that?)

Just doing my duty here, though unfortunately I wasn't there in person. Someone I know who was there sent me some photos of the setup and the stage and I have to say that, despite the terrible venue name, it did appear to be quite a lovely little spot for an outdoor show. Hopefully the flooding in western North Carolina wasn't too bad around the area... As far as the show, I guess when you don't have Spiders in the setlist, there's time for an extra tune or two. Interesting to note the inclusion of Hummingbird. Is that the first time for this run? I can't remember for sure, but is

Well, that was something. On a scorching, muggy-as-all-get-out night in Richmond — one that Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney had likened to "playing on the surface of the sun," though I guess it was par for the course for mid-August in the Virginia capital — the It's Time tour stop here went from one of those outdoor events you merely tolerate and sort of secretly want to get over with to maybe the best show on the run so far. At least as far as Wilco's performance was concerned. Now I haven't been to all of the shows on this tour — I wasn't at Red Rocks, for instance, though I

Yes, and will continue to — or so I’ve been told (and so it says on Wilcoworld ).