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Wilco — 19 August 2021, Asheville, NC (Salvage Station)


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Just doing my duty here, though unfortunately I wasn't there in person. Someone I know who was there sent me some photos of the setup and the stage and I have to say that, despite the terrible venue name, it did appear to be quite a lovely little spot for an outdoor show. Hopefully the flooding in western North Carolina wasn't too bad around the area...

 

As far as the show, I guess when you don't have Spiders in the setlist, there's time for an extra tune or two. Interesting to note the inclusion of Hummingbird. Is that the first time for this run? I can't remember for sure, but is Asheville Lilac Rain territory? She must be about 30 by now. Anyway, I feel like Hummingbird is one that always gets played in Asheville for some reason, though I'm too lazy to look it up right now. Will look forward to the Vince recap and any others (#SorryAboutTheNovaYetAgain).

 

For now, here was Wilco's complete setlist, as played (once again taken from Wilcoworld, for record-keeping purposes here):

 

A Shot In The Arm

Random Name Generator

At Least That's What You Said

One And A Half Stars

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

Art Of Almost

If I Ever Was A Child

Impossible Germany

Love Is Everywhere (Beware)

Box Full Of Letters

Hummingbird

Everyone Hides

Dawned On Me

Jesus, etc.

Theologians

I'm The Man Who Loves You

What Light

Heavy Metal Drummer

I'm Always In Love

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

The Late Greats

California Stars

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Thank you for the post.  I had planned on going to the Tuesday night show, couldn't make it to Thursday's show.

I was at the show in Ashville where Lilac Rain made her stage debut, it was really cool.  Then every subsequent show, she'd be there, and he'd carry her around during Hummingbird.  The last time I saw this happen, she was pretty damn big, looked kinda awkward. :) 

 

 

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Always tough trying to do a recap AFTER bbop posted one for the night before.  But here goes...

First off, it really WAS a (somewhat) converted junkyard set up as a food-and-entertainment area right next to the French Broad river.  Food trucks and a couple bars around the perimeter, with the stage in one corner with a big open area in the middle, with quite a few tables & chairs and places for lawn chairs behind the gravel pit area in front of the stage.  Lots of vintage signs & other oddities lying around.  If you caught Jeff's Starship Casual today, you saw that it POURED down rain during the afternoon ahead of the show.  But it mercifully stopped right at 430 which is when they opened up the parking lot and started letting folks in to get lined up.  That did make for a few sloppy spots in the venue where they had put down fresh mulch in some of the walkways and grassy areas to try and keep down the mud I suppose.  I did have a little deja vu moment when the rain started, as this show was already rescheduled from Tuesday to Thursday while TS Fred was dumping rain on Asheville and caused the tour to get re-arranged.  But the show must (and did) go on. 

The entry process left much to be desired, and this was the first show I attended on this tour where they did NOT screen vax cards or negative tests.  There were noticeably more masks going in than I'd seen in other shows, since NC has an indoor mask mandate, which the venue said applied to the large bar area and the indoor food areas.  But out in the venue itself, it was pretty mask-less other than the oddity that about a third of the folks on the rail wore masks.

NNAMDI opened at 6, with the sun peeking out from the earlier clouds and steaming things up a bit.  He remarked that he usually had a guitar, but due to the wrist injury he got the day the tour started, "y'all just get to watch me wiggle around a lot".  Good set, and seemed that the GA crowd was enjoying it.
Sleater-Kinney came on, and once again the SK faithful were there in force, adding tons of energy to the show and drawing lots of smiles from the band, along with some nice praise from Carrie that they were "the best audience this tour."  She also mentioned that they were in Asheville on Tuesday night (being cancelled), but that tonight was way better.   I can't say enough about how their fans really make a show come alive.

The sun was still up when Wilco came on at 8:25-ish, still steamy and warmed up nicely from the SK set.  Jeff's glasses kept fogging up, and he couldn't really see much for the first song or three.  His guitar tech had to wipe down his glasses with the first couple of guitar swaps, and Jeff even tried taking them off for one song but quickly abandoned that approach.  After his tech cleaned them off the first time, he remarked "hey look at all these people here!".  A couple more quips about the rain earlier that day, and also thanked everyone for coming out for the rescheduled show tonight. 

Again not a ton of banter, but we did get one more song than usual, with Late Greats being the first encore song ("pretend we walked off, you screamed, and we came back") before CaliStars ended at 10:00 sharp.  One little tidbit was before Heavy Metal Drummer.  Jeff was kinda strumming loosely, and speaking some of the lyric lines to the song before Glenn kicked off the actual song.  At the end of that spoken-word prelude, he added "let me tell you about heavy metal drummer and the big beat", a la The Doors "The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)".  Interesting to say the least.  He did mention earlier that this was the first time they've played Hummingbird in 19 months or whatever.  A very welcome add, and the audience participation was pretty admirable. 

Kudo's as always to the crew and to Stan running sound.  Apparently they didn't get to sound check due to the earlier rain, but the sound was excellent considering it wasn't the most high-end venue they've ever played.  And there was no backstage area to use for shuffling gear across the three bands, just a tent covered platform stage left.  The crew has really outdone themselves this run, and the rescheduled Asheville show means that they have 5 nights in a row, with ridiculously long driving times in between.  Gonna be a long week for everyone.

As mentioned by bbop, we were once again NovaFree at this show.  I had brought a new "got nova?" sign, sharpie'd in my best copycat "got milk?" font (the phenix american font in case you were wondering).  Not sure if it got through to the foggy-glass lead singer, but like any white sign with black lettering, it did get a "nope" head shake.  Not one to be discouraged, I tried taking my 8' long banner version and taping it onto the stage side of the rail about halfway through the show... didn't even get a head shake on that one.  Sigh. 

I'm off the trail for a while, with no more of the SK/Wilco shows on tap.  Hope to pick back up in Sept with a couple festival dates, then (hopefully) heading out west for most of the October run. 

@bböp, back to you!!

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