Jeff Tweedy — 13 October 2024, Woodstock, NY (Bearsville Theater) [Night 3 of 3]

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Well just like that, another three-night Jeff solo residency is in the books, and it's amazing how he is able to make each night a unique experience whether you were a hardcore devotee there for all three shows, a more casual fan or even someone seeing him perform solo for the first time. Part of that stems from the fact that he didn't play a single song on Night 3 that he had played on Nights 1 and 2 (and only repeated two songs over the course of the entire weekend at the Bearsville Theater) and part also stems from his ability to expertly interact with and navigate each audience and keep things relatively fresh.

 

That crowdwork started pretty early on in the set tonight when Jeff remarked for the second time in the first 15 minutes on how familiar the faces looking back at him appeared. This came after he played the Summerteeth two-fer of Summer Teeth and How To Fight Loneliness, the former of which led to the usual crowd participation on the harmony parts but didn't go quite as well as it could have when some of the participation kind of petered out after what seemed to be the end of the song. "We nailed it," Jeff joked. "Some people didn't get the memo about the false ending. My wife hates false endings. She's always like, 'Why?'" Jeff then went on a little tangent about how psychedelic records would fade out and fade back in and how people got so excited about that sound, and labeled it "hover and recover" when he does a live fade out and fade back in by backing away from the microphone and then returning, demonstrating that maneuver at least a couple more times over the course of the set.

 

After hovering and recovering briefly to close out How To Fight Loneliness, Jeff said, "We're having fun, more fun than I expected. Are you the same people?" He then asked how many people had been in attendance the first two nights. When only a handful of people responded in the affirmative, Jeff joked, "Well, you all look pretty familiar." Then a woman yelled out that she was here for the first time, which drew a much more sizable response, and Jeff changed course and quipped, "I should have asked that instead. How many people are here for the first time? That opens up a whole new repertoire" of songs that he had already played. He showed a cheat sheet of approximately 40 songs he hadn't yet played over the course of the first two nights, suggesting that with so many people there just for tonight's show, he didn't have to vary his set as much as he had planned.

 

Fortunately for those of us who had been there for the entire run, Jeff didn't follow through on that teasing threat. At heart, he aims to please if possible. I can't count how many times I've seen him play by himself when he appears to shoot down an audience request only to come back to it a short time later. Tonight's example of this came when one lady rather aggressively shouted a request for Handshake Drugs, and Jeff replied that it was a song he often got requests for at solo shows but didn't usually grant because "it's the same thing over and over again and I think it sounds stupid. It sounds good when there's electric guitars and stuff. All right, I'll play it...but not right now (because I need a different guitar)." When he did finally get around to it, he joked before starting the song that he was going to prove a point, but when he actually performed it, he added some different chords and embellishments that basically disproved his prior assertion. Of course, midsong, some wiseass in the crowd yelled out, "It's a little repetitive!" which caused Jeff to shoot back, "See?" Jeff then did his usual bit about how the original requester could now leave, having gotten her request granted, and he went through his old joke about getting the list of song requests submitted through Wilcoworld each night with every song receiving exactly one vote and how he figured a good tactic would be to ask everyone to leave after they had gotten their song played so Jeff would know when the show was over.

 

Another example of giving into a crowd "suggestion" came late in the set when a guy yelled in an almost-demanding tone, "Play the 12 string!" Jeff amusingly gave him a little bit of "what for" in response, joking that he couldn't possibly have an instrument on stage for the entire show and not use it (saying it in a kind of "How dare I?" tone). But ultimately he gave in and picked up one of the two 12-string guitars he had on stage behind him and wound up playing a jangly Cousin two-fer of A Bowl And A Pudding and Meant To Be.

 

(Just as a counterpoint to the part about Jeff being a crowd pleaser, though, he doesn't always cooperate with everything that someone in the audience is bold enough to shout out. For example, tonight a lady yelled out a lyric from the Mermaid Avenue tune Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key as a way of requesting the song, I guess. Jeff politely informed her that Billy Bragg sang that one on the recording, the implication being that it's not really part of Jeff's catalog. Almost immediately another guy in the crowd felt the need to inform Jeff that Bragg (along with fellow Mermaid Avenue alum Natalie Merchant) had just played the Bearsville Theater a couple of months earlier. Jeff asked if Bragg had sang Way Over Yonder... at that show and the reply came back that he had. Jeff shot back, good-naturedly but also with a measure of exasperation, "So why the fuck are you asking me to play it, then?")

 

From a performance standpoint, I can't say that this was Jeff's cleanest show. After playing almost flawlessly on Night 2, he did sort of revert to some of the shakiness of Night 1 on a couple of songs. Ironically, they are ones that he plays often in a solo setting. On Jesus, etc., he apologized afterward for delivering a weird rendition of the song; apparently his mind had started to wander a bit and, by his own admission, he added an extra bridge. A couple of songs later on Some Birds, he just struggled with the lyrics on a couple of occasions to the point where he almost abandoned the song but eventually managed to get through it thanks to enough people singing along that they formed a sort of "human teleprompter."

 

Not that there weren't some highlights, too. I don't think Jeff plays Should've Been In Love often enough for my taste, so it was a treat to hear that oldie but goodie (which also featured a "hover and recover" moment). We also got Jeff's highly entertaining tales of being a teenage liquor store manager before An Empty Corner (and was it just me, but did that one share kind of a similar strumming pattern at one point as the newish song Enough that Jeff also played a few songs later. And of course there was also another dose of newer songs, as expected. One was a live debut, apparently called Love Is For Love, while I was happy to hear Enough again after hearing it played at Largo and Solid Sound earlier this year. That's the one with the lyric, "Is your heart higher than your mind?" Also among the newish tunes Jeff played tonight was Cry Baby Cry, which Starship Casual readers and Tweedy Show viewers have gotten to hear take shape over the past year or so since Jeff shared the demo of it he recorded in his hotel room in Ireland in September 2023. I would like to clarify again, however, that this song is not a Beatles cover as the good folks over at Wilcoworld and a couple of other sources strangely seem to indicate.

 

Then again, playing a Beatles (or, I guess Dylan) cover might have been about the only other way that Jeff could have had this Woodstock crowd more in the palm of his hand after his 92 minutes on stage. Whether you have seen him play by himself for the 100th time or the first and whether you were there all three nights or just one, I think it's safe to say that Jeff left you with something new to think about or laugh about or appreciate. And that's pretty good for a guy with just an acoustic guitar — OK, more than a few acoustic guitars — to entertain you.

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played, for the third and final night in Woodstock:

 

The Universe

new song-Love Is For Love

new song-Cry Baby Cry

Summer Teeth

How To Fight Loneliness

Guaranteed

new song-Enough

Handshake Drugs

Tired Of Taking It Out On You

An Empty Corner

Company In My Back

Should've Been In Love

Jesus, etc.

What Light

Some Birds

Falling Apart (Right Now)

I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

A Bowl And A Pudding

Meant To Be

Let's Go Rain

A Shot In The Arm

[Albert Tatlock]

Ta Baby Ta (Tatlock cover)

[Sun Caught Fire]

And just like that, 3 wonderful to read reviews/recaps.  I was pretty sure the reference to human teleprompter was directed at our review author!  Good stuff, and Jeff continues prolifically to deliver with some great new tunes. 

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Just thought I'd call attention to a nice review of this show from Uncut magazine written by noted music scribe Will Hermes (whose Substack is definitely worth a follow), especially since he so kindly linked to this very Web site/message board in his piece. Cheers to you, sir!