bböp

Sorry for the delay in responding. Been in transit and taking care of life stuff today. Anyway, Jeff didn't really say anything about White Wooden Cross (which, by the way, is the title I've given it, which usually turns out to be wrong). He just introduced it as "a new song," but I got the feeling that it wasn't one of the Warmer tunes. Otherwise, he probably would've just introduced it as such. This song didn't seem to be as direct or personal lyrically as the Warm/Warmer stuff, but that was just my initial impression after hearing the song once. Jeff has played a couple of other "new" son

Also Jeff played a short — but pretty well attended — in-store at Orlando's Park Ave CDs earlier in the afternoon. The setlist for that set, as played, was: Bombs Above> Some Birds Baby Shark (fragment) Guaranteed Passenger Side Don't Forget

You knew it had to happen at some point, that Jeff couldn't possibly play a week of shows in Florida without mentioning "Florida Man" at least once. And finally in Orlando, during the last show of the run, it happened. During a mid-set question-and-answer session in which he had already acknowledged that he still gets nervous on stage, Jeff responded to a comment about coming to the state more often by referencing the popular Twitter handle/Internet meme. "Florida Man is a real thing," Jeff said. "There are some here tonight, and that's why I'm nervous." Truth be told, those Florida Men (a

This might be the single-best review of a Jeff solo show ever...please read and enjoy (all the exclamation points and incomplete setlist, that is).

On the Shows page, just click on the "request song" link underneath the show you want to request a song for and it should bring you to a drop-down menu that says "Choose a song." (There's also a field to add a note or dedication.) Seems to be there when I go to it...

As I've been following this current tour in support of Warm, the thought has occurred to me that it would have been really interesting to have been at Jeff's first true solo performance. I'm not even sure when or where that was. I suppose I could look it up — it was probably at Lounge Ax in Chicago — but record-keeping wasn't always as meticulous back in the day, so who knows for sure. (For the record, the earliest record of a bonafide solo show, not a radio or in-store appearance, in the database we have was at Lounge Ax in 1997.) Unfortunately I can't claim to go back nearly that far in my

Don't sell yourself short, man! Wish I'd had more of a chance to chat with Don and hear some of his stories. Nice to hear that he enjoyed the show (and still goes to so many shows)...

Who would do such a thing? #potkettleblack Yeah, sure. Why not? Actually, I have no idea. But Chris Thile did just get Jeff to do it on his Live From Here show not too long ago, so I guess there's as good a chance as anything. Watch it on the beer-fueled requests, though.

OK, right from the top, I have a confession to make as it regards this show: In this age of (alleged) college admission fraud and hate attack hoaxes, I gamed the system. Now I don't think I'll face any indictments or serious consequences, but I plead guilty to casting multiple votes for a certain song in the request forum on Wilco's Web site. I just didn't expect my request gambit to actually work. With Jeff pointing out the scant requests that had been received for the show the other night in Tallahassee, I decided to conduct an experiment and do something I almost never do, which is reques

I’ll be there. Feel free to hit me up. I think you have my number?

Nice work! Now you have to jot down the setlist and file a little report...

Here's the thing about tertiary markets and live music: Sometimes you get a better, more satisfying show than in a major city because the venue is smaller and/or more unique and because the audience is enthusiastic and grateful to the performer for venturing to their area. And then sometimes, to paraphrase an old pal of mine, Tallahassee on a Tuesday night is exactly what you expect it to be. Personally, I had relatively high hopes for the Moon — insert your favorite moon pun here — from having seen Wilco perform there nearly 13 years ago to the day. I remember it being just a surprisingly fu

Yeah, maybe there was a decent one of those. By then, though, it was kinda too little, too late.

Honestly never crossed my mind, but I’m surprised you even care about this. (I’ll let you know when I get to Del Boca Vista... )

And so begins a week of shows in Florida. It's always been kind of a fascinating state — to me, anyway — when it comes to any sort of cultural performance because you look around at other folks in the audience and think, 'Who are these people?' Are they true fans of the performer, or just people curious about a name they've heard? Are they truly local people, or transplants from someplace else? Did they come because they were supporting the arts, or because their friend/parent/spouse goaded them into it? Ultimately I'm not sure Jeff ever fully got a read on the audience at the Ponte Vedra Co

As Jeff said last night in Macon regarding the “open kimono,” it paints a picture, doesn’t it?

Finally, a general admission standing show! In a lot of ways, this venue felt to me like one that Jeff might've played in the "good old days," with its low stage and lack of barricades contributing to a level of intimacy that you don't always get anymore. For those in the first couple of rows, you certainly couldn't have gotten much closer to Jeff. And unlike many of the "black box"-type rooms he has performed in recently, where he couldn't see much — if any — of the audience, here Jeff could probably see nearly everyone. Theoretically this type of setting should have made for an especially f

Sorry to say I haven't seen the (or a) jumbo thus far, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have it with him. So far in terms of guitars, it's just been, I believe, a Gibson J-45, the old Martin and a Kel. Incidentally, Nashville is the only show on the rest of this run that I won't be able to get to (found out that Lucinda is playing Car Wheels in Asheville the night after Jeff plays there, so I decided to stick around an extra day), so please help me out with some reportage from that one, if you're so inclined! And I hope you get your song...

Thanks for reading, all. Happy to have a small, but loyal, audience. Haha. And yeah, I debated whether to include the bit about “Open Kimono,” but he definitely said it. I'm just not sure how many people got it?

It was bound to happen, as it almost always does on these solo tours: Two consecutive evenings, two reserved-seated theaters, two totally different atmospheres... A night after playing before a polite, but perhaps too-respectful, audience in the Memphis suburbs, Jeff encountered a boisterous, but not overly obnoxious, crowd in Birmingham. Depending on your point of view of an ideal Jeff solo performance, you could make an argument for one or the other as being the "better" show. In that case, you'd have to put me into the Birmingham camp (my friends in Memphis notwithstanding). Jeff actual

Well, I guess there probably weren't too many VCers in attendance at the show in Germantown last night so I guess it falls to me to do some reportage here. I say that because the venue was kind of your standard suburban performing arts center auditorium with all of the acoustics, atmosphere and audience that type of room typically brings. So basically the show sounded really good, but the vibe was probably too polite at best (and a little detached at worst). Perhaps because of that, the visits to Banter Corner started relatively early. Apparently Jeff had played the GPAC about a decade earli

No apologies necessary. Someone posted a leaked track listing in the Warmer thread of the Just A Fan forum, so I was just going by that. Plus Jeff has been playing several songs from Warmer in his shows for a few months now (though, as he said, in Austin, he hadn’t ever played Guaranteed live before).

Looks like Jeff will be a part of two Record Store Day releases this year. Just happened to see this article about another Woody Guthrie track...

Da.