wonder if...

[drop dead ed]

John Stirratt still gets to play "It's just that Simple" live. I know he played it on the last show I was at which was a year ago. It's a nice song, I think, and was just wondering if they include it.

 

I also wonder if this is just another reason on how Wilco wanted to follow the exact formula of Uncle Tupelo, and maybe, just maybe, if Jay Bennett had not joined, we would have seen more of a Jeff Tweedy / John Stirratt combination.

[froggie]

your guess is as good as everyone's. they do play it every now and then. maybe put in a request for it on their official site

[Sir Stewart]

I also wonder if this is just another reason on how Wilco wanted to follow the exact formula of Uncle Tupelo, and maybe, just maybe, if Jay Bennett had not joined, we would have seen more of a Jeff Tweedy / John Stirratt combination.

 

Following that logic, if Bennett joining the group changed the dynamic so that Stirratt didn't offer more tunes, wouldn't we have seen more Bennett-penned tunes on those three Wilco albums? I think Tweedy had enough tunes of his own that a Tupelo-esque tradeoff on albums was never a thought. But then again, it is sort of interesting to think about - perhaps in some alternate reality there's no Autumn Defense, and YHF is a double album.

[broc]

He sang it in Dublin on 27/08/09.

[j-hen]

He did on 4/23/09 at the Oxford, MS show

[The High Heat]

I also wonder if this is just another reason on how Wilco wanted to follow the exact formula of Uncle Tupelo, and maybe, just maybe, if Jay Bennett had not joined, we would have seen more of a Jeff Tweedy / John Stirratt combination.

Wilco: Learning to Die by Greg Kot, page 171

 

"I certainly had plenty of songs to sustain a band," Tweedy says. "There weren't enough of John's songs, or there wasn't enough of a dialogue, to establish an equal, Uncle Tupelo-type songwriting partnership, and I don't think anyone had any illusions that that was going to be how the band would work. I wasn't willing to go back to writing half an album a year. But I definitely wanted ideas from everybody and input on my songs. Mostly what I've stressed is, do you have anything you're working on that I could be involved in shaping, or something that I could write the melody for? I'm not the greatest singer in the world, and I have to write the melody to be able to sing it."

 

The preceeding pages also note that Stirratt was living in New Orleans during the early years of the band and did not move to Chicago until 1999 or 2000. It also notes that the songs he wrote were completed songs that Jeff couldn't fill in the melodies for,as opposed to Bennett's tapes that laid out a musical landscape for Jeff to fill in.

 

Of course, none of this answers your question of what would happen if Bennett had not joined. The dynamic would have been different, but John not living in the area would probably have limited his opportunities anyway.