Greg Kot Chicago Tribune Article

[Albert Tatlock]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/ct-jeff-tweedy-spencer-family-illness-20140922-column.html

 

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[Bosco]

Music provides refuge in Tweedy family's health crisis

 

After drumming — and drumming well — on Mavis Staples' "One True Vine" album last year that was produced by his father, Wilco founder Jeff Tweedy, Spencer Tweedy might've been justified in feeling confident about future family collaborations.

 

But, in keeping with his playing style, the 18-year-old drummer kept it humble as his dad began recording songs for what would become "Sukierae" (dBpm Records), the father-son duo's debut album released Tuesday under the group name Tweedy.

 

"Even though I'd been working on Mavis' record for months at that point, I did not take it for granted that I would be included on this other project," Spencer Tweedy says. "I just never wanted to assume that I get to go to work at the Loft (the Wilco studio on the Northwest Side). It's a privilege. Even though I've learned I'm welcome and people do like my drumming, I still try to keep my hopes down. I wasn't positive I'd be included on it till the day recording started. I wasn't exactly positive if what we were recording was going to be for a real release, either. It was all very 'let's see what happens and have fun doing it.'"

 

The pair recorded songs at a prolific rate, a project complicated and nearly overwhelmed this year when Susan Miller Tweedy, Spencer's mother and Jeff's wife, was diagnosed with lymphoma and began a grueling series of chemotherapy treatments. Doctors are optimistic that she will recover, Jeff and Spencer Tweedy say. To many Chicagoans and members of the independent music community worldwide, Miller is best known for her role in booking hundreds of concerts in the city during the '80s and '90s, and her co-ownership of the longtime Lincoln Avenue club Lounge Ax. But for the past 15 years particularly, she has lived a more private life as wife and mother to a family that also includes 14-year-old Sam.

 

"It was really, really shocking, and painful, particularly in the beginning, especially around February when the first news came," Spencer says of his mother's cancer battle. "It was really scary for everyone in the family. But it became a normalcy we could all cope with. We wanted to make mom as happy as she could be while she was dealing with the treatment. It had a profound influence on my dad because he's the songwriter, and it bled into the songs. He put his vocals on in the later stage of making the record, and it was the glaze that tied it all together."

 

In a separate interview, Jeff Tweedy looked back on a year filled with turmoil and uncertainty, but also the strength that a family and a married couple can draw from one another in a time of crisis. Though rarely explicit, those emotions became the album's guiding theme.

 

"Contrary to the notion of the 'tortured artist,' one of the great virtues of being an artist is you have consolation," he says. "The family was involved in something together, and as Susie's health transpired, it (making the album) gave us a welcome sense of meaning, a sense that things were moving forward and there was something to look forward to besides more biopsies and scans. It just became comforting to everyone."

 

That family dynamic was reflected not only in the lyrics, but in the intimacy of the performances, largely built on just Jeff's guitar and Spencer's drums. Even young Sam, who was not directly involved in the recording, served a role, often listening with his father on car rides to and from school and offering suggestions or comments. In recognition of his contributions, he received an executive producer credit.

 

"We would always listen to music in the car since the kids were young, and so it was normal for me to play stuff, and we'd all listen and talk about it," Jeff Tweedy says. "Sammy would weigh in with unvarnished opinions. He can be pretty harsh, but he surprised me too. You'd think a 13-, 14-year-old would say, 'Get rid of that waltz.' There are a five or six waltzes on the album. But he let me keep them."

 

In the end, Jeff and Spencer Tweedy had recorded dozens of tracks, and pared them down to 20, split over two discs that can be listened to separately or as part of the whole. It was an approach Jeff Tweedy first tried on Wilco's 1997 breakthrough double-album, "Being There."

 

He wanted to ensure that the record wouldn't be easily typecast or slotted into a category, much in the same way that "Being There" broke Wilco out of the "alternative-country" ghetto that some fans and critics had consigned the band. By calling the band "Tweedy," he aimed to emphasize that it was a band effort rather than a singer-songwriter record — "the world has enough of those," he said. And sequencing the material over two discs rather than one, he sought to "keep things wild and spontaneous."

 

"I like the idea that the music hasn't been pruned into nice shrubbery," he says. "It's this overgrown thing, and I do like that. I like getting lost in it."

 

The album is named after his wife; "Sukierae" is one of Miller's nicknames. As the album's central subject, she enjoyed hearing it come together, Spencer Tweedy says.

 

"The biggest consolation through all this was just our ability to talk to each other, and spend time together and the openness of being able to tell each other how we're feeling," Spencer Tweedy says. "That was the biggest thing that helped us cope. It's funny, my mom loves music, and she listened to 'Sukierae' closer to when it was finished. She definitely likes it. But her favorite music to listen to is Mavis (Staples') music. Every time we turn on the jukebox in the house, the first song that comes on is (the Staple Singers') 'I'll Take You There.' We always come in second to Mavis, and I think my dad wouldn't have it any other way."

 

greg@gregkot.com

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