Spectacular Dallas Review

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Tweedy and son Spencer, behind the drums, at the Majestic Theater Sunday night (Brad Loper/Staff photographer)

The first song into his encore at the Majestic Theatre Sunday night, three songs from the close of a show we didn’t want to end, Jeff Tweedy and his new band performed a song the Wilco frontman said he’s never done live. He wrote it, but did not record it: “You Are Not Alone,” the title track to Mavis Staples’ 2010 album, which Tweedy produced. It’s a haunting, hopeful song — a little gospel, a little folk, a lot of heart — about getting through to someone, about begging them to accept the “open hand” and “open heart” in front of them. Sang Tweedy, not alone, “There’s no need to be afraid.” He was joined on vocals by another man named Tweedy: his son Spencer, Jeff’s drummer, who is all of 18. Father sang to son; son, to father.

It was but one profound highlight on a night that began with a dare of sorts, as Jeff opened with 14 (!) songs from his upcoming Sukierae — songs no one had heard before, save, perhaps, for the bootlegged performances from earlier shows along the tour. Even at 14 that’s an incomplete offering; we’ve yet to see a complete track listing, and one song, “Hazel,” made its debut in Dallas Sunday. Still, that’s something few musicians would even dare; most acts only perform albums in their entirety once they’ve become calcified “classics” their audiences memorized decades ago.

Tweedy, plugged in (Brad Loper/Staff photographer)

There’s something to be commended about debuting the new work without propping it up against the familiars and favorites. A year after Wilco’s all-covers-show at the Solid Sound Festival, he’s now asking the audience to absorb a whole new narrative, not just a few here-and-there chapters. Tweedy can pull it off for any number of reasons, chief among them his audience has grown up alongside him, watched him go from Paul Westerberg in a Carter Family T-shirt to a would-be Gram Parsons fronting The Band making Pet Sounds to The Best Singer-Songwriter of His Generation Not Fronting Radiohead. And the songs are great — not Wilco cast-offs so much as echoes of earlier records stretched and pulled in slightly different directions.

The epic, atmospheric “Diamond Light” sounds like something from A Ghost is Born or even The Whole Love, the band’s most recent record (three long years ago); one could only imagine how guitarist Nels Cline would have snapped that song in half and sent the shards into space. And “Honey Combed” — the sound of three guitars harmonizing into a single, soaring voice — might have come from, oh, Being There.

But, look, they’re all uniquely Tweedy — the beautiful melodies and regret-filled lyrics written and performed by a 46-year-old from Belleville, Illinois, who got to 1970s Laurel Canyon as quickly as he could, save for that detour to the Allmans’ show at the Fillmore East and that Television gig at CBGB. One need not play Name That Wilco Outcast; those songs deserve better, and come September 16 we’ll have all the time in the world to absorb and adore them.

Following the first 14 songs came another 14, most without the band. The audience, rapt and respectful before, roared in gratitude as he bounded from Wilco offerings (“I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” singalongs “Passenger Side” and “Jesus, Etc.” and “Someday, Some Morning, Sometime” and “California Stars” from the Woody Guthrie records with Billy Bragg) to Uncle Tupelo immortals (“New Madrid”) to the footnotes from underrated side projects (Golden Smog’s “Please Tell My Brother” and two from Loose Fur). As a singer he’s never sounded better; his vocals are now Cinemascope enough to match the songwriting. And as a guitar player, he’s got chops enough to fell a forest.

So, yeah — all those highlights, one after the other after another until, in the encore, we landed at that father-and-son duet, followed by a cover of Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart,” which Jay Farrar sang with Texas tornado Doug Sahm on Tupleo’s adios Anodyne, followed by “California Stars.” Every show, every night, should be so perfect.

 

 

Not many artists can get a grizzled, experienced, somewhat jaded Newspaperman to gush like a 13 year old girl.

But Jeff Tweedy can.

 

http://popcultureblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/jeff-tweedy-wont-give-back-the-key-to-your-heart-after-beautiful-bountiful-show-at-majestic.html/