Jeff Tweedy — 28 September 2018, Victoria, BC, Canada (Capital Ballroom)

[bböp]

Maybe it's a bit of recency bias on my part, but what I've witnessed over the past few days has convinced me that there are basically two types of audiences when it comes to Jeff's solo shows and it comes down to the venue. In mostly general admission standing room, bar-type settings, crowds are engaged, loud and occasionally shameless, while in reserved-seat darkened theaters, they are generally attentive, anonymous and somewhat detached. (The exception to this theory, of course, being Spokane.)

 

The thing is, as I've often maintained, you'd like to have a bit of both in order to have a truly satisfying experience. Unfortunately, you rarely get exactly the right balance between rowdiness and respectfulness because it's a fine line. Different people come to Jeff's shows for different reasons, their enjoyment of his music manifests in different ways and I suppose they want different things out of him — whether it's banter, inspiration, attention or whatever. So it went tonight in the relatively intimate, general-admission confines of Victoria's Capital Ballroom, where Jeff played a loose, fun show to a Friday night audience that was very much into it, sometimes a little overly so.

 

To be fair, it had been a good, long while since Jeff's last solo performance in this part of the world. Despite Wilco coming to Vancouver about every three years or so dating back to 2010 — the band also played its only show in Victoria that year — is it possible that Jeff hadn't performed solo in western Canada since 2006? Anyway, early on in his set, Jeff mentioned that he had been "here for the (2010 Winter) Olympics. I medaled. I got a silver medal in sad folk. I still think I was robbed...Russian judges." And he mentioned the Olympics again as he left the stage for good, so that experience must have left an impression on him.

 

The biggest surprise, I guess, musically was (I think) the live debut of the title track from the forthcoming WARM — which we might owe, at least in part, to a request submitted by VCer TCP, née The Cowboy Poet, who was telling me that he had requested the song just before Jeff came out and started the show with it. Jeff came on stage already wearing his harmonica rack, which usually means Via Chicago, but it quickly became evident that it was going to be a different opener this evening. It's a pretty short song, actually, starting out, "Please take my advice/Worry into your song/Grow away from your anger/Distance belongs," and then the lyrics cited by George Saunders in his WARM liner notes, "Oh, I don't believe in heaven/I keep some heat inside/Like a red brick in the summer/Warm, when the sun has died." It's interesting to me that, at least from the track listing I've seen for WARM, there is another song actually called The Red Brick on the record. It's the second phrase that is referenced in more than one song; a reference to a "window twin" appears in both Some Birds and I Know What It's Like.

 

Jeff's banter game was pretty solid throughout, but definitely more evident in the first half of the set. After playing You And I, for example, he asked the crowd if the song had been played on the radio because, he joked, "I hired a Canadian to get around the CanCon laws" that require a certain percentage of Canadian work to be played on Canadian airwaves.

 

A bit later, he reached another crossroads in his set and, looking at his list of songs and requests on his side table, said, "Where else do we want to go with this performance? Did I say that aloud? This is what I'm thinking about up here." Then he continued, "This environment is gonna force me to sing some of my more festive songs. Don't get too excited. They're still fucking depressing." He briefly lifted his Stetson while this was going on, presumably to cool off a bit, and also made the comment, "See, it's not just hair glued inside a hat. It will be soon."

 

One other random comment came after Impossible Germany, when he mentioned how people might have noticed that the acoustic arrangement of the song didn't contain the solo from the full-band version and added a repeated lyric instead. "Nels' solo says 'This is what love is for' to me," Jeff remarked. "Because I'm romantic."

 

Otherwise Jeff mostly plowed through the second half of the show, leaving it to a crowd that definitely seemed into singing along, saying it had done the best job on Let's Go Rain of any audience thus far while gently chiding some clappers on California Stars by saying he "hadn't heard clapping like that since Norway." He closed the main set with old Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reliables Jesus, etc. (after telegraphing the opening chords earlier before switching to Kamera) and I'm The Man Who Loves You (with the fade-out-and-stroll-off-stage conclusion he has favored lately).

 

Perhaps the song that best epitomized this audience was the encore-starting I'm Always In Love, which sort of devolved into a glorious mess. First, for some reason, Jeff goofily would speak-sing the first line of each verse. Then one guy at stage right threatened to take over the song by loudly singing/humming the synthesizer riff at every opportunity, even after Jeff sarcastically called him out on it ("Are you not using a real synthesizer? That's so insane!"). Then everyone singing along badly jumped the gun on the final "I'm always in love" (with Jeff mouthing, "That's my part"), before singing the final whoos completely off rhythm. Maybe you had to be there to fully appreciate it, but it was truly something to behold. "Are any of you from Spokane?" Jeff asked afterward, a joke that probably only someone who had been at that show could fully appreciate.

 

This audience had a far different vibe from the one in Spokane, of course. It was, simply put, a bar crowd that wanted to have a good time, one that might have gotten a tad unruly on occasion but never crossed any line into disrespectful behavior. So that made for a generally fun vibe overall, one that Jeff seemed to ultimately enjoy. As did I.

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played (new songs indicated, with proper titles as known):

 

new song-Warm (When The Sun Has Died) (w/harmonica; live debut)

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

New Madrid

You And I

Hummingbird

new song-Having Been Is No Way To Be

Bull Black Nova

Laminated Cat (aka Not For The Season)

new song-Let's Go Rain

Impossible Germany

new song-Some Birds

Passenger Side

California Stars

Kamera

new song-Don't Forget

Jesus, etc.

I'm The Man Who Loves You

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

I'm Always In Love

Misunderstood

Acuff-Rose

A Shot in the Arm

[TCP]

Great write up Bbop!

I was a little worried about the crowd when people in the back and the sides talked through out James Elkington's set. Which is too bad because James was ripping up that guitar and definitely deserved a more attentive audience. But when Jeff was on stage, I didn't notice much, if any, talking. 

Another bit of banter that I liked was before Jeff played Let's Go Rain, when he announced he was going to sing a new song, the same gentleman who would later sing the synth part of I'm Always In Love, yelled out "oh the one that came out today!". Jeff was confused "Did a song come out today?". The guy mentioned Some Birds, which came out earlier this week, and Jeff, very gently, berated him for being late to the news on that and then openly pondered actually doing an actual song that (someone else) released that day.

Victoria is a really nice city, despite living in BC all my life, I've only been here twice before. For a community this size, there's some great record stores, Ditch Records and The Turntable, some nice restaurants, and some interesting architecture for Western Canada. It's a great city, hopefully Jeff and his crew enjoyed their time here as well.

I've seen Jeff/Wilco play in some great places but never in a bar. There was no rail, radiatortunes, bbop, my wife, and I were right against the stage, even setting our drinks down on it, the balcony went around the stage, and the whole audience totalled, I believe, around 600. This all made for a pretty intimate performance that I think will be hard to top tomorrow in Vancouver, but let's see!

[Sun Caught Fire]

As usual, this report is very much appreciated here on the East coast unable to be there in person. Can't wait to hear the tune Warm.

[50footqueenie]

I've been in Victoria on a Friday night and can confirm it's a party town. (And has some decent beer).