Jeff Tweedy — 12 October 2024, Woodstock, NY (Bearsville Theater) [Night 2 of 3]

[bböp]

I'm not going to say what difference a day makes, but on the second night of his three-night solo run at the cozy Bearsville Theater, Jeff seemed like he had certainly gotten his footing underneath him after an opening show that saw him experience some of the expected performance struggles that often go along with a period when he has been in the studio recording new material and focused on what's to come rather than what has been. Or perhaps it was just the gift he got from his friend Scott Reilly, a vintage early 1970s book called Electric Rock that Jeff said he had been reading just before he was summoned to take the stage.

 

Nerd alert notwithstanding — the book, after all, is billed as "the rock musicians' guide to electric guitars and amplifiers" — Jeff seemed genuinely delighted to have received the gift and proudly walked off stage holding the small volume over his head as left the stage for the evening. That came just after a triumphant show-closing reprise of the song Lou Reed Was My Babysitter that he had struggled with the previous night. As is often the case with Jeff, I suspect that he wanted to get right back on the proverbial horse and erase the memory of that shaky earlier rendition.

 

At one point, a little over halfway through the 90-minute set, Jeff made an offhand — but perhaps telling — comment that seeing so many familiar faces from the previous evening, "I thought I should try."

 

And so he did. Lou Reed Was My Babysitter was one of just two songs Jeff repeated from Night 1, the other (Mine Forever) being one of the new songs that had made their live debut the previous evening. Speaking of nerd alerts, I'll report that Jeff played Mine Forever on a 12-string guitar tonight — in contrast with just one of his usual acoustics, and it wasn't even the 12-string he had sitting on stage behind him but another one that he had to call for from his off-stage stash. At any rate, the 12-string instrument added a slightly different texture to the new tune that I enjoyed a little more. Or maybe it was just the chance to hear the song for a second time.

 

Of course, it was to be expected that we would get the opportunity to hear even more newish songs tonight and that certainly proved to be the case. Jeff obliged with the live debuts of a couple more songs — disclaimer: I'm not counting performances on the Tweedy Show as a true live performance, just in case he played one of these on one of those shows — that presumably will be on the forthcoming Tweedy band record. What For was the first of these tunes, featuring a long outro with that two-word phrase repeated over and over. Afterward, Jeff told a funny anecdote about recording a version of that one recently with Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham and Sima asking Macie something to the effect of just how many "What fors" there were and Macie replying to Sima, "a LOT," which caused Jeff to shorten the outro a bit. The other live debut came in the form of This Is How It Ends — song titles courtesy of Wilcoworld — that featured the chorus(?), "We can still be friends/Close your eyes/Count to ten/This is how it ends..."

 

We also got a couple of other songs that Jeff has played live a handful of times before but might have been new to the majority of the Bearsville Theater audience, including show opener Ain't It A Shame. That tune was part of the "Jeff Tweedy and Friends" Sunday set at this year's Solid Sound Festival and also performed on a couple of other occasions earlier this year. Jeff couldn't help but comment on beginning the show with that song and the Hot Sun Cool Shroud track Say You Love Me (whose title the good folks at Wilcoworld need to correct from Say I Love You Again...ahem), two of his saddest recent compositions. "It's Saturday night, so I thought I'd start us off on the right foot here," Jeff joked. "I hope everyone's been taking their meds."

 

From a Banter Corner standpoint, there's always far too much to fully recap here. But a couple of highlights worth mentioning, at least in brief, included a mind-blowing story about meeting the very tall former New Jersey senator and New York Knicks star Bill Bradley on a plane recently and Bradley approaching Jeff and asking, "So what exactly did you mean by 'Impossible Germany?'" When someone in the audience asked what Jeff had told Bradley, and despite Jeff's initial demurral and subsequent comment that he "made up some bullshit," Jeff went onto spell out what that phrase (and I guess, the song) meant to him and it was quite touching. You'll have to get the full transcription off a recording of this show if and when it ever comes out, but suffice it to say, I don't remember Jeff ever expressing the answer to that question that way before.

 

Another amusing moment came when a baby in the audience cried out quite audibly during You And I, and Jeff asked if there was indeed a baby in attendance to make sure he hadn't been hearing things and then related an anecdote about playing a show in Australia a few years ago — for the record, it was at the Meeniyan Town Hall on 24 May 2019 — where they apparently served dinner during the show and it was very dark and all he could hear was the sound of cutlery on plates and people eating and then hearing a baby and asking if people were eating babies. Someone then made a comment about babies and Vegemite and I sort of lost track after that, but it was an entertaining tangent. And later in the show, there was another interlude when someone yelled a shout of encouragement and Jeff went into his usual cheeky comment about how he welcomes that type of individual validation and how he wished every single person in an audience could do so after every song but then extended the thought into what if we replaced all applause, etc., not just at concerts but also at sporting events and the like, by everyone simply yelling out "You're OK, buddy!" That, of course, led to a test run with the audience in front of him and made for a running joke for the remainder of the set.

 

I feel like I'm probably missing a bunch of other little moments that I probably wouldn't be able to fit into this little recap anyway, but I suppose part of the beauty of a mini-residency and a longer tour is there's always the next night to look forward to. And so I'll let any other loose ends from Night 2 go and try to do just that. The beauty of a three-night (or more) run with Jeff, especially solo, is that you never quite know what to expect. We could hear some of the same new songs we're already heard, or some different ones, or some other older tunes — despite Jeff's repeated contention that he doesn't know any older songs and doesn't even recognize some of them as his when he looks at a list of potential songs to play. Something tells me he'll figure it out by showtime.

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played, for Night 2 in Woodstock:

 

new song-Ain't It A Shame

Say You Love Me

Evicted

new song-What For

Ambulance

You And I

Annihilation

Dawned On Me

Impossible Germany

Guess Again

Even I Can See

new song-You're Not Gonna Win

new song-Mine Forever

Hearts Hard To Find

new song-This Is How It Ends

New Madrid

Please Tell My Brother

I Know What It's Like

Casino Queen

Passenger Side

I'm Always In Love

Lou Reed Was My Babysitter

[Albert Tatlock]

The new set of quills are working out just fine.

 

Ta.

[Magnetized]

Thanks as always for your detailed notes, which are always my first read the morning after a Jeff or Wilco show. One thing I’ll add is that it felt good to have Jeff make a couple of explicitly political comments. I wish I could remember details the way you can, but perhaps someone else has better recall. Or again, hopefully we can hear it on a yet-to-surface recording. It was indeed a show worthy of memorializing.