Couple of Short JT Florida Interviews On the New Tour

[Albert Tatlock]

Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy talks about upcoming concert at Fillmore Miami Beach

 

By Michael Hamersly

 

When the critically acclaimed alt-country, art-rock, experimental (add your own label here) band Wilco takes the stage Tuesday night (May 15), it kicks off an amazing five days of dynamic, eclectic music at the Fillmore Miami Beach (Chris Cornell, Jane's Addiction and British dubstep DJ Rusko are scheduled to follow). The group - headed by enigmatic singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy - performs in support of its eighth studio album, "The Whole Love." Tweedy talked to Miami.com about the concert, his attitude toward critics, his favorite country musicians while growing up in Illinois, and how it felt to win two Grammys.

 

What can we expect from your show?

Different songs from the last time we played in the area - we usually look at the set list from the last time we'd come through town and try and play at least half a show of different songs. We definitely didn't play any of the new songs last time we were there, so we'll play a lot of "The Whole Love."

 

Wilco is very difficult to describe critically, because there are so many musical styles going on - do you kind of chuckle when you read reviews of your music?

Umm, I don't chuckle - I cry, I wring my hands, I don't know [laughs]. Yeah, I don't take too much of it very seriously, the positive or the negative. The thing to really pay attention to is the relationship you have with an audience onstage, and the people that you meet, and friends, and the people that you trust. And not to say what people in your profession do isn't important - I understand it is - it's just that it has to be taken with a grain of salt when you're on this end of it.

 

I hear so many different influences in your music - maybe early on some Traveling Wilburys, then a lot of Beatles, especially Lennon and Harrison, then some Elliott Smith and Pavement. Is that by design, or does that just kind of flow out of you?

There's not very much that's by design - I can tell you that, honestly. I think that we don't spend a lot of time intentionally going for something to sound like something else, using an influence explicitly. And I also think we don't spend a lot of time trying to hide influences if they emerge and we identify them after the fact, just like anybody else listening to our music would. So I think it's just trying to be honest - I don't think we need to go out of our way to conceal it.

 

Many of your songs head off into tangential jams - is that spontaneous in the studio?

I would argue that there aren't any jams in Wilco - I think everything is pretty composed. Jamming to me says that it's just chord progression and then you just vamp over it and play. I don't think there's a lot of that. I think we usually try and be fairly intentional - I don't think there's a lot of free-form jamming or improvisation in Wilco. There's room for things to be bent every night, and that's part of what makes the shows exciting and fun, but there's not what I would call straight-up jamming.

 

Where did your country roots come from?

Oh, it's just liking country music when growing up. But I know a lot of people that grew up in the part of the country that I grew up in that hate country music.

 

Who are some of your biggest country music influences?

I tend to like the earlier pioneers - Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard. I could name a thousand.

 

Wilco was labeled "alt-country" early on - did you kind of rebel against that in your songwriting?

Well, no - people called us that, but we never thought of ourselves as that, so there wasn't any rebellion. We just tried to stay true to what we thought of ourselves as, and never felt exclusively beholden to any one genre of music. And as we've gotten older and had more experience, I feel like we've tried to claim more stuff as being a part of Wilco, to appreciate and love more, not to narrow things down.

 

How important was it to you personally to win two Grammys?

It was really nice, I guess. Grammys are a lot easier to dismiss before you win one. And I still feel like it's never been the validation that we've looked for or needed to feel inspired to do what we do. That being said, it's awful nice for your parents and things like that, and everybody likes being acknowledged. But I can say that the Grammy that I won for helping Mavis Staples make her last record was really rewarding, because it was so meaningful to her, and she'd never won one, and that was a serious oversight on the part of the recording industry. But it felt really great to be a part of that with her.

 

http://www.miami.com/wilco-lead-singer-jeff-tweedy-talks-about-upcoming-concert-fillmore-miami-beach-article

 

Friday, May 11, 2012

Q&A: Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on concert playlist, more

 

By Heather Lovejoy

 

Since forming in 1994, the Chicago-based rock band Wilco has chugged along, managing to always get back on track when industry or personal difficulties knocked them off.

Amid lineup changes, stylistic shifts, addiction problems and periodic blogosphere chatter about foreseeing the band's break-up, they seem as tightly knit as ever.

They are set to play on Wednesday night at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. Lead singer and songwriter Jeff Tweedy spoke by phone about the band's music, his ventures and his struggles. Here are edited excerpts from that interview.

 

So, the latest news on your front is that Martin just introduced a new Signature guitar model that bears your name. How did that come about ... [and] will you be playing it on next leg of your tour?

 

It’s been in the works for a really long time. ... It’s a very, very slow process, but it got a lot more real a couple of years ago when my friend Woody, who is sort of a Martin historian, got involved and started to help designing it with me. … I really trusted him to put most of it together. ... I have been playing it live, [but] I play in a lot of different tunings and I have a lot of different tonal colors I look for in songs, so I play several different guitars during a concert. ...

 

On the Wilco website, there’s a place for fans to request songs to be played. Which are requested the most?

... Other than “Jesus, Etc.” and “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the ones you would expect. I can look at the top 10 requests on any given night and I can predict that they are songs we played the last time we were in that town. It’s almost invariable. … A lot of hardcore fans who come see us multiple times and really enjoyed certain songs want to relive that experience. It’s conflicting, actually, because generally what we do is look at what we played last time in a city and want to play different songs entirely.

 

Are most of the band’s album’s represented in the set? Or is there a leaning toward certain ones?

 

Well, I mean, we play a majority of songs off the new record right now. They’ve been fitting really well with the ones from “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel,” so those get played more than any others right now, I guess. But generally, it’s pretty mixed up.

Of all the songs you write, what percentage do you end up discarding?

[Long pause] 60 percent. … I mean, it’s really hard to call a lot of them songs. The things that just get documented as an idea for a song, I would call that material that gets discarded. About 40 percent of the ideas that I put on tape or document somehow ends up being a song. Maybe 20 percent ends up being on a record.

 

Wilco gets called everything from Americana to avant-garde. What do you call yourselves?

 

... Our parameters are pretty wide. We want to play music. … That’s just not narrow enough for people. [Laughs] I think we think of ourselves as mostly a rock band. But the thing is, for us, a rock band is a very wide definition and that’s the beauty of it. ... There’s an element of freedom and that’s why we like to play rock music. Narrowing things down, I don’t think that’s the way it should be. ... I always thought the goal was to like more. ... To listen to more and love more, not to get more specific or hone in on any one thing. The world just doesn’t work that way, to me.

 

You’ve also been pegged as experimental. Has being experimental ever been your intention?

 

No. It’s never been our intention to be experimental. Our intentions have been to explore sonic possibilities and to utilize things we’ve heard in our explorations of other people’s music, and some of those things come from avant-garde and maybe from experimental music. … From our perspective, the experimenting has all been done by the time it makes it to a Wilco record. It’s all been a part of rock for a long time. Dissonance, feedback, all that, is nothing new to the art of rock.

 

Away from the business end, on a personal level, you’ve been pretty open about struggling in the past with extreme anxiety before shows. How did you get past that?

 

It certainly has taken effort. I would make it a lot more clear that I don’t have what would be described as stage fright. I have anxiety disorder, period. So I have the potential to have panic anywhere. The problem with getting on stage was not getting on stage, but the thought that I would have a panic attack in the middle of that situation. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened in a very long time. I think that’s a subtle distinction for some people, but it’s a big difference for me. … I think it helps when you talk about mental illness and mood disorders in an honest way; I think that’s important. I have panic disorder. That’s been something that in the past eight years, I’ve fortunately been able to deal with using certain strategies.

 

Can you talk about those strategies a little?

 

Well, I can say, I think that it’s important to be properly medicated. I think that it’s almost imperative if you have a true biological mood disorder. A certain amount of cognitive therapy and analysis is going to help you quite a bit. … I do really have a firm belief that it’s difficult to find good help. I struggled for a long time and ended up in situations where the people who were supposed to be helping were actually ending up doing the opposite.

 

There’s still a stigma surrounding it that keeps a lot of people from getting help or admitting it to even themselves. Were you ever in that place?

 

Well, I think, maybe. The thing I always identified as being really a stumbling block in my efforts to get well were that I really hated the stereotype of drug-addled and tortured artists. I’ve always just scoffed at the notion. I still do. I don’t think that helped me get help, though. Because, for example, I wasn’t pursuing a party. I wasn’t out there in the way people think of rock stars and what they do, going out there and partying … I hated that idea and it really wasn’t like that.

 

Wilco’s lineup has been stable for several years now, which hasn’t always been the case. What’s different about this lineup?

 

Um, well, that’s just something you can’t put your finger on. It’s a matter of chemistry, certainly. ... I think you get better at making decisions and at handling stressful situations as you get older. ... Younger bands and younger people tend to have a much more difficult time confronting conflict. Anytime you have a group of strong-willed people that are all artists and have ideas about the way things should be, you’re going to have conflicts. But resolving them and directly confronting them makes them much less problematic in the long run.

 

What music is on your playlist right now? Any recommendations?

 

Well, we were just on tour with White Denim, I think their records are pretty fantastic. I’ve been listening to a lot of old gospel music and old soul music lately. I’m getting ready to make another record for Mavis Staples and I’ve been trying to find material for her. So, that’s where I’ve been headed with what I’m listening to.

 

http://m.jacksonville.com/entertainment/music/2012-05-11/story/qa-wilcos-jeff-tweedy-concert-playlist-more

[nalafej]

I'm going to have to call understatement on " I play several different guitars during a concert" !!

[rhino4evr]

another White Denim shout out! awesome. Wish they were opening. only a few more days.

 

Also..that Miami interview was terrible.

[choo-choo-charlie]

http://www.miami.com...i-beach-article

 

Many of your songs head off into tangential jams - is that spontaneous in the studio?

I would argue that there aren't any jams in Wilco - I think everything is pretty composed. Jamming to me says that it's just chord progression and then you just vamp over it and play. I don't think there's a lot of that. I think we usually try and be fairly intentional - I don't think there's a lot of free-form jamming or improvisation in Wilco. There's room for things to be bent every night, and that's part of what makes the shows exciting and fun, but there's not what I would call straight-up jamming.

 

 

So, will this get people to stop the "is Wilco a jam band?" conversation?

 

[theashtraysays]

nice article on WW.

http://wilcoworld.ne...-john-woodland/

 

Is this the same guy as this?

 

So, the latest news on your front is that Martin just introduced a new Signature guitar model that bears your name. How did that come about ... [and] will you be playing it on next leg of your tour?

 

It’s been in the works for a really long time. ... It’s a very, very slow process, but it got a lot more real a couple of years ago when my friend Woody, who is sort of a Martin historian, got involved and started to help designing it with me. … I really trusted him to put most of it together. ... I have been playing it live, [but] I play in a lot of different tunings and I have a lot of different tonal colors I look for in songs, so I play several different guitars during a concert. ...

[choo-choo-charlie]

nice article on WW.

http://wilcoworld.ne...-john-woodland/

 

Is this the same guy as this?

 

Woodland = Woody? I'll bet so!