Jeff Tweedy — 9 March 2019, Macon, GA (Hargray Capitol Theatre)

[bböp]

Finally, a general admission standing show! In a lot of ways, this venue felt to me like one that Jeff might've played in the "good old days," with its low stage and lack of barricades contributing to a level of intimacy that you don't always get anymore. For those in the first couple of rows, you certainly couldn't have gotten much closer to Jeff. And unlike many of the "black box"-type rooms he has performed in recently, where he couldn't see much — if any — of the audience, here Jeff could probably see nearly everyone.

Theoretically this type of setting should have made for an especially fun, energetic show, with a great connection between Jeff and the crowd, but for whatever reason, I thought it ended up being just OK in that regard. I think some of that maybe had to do with Jeff simply being a little distracted, for whatever reason. It also probably had to do with some audience members who, because of their proximity to Jeff, could be heard more than usual and whose occasional awkward comments and behaviors also probably contributed to Jeff not being quite as focused as usual. I should say that I have no definitive knowledge or evidence of this, except the experience of having seen Jeff perform many times in many different settings.

Anyway, like I said, nothing wrong with a perfectly enjoyable show that probably left the vast majority of the audience feeling like they had gotten their money's worth and then some. I certainly don't mean to take the shine off anyone's experience. Personally, I just don't think it was Jeff's absolute best night. He struggled to keep his primary guitars in tune, blaming it on the changing weather they have endured on this tour, and even stopped Hummingbird after saying the guitar he was using "sounds like shit" and restarting the song with a different guitar. He flubbed a line even after the restart, and that followed a chord flub on Radio King that caused him to exclaim "Oh, shit," with a grimace of sorts, as if he was saying to himself, "What happened there?" (In service of accurate reporting, he also had a near-flub in Remember The Mountain Bed and flipped two lines in the first verse of Guaranteed.)

Perhaps at least one other minor source of distraction might have simply involved playing an acoustic show on a Saturday night. At one point, maybe after some shouted requests, Jeff picked up his cheatsheet (it’s not really a setlist, but a list of songs with some notes; I saw Buck Meek letting some folks take a quick picture of it after the show, so maybe it will appear somewhere) and jokingly said that he had a plan for what to do if things “got rowdy.” In my mind, I immediately pictured a “rowdy flowchart,” which would be kind of hilarious. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure or something. Anyway, at another point, he also mentioned that he wanted to sneak in the delicate Warmer song Guaranteed “before things get too rowdy.”

In terms of other visits to Banter Corner, Jeff noted that Radio King was the most requested song of the night — by a whopping six people — and jokingly blamed his mistake on the people who requested it. Then he did a quick version of his bit about how all of his songs are requested by exactly one person each night and how "there's no consensus" so he's asked other audiences to leave once they've heard their song and that way he'll know when to stop playing.

Jeff also recounted his story that he wasn't wearing his trademark hat because too many other people who came to his shows were wearing it and that he had chosen a model that was too easy to find. Jeff added that after he offered this explanation in Texas, the "Twitter police" even chimed in about the matter, trying to argue that his hat actually wasn't that common and insisting that people were actually wearing it as an homage to Lyndon Johnson — or something like that. At any rate, Jeff pretty much dismissed that theory as horseshit.

Another brief, but humorous, line came when Jeff introduced New Madrid by saying he was going to play a song "from Uncle Tupelo times." Then he added that he was going to start a restaurant called "Uncle Tupelo Times" that would feature...frozen burritos.

The other significant banter came toward the end of the set when someone mentioned the 20th birthday of Summerteeth and another person then yelled a request for ELT. "No," Jeff immediately shot back, and then talked about how he wasn't going to honor the occasion because "20 is just an arbitrary number. Why didn't we have (a celebration) last year of 19?" That segued into a brief tangent on weed, of all things. Jeff explained that those sorts of thoughts went through his head even though he doesn't smoke weed anymore, and then shared that his wife possessed a medical marijuana license because of her continuing treatment for cancer and how she had a tackle box with all sorts of implements for smoking weed but didn't really use much of the marijuana and probably just mostly liked having all the stuff that went along with it.

Of course Jeff did sort of end up honoring Summerteeth in his encore by playing I'm Always In Love and A Shot in the Arm, both of which elicited some pretty good crowd participation. Between that pair and the show-closing Misunderstood and Acuff-Rose, which both drew perceptible audience admiration during their respective instrumental interludes, Jeff ended the show on a musical high note, which certainly was more than welcome.

Here was the complete setlist, as played:

Via Chicago (w/harmonica)
Remember The Mountain Bed
Bombs Above
Some Birds
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Radio King
Family Ghost
Guaranteed
Having Been Is No Way To Be
Hummingbird
I Know What It's Like
New Madrid
Passenger Side
Let's Go Rain
Jesus, etc.
Heavy Metal Drummer
I'm The Man Who Loves You
---------------------------------
Don't Forget
I'm Always In Love
A Shot in the Arm
Misunderstood
Acuff-Rose

[SarahC]

It thought it was a fun show. Worth the drive.

 

I think some more “rare” Summerteeth gems might make their way out in the Florida run, perhaps.