Wilco — 6 November 2019, Pittsburgh, PA (Heinz Hall)

[bböp]

Although Pittsburgh has historically been a preferred place for Wilco to play, I would have to say that a group of pretty passive patrons — not to mention some possible potty problems on Jeff's part — probably played into tonight's performance being the closest to a professional one thus far on the Ode To Joy tour. And in this case, "professional" did not necessarily produce a positive payoff. Picture a relatively perfunctory production...if you please?

 

In other words, if you don’t do alliteration, the band always enjoys playing in Pittsburgh but the audience didn’t really bring it this time and that, along with Jeff’s gastrointestinal issues, that made for a solid, if unspectacular — aka professional — show.

 

Of course, if you’re only seeing one show on a given tour, the reality of such a performance will be lost on you. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The performers are still presenting the show they want to present, in this case complete with abstract art projections and lighting design, and presumably enjoying themselves as much as anywhere else. Things just aren’t quite clicking on all cylinders, for whatever reason, and it’s the professionalism of the act that gets it through.

 

For instance, Jeff shared with the audience about two thirds of the way through the main set that he had been dealing with a little tummy trouble from what he identified as “a salad from a truck.” “Don’t eat salad from a truck, people,” Jeff quipped. “Do you have salad trucks here? I’m not sure it was from a truck. Let’s just keep playing music.” And earlier in the show, as part of an amusing visit to Banter Corner about White Wooden Cross being more of a serious song which is why the band put it to a calypso beat — Jeff looked back at Glenn and asked if it was indeed calypso, to which Glenn responded, ‘Not really,’ so Jeff finally settled on “vaguely tropical, to avoid cultural appropriation” — Jeff also joked that, “I think the Imodium is starting to kick in.”   

 

Whether it had to do with his GI distress or some other reason, Jeff was a little wobblier on lyrics than usual. He had a small hiccup in Hummingbird, sang the “They’re not worth reading” line twice in Laminated Cat (instead of “It’s not for the season” the first time through) and also couldn’t quite cleanly utter the “I create/I am the flame/Flame creator…” lyric in Random Name Generator.

 

The other main factor, IMHO, with this show was there was little energy coming from the audience until almost the end of the show. Heinz Hall is a very nice 2,600-seat theater, like plenty of others the band has played before. Unlike at most theaters, though, the audience remained seated nearly the entire show. To be fair, there were pockets of people near me and elsewhere that tried to stand early on but were shouted down by people behind them so that eventually, for a significant portion of the set, everyone was sitting.

 

Maybe if the band hadn’t just come off a show the night before in Ann Arbor during which a theater crowd stayed mostly seated throughout, Jeff wouldn’t have said anything. (And it was a little weird, at least to me, that the first audience comment in Pittsburgh came from a guy who asked Jeff, “You’re not too tired from Ann Arbor, are you?” Jeff looked out quizzically in the guy’s direction and replied, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”) But after Impossible Germany, Jeff couldn’t help but point out while checking in once again that this “is the first audience we’ve had in a very long time that’s stayed seated the whole time,” though he did admit that the seats looked pretty comfy. Perhaps it was because of his genuine fondness for Pittsburgh, which he expressed before leaving the stage, that he felt comfortable being honest with this audience.

 

I wouldn’t say Jeff’s comment completely eased the tension between sitting and standing, but it definitely helped. And by the real encore — Jeff reiterated what he has been saying before Hold Me Anyway about how the audience should pretend that the band had already played its main set, gone off stage and returned, adding that “we weren’t sure we were gonna get (an encore) so we stayed. Also, we crunched some numbers at the beginning of the tour and figured we could play 1.7 more songs if we didn’t go off and come back, so this is the .7,” — more people had stood up and people had even started to trickle down the aisles toward the stage.

 

As a result, the show-closing Misunderstood felt like the only song of the evening to me that really had the energy of a proper Wilco show. I found myself thinking, ‘Wow, this is what this whole show should have been like,’ and being a little sad that it hadn’t. Not that there weren’t other highlights, like Laminated Cat which was excellent on this evening with a particularly intense jam section leading to the fade-out conclusion (with Jeff leaning on his whammy bar) the band has been employing recently. Indeed, the three-song run of Whole Love, Laminated Cat and Random Name Generator in the middle of the main set might have represented the apex of the entire gig.

 

So like I said earlier, this one definitely fit into more of a “professional” sort of performance, especially when compared to recent Pittsburgh shows, like one at the nearby and similarly sized Benedum Center in early 2016 and an outdoor show at Stage AE in 2017. While I think that a band’s touring patterns and feelings about any given city often tend to be overanalyzed and overblown, I do think that Jeff does have a soft spot for Pittsburgh and maybe that’s why he was a bit miffed to see a fairly lifeless crowd. But things could have always been worse, right? We could have been in Philadelphia...

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played (Jesus, etc., was on the printed list as the first song of the encore but was replaced by California Stars, and If I Ever Was A Child was also listed after Impossible Germany but crossed out):

 

Bright Leaves

Before Us

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

War On War

One and a Half Stars

Handshake Drugs

At Least That's What You Said

Hummingbird

White Wooden Cross

Via Chicago

Whole Love

Laminated Cat (aka Not For The Season)

Random Name Generator

Reservations

We Were Lucky

Love Is Everywhere (Beware)

Impossible Germany

Box Full Of Letters

Theologians

I'm The Man Who Loves You

Hold Me Anyway

The Late Greats

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

California Stars

Red-Eyed and Blue>

I Got You (At The End of the Century)

Misunderstood

[Albert Tatlock]

Potty problems? The mind boggles.

[LittleDrummerBoy]

This show was awesome! Being my first show since the release of Ode to Joy, it was a treat to hear the newer songs (although my favorite, Everyone Hides, was omitted), and that was by far the best version of Laminated Cat I've ever seen/heard.

 

Following the previous setlists, I was disappointed when Jeff put on the electric after Hold Me Anyway, as Misunderstood is my 2nd favorite Wilco song - behind Let's Not Get Carried Away (I'm a fan of Glenn, if you couldn't tell), but was ecstatic when they CLOSED with it! 

 

Thanks for the recap as always!

[Beastsbelly]

Allow me to second the praise for Laminated Cat.  It was truly epic.  And the lead-in/crossover from The Whole Love was very engaging.  The combination of the two makes this a Roadcase-worthy show and worth the price of admission plus FLAC.

 

I'm missing Everyone Hides.  Surprised that they would drop the second single from the set so quickly.

[LittleDrummerBoy]

Although Pittsburgh has historically been a preferred place for Wilco to play, I would have to say that a group of pretty passive patrons — not to mention some possible potty problems on Jeff's part — probably played into tonight's performance being the closest to a professional one thus far on the Ode To Joy tour. And in this case, "professional" did not necessarily produce a positive payoff. Picture a relatively perfunctory production...if you please?

 

 

To Jeff's point, those chairs were really comfortable...

[jhuml1]

I still don't get why they book seated venues and then complain about it. Someone besides Jeff is booking them, sure, but all he has to do is say "knock it off" and then problem solved.

[nalafej]

I still don't get why they book seated venues and then complain about it. 

 

Totally! And this has been going on for years now.

[bböp]

I still don't get why they book seated venues and then complain about it. Someone besides Jeff is booking them, sure, but all he has to do is say "knock it off" and then problem solved.

Totally! And this has been going on for years now.

I don't pretend to know everything about how shows get booked, but I'm sure a lot more goes into it than we know. First off, the band has a booking agent for a reason. Wilco obviously could say yay or nay to a venue, of course, but I'm sure they specify the types and sizes of venues they're looking to play and then leave the specifics up to High Road Touring. It could be that a market like Pittsburgh doesn't have a suitable general admission venue (a November show at Stage AE isn't a possibility, I'm guessing?) of a certain size to fulfill Wilco's requirements. Or it could come down to availability or tour routing or any number of factors. My point is that they might book a seated venue in a certain market because it's the only room available of a certain size.

 

I think especially with OTJ that the band did want to play a mix of theaters and some GA venues. It's just that they don't expect a theater crowd to stay seated the entire time. Hell, even at Radio City — which, I mean, there's not many cushier places than that — some people stood and there wasn't a problem. From past experience, I can say that it's pretty unusual for a reserved-seat crowd to stay seated for most or all of a show so it's not surprising that Jeff would comment on it when it does...

 

Anyway, my two cents. Also, taking this opportunity to also say I've updated my recap above.

[jhuml1]

I don't pretend to know everything about how shows get booked, but I'm sure a lot more goes into it than we know. First off, the band has a booking agent for a reason. Wilco obviously could say yay or nay to a venue, of course, but I'm sure they specify the types and sizes of venues they're looking to play and then leave the specifics up to High Road Touring. It could be that a market like Pittsburgh doesn't have a suitable general admission venue (a November show at Stage AE isn't a possibility, I'm guessing?) of a certain size to fulfill Wilco's requirements. Or it could come down to availability or tour routing or any number of factors. My point is that they might book a seated venue in a certain market because it's the only room available of a certain size.

 

I think especially with OTJ that the band did want to play a mix of theaters and some GA venues. It's just that they don't expect a theater crowd to stay seated the entire time. Hell, even at Radio City — which, I mean, there's not many cushier places than that — some people stood and there wasn't a problem. From past experience, I can say that it's pretty unusual for a reserved-seat crowd to stay seated for most or all of a show so it's not surprising that Jeff would comment on it when it does...

 

Anyway, my two cents. Also, taking this opportunity to also say I've updated my recap above.

 

I'm sure there is a lot of truth in what you're saying. It is kind of puzzling in Dallas/Irving, though, because the venue that they've played the last 2 times through can be configured as GA, as it has been for every other show I've seen there. Maybe it has to do with struggling to sell out there, which might be even harder to do with that large GA section up front. There aren't really any other venues in Dallas of the same capacity or slightly smaller that would provide a good mix of GA and seats. Bomb Factory is mostly GA, South Side Ballroom is all-GA. Majestic Theater, McFarlin Auditorium, and Fair Park Music Hall are all seats. Guess we'll just have to storm the front again next time!

 

Thanks for the recaps; I read them all and enjoy them.

[nalafej]

You just have to love this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headline 

 

Wilco overcomes a bad salad to play another great Pittsburgh show

 

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/music/2019/11/07/Wilco-review-Ode-to-Joy-Pittsburgh-Heinz-Hall-Jeff-Tweedy-Nels-Cline/stories/201911070116