It’s always a little unnerving when a hush falls over a conference room and all sets of eyes fall of you. With a nervous throat clearing, mock cough, I ask the other people if I could have the room to take the call. Thankfully everyone is okay with the interruption. In the middle of a very in depth and intense business meeting, it’s not every day one is paged from the receptionist in some one else’s office in someone else’s city with a call from the ring leader of Wilco.
Luckily I had forewarned the others at the meeting of my pending deadline and the chance that such a call might arrive. Yet, it still caught everyone a bit off guard, especially me. Working on four hours sleep (new born son) and still shaking from our “landing” at JFK, my thought process is a bit, shall we say, off.
While I’ve withheld almost all the meatier and more interesting chunks of this quick phone interview for the upcoming MAY issue of PASTE, I thought I would put all the excess fat that fell on the cutting room floor up here for display, comment and ridicule. While the interviewee never has a chance to edit his words, interviewers have the magic of hindsight and spell check. Therefore in a show of fair play, and with the implicit understanding being no matter what it tastes like you’ll still eat the whole story in print next month, here’s what was left on the plate, corn dogs and all. Bon Appetite.
ST: Hey Jeff, thanks for the call. I think the new album (Sky Blue Sky ) is fantastic, an excellent, how do I put this… return to form, if that makes any sense. (ummm no, it doesn’t dumbass) Not saying the last two albums weren’t great, they’re some of my favorites (full force backpedaling, but gravity is too strong) I was just hanging with your old buddy Jay Farrar (what am I doing?!?) I’m one of those guys (???!!!) I’m an Uncle Tupelo, A.M. fan so you can probably imagine why this new album is completely in my wheelhouse? (Somebody pull the trigger; I’m in free fall)
JT: Um, I guess so.
ST: What I mean is lyrically (wake up, you are on the phone with Jeff Tweedy not some patient bartender) some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in a decade (true). Where one might call Summer Teeth and amazingly crafted and cunning pop album, I hear this album as more of its pastoral cousin. Can you find Sky Blue Sky in between any of your past albums or is it a new outgrowth? (Please save me Jeff until common sense kicks in)
JT: It’s a first record for me in all kinds of ways in terms of where I am in my life; I’m much healthier than I have ever been, so in a lot of ways this feels like a beginning for me. If I had to compare it to anything, just in the way this record goes in between a couple of different vibes, to me, it feels a little closer to Being There in that there seem to be some really broad stroke influences peering out here and there as part of the landscape. I don’t think we tried to do that intentionally but it was more of us finding our common ground and that’s what Being There was all about.
ST: I was listening on the way down to NYC this morning and I wrote a little note on my hand while looking down from 30,000 feet and it said this album is a shuttle between ‘the beautiful melancholia of suburbia and metro angst.’ Lyrically that’s the way I was feeling. Listening to “Hate It Here”, while I know there is some love in there, at the same time the domesticity that permeates it…
JT: I just laugh when I hear that song. I think it’s funny. My wife calls it one of my “liar songs”. ‘You don’t know how to work the washer dryer, what are you talking about?’
ST: Exactly, having a three year old and a 14 day old baby, my home life is exponentially crazier. Just trying to start the dishwasher while trying to burp a baby…
JT: You have a fourteen day old baby?
ST: Yeah
JT: Wow, I can hear it in your voice actually. (Laughs) You haven’t been getting much sleep lately, have you? (Thanks for noticing; now you know why I sound like Keith Olbermann on an Ambian jag)
ST: No.
JT: Kinda like being on and off crack or something.
ST: Yep, and in the same way it’s in that natural sleep deprivation where some of the most beautiful moments happen when your guard is completely shot.
JT: Right.
ST: That’s why it was a good time for me to listen to the record, because I think I was ingesting it with such a stripped down feel; it was touching me off emotionally. I was just riding this roller coaster listening to it three times in a row during my whole little travel session again this morning. So congratulations, you made me close to tears while at the same time giggling.
JT: Well that’s good. I’m very happy to hear that. I think it is an emotional record.
ST: Last time I saw you guys play it was at Bonnaroo and you had been sober….
JT: Not that long.
ST: You could tell your new found energy and life you put into that show translated to 88,000 people, which I guess you could say is tough to do. Not that you had to win them over but you did. Listening to the new record I’m really excited to here “Side with the Seeds” live; I think it’s going to translate extremely well.
JT: We played it twice at the last two shows we did before we took a break in Chicago at the Auditorium Theater.
ST: But that’s cheating, that’s home town turf.
JT: Yeah but in some ways it’s more difficult.
ST: More jaded?
JT: Yeah, they’re harder to impress sometimes. But, I think almost everything on the record other than “Please Be Patient with Me” and some of the quieter songs are going to work well.
ST: I think “Shake it Off” with it’s staccato gun shot style and “body full of holes…” BANG, BANG will work. I hope the guy in the way back can handle it.
JT: Oh man, trust me that one’s going to be monstrous live. (Laughs) I can’t wait.
ST: You’re returning to Bonnaroo and I know it’s hard to encapsulate an experience like Bonnaroo in a thirty second sound bite, but how did that scene… I don’t know if you had a chance to golf cart around, see any other bands, or where you stuck backstage? What was it like for you last time?
JT: I think I got really REALLY hot that day. It was super hot. But I got to meet Dylan. (Breaks into a hysterical Dylan story, but you are going to have to wait and read about that one in the MAY issue, but it’s a classic. Suffice it to say there are some funny references to various historical figures including Walt Whitman, Jesus, and Chris Farley.)
ST: Speaking of literary giants, I am a huge Steinbeck guy. I don’t know if you read him at all.
JT: Yeah, of course!
ST: Stylistically your lyrics somehow jump between Burroughs and Steinbeck sometimes. Where at one point there’s a Naked Lunch type feeling and at the same time there’s a Grapes of Wrath vibe…most people might think that’s a completely wide spectrum but at the same time I think there is a beauty in Terra Firma and the staining of the actual earth…. not wanting it go to your head that I think you’re somewhere between Burroughs and Steinbeck…
JT: That’s okay; I’m already calling a carpenter to widen my house for my ego. Seriously, that’s very sweet of you but I understand what you’re saying, not about me, but those two “things’. As one who has worked really hard in life to try and be expansive and inclusive at the same time, I don’t see that much of a difference between those two guys in spite of all the obvious stylistic differences. I am really comforted by the idea… just picturing two guys putting pen to paper you know? And the same feeling goes for music. I don’t know why you can’t be both complex and simple. I don’t know why people feel they have to make a choice.
ST: I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, but I think that’s a testament to a maturity and growth. Because, to make it seem lyrically effortless but at the same time… when you listen to Sky Blue Sky three times in a row, you can listen to it the first time and say, ‘that was a nice simple song with sunbursts and 70’s sounds,’ which I think you are going to get a lot of …
JT: Yep, you’re right.
ST: But at the same time it’s like ‘yeah I hear the BJ Thomas/ Karen Carpenter vibe but the baklava levels of meaning as you peel back the philo dough are pretty remarkable; it just has so much depth. Which is good because it let’s anyone bring their own baggage to the table or just enjoy it on a very surface level and that’s a testament to the growth of Wilco.
JT: I hope so, because that’s what we set out to do, just sit down and play together and like I said that’s always been good enough… (The full answer is very nice, and you’ll enjoy it on a nice spring day in May while smelling flowers or watching a ball game) …. In the past I’ve made it not good enough just because I took other things from it and in order to finish it, I’ve hung some sort of Baroque structure on it or something like to that effect.
ST: Anything you’re looking forward to seeing at Bonnaroo?
JT: Festivals are always kind of weird but hopefully we’ll get to catch some other stuff and that’s always fun. It’s always an easier day than a normal show because you don’t play as long…
ST: There’s not any time for sound check.
JT: No, you don’t soundcheck; you just walk around all day and eat corn dogs.
ST: This year I’ll be your tour guide and take you to all the best food stands.
JT: Absolutely. Until then take care of that new baby.
ST: Thanks Jeff
JT: Good luck and take care
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