Jeff Tweedy — 25 February 2022, Los Angeles, CA (Largo at the Coronet Theatre) [Night 2 of 5]

[bböp]

Before Jeff plays a few shows all by his lonesome here in Los Angeles and then in Texas, he bid farewell to his solo band — sadly, for who knows how long — with one more full set that once again demonstrated how talented each individual band member is and how well they have gelled as a unit. And once again, the band changed things up enough with the setlist to keep it interesting for those folks seeing more than one show, while also keeping the focus squarely on songs from Love Is The King and Jeff's other relatively recent solo work.
 

While Jeff's Largo shows have always traditionally featured an opening set by a surprise comedian, the identity of said comedian for Night 2 was perhaps the worst-kept secret of the day on this stretch of La Cienaga Boulevard — particularly after social media posts providing set times for the show listed "NO" with a slot at 8:10 p.m. before "JT" took the stage at 8:30. Of course anyone who hasn't been living under a rock in recent years would be able to deduce that the "NO" could only be Nick Offerman, and sure enough, the clean-shaven actor/author/woodworker/buddy of Jeff emerged on schedule with an acoustic guitar in hand and proceeded to regale the crowd with a couple of songs (including one he and Jeff wrote together for the audiobook version of Offerman's book Good Clean Fun; I believe it was American White Oak, but I'm not 100 percent sure) before concluding his mini-set with the Parks and Recreation fan favorite 5,000 Candles In The Wind (Bye, Bye L'il Sebastian) with special guest Jim O'Heir.

 

Once Jeff And Co. hit the stage, it didn't take long for him to acknowledge how happy he was that Nick was able to come be a part of tonight's show. It took exactly two songs, to be precise, for Jeff to mention his well-documented bromance with Offerman and author/professor George Saunders — which is chronicled in Offerman's most recent book, Where The Deer and the Antelope Play — and how he is "not bragging, but it's pretty fucking cool." Jeff added after playing A Robin Or A Wren that he had been thinking about how he wished Saunders could have been at the show tonight as well, but then he remembered that Saunders actually helped write some of the lyrics for AROAW, so he kind of was a very small part of the show in that way.

 

Unfortunately we did not get any more Offerman sightings, on stage or off, for the rest of the evening, not even for a little collab of some sort. Then again, there was a slightly more business-like feel to the pacing of the show tonight than Night 1. As Jeff sort of alluded to at one point, some of the Tweedy band members, including Liam Kazar, Spencer Tweedy and Sima Cunningham, had to catch a red-eye flight back to Chicago immediately after the show since Liam was due to headline his own show at Metro the following night and Spencer and Sima play in his band as well. Phew, no rest for the weary!

 

I should say that unless you had seen, say, three shows in a row, you almost certainly wouldn't have been able to detect anything out of the ordinary. It wasn't like Jeff or anyone else in the band seemed rushed in anyway, but they just moved through their set a little more expeditiously. Jeff certainly visited Banter Corner on more than a few occasions — including a little stretching session in which he demonstrated his flexibility before World Away,  a funny little bit about how he hasn't yet learned to introduce songs properly in 30 years of performing and a semi-dad joke about how Wait For Love was commissioned by George W. Bush as part of an abstinence campaign — but there was (thankfully) no mention of the anniversary of Spencer's "anal fissure" or too much (any?) back-and-forth with the crowd.

 

For the encore, which once again led off with Sammy Tweedy's excellent lead vocal on Neil Young's Helpless, the band shook things up a little bit with covers of It Must Be Love by Labi Siffre and Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You by Bob Dylan. After the former and prior to the latter, Jeff remarked, "Bet you didn't expect to hear that one." (To which I kind of wanted to say, well, for those of us who tuned into the short Tweedy Show episode streamed from backstage just before the show, during which they played It Must Be Love, well, we sort of did expect that maybe they would play it during the show as well...) But anyway, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the harmonies by Sima and her Ohmme-mate Macie Stewart on It Must Be Love, though, which sounded absolutely killer on this song in particular.

 

For the final two songs of the show, Sima moved over to the "Jon Brion honorary piano bench" for the first time all show. The piano had seemed to be in play a bit more on Night 1, so perhaps that was another product of the slightly increased pace of Night 2. And perhaps it was because it hadn't been used much that when you could hear it, like during Sima's short solo on California Stars, there seemed to be a bit of static, at least at the outset. But this is the smallest of nits I'm picking in what was otherwise a great-sounding show and just a perfect setting to get to see this group of musicians enjoying each other's company so much.

 

As I mentioned earlier, if I had to quibble with anything, it would have been nice to see Offerman come out and do something with the band on their final night together for a while. Or, since friendship seemed to be a running theme throughout the course of the show — another joke that Jeff made a couple of times involved how someone was "in the running" to be his best friend, which he proclaimed about lead guitarist James Elkington while introducing the band; later on, while thanking Largo for hosting him, Jeff also joked that the venue's proprietor, Mark "Flanny" Flanagan, was a "dark horse" for best-friend status — it would have been fun to see the band close out their final show for a while with their great version of Pops Staples' Friendship.

 

Alas, we didn't get either of those things but it has been a lot of fun getting to see "Jeff Tweedy" (or the band called Jeff Tweedy or Jeff Tweedy and friends or whatever we're calling this unit nowadays) play these shows together over the last couple of months. It's always a treat, and after what seems like will be a pretty Wilco-intensive stretch upcoming, I look forward to the next time we can get Tweedy and Company all together on the same stage again.

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played, for Night 2 of this Largo run (there were no changes/omission from the printed setlist):

 

Love Is The King

A Robin Or A Wren

High As Hello

Opaline

Gwendolyn

Evergreen

Don't Forget

Orphan

Save It For Me

Guess Again

I Know What It's Like

Half-Asleep

Even I Can See

World Away

How Hard It Is For A Desert To Die

Some Birds

Wait For Love

Let's Go Rain

Family Ghost

The Red Brick>

Warm (When The Sun Has Died)

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

Helpless [Neil Young] (Sammy Tweedy on lead vocals)

It Must Be Love [Labi Siffre]

Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You [Bob Dylan]

California Stars

[Brian F.]

I was amused that the printed set list said "Tonight (Dylan)" as if, but for the parenthetical note, the band might have broken out into, say, "Tonight" from West Side Story.

 

"Ultra Orange Room" was sound-checked, but not played.

 

[Albert Tatlock]

Ta (despite the shortage of punage)

[bböp]

On 2/27/2022 at 8:53 AM, Albert Tatlock said:

Ta (despite the shortage of punage)

You want some punage, do you? Why you randy taffy…

[Albert Tatlock]

16 hours ago, bböp said:

You want some punage, do you? Why you randy taffy…

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mls4sV0fKjE