Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “A Shot in the Arm”

Today’s Song Spotlight shines bright on one of Wilco’s most dramatic and stunning tracks:

“A Shot in the Arm” (Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett, John Stirratt)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, acoustic guitar, twelve-string guitar, synthesizers 
Jay Bennett: lap steel, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, drums 
John Stirratt: bass 
Ken Coomer: timpani

Kicking off with one of the best and most intriguing opening lines of Tweedy’s career, “The ashtray says you were up all night / When you went to bed with your darkest mind,” “A Shot In The Arm” is a Summerteeth standout, and one of Wilco’s biggest live crowd pleasers.

In his 2018 memoir, Tweedy attributes the influence of the award-winning American author William H. Gass on the song’s desperately dark lyrics. “There would be no ‘Something in my veins / Bloodier than blood’ without his genius,” he writes. 

Despite its edginess, this intensely tuneful track has a lavish-sounding production that includes ELO-style instrumentation and a catchy circular progression. It appears in two forms on Summerteeth: first as the third track in the song cycle, then as a bonus alternate take toward the end of the album, as an unlisted “hidden” track. 

A remix of the song by Warners executive David Kahne appeared as a B-side of sorts on a CD single for “A Shot In the Arm” that was issued in spring 1999. In the liner notes to the 2014 4-CD rarity set Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Tweedy says of the remix, “I personally think this sounds like a dated mess, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the feeling I had about the song and what the song meant to me. But it’s interesting to listen to because it sounds like an artifact from a very different time in music.” 

“A Shot In The Arm” is one of Wilco’s most performed songs, with over nine hundred live airings to date. A version recorded at the Vic Theatre in Chicago appeared on Wilco’s 2005 live album, Kicking Television, and their 2009 live DVD, Ashes of American Flags included a rendition filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on March 2, 2008. 

Here’s a clip of Tweedy and co. performing the song at the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England on June 25, 1999:

There is also a solo acoustic take of the song performed by Tweedy on his live DVD, Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Norrthwest, filmed  at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene, Oregon, on February 4, 2006.

Tweedy had first played “A Shot In The Arm” at the Lounge Ax on March 25, 1999; a year later, to the day, Wilco premiered their full-band arrangement of the song at the Gruenspan in Hamburg, Germany.

Daniel Cook Johnson's Wilcopedia: A Comprehensive Guide to the Music of America’s Best Band is available for order here.

More later...