Wilco — 15 January 2026, Riviera Maya, Mexico (Hard Rock Hotel) [Sky Blue Sky Festival; Day 1 of 4]

[bböp]

The Friday, opening night set at the Solid Sound Festival has traditionally been a place where Wilco will do something unique and special, such as playing all covers, performing a new album in its entirety or devoting an entire set to deep cuts. But judging by the past couple of times the band has held its other festival, Sky Blue Sky, those opening-night sets might be giving the ones at Solid Sound a run for their money.

 

Look no further than Sky Blue Sky 2023 when Jeff and Co. decided, for some reason, to start the show by playing the opening tracks off nearly all their studio albums. And then there was tonight’s bonkers outing when they opened their set by recreating an infamous 1997 video of a Canadian television performance taped at a ski area (Marble Mountain Resort in Newfoundland, to be exact). This oddball video of the set from the “Snow Job Festival” (was this actually a real festival?) featured the band’s lineup at the time — Jeff, John, guitarist Jay Bennett, drummer Ken Coomer, and pedal-steel guitarist Bob Egan — blowing through a half-hour set of Being There tunes for Canada’s version of MTV (MuchMusic) before a relatively small but pretty raucous crowd at what appears to be the base of the ski area.

 

The first question that comes to mind is why now (though 2026 marking the 30^th anniversary of the release of Being There might have something to do with it)? I would love to know just how this random video got back into Jeff’s head, first of all, and then why he decided to attempt to recreate it in this setting with minimal time to prepare. And if I’m being honest, whether he ever considered donning a pair of ski goggles and a winter hat like he did in the video. But if you’re a certain type of Wilco fan, like I am, you simply can’t argue with the awesomeness of this gambit.

 

You knew something was up when Jeff didn’t whistle during Red-Eyed And Blue and then for sure that something unique was going on when one Being There song after another kept coming to start the show (though it probably wasn’t going to be a complete run through the double album because the songs played weren’t in order). Finally, when the run of songs from the video was done — although I must note that the available source(s) both seem to cut off Outtasite (Outta Mind), and the band stayed true to the video by not including that song in this Sky Blue Sky set — Jeff finally revealed that there was indeed a method to the madness (though I’m pretty sure he never actually said what it was).

 

Instead, he offered a free T-shirt to anybody in the crowd who could tell him what tied the opening batch of songs together. Of course, more than a few people shouted that they were all Being There songs and Jeff sort of gave a ‘duh’ look and said he knew what record the songs were from. Eventually a few folks came up with “ski resort video” (much respect, by the way, because it certainly wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind) but by then Jeff had already seemed to move on. Still, what an audacious way to start a show. It was even more audacious given the fact that the band hadn’t played a show together since the end of August and undoubtedly didn’t have much time to rehearse, yet learned the arrangements of the songs the way that 1997 lineup played them in the video. It really was an amazing thing, from the opening suite of Red-Eyed>I Got You>Someone Else’s Song to the closing jam on Kingpin. The latter, incidentally, included the sort of audience call-and-response that later live versions of that song feature, which Jeff said the band didn’t intend on but ran with in the moment. “We weren’t gonna do that, but we will now,” Jeff said, before playfully admonishing the crowd with a couple versions of “I think you can do better than that.”

 

I’m sure there is even more to unpack from that opening, but for the sake of this recap, let me move on with the rest of the show. Because as unexpected and cool as that was, the remainder of the 20-song, 99-minute set contained even more noteworthy highlights. For instance, can we talk about the full-band live debut of Alone (Shakin’ Sugar) that had more than a few audience members, ahem, shakin’ their heads, either because they didn’t know the song at all (a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era demo/outtake that I’m pretty sure didn’t get officially released until the YHF deluxe box set came out in 2022) or couldn’t believe Jeff and Co. had chosen this moment to finally play it? Jeff has done it a handful of times solo, but despite it being a (hardcore) fan favorite, the full band had somehow never gotten to it until now. I mean, honestly, what the heck? It just goes to show you that even more than 30 years into their career, Wilco still has the capacity to surprise.

 

Count the encore as another surprise, on several levels (and I’m not even counting the fact there was an encore at all, which none of us in the crowd seemed to be entirely sure of). But when I saw a lyric sheet being brought out and taped down at Jeff’s feet and then Jeff went into a nice remembrance of the late Bob Weir, I figured the band’s terrific cover of the Grateful Dead’s U.S. Blues had to be coming — even though I know Jerry Garcia sang that one, not Weir. But as usual during this set, I was proven wrong when Jeff and his bandmates instead launched into their version of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows. As Jeff explained it in his comments about Weir, who he added “was a supporter of (our) band,” and “was everything you would want in a musician,” Wilco had played TNK with Weir on a couple of occasions (including in Nashville during the Bob Dylan AmericanaramA tour in 2013) so doing it here as a tribute to him “feels very appropriate.”

 

Now I still thought we might get U.S. Blues to close out the night, but instead there were a couple more curveballs in the form of rarities Candyfloss and Dreamer In My Dreams. Prior to tonight, the former had only been played live by the full band three times since 2017 (and two of those were at previous Sky Blue Skys) and the latter only once by the full band since 2014. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, both songs are the last tracks on their respective albums.

 

A few other tidbits I thought it worth mentioning:

• The version of I’m Always In Love was the normal rocking arrangement of the song and not the more plaintive reworking of it that the band had started to do last August during its final month of touring last year.
• There was a funny moment during the song Sky Blue Sky when a woman in the audience very loudly counted out “1-2-3-4” a couple of times during breaks in the song, which Jeff couldn’t help but poke a little fun at, saying that was what the band was doing on stage themselves when they were tapping their feet and such. “Still, it is pretty helpful,” Jeff quipped. “Glenn says he loves it. Glenn never learned to count past four.”
• Jeff encouraged the crowd to sing along before both Passenger Side and If I Ever Was A Child. I’ve never heard him try to get a singalong going on the latter before, and he seemed to acknowledge as much when he said, “I don’t think everybody knows this one well enough (to sing along), but I’d love to hear you give it a shot.” I have to say, from my vantage point, there is definite room for improvement.

 

Perhaps the other surprise during the set was there were no collaborations with any special guests. Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, for instance, would have been a fine choice to help sing If I Ever Was A Child since his band has often covered that song, but he might not have arrived yet since YLT doesn’t play until Night 3. But there is still plenty of time for that kind of thing to happen. It seemed like the most important thing — for band and audience alike — on this night was to enjoy being together in this lovely corner of the world again. “All right, we’re gonna play a song from this century,” Jeff said after the lengthy group of oldies to start the show. “It’s so good to see everybody. It’s making me happy. Thank you for coming…it’s a gift to get to do this.”

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played, for Wilco’s first of three sets at Sky Blue Sky 2026 (didn’t see a printed setlist, so can’t say if there were any changes/omissions):

 

1. Red-Eyed And Blue>

2. I Got You (At The End Of The Century)>

3. Someone Else’s Song

4. Monday

5. Hotel Arizona

6. Kingpin

7. A Magazine Called Sunset

8. Passenger Side

9. Evicted

10. If I Ever Was A Child

11. Forget The Flowers

12. Many Worlds

13. Via Chicago

14. Handshake Drugs

15. Sky Blue Sky

16. Alone (aka Shakin’ Sugar)

17. I’m Always In Love

    ---

    Encore:

18. Tomorrow Never Knows [The Beatles]

19. Candyfloss

20. Dreamer In My Dreams

[worldrecordplayer]

Just to fill in what I wrote in one of the FB groups, the non GD fans here may scratch their heads at the choice of Tomorrow Never Knows. The Dead covered it during their last few years with Weir singing, which presumably is why they chose to do it at Americanarama. As someone who's been in the GD world since 1972, It meant a lot to me that they paid tribute to Bobby Ace. 

[Albert Tatlock]

(Quetzalcoa)ta(l)

 

Nice to see Magazine also.

 

In other news, I came up with the perfect company name for a small truck rental company: Nosferatu, with their strap line being, of course, Nosferatu the Van Hire. I’m quite proud of that and had to share. No idea why I way thinking of company names for small truck rental companies though. Quiet news day I suppose.