As it’s September 11th, this week’s Song Spotlight shines on the Wilco song that is most associated with that day in 2001: “Jesus, Etc.” This is despite that the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot track was written and recorded several months before the tragic events of 9/11 occurred. Read on for more:
This is an edited excerpt of Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com) releasing on 9/17; pre-order here.
“Jesus, Etc.” (Jay Bennett, Jeff Tweedy)
According to a 2002 interview with Jay Bennett, the title of one of Wilco’s most beloved songs was derived from his ‘lazy late-night CD labeling.’ In the same piece, Bennett said the song was ‘the last addition to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,’ and ‘was written by Jeff and me (in the old school you got a verse, hey, I got a chorus method) one very late night, long after many of these wedges had been driven between us. We still had some magic going on right up until the end. That’s one of my favorite songs that Jeff and I wrote together.’
The late Bennett was far from alone, as ‘Jesus, Etc.’ is a favorite among many fans and critics due to its ultra-melodic, violin-driven groove and Tweedy’s weary yet somehow urgent vocal, which seeks to soothe the listener with the notion that each star “is a setting sun.”
Tweedy corroborated Bennett’s recollection of the song’s creation in a 2002 interview with The Nation. “It’s one of the last things we recorded [for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot], and I think it’s one of the only things that Glenn, our [new] drummer, plays on that wasn’t a re-approach of something that we’d already recorded, or a song that had been around for a while,’ he explained to Hillary Frey. ‘It’s one of the first songs of the new line-up, and it came about very quickly. And then it got a really inspired performance.”
He went on to tell Frey that he and Stirratt had collaborated on the string arrangement for the song, and that ‘the goal was to have each section of the song commented on a little bit differently with the string texture.’ Adding a lot to the performance on the album was Jessy Greene, a violinist from St. Paul, Minneapolis, and a former member of Geraldine Fibbers and The Jayhawks. Greene guested with Wilco for the first live performance of “Jesus, Etc.’ at First Avenue, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 29, 2001.
She would go on to lend her strings to the song at Wilco’s concert at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis on July 30, 2002, and she appeared with the band when they performed it on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in September 2003. As has been well noted elsewhere, Tweedy & company launched a free internet stream of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in September 2001.
This, of course, was when the world was still in shock from what happened on 9/11, and many listeners found it impossible to separate lines like “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs,” and “skyscrapers scraping together” from that month’s tragic events. Even in the knowledge that Bennett and Tweedy wrote the song in early 2001, the timing is still pretty chilling.
Zach Schonfeld and Ryan Bort, in their ranking of Wilco’s albums for Newsweek (notably posted on September 11, 2016), wrote that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s original slated release date was “a curious trick of history, considering prophetic classics ‘Jesus, Etc.’ and ‘Ashes Of American Flags’ are frequently assumed to be about the 9/11 attacks.”
A live version of “Jesus, Etc.” (sans strings) features on Wilco’s 2005 live album Kicking Television, highlighting the then-new line-up of Nels Cline, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone, John Stirratt, and Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy has said that “Jesus, Etc.” is one of their most requested songs, and that they play it “damn near every night.”
That accounts for the almost eight hundred performances from 2001 to today. The founder/frontman has also played it more than a hundred more times either in solo acoustic sets or with his side project, Tweedy, with his son Spencer. Confirming its status as a Wilco “standard,” the song has been covered by artists as diverse as Norah Jones, Bill Fay, Puss N Boots, Paul Dempsey, and The Mynabirds.
“Jesus, Etc.” was also one of the twelve Wilco tracks to be given the instrumental bluegrass treatment on Pickin’ On Wilco: Casino Side (CMH Records, 2004). Often—particularly during the 2009-10 tour for Wilco (The Album)— “Jesus, Etc.” has invoked a massive audience sing-along, with Tweedy letting the crowd take the first few verses, à la live versions of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” Some nights, Tweedy has let them sing damn near the entire song.
More later...
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