The Tweedy show

[ZiggyBratwurst]

Thanks.

[TCP]

No Tweedy Show tonight but bonus episode on Sunday, as per @stuffinourhouse on IG. 

[ZiggyBratwurst]

Tonight’s bonus episode is at 8pm Central, per @stuffinourhouse IG “story.” Notice that’s an hour earlier than usual.

[u2roolz]

The Tweedy Show "Father's Day Special" Sunday June 21 Episode 63

 

#animated intro on screen

-- Jeff & Susie introduce Peter Miller who is Susie's father. He's sitting in the barber chair.

-- Peter wishes a Happy Father's Day to all

-- Peter has wonderful words about Jeff, Susie, Spencer, & Sammy.

-- Peter tells a story about having to sing Tit Willow for his 8th grade graduation and sings a bit of it.

Casino Queen (w Spencer on drums & backing vocals. Dedicated to Jeff's late father.)

-- Peter talks about spending 108 days in the ICU back in 2018.

Mi Shebeirach (Debbie Friedman cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on backing vocals)

-- Peter tells a joke about Victor The ventriloquist

-- Peter tells a joke about a guy in a Dublin pharmacy

-- Peter talks about his late brother Willie

-- Peter talks about his dear friend the late Sam Bobrick

You Are Not Alone (Mavis Staples cover w Spencer on drums & backing vocals)

-- Jeff wishes Paul a Father's Day on behalf of Maeve {I assume this is for Paul Suwan. Not 100% sure}

-- Peter tells the story about the wonderful Chinese restaurant

-- Peter talks about learning Spanish from Professor Leonardo at Truman College

Ram On (Paul McCartney cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on drums & "mouth trombone")

-- Peter talks about how Jeff is a great father & husband. Jeff returns the compliments.

Save It For Me (w Spencer on drums & Sammy on backing vocals)

-- Peter says "intercourse" instead of "fuck" for his grandson Charles

-- Jeff says there will be an episode on Monday, but maybe not after that for a bit.

Reincarnation (Roger Miller cover)

 

The Tweedy Show shall return Monday evening, but might take a brief hiatus starting on Tuesday, according to Jeff.

[u2roolz]

Hope it goes well! Thanks as always for your recaps

Thank you, Craig!

 

Good luck on Thursday u2roolz!!

Thank you, Kevin!

 

 

Great note keeping Ziggy!

Yes, excellent job! Thank you, Monty!

 

Everything went well. Found one polyp. I still have to hear on that, but I’m a bit confidently arrogant that I’m in the clear for now because the issue subsided with some Omeprazole. Thank you again for the kind words!

[Chez]

Thank you, Craig!

 

Yes, excellent job! Thank you, Monty!

 

Everything went well. Found one polyp. I still have to hear on that, but I’m a bit confidently arrogant that I’m in the clear for now because the issue subsided with some Omeprazole. Thank you again for the kind words!

"Found One Polyp" should be a song title from Wilco's next album.    Glad to hear things went ok for you.

[ZiggyBratwurst]

Yes, excellent job! Thank you, Monty!

 

 

Happy to help, and glad to read that things went well for you.

[u2roolz]

The Tweedy Show Monday June 22 Episode 64

 

# animated intro on screen

Opaline (new song w lyrics "Make Believe That She Still Loved Me/When You Got No Love At All")

-- a toy boat is shown and everyone tries to say "toy boat" multiple times in a row

Range Life (Pavement cover sung by Sammy w Jeff on backing vocals)

-- Jeff shows off his cute socks

-- Susie mentions that A Shot In The Arm's Diane purchased & received the same IKEA curtains as the Tweedy's

Don't Forget (w Spencer on drums)

-- Spencer talks about a dream that he had regarding pooping in a dressing room getting ready for a gig

-- Peter Miller's photo is on the back of The Young Fresh Fellows' It's Low Beat Time record

Pink Flag (Wire cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on drums. Jeff & Spencer on backing vocals)

-- Spencer talks about his Whitehall drum set

-- Susie tells the "fucking Mark" story which is what Spencer said on his toy phone while Susie was on the phone with Mark in her office

-- Jeff discusses how he quit smoking when Spencer presented him with a "contract" to quit smoking after he got out of rehab in 2004.

-- Jeff mentions that he has to take another week long break again for his book. [Or this is the last Tweedy Show in a while.]

Guess Again (w Spencer on drums)

Reincarnation (Roger Miller cover)

 

The Tweedy Show might return a week from today. Maybe a bit longer. It sounds like another kids' edition will happen again. Stay tuned to Susie's IG for any announcements.

[lost highway]

I'd love for him to spill the beans about what this new book project is all about, but I have the feeling we won't hear about it for quite a while.

[TCP]

I'd love for him to spill the beans about what this new book project is all about, but I have the feeling we won't hear about it for quite a while.

 

Agreed. Even if he finishes writing it this week, I imagine by the time you go through editing, changes from the publisher, manufacturing, it'll probably be awhile. And if they want the release to coincide with another book tour that could delay things further. 

[u2roolz]

The (No Jeff) Tweedy Show KIDS EDITION Episode 65

 

-- Spencer & Casey sing a bit of The Wheels On The Bus

The Big Make-Over (Robert Pollard cover sung by Sammy)

-- Spencer discusses the philosophers Sartre & Camus

Drivin' On 9 (Ed’s Redeeming Qualities cover sung by Casey w Spencer on guitar & "mouth trumpet")

-- Charles calls in & chats. His dad, Danny, joins in on the chat too.

No Reply (The Beatles cover sung by Spencer w Sammy on backing vocals)

Everything Flows (Teenage Fanclub cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on guitar & backing vocals)

-- Spencer & Sammy have recorded some of their own music recently

New Paint (Loudon Wainwright III cover sung & performed on guitar by Casey. W Spencer on guitar)

Blue Moon (Bit Star cover sung by Sammy)

Maggie May (Rod Stewart cover sung by Casey w Spencer on guitar)

Reincarnation (Roger Miller cover)

 

The Tweedy Show will probably return Monday evening. Stay tuned to Susie's IG page once again for any announcements.

[tinnitus photography]

Drivin' on 9 is a song by Ed's Redeeming Qualities, who also wrote the definitive song about lawn darts. 

[Oil Can Boyd]

Drivin' on 9 is a song by Ed's Redeeming Qualities, who also wrote the definitive song about lawn darts. 

 

Ha! Not surprised that you beat me to it ...

[u2roolz]

Drivin' on 9 is a song by Ed's Redeeming Qualities, who also wrote the definitive song about lawn darts.

 

  

Ha! Not surprised that you beat me to it ...

Thank you! I changed it in my recap.

[ditty]

The Talented Tweedy Family

 

By Peter C. Baker

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-talented-tweedy-family

 

In the evening of March 19th, Susie Tweedy picked up her phone, opened Instagram, and started streaming live from her family’s Chicago home. Normally, her account is devoted to showcasing her vast collection of retro tchotchkes. On that night, though, she featured a new subject: her family, sheltered in place. There they were, visible to anyone who happened to be tuning in: her husband, Jeff, best known as the singer and primary songwriter of the band Wilco, and their two sons, Spencer and Sammy. I didn’t catch that night’s stream, and can’t find an archived version online, but Internet lore holds that Jeff took questions from the bathtub. Susie was coughing, and viewers were reassured that she did not have covid-19. The broadcast wasn’t preplanned or advertised, so no one knew to tune in. But, the next night, the Tweedys did it again, and then they did it again, and, soon, it was a regular thing: “The Tweedy Show,” seven nights a week. Recently, it’s gone down to four nights, with sporadic breaks as needed. Sixty-plus episodes in, it’s my favorite cultural production of the pandemic, hands down.

 

A representative “Tweedy Show” goes like this: Jeff plays a handful of his own songs, plus a few covers, usually sitting on the living-room couch (no more bathtub shots), often wearing normal clothes up top and pajama bottoms down below. Spencer, who is twenty-four and has collaborated extensively with his father in recent years, sits on the other end of the couch, sometimes using his hands to drum on his knees, sometimes playing a minimalist drum kit set up in the middle of the room. Sammy, who is twenty and still in college, wanders in and sings a few songs, reading lyrics off the phone; like his dad, he’s a technically imperfect singer with the rare gift of making whatever he’s singing sound like what he’s feeling at that very moment. Now and then, father and sons all sing together. Susie stays behind the camera, keeping track of questions, comments, and requests from viewers, whom the family jokingly call “clients.” (Now that word of the show has trickled out, between one and two thousand people tune in per night.) Occasionally, Spencer’s girlfriend, the Chicago musician Casey Walker, who is part of the family’s quarantine pod, shows up and sings, too. Casey’s dog, Basil, seems to be a lot of viewers’ favorite recurring character.

The performances are loose and warm, the stories unpolished and meandering, the mockery gentle and loving. In a welcome departure from a great deal of other made-at-home pandemic content, the Tweedys’ living room actually looks like a place where people live, not a furniture showroom. The show gives us the feeling, absent from most of our lives now, of lounging around with friends after dinner—but throws a wildly above-average amount of musical talent and experience into the mix.

 

For anyone who has followed Jeff Tweedy over the years, “The Tweedy Show” will have an extra emotional undercurrent. In the spring of 2004, Tweedy publicly announced that he was entering a rehab program designed to treat panic attacks and a painkiller addiction. I remember rewatching old Wilco performances during this period, searching uncomfortably for signs of Tweedy’s struggles not just in the songs but in the man himself: his eyes, his mouth, the way he stood. A new Wilco album, “A Ghost Is Born,” had been recorded before Tweedy entered treatment; that summer, when it was released, lyrics about migraines, drug deals, and breakdowns jumped as if they’d been underlined.

 

In two recent solo albums, “Warm” and “Warmer,” and an accompanying memoir, “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back),” Tweedy has revisited this part of his life with a new level of detail and candor. In one heartbreaking passage, he recalls being sure that he would die soon and wanting to leave his last album as a memory ark for his children: “I was a goner, but I didn’t have to lose everything. ‘A Ghost Is Born’ would be a gift to my kids, who could turn to it when they were older and put together the pieces of me a little bit more than I’d been able to put myself together for them in real life. ‘There will be a new day someday,’ I thought, and I wanted this record to be an elemental tool for Spencer and Sammy to reconstruct my worldview, to have some deeper connection to the dad they’d lost.”

 

One of the great pleasures of “Warm” and “Warmer” was looking at the liner notes and realizing that the albums feature Spencer’s drumming and Sammy’s backing vocals; they’re literally supporting their dad as he delivers songs about the time in his life when he thought he would die. A similar feeling permeates “The Tweedy Show”: there are songs about loss and pain and mortality—but they’re being performed by a family looking awfully grateful to have one another to hunker down with. It’s not uncommon to hear Susie tearing up behind the camera, and I can’t blame her.

 

On the first Monday of the month, after the nation erupted in protests over racist police brutality, the show began on a sombre note. Jeff recalled starting the show back in March as a way to help people get their bearings amid the disorientation of the pandemic. On this night, though, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want the show’s ongoing existence to function as a brief for escapism, or a cry for going “back to the status quo.” His conflicted feelings were visible on his face. “I just remind myself that joy is allowed,” Spencer said. “Even in solemn moments, and also even in moments that demand concrete action and dedication.”

 

Many of us are more housebound than usual, improvising new modes of coexistence with family members and other companions. In the streets, protesters are improvising new modes of solidarity, demanding that society at large to do the same. (Last week, Tweedy announced that, going forward, five per cent of his songwriting revenue would be donated to racial-justice organizations, and expressed a hope that similar initiatives might become commonplace across the music industry, perhaps as a standard option on rights-management contracts.) Good songs provide a vision of life’s chaos resolved—if only for a few minutes—in meaningful unity. Out in the world, it may not be time for resolution yet. But, meanwhile, “The Tweedy Show” manages to function as good news of the deepest sort: a sign that things can be O.K., even when things aren’t O.K.

 

Peter C. Baker is a writer based in Chicago.

[Chez]

^^^ What a fabulous essay!

[ZiggyBratwurst]

Drivin' on 9 is a song by Ed's Redeeming Qualities, who also wrote the definitive song about lawn darts. 

 

 

  

Thank you! I changed it in my recap.

 

Changed on the spreadsheet, too.

[last cigarettes]

so...

 

long time client here. i've been mostly watching episodes on youtube rather than live, so i haven't been as connected with all of you as i wish i were. i also wish i'd been a little less shy at past solid sounds and other shows, and said hello instead of just smiling in the background (though my kids and i are in the group photo from last year- if any clients have a decent resolution copy that they'd like to send along i'd be much obliged )...

 

i tend to be more of a reader (lurker just sounds creepy) than a contributor on VC. i seem to only post here immediately post-show (when i'm soaked in good energy), or after major trauma in my life (i won't bore you all with details). i don't mean to get weepy, but i just watched the father's day episode (63), and i'm feeling all my feelings.

 

peter, susie, jeff, spencer, sammy, casey, basil- thank you all for this beautiful gift. your show has been such a salve for the anxiety, uncertainty, grief, etc. that we've all been going through in these times. much as i've found jeff and company's music to be since i was 14 (uncle tupelo days), you have made it okay to be sad and happy and close and distant and fearful and hopeful all at the same time. 18 years ago this past tuesday, i lost my own dad to cancer when he was 49 and i was 23. much of my meandering, occasionally stumbling path through life since then has been shaped by that experience. we've gone through our share of other immediate family medical drama over the ensuing years, but i know it is no worse than that of many of the rest of you- we all have our struggles, and we would all be better off if we were more open to sharing them and finding common ground with one another rather than finding ways to define our differences and digging in on our opposition to those we disagree with.

 

thank you, tweedy family, for opening your lives and hearts and songbooks to those of us who love you from afar. high school, college, my marriage, my kids' childhood- all of it has included your music, humor, and acceptance, and is richer for it. this family of clients loves all of you (and other clients we've yet to meet) so deeply, and yearns for the opportunity to gather together again in the amazing community we've all helped to build. 

 

also, forevermore, i will both laugh and cry anytime jeff starts playing one sunday morning, especially close to the one minute warning (it's so sad, and so beautiful... and so long).

 

feeling all your feelings,

 

isaac 

 

p.s. U2roolz, glad to hear you're feeling better. you've been doing yeoman's work with your recaps. and paul, and diane, and all the rest of you, of course. we'd all be lost in the dark without such powerful institutional knowledge on our side. 

[ZiggyBratwurst]

This is a lovely thing to read first thing this morning. Great way to start my day. Thank you, Isaac.

[theashtraysays]

Well said Isaac and thanks for sharing.

We’ll hold you accountable next summer in North Adams to find more of us irl. Just look for the hugs, that’ll be us.

Vince

[tinnitus photography]

This is a lovely thing to read first thing this morning. Great way to start my day. Thank you, Isaac.

100% agree. lovely post, esp this part:

 

 

 

we all have our struggles, and we would all be better off if we were more open to sharing them and finding common ground with one another rather than finding ways to define our differences and digging in on our opposition to those we disagree with.

i need to keep that in the forefront of my mind more often.

 

[last cigarettes]

thanks for the kind words, guys. tim and vince, you have both always made me feel welcome in this community since i joined. monty, your level of deep appreciation and obsessive organization make you a welcome new friend- great to have you here.

 

watching the tweedy show is also taking a little of the sting out of not seeing wilco and sleater-kinney in my hometown, on our anniversary (and jeff's birthday!), with my wife and brother-in-law and sister-in-law in august. i've never been more grateful that it's not an odd-year summer- i'm keeping myself hopeful with visions of joe's field next june...

[u2roolz]

The Tweedy Show Monday June 29 Episode 66

 

# animated intro on screen

-- Jeff shows off his Porous Walker socks

I'd Rather Be Alone (last performed on the 2nd episode when it was still untitled. I gave it the name I'd Rather Be Alone back then because it gets repeated a lot in the song. Tonight Jeff gave it the official title.)

-- Jeff & Susie talk about the recent New Yorker piece

Try (Neil Young cover w Spencer on drums. In honor of Neil's Homegrown being released and Canada Day on July 1st.)

Muzzle Of Bees

-- Jeff plays a bit of the hymn In Christ There Is No East Or West to stump Paul which he does

Close My Eyes (Arthur Russell cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on backing vocals)

La De Da (Link Wray cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on drums w Jeff & Spencer on backing vocals)

-- the Tweedy family wonders why Lemmy on the curtains looks different tonight. It turns out that one of the lightbulbs in the ceiling lamp is out.

I Know What It's Like (w Spencer on drums)

-- Susie mentions that a year ago today we were all at Solid Sound

When You Sleep (My Bloody Valentine cover sung by Sammy w Spencer on drums)

-- Susie shows her lunchbox collection which includes Dukes Of Hazzard which has the Confederate flag. Spencer takes it and smashes it to the ground.

-- a discussion on cancel culture is had by all

-- Jeff plays a few notes of Reincarnation because they lost track of the time.

[TCP]

Great show. But I have to correct the record, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Neil is absolutely still a Canadian citizen as well as American. He's arguably our best songwriter, you guys already have Bob Dylan, why are you trying to take credit for Neil too?? 

The only way to make this right is on Wednesday (Canada Day), to do a special show of ONLY Canadian songs. Neil? Check. Leonard Cohen? Check. Tragically Hip? Sure. Robbie Robertson? Check. Rush? YES! 

Who's with me?!?! 

[u2roolz]

p.s. U2roolz, glad to hear you're feeling better. you've been doing yeoman's work with your recaps. and paul, and diane, and all the rest of you, of course. we'd all be lost in the dark without such powerful institutional knowledge on our side.

Thank you for the kind words, Isaac! Great story! Thank you for sharing it with us! And yes, I view this as a collaboration between Paul, Monty & myself.

 

And it sounds like you’re local to me, since you were also going to see Wilco on Jeff’s birthday in Boston. I don’t think that will ever happen again in terms of scheduling a show on his birthday in my neck of the woods.