Jeff Tweedy — 28 October 2024, Menlo Park, CA (Guild Theatre) [Night 1 of 3]

[bböp]

Not that tonight was the last show on this meandering Jeff solo jaunt across America, but we have reached the last stop. After opening with a three-night stand in pastoral upstate New York nearly three weeks ago, Jeff kicked off another three-night mini-residency in this Northern California bedroom community that will bring the tour to a close. It's tempting to compare these bookend series of shows — and we'll have to see if he plays three nearly unique sets here the way he did in Woodstock at the start — but if Night 1 of this stint at the intimate Guild Theatre is any indication, then it will be a natural evolution and summation of this particular stage of Jeff's solo performance history.

 

One difference between the Bearsville Theater, where the tour began, and the Guild is that the former was almost exclusively a general admission standing situation, which meant that the diehard fans who attended all three shows pretty much wound up right along the front couple of rows each night — Chrissie Hynde be damned — and even Jeff couldn't help but comment on the relative familiarity of the audience from night to night. I had thought that the setup at the Bearsville Theater would be general admission seating for some reason, but it was nice to be able to stand and get up close if you wanted to.

 

That's what we thought we'd be able to do at the Guild, but when we got in tonight we discovered that what we thought had been an open GA floor plan when we bought the tickets ended up being mostly filled with chairs that were reserved. More than a few folks who had bought GA tickets were confused at the setup because other shows at the venue have had an open GA floor and we didn't remember the floor plan showing reserved seats initially. But it wound up that the folks with GA tickets had to stand behind a row of chairs up on a slightly elevated level (or, I guess, upstairs in the balcony), with an additional four rows of chairs set up on a lower level directly in front of the stage. The reserved seats on the floor were about double the price of the GA tickets, so it made sense that those were the "best" seats, but it was nonetheless still a surprise at first.

 

At any rate, the show itself resembled more of what Jeff had done at the beginning of this run with a few new songs sprinkled in near the start. He had almost completely abandoned those newer songs as the tour went on and he was playing in a different city every night, so it was nice to have them back tonight with the sprawling Feel Free kicking the night off and KC Rain following a few songs later. Other songs in the first half of the set included several of the ones that Jeff has leaned into regularly as the tour has gone on, among them An Empty Corner (which was, as usual, preceded by Jeff's ever-lengthening tales of being a teenage liquor store employee) as well as Gwendolyn and Having Been Is No Way To Be.

 

As I've often maintained with Jeff's solo performances, it can be an audience that ultimately determines how a show will go — for better or worse — and I would have to say that tonight's group was a little on the sedate side. Obviously there were plenty of fans, and some dedicated ones at that, but they were almost too polite. Jeff even commented on it a couple of times early on, such as when he first checked in — "How's everybody doing? You're so quiet I hardly know you're here" — which led to a brief burst of applause, to which Jeff replied, "That wasn't a plea for any feedback. I like it when I forget you're here. I can't see you at all. I'm picturing an extremely young crowd..." When that drew some chuckles from the mostly middle-aged assemblage, Jeff deadpanned, "I don't know why that's funny." A bit later, after asking if everybody was having a good time, Jeff quipped, "I know it's a Monday night, but it really feels like a Tuesday night crowd. There's definitely some Tuesday energy here." Whether or not Jeff sensed a weirder-than-usual vibe from this audience, he couldn't help but wryly observe that the almost-chantlike recitation of the chorus during I Am Trying To Break Your Heart reminded him of something disturbing. "You sound like a cult," Jeff said afterward. "Seriously, that was haunting. Can we hear that again? I can hear the track suits."

 

We did ultimately have one audience member to thank for pushing Jeff in perhaps a slightly different direction than he planned to go. After Jeff switched guitars and was trying to figure out what to play next — asking himself but out loud, "What do I play in this tuning?" — a guy seated near the front suggested Cars Can't Escape. Jeff countered, saying, "No, it's standard tuning." Then the guitar nerdery started to go over my head when the guy said something about presumably a certain chord being "a hard reach" in whatever tuning they were talking about and from that point on, it seemed like he was speaking Jeff's language. Jeff proceeded to switch back to the guitar he had been using and said, "I'll show you..." and so we all got to hear Cars for the first time in nearly a year.

 

Guitar usage, or the potential lack thereof, also accounted for the trio of songs — Country Song Upside-Down, Kamera and Meant To Be — that Jeff played on a 12-string guitar in the back half of the 92-minute set. He reiterated the observation he has made most nights recently about learning on this tour that when he doesn't use every instrument he has on stage with him, "people get pissed. ... I was gonna let that be Chekhov's 12 string. I love how many people get that joke. I'm trying to raise the discourse around here."

 

In terms of other visits to Banter Corner, Jeff of course had a little fun with someone in the first couple rows of seats who got up about halfway through the set to apparently use the restroom. "Where are you going, Tinkletown?" Jeff asked playfully. "I'll wait. Anyone else have to go? I wasn't planning on pulling this show over this early." Another person in the pricey seats took the opportunity just then to ask Jeff to "talk about the pandemic." After some groans from fellow audience members, the guy clarified that he wanted Jeff to talk about The Tweedy Show and made an earnest comment about how it had really helped him and many other people get through that time. Jeff thanked him, and informed anyone in the crowd who might not know that "a lot of (the episodes) are archived on my wife's Instagram if you want to hang out with my family in the past and watch us talk bullshit and play covers. We learned, like, a thousand songs."

 

One final moment of levity came near the end of the show when a guy in the balcony loudly yelled out a request for "Jesus, Inc." Jeff looked up in that direction quizzically for a second and repeated the incorrect song title in a questioning manner, but ultimately didn't grant the wish. Instead, he said, "Here's what you were gonna request — a new song," before launching into Lou Reed Was My Babysitter, which not only was a better choice for that particular point in the show, but also provided a little jolt of energy to the relatively placid proceedings before Jeff headed off stage for good two songs later.

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played, for Night 1 in Menlo Park:

 

new song-Feel Free

Normal American Kids

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

Gwendolyn

Having Been Is No Way To Be

new song-KC Rain

An Empty Corner

Impossible Germany

I Am My Mother

I Know What It's Like

Box Full Of Letters (waltz arrangement)

Family Ghost

Cars Can't Escape

Whole Love

Dawned On Me

Country Song Upside-Down

Kamera

Meant To Be

Lou Reed Was My Babysitter

You Are Not Alone

I'm The Man Who Loves You

[Albert Tatlock]

Ta. Last night was night 1 of 4 for Dostoevsky's The Idiot adaptation on the radio. Good kind of comedy of manners so far. Another one who's better than that Checkhov garbage (to use a word that's suddenly in vogue it seems). I also had a joke about Chekhov's phaser not pistol, but I'll leave that for now.

Some variations on other Jesus + abbreviations that might work as a song title:-

Jesus fomo

Jesus tbd

Jesus rofl

 

[nalafej]

Jesus, Inc !

[kidsmoke]

13 hours ago, nalafej said:

Jesus, Inc !

 

This reminded me of the little kid who called churches "Jesus stores".