Jeff Tweedy — 24 September 2018, Bozeman, MT (Rialto Bozeman)

[bböp]

"Half of it's you, half is me," or so a certain songwriter once posited, and perhaps there wasn't a better recent example of that mantra than Jeff's show in Bozeman last night. It might be the case that you had to be there, but on the day that his first proper solo album was officially announced, Jeff had one of those shows where he seemed like he was a little bit distracted and not necessarily in the mood to perform — and much of the audience seemed almost just as eager to interact with him as to hear him play music.

 

That makes it sound like it was a trainwreck of a show, but I should preface that by saying it was a thoroughly enjoyable one and Jeff even thanked the audience for "being a fun crowd" as he left the stage. As much as some of Jeff's recent solo shows have seemed almost like recitals, this was basically the complete opposite. Jeff had plenty to say, and the mostly general admission standing audience inside the intimate Rialto had plenty to say back at him. I'm sure I won't be able to fully recap or convey the interactions here, so you'll have to take my word for it.

 

From the outset, Jeff's distraction seemed to come at least in part from his guitars struggling to stay in tune. "All these stupid old guitars were cold all day and now they're not, and they're like 'Fuck you, man,'" Jeff explained, joking that this show was going to be an example of what things were like before electric tuners. About a third of the way through his set, Jeff even took the relatively rare step of speaking directly to front-of-house engineer Stan, telling him to turn his guitar down in the wedges because "I don't wanna hear this out-of-tune piece of crap." (As on Jeff's tour in the UK and Ireland earlier this year, support act James Elkington is also serving as the de facto guitar tech on this autumn run but I suspect his role isn't so much to actually tune guitars as simply to hand Jeff guitars that have already been tuned, as needed, and be there in case of any emergencies like a broken string. Which is to say that I don't think Elkington deserves blame for any tuning issues, nor was Jeff suggesting as much.)

 

At the same time, Jeff was also contending with a pretty vocal audience that didn't really have much hesitation to engage with him in one way or another. Just two songs into his set, Jeff spotted a man in the front row at stage right who had a small poster from the show Uncle Tupelo once played in Bozeman that he laid on the stage so Jeff could see it. When he saw that Jeff had seen it, the man asked Jeff if he would sign it, saying that he had been carrying it around for 25 years. It didn't take long for Jeff to oblige, saying that he "didn't want to look at that all night."

 

That Uncle Tupelo show came up again later in the set when Jeff said he was going to play an Uncle Tupelo song and that he had played in town once before with that band at a venue called the Filling Station and remembered how it had been so cold. Naturally, someone in the audience had to question that by suggesting that maybe the show had actually been at a venue called the Cat's Paw. Jeff scoffed, however, saying, "I might have been a drug addict, but I know where I went." He said the reason he knew he had once played at the Filling Station was because Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists) had once told him he had been at that show. (Incidentally, the moment Jeff even mentioned UT, a possibly inebriated woman behind me couldn't stop yelling out "Carbondale, Illinois," until Jeff finally had to address her. Apparently she thought that was where UT had been from. Jeff gently corrected her, but somehow that led into her saying that she had once seen Jeff perform in Sioux City, Iowa, at a jazz festival. Finally, a miffed Jeff asked why they were having this conversation. I tell this story as one example of just how casual the interaction between performer and audience was at this show.)

 

Another extended bit of crowd interaction came when Jeff indicated that he had a couple of things on his mind that he wanted to share. He mentioned the Neil Young record Harvest Moon and how he realized that he was six years older than Young was when he made that album, also noting that he is the same age as the Rolling Stones were when they made Steel Wheels. "I'm living on borrowed time here," Jeff deadpanned. "This is it." That segued into Jeff noting that there seemed like a lot more women in attendance at this show than usual and commented on how "weird" that was, asking whether there was a bachelorette party going on or something. Then he related his other thought, basically reiterating comments he has made in the past about how David Bowie and other artists were known for cultivating various personae and how Jeff felt like he had been doing the same over the course of his career. As Jeff rambled on, a woman yelled out, "You're still sexy, Jeff!" Which perfectly set up the punchline about Jeff's alter ego: Chubby Stardust.

 

There were a number of other moments of crowd interaction that I won't come close to accurately relating, including a brief back-and-forth with a woman standing front row center who Jeff jokingly gave a hard time after he asked if everyone was having a good time and (I think) her response could have been interpreted as a backhanded compliment. Another came after Let's Go Rain and just before a request for I'm Always In Love when Jeff talked about how he didn't mind when people sang along. He said he understood why people didn't sing along to some songs because they had crazy lyrics that no one knew, but that the right thing was probably to find a balance between songs to sing along with and not. At some point during this, someone in the balcony said something like, "Come to Canada." To which Jeff quizzically said, "You guys are really good at non sequiturs, aren't you? We were talking about singing along and then someone says something about Canada. It's like, 'My knee hurts, maybe I'll take up needlepoint." It was pretty funny, but like I said, maybe you had to be there.

 

Anyway, a result of all of this back and forth was that Jeff only ended up playing 20 songs (or at least two or three less than he has played at other solo shows on this run). Then again, maybe Jeff presaged as much when he glanced over at his list of possible songs early in the show and said bluntly, "I don't feel like playing any of these." It was just one of those kinds of nights, I guess, and both Jeff and the audience rolled with it.

 

For me, the musical highlight was hearing the new songs with the added context of finally learning about WARM and having read George Saunders' eloquent liner notes. We got another new song in the encore called I Know What It's Like that I think Jeff might not have played since I saw him at the Clearwater Festival in New York in June, and that one was especially interesting to hear again with its relatively light, upbeat melody combined with the darkness of lyrics such as "I know what it's like not to feel love." Also as relates to the new songs, it dawned on me (no pun intended) that the song that had the working title "New Wave Theater" is likely actually called "Having Been Is No Way To Be." Listening to it again last night, I finally realized that lyric comes in toward the end of the song. As for the new song we've been calling Evergreen, I'm still not sure if that is the correct title or not. There aren't any lyrics in it that clearly go along with the list of song titles released for WARM, so we'll have to wait to see on that one (but it definitely isn't a reworking of Childlike and Evergreen).

 

Anyway, enough blathering from me for now. Here was the complete setlist for Bozeman, as played (new songs indicated, with proper titles as known):

 

Via Chicago (w/harmonica)

new song-Bombs Above

new song-Some Birds

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

Remember The Mountain Bed

new song-Having Been Is No Way To Be

Hummingbird

New Madrid

new song-Evergreen

Impossible Germany

new song-Let's Go Rain

I'm Always In Love

Passenger Side

Jesus, etc.

I'm The Man Who Loves You

----------------------------------

California Stars

new song-I Know What It's Like

Misunderstood

Acuff-Rose

A Shot in the Arm

[Sun Caught Fire]

Thanks P for the report, as always the next best thing to being there (no pun intended here either).  A webcast would be nice!