Playing in the Rockers' Clubhouse - JT in WSJ

[Albert Tatlock]

Like the Sasquatch comments - was anyone here there?

 

http://online.wsj.co...3459206104.html

 

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

 

Playing in the Rockers' Clubhouse.

 

By JOHN JURGENSEN

 

 

 

As a kid, Jeff Tweedy watched "The Monkees" and pictured a rock 'n' roll group as a clubhouse full of musical pals. For the past decade, the headquarters for the 44-year-old singer's band, Wilco, has been a sprawling loft space on Chicago's North Side. A pinball machine in the kitchen and some wooden bunkbeds are among the boyish touches. Otherwise, the setting—a recording studio, racks upon racks of instruments, and a full floor of merchandise and touring gear upstairs—attests to the maturation of Wilco's career since 1994, when Mr. Tweedy started the group from the splinters of Uncle Tupelo, the influential alt-country group he'd led with Jay Farrar.

 

In 2002, the album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" marked a commercial turning point for Wilco when it landed with wide critical acclaim, a revealing documentary film and a juicy industry back story (the hit record had been initially rejected by Wilco's label, only to be bought and released by another label under the same parent company). At the time, however, Mr. Tweedy was in the midst of a personal slide. In 2004, the songwriter went to rehab for an addiction to painkillers. On the new Wilco album "The Whole Love," due Sept. 27, Mr. Tweedy sings about the seesaw between exuberance and despair in songs that veer from raw folk confessionals to red-blooded rockers. He recently discussed his new songs, the struggle to remember his old songs and Wilco's worst moment on stage.

The Wall Street Journal: How do you know it's time to start a new album? Is it just a critical mass of new songs?

Mr. Tweedy:Before this album we gave ourselves a much larger break [from touring] than we probably have forever. I know for a fact that playing those old songs and tending to that catalog takes a lot of mental energy. Maybe there's more anxiety about that than coming up with new material. I was feeling like everything I was writing felt fresher, then a couple of solo acoustic shows snuck up on me and I thought, "I can't even think of the names of any of my songs." But I did the show and everything was fine. That helped dispel that myth.

 

 

 

Does that challenge just come down to remembering the chord changes and lyrics, or is it more abstract?

It's an abstract, like an anxiety dream. The act is so familiar but you can't quite picture it unless you're up there doing it. There's definitely muscle memory. If I start to forget a lyric, I know that the faster I can look away from it, the faster it will come. Fortunately, our audience is pretty forgiving of me forgetting words. You get older and realize, if one show was going to take the band down, it would have happened already, because there've been plenty that would have warranted that reaction from the public.

 

What was Wilco's worst show ever?

 

The first time we played the Sasquatch festival [in 2005]. We went on after Arcade Fire, who were just becoming huge at the time. And they are so anthemic. And they're climbing on the scaffolding and they're out in the audience beating drums. It was berserk. It was like having your ass handed to you by, like, Cirque du Soleil. Then we went out and all our microphone lines had been patched in backwards. So there was high-hat coming through my vocal monitor and nothing else. Or keyboard blaring out of the drum monitor. You couldn't make things worse for a band onstage than that. What do you do? Do you stop? It was terrible. But I have met people who say, "I saw you at Sasquatch and it was great." OK, you must be deaf, I'm assuming.

 

Why did you open the album with the song "Art of Almost"? It's more than seven minutes long and features a frenzied rock breakdown.

 

It's pretty much invariably the case for Wilco records to have the first song dictate the critical shorthand that comes along with it. "Sky Blue Sky" is the mellow record; it starts with "Either Way." "Wilco (The Album)" is the funny record; it starts with "Wilco (The Song)." So that's one reason it's ideal to put ["Art of Almost"] first, because I don't know what people are really going to make of it.

 

"Born Alone" is just one of the songs on the album that makes reference to drugs. Musically, the song descends into a spiral but doesn't come back out.

I find that song really joyous, but I do see how on paper it's really dire. My mom told me something that I struggled with my whole life: "You're born alone and you die alone. So you should get used to being alone." And that's just terrible advice. That song felt to me like the first time in my life when I said, that's bulls—. I don't need to be fearful of being alone, or being with people. So the song gets to the end, and that rock catharsis—it's the best strategy I've come up with for consolation.

 

You've been playing music with your sons [spencer, 15, and Sam, 11], and put out a single as the Raccoonists.

 

We listen to rough Wilco mixes in the car and they say, "Why are you singing like that, Dad? Is that the finished vocal?" They love the music, but they're pretty merciless. But when we play it's really just playing. It's play. There's not that big a difference between the way the Raccoonists work and the way Wilco works. We'll go downstairs and not talk about exactly what we want to do, until something starts sounding good. Then we'll press "record."

 

What's the best career decision you've made along the way?

The best business decisions all boil down to us not being willing to crawl across cut glass to live outside our own means. Indie rock has kind of won. Meaning that there are still big-time movers and shakers, but for the most part nobody's going out there with the million-dollar videos and the huge tour budgets. That wasn't really ever offered to us that much, but looking at other bands and friends, it always seemed to be the thing that killed them. Wanting more than they had, faster than they could really get it. Maybe that's just touring in a bus, or having a hotel room every night. For us, it meant just not owing anyone a bunch of money.

[electro]

"It was like having your ass handed to you by, like, Cirque du Soleil."

 

Hilarious image. Now I'm picturing the Wilcos getting pummeled by mimes.

[Magnetized]

". . . Mr. Tweedy started the group from the splinters of Uncle Tupelo..." Think that'll replace "rose from the ashes of"?

 

Really good interview. Thanks for continuing to find these--I love hearing Jeff talk.