#John Stirratt

[webkinzasalbums]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) & american cocker spaniel

ask from @melloncollie26

[thebowerypresents]

Wilco Kick Off the Weekend and a Three-Night Run at the Beacon Theatre on Friday

Wilco – Beacon Theatre – June 21, 2024

Like many a Wilco fan, I look back to 2004’s A Ghost Is Born with certain fondness, not least because it was an inflection-point epoch. Before touring the Ghost material — which is to say, before Wilco rounded out the band lineup we would come to know over the two decades since with guitar sorcerer Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist wonder Pat Sansone — Wilco had only just begun to push at the artier, more experimental edges of their invigorating, countrified indie-rock, hinting at what might come next. 

After that, Jeff Tweedy and Co. were totally indulging those edges: Ghost inaugurated an era of Wilco songs and shows that could be tightly compact or sprawling and annihilating and psychedelic, and today usually are all of those things, where even the quietest and most delicate tunes have simmering noise-rock rage just beneath them and are better for it. Wilco can be so sweetly on. They can go so wildly off. It’s all good. And as the size of their playable oeuvre has doubled since — including a prolific run of new material since the pandemic — they’ve refined what they do even further. They wear their “great modern rock” bona fides well. 

Wilco shows have a way of feeling casually epic. At the Beacon on Friday — the first of three for the band, back in the broiling city — they started out confident and workmanlike and then, gradually, both relaxed the vibe and upped the intensity. Tweedy was his usual affable, lightly sardonic self, steering them through a well-blended run of classics from all eras (“Handshake Drugs,” “Passenger Side,” “I’m the Man Who Loves You”), more recent tunes and obscurities. 

There was some deference to Ghost material — among the standouts, the sensational, Beatles-like “Hummingbird” just never gets old, and the crowd felt it deeply — but there was at least as much from 2022’s Cruel Country and 2023’s Cousin, the pandemic Wilco albums whose songs yield some of their most interesting experiments yet. “Falling Apart (Right Now),” from the former, is an actual, chicken-pickin’ country song, but one that isn’t so much a throwback to Wilco’s early, pre-millennium alt-country days as it is what the band might sound like if they took this version of the band back to that aesthetic. And yet, “Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull,” from that same album, has very little country at all: a woozy, jangling build that on record ebbs into rustic psychedelia but here, live, opened up, became a sonic voyage, the band all in protracted instrumental jamming at once.

When they go for it, they really go for it. Long masters of setlist construction, Wilco built on a strong first hour and then cranked up things, using the last third of the show on a run through some of their richest material: “Heavy Metal Drummer,” “The Late Greats,” the deceptively delicate, right-in-the-feels “Jesus Etc.,” the much-beloved hymn “California Stars,” the shoegaze-hypnotic choogle of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” at the close of a four-song encore. And every time you think you’ve previously heard the best of Cline laying waste to “Impossible Germany” — a pensive tune that in fact houses a seven-plus-minute, no-holds-barred guitar excursion — it ends up feeling like the first time, with Friday’s showstopper a wiry adventure of maybe-this-feels-like-Eddie Hazel-meets-David-Gilmour-but-no-it’s-actually-just-Nels-doing-Nels-and-holy-shit.

Wilco’s individual players get plenty of love: Tweedy, Cline, Sansone, the might-be-MVP Glenn Kotche on drums, the stalwart John Stirratt on bass, the never-not-on-point Mikael Jorgensen on keys. Less talked about, and ever more apparent as they age, is how well over 20 years they’ve jelled as an ensemble and move as one organism over songs for whom this many players and this much musicality might be too much in an arena, let alone a theater. That they’ve also kept all this from becoming mechanical — that every Wilco show still feels fresh and unforced — suggests there are many more Wilco epochs yet to come. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

(Wilco play the Beacon Theatre again tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Savannah Lauren | @savannahlaurenphoto

[musicmags]

[krispyweiss]

Song Review - Wilco - “Evicted”

Promotional materials declare Wilco’s forthcoming LP is a move away from “their country-influenced roots” and back toward “their more familiar progressive and experimental rock territory.”

Which makes “Evicted,” the lead single from Cousin, sound really awkward because, despite some atmospheric flourishes, the track is totally country- (and folk-) leaning as Jeff Tweedy sings:

Am I ever going to see you again/I’m evicted/from your heart/I deserve it

Out Sept. 29, Cousin is produced by Cate Le Bon, who is said to have brought “her unique musical perspective to the band’s trademark sound, and provided them with an inspiring new challenge to push their musical boundaries.” The band is obviously trying to build buzz, but “Evicted” jibes with the promotional material in the same way the not-guilty pleas from rhymes with Fondled Dump jibe with the evidence in his indictments.

And the song isn’t even very exciting or clever.

Grade card: Wilco - “Evicted” - C

8/1/23

[spilladabalia]

Wilco - Heavy Metal Drummer

[sinceileftyoublog]

Square Roots 2024: 7/13-7/14

Big Star Quintet's Jody Stephens

BY JORDAN MAINZER

One of this year's Square Roots headliners is calling it quits after their upcoming album and current tour, and another hasn't really been a proper incarnation of itself for a decade and a half. Nostalgia be damned, this past weekend, both X and Big Star Quintet beat the heat and sounded as good as ever. Okay, my in-person experience with X is limited to Riot Fest 2017, I never got to see Big Star, and otherwise, all I have are each band's multiple live albums to wonder what they might have been like in their heyday. Hindsight aside, X's cowpunk momentousness and Big Star Quintet's glorious sky-high rock and roll rendered them the unabashed standouts of a weekend that featured guitar music heavyweights new and old.

X's John Doe & Exene Cervenka

X has released only one song from their final record Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum), and they did perform a few new chuggers during their Saturday night headlining set. But from the moment Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom, D.J. Bonebrake, and touring drummer Craig Packham entered the stage to Link Wray's "Rumble", you knew their focus would be the past: "You're Phone's Off The Hook, But You're Not", "In This House That I Call Home", and "Because I Do". Yes, Zoom whipped out his saxophone and Bonebrake his vibes; Cervenka and Doe's contrasting vocal timbres gave the whole set an rousing feel, as if the sonically diverse voices in the crowd were meant to shout along with them. They did, to the stuttering "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts", and some of the more musically inclined, limber set goers perfectly air-drummed Packham's choppy thwacks on "Los Angeles". If X is truly leaving us, they're at least still having a blast.

Big Star Quintet's Chris Stamey

Big Star Quintet, meanwhile, may have only one member of the original power pop quartet in drummer and vocalist Jody Stephens, but they feel more Big Star than, say, the current Beach Boys feel like the Beach Boys. (I know, that's not a high bar to clear.) But at least two of the members have direct connections. Jon Auer (The Posies) was part of the reformed Big Star from 1993 until 2010, when the deaths of Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel effectively ended the band. Chris Stamey briefly played bass for Chilton in the late 70s before embarking on his own musical career with The dB's. And while R.E.M.'s Mike Mills (who participated in a Chilton tribute concert during SXSW 2010) couldn't join the Quintet in the Chicago area, not one, but two members of Wilco (bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone) rounded out the lineup and provided a wonderful local connection to boot.

Big Star Quintet's Pat Sansone

The Quintet was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Big Star's sophomore masterpiece Radio City, but on Sunday night, they didn't adhere to any self-imposed rules and play the album front-to-back. Instead, before even mentioning Radio City or playing any of its songs, they started their set by banging out 9 (!) straight from Big Star's debut, #1 Record, switching off lead vocals and instrumentation. Stirratt unleashed a feverish falsetto on "In The Street", immediately answering the question of who would sing "September Gurls" when the band inevitably played it last. Sansone and Auer gorgeously harmonized on the ripping rocker "Don't Lie To Me", while Stamey provided some welcome quietude on "Give Me Another Chance" and "Watch the Sunrise". The band itself was in sync, but not stuffy, deft enough to tackle the funk-to-stadium rock breakdowns of Radio City's "O, My Soul", loose enough to adhere to the snappy ramshackle spirit of the harmonica-imbued "Life Is White".

Big Star Quintet's Jon Auer

When Stephens sang, though, it felt a little bit like time stopped, and not because he brought the house down or anything. (His voice does remain strong!) He dedicated "The India Song" and "Way Out West" to Hummel, stating, simply and heartbreakingly, "He was a close one to me." And when the rest of the band stepped up to the microphone with acoustic guitars in hand, and it was clear they were to play the beloved "Thirteen", Stephens admitted, "I remember being 13, don't you? I was really uncomfortable with myself, but it makes for a great song!" Here was the last remaining connection to one of the greatest bands in American history, still vulnerable, reminding you that no matter how old you get or how long certain songs and records have been around, the emotions never die.

Sansone

Lydia Loveless

Oh, I'll throw in a bonus weekend standout: the great Lydia Loveless, less than a year removed from their sixth LP, Nothing's Gonna Stand in My Way Again (Bloodshot). The record is classic Loveless, heartbroken, all while dealing with the trials and tribulations of life both regular ("Toothache") and time-specific (pandemic isolation). Their high and lonesome twang pervaded each song, save for Nothing's "Poor Boy", during which Loveless belted, showing off their vocal chops. "Sex and Money" proved to be the cheeky live anthem you knew it was going to be the first time you heard it. At the same time, Loveless continued to give their previous album Daughter its due. (Introducing "Wringer", Loveless quipped that it was "from Daughter, which came out in 2020, which means it was very successful...everybody was out doing stuff, money burning holes in their pockets.") From the prickly guitar strums of "Say My Name" to the deliberate drum beats of "Don't Bother Mountain", the latter of which saw Loveless switch to synth, their performance of the Daughter songs showcased that it's Loveless' most thematic and instrumentally diverse album to date. That's not a small feat, with a catalog as deep as theirs.

Loveless

Loveless

[nonesuchrecords]

Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky is now available in a limited-edition two-LP, sky-blue vinyl release; you can get it here. The Gold-selling album made year’s best lists from Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, BBC Radio 6 Music, and more. “Near perfect,” said Spin.

Featuring the band that was assembled after the release of 2004’s A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky was the first studio album from a lineup that has remained the same to today: guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, percussionist Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and guitarist Nels Cline.

[thepermanentrainpress]

Gallery: Wilco @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre - Vancouver, BC Date: September 21st, 2022 Photographed by: Ray Maichin

[allmusic]

AllMusic Staff Pick: Dolly Parton Jolene

While Wilco was inarguably Jeff Tweedy's band at this point, Summerteeth, released 25 hours ago today, was the apex of his collaboration with Jay Bennett, and while John Stirratt and Ken Coomer were their strong, reliable selves as a rhythm section, it's Bennett's keyboards and production smarts that give life to a set of great, uncompromising songs. If Being There was the album where Jeff Tweedy embraced all that was possible with Wilco, Summerteeth was where he closed the door on the past and boldly stepped into a very different future.

- Mark Deming

[satelliteee]

Wilco’s John Stirratt On Ode to Joy, Classic Cars And ‘60s Pop - LEO Weekly

Short but interesting.

[sandybrett]

A rough chronology of the extended Wilco family

1990

Uncle Tupelo, consisting of Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn, release their first album, No Depression.

1991

Uncle Tupelo release Still Feel Gone.

Titanic Love Affair, led by future Wilco guitarist Jay Bennett, debut with Titanic Love Affair.

1992

Uncle Tupelo release March 16-20, 1992. Mike Heidorn leaves to spend time with family and is replaced by Ken Coomer. John Stirratt and Max Johnston are also added.

The Bottle Rockets, led by UT's friend and roadie Brian Henneman, debut with Bottle Rockets.

Alt-country supergroup Golden Smog, of which Tweedy will later be a member, debut with an EP, On Golden Smog.

1993

Uncle Tupelo release Anodyne. Farrar leaves due to the breakdown of his friendship with Tweedy.

Titanic Love Affair release an EP, No Charisma.

1994

The Bottle Rockets release The Brooklyn Side.

1995

Wilco, consisting of the remaining members of Uncle Tupelo plus Brian Henneman as temporary lead guitarist, debut with A.M.

Son Volt, consisting of Jay Farrar, original Uncle Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn, and brothers Jim and Dave Boquist, debut with Trace.

Golden Smog, now joined by Jeff Tweedy, release Down by the Old Mainstream.

1996

Titanic Love Affair release Their Titanic Majesties Request and split up.

Wilco, with Jay Bennett as new lead guitarist, release Being There. Max Johnston leaves soon after.

1997

Son Volt release Straightaways.

The Bottle Rockets release 24 Hours a Day.

1998

Billy Bragg and Wilco release Mermaid Avenue, an album of previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics set to music.

Son Volt release Wide Swing Tremolo and go on hiatus.

Golden Smog release Weird Tales.

The Bottle Rockets release Leftovers.

1999

Wilco release Summerteeth.

The Bottle Rockets release Brand New Year.

2000

Billy Bragg and Wilco release Mermaid Avenue, Volume II

Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, and Jim O'Rourke start a side project called Loose Fur, although nothing is released yet. Kotche soon replaces Ken Coomer in Wilco.

2001

Jay Farrar releases Sebastopol.

The Autumn Defense, a side project of John Stirratt and Pat Sansone, debut with The Green Hour.

Wilco attempt to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but their label won't let them, so they buy the masters back and release them for free on their website. Jay Bennett is dismissed from the band.

2002

The Bottle Rockets release Songs of Sahm.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally receives an official release.

Jay Bennett and Edward Burch release The Palace at 4am (part i).

2003

The Minus 5 release Down with Wilco, a collaboration with several members of Wilco.

Jay Farrar releases Terroir Blues.

Loose Fur release Loose Fur.

The Autumn Defense release Circles.

John Stirratt and his twin sister Laurie (a member of Blue Mountain) release Arabella.

The Bottle Rockets release Blue Sky.

2004

Jay Bennett releases Bigger than Blue.

Wilco release A Ghost Is Born. Pat Sansone joins the band for the tour and all subsequent albums.

Jay Bennett releases The Beloved Enemy.

2005

A new lineup of Son Volt, with Jay Farrar as the only consistent member, release Okemah and the Melody of Riot.

2006

Glenn Kotche releases a solo album, Mobile.

Gob Iron, consisting of Jay Farrar and Anders Parker, release Death Songs for the Living.

Golden Smog release Another Fine Day.

Loose Fur release Born Again in the USA.

Jay Bennett releases The Magnificent Defeat.

The Bottle Rockets release Zoysia.

2007

Golden Smog, no longer including Tweedy, release Blood on the Slacks.

The Autumn Defense release The Autumn Defense.

Son Volt release The Search.

Wilco release Sky Blue Sky.

2008

Jay Bennett releases Whatever Happened, I Apologize.

2009

Son Volt release American Central Dust.

Benjamin Gibbard and Jay Farrar release One Fast Move or I'm Gone.

Wilco release Wilco (the album)

Jay Bennett dies suddenly of an accidental painkiller overdose.

The Bottle Rockets release Lean Forward.

2010

Kicking at the Perfumed Air by Jay Bennett is posthumously released.

The Autumn Defense release Once Around

2011

Wilco release The Whole Love.

2012

Jay Farrar appears on New Multitudes, along with Anders Parker and two other artists, for another collection of unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics.

2013

Son Volt release Honky Tonk.

2014

The Autumn Defense release Fifth.

Max Johnston releases Dismantling Paradise, his only solo album to date. Since leaving Wilco, he has been a member of The Gourds.

Tweedy, consisting of Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer, release Sukirae.

2015

Wilco release Star Wars.

The Bottle Rockets release South Broadway Athletic Club.

2016

Wilco release Schmilco.

2017

Jeff Tweedy releases Together at Last

Son Volt release Notes of Blue.

2018

The Bottle Rockets release Bit Logic.

Jeff Tweedy releases WARM.

2019

Jeff Tweedy releases WARMER.

Son Volt release Union.

Wilco release Ode to Joy.

2020

Jeff Tweedy releases Love Is The King.

2021

The Bottle Rockets announce their retirement.

Son Volt release Electro Melodier.

2022

Wilco release Cruel Country.

2023

Wilco release Cousin.

Son Volt release Day of the Doug.

2024

Pat Sansone releases Infinity Mirrors.

Wilco release an EP, Hot Sun Cool Shroud.

[complexdistractions]

Wilco : Cousin

Wilco have quietly and casually slipped into elder statesmen mode, putting out decent records every couple of years. Jeff Tweedy and company have locked into, while not auto pilot, something akin to safety mode. Gently strummed songs with Tweedy’s now hushed and whispered delivery. The band’s cache of musical wizards(Nels Cline, Pat Sansone, John Stirratt, and Mikael Jourgeson) add subtle…

[screamingforyears]

IN_A_MINUTE: // AN INDIE EXPRESS… // “GEM & I” is the latest single from @anmlcollective’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Isn’t It Now?’ (9/29 @dominorecordco) & it finds the long running outfit of Avey Tare, Deakin, Geologist & Panda Bear on a hot streak of late as they once again bring the goods across a 3:40 clip of Tropicali-dripped, harmoniously dipped & psych-tinged ArtPop. // “LOVE SONG” is the second single from @krugspencer’s forthcoming LP titled ‘I Just Drew This Knife’ (10/13 Pronounced Kroog) & it finds the British Colombian “near-unemployed” trio of @e.l.browning (drums/bass/guitar/keys), @jk__rolling (lead guitar) & Spencer Krug (vocals/keys/bass) reveling in the groove across 3+ mins of moodily hazed PsychRock. // @wilco are here w/ “COUSIN,” the second single/title-track from their forthcoming @catelebon produced LP (9/29 dBpm) & it finds the Chicago-based lifers, consisting of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Nels Cline & Patrick Sansone sounding wholly refreshed & ready to resume their journey w/in “familiar progressive & experimental rock territory” across 4+ mins of jaggedly textured & sweetly sung AltRock.

[tonyvasquez]

HBD John Stirratt!

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Wilco - “Cousin”

“Cousin” sounds like the Wil-Cars.

Backing into the early-1980s on the title track from its forthcoming (Sept. 29) LP, Wilco betrays the song’s creators only via Jeff Tweety’s vocals.

I’m nothin’/my cousin, he sings over a minimalist backing track.

And “Cousin” - which follows “Evicted” - is not much more than a backing track made interesting only by Tweedy intoning: Dead awake in waves on the coda.

Grade card: Wilco - “Cousin” - C

9/20/23

[spilladabalia]

Wilco - Evicted