Wilco Wednesday Song Spotlight: “New Madrid”

Today, the Spotlight shines on a song that's not technically a Wilco song as it was originally an Uncle Tupelo track, but when that band broke up, its author, Jeff Tweedy took it with him and has played it with Wilco and his other offshoots enough to render its origins kaput.

This entry was inspired by the news, posted by Kyle Thompson on Facebook, that today is the 209th Anniversary of  the great New Madrid earthquake.

“New Madrid” (Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, guitar
Jay Farrar: guitar
John Stirratt: bass
Max Johnston: banjo
Ken Coomer: drums

One of Jeff Tweedy’s best pre-Wilco compositions, “New Madrid” was one of four songs from Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne that the singer-songwriter continued to play after his former band’s breakup.

For John Tryneski of Spectrum Culture, the song is “a bouncy banjo-driven number that pokes fun at Iben Browning’s quackish predictions of a natural disaster in that Missouri town.” This refers to the Texas businessman and author who predicted that a major earthquake would hit the New Madrid Seismic Zone around December 2–3, 1990, and that the US Government would collapse in 1992.

 Of course, this didn’t happen, and as Jay Farrar would note in an interview in 1993, “Ironically, the town has really grown in population since then. People went there and decided it was a good place to live, and there’s been this huge influx of people.’ Jason Nickey, in a review of Uncle Tupelo’s 2003 compilation 89/93: An Anthology, wrote that, along with “Black Eye,” “New Madrid” “hints at the mysterious and complex lyrical turns [Tweedy] would explore later with Wilco.”

Wilco performed “New Madrid” at their first gig in November 1994, while Tweedy’s first solo acoustic show in late December that year also featured the song. Wilco continued to play the song a lot throughout the mid-to-late 90s, with close to fifty documented performances in 1997 alone; its presence dwindled in the 2000s, but it’s been played on every Wilco tour except their 2010 run.

More recently, in the years since the band’s twentieth anniversary tour, it’s been performed in a stripped-down ‘hootenanny’-style in a smattering of show encores. Meanwhile, Tweedy has performed the song more than a hundred times at solo shows or with his Tweedy side-project.

“New Madrid” was the only Tweedy original that was played during Wilco’s all-request/all-covers show at their Solid Sound Festival at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, on June 21, 2013. After that performance, Tweedy said that whomever it was in the audience that had requested the song should raise their hand. He then thanked the member of the crowd who did so, remarking, “Out of all of the songs in the world, that’s awesome...a wise, wise choice.”

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Pecan Pie”

As it’s almost Thanksgiving, this week’s Spotlight shines on a song that celebrates one of the holiday’s most classic desserts:

“Pecan Pie” (Jeff Tweedy)

After performing this song at the Vic Theatre in Chicago for the Annual Benefit for Education on April 6, 2007, Jeff Tweedy remarked that it was “Definitely the best song I’ve ever written.”

Tweedy has made that claim often since the song’s release on Golden Smog’s Down by the Old Mainstream, but as he jokes around so much, it’s difficult to know whether or not he’s kidding. Don’t get me wrong - I find “Pecan Pie” to be a pure charmer, a sprightly, finger-picked song about a guy craving this traditional Southern dessert, and his love.

Tweedy premiered “Pecan Pie” during his first tour as a member of Golden Smog in 1994, and Wilco first played the song at their second ever show at 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis in late November 1994, and they performed it throughout their ‘94-‘95 tour. They returned to it in ‘97, ‘99, and ‘00, but after that it has left the band’s orbit (their last performance of it was at one of the Lounge Ax’s last shows). It now resides in the realm of Tweedy’s solo gigs, and shows with his self-named side project.

The song has been a fan favorite, oft requested at Tweedy’s Education Benefits and he has repeated his claim as to it being the best song he’s ever written a few times in recent years, but not everyone agrees with him.  Allmusic.com’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine, in an otherwise rave review of Golden Smog’s Down by the Old Mainstream, wrote that it it’s a “bit too cute to be effective.”

Tim Grierson offered his critique in his 2012 band bio Wilco: Sunken Treasure that Tweedy’s “‘Pecan Pie’ has some of the same folk charm as some of A.M. but, like so much of his material at the time, felt lightweight to the point of being almost jokey.”

It’s possible that the whimsical jokiness of “Pecan Pie” is what Tweedy likes so much about it. The song’s appearance at his solo shows is usually surrounded by humor – sure a lot of the tunes are likewise kidded about, but Tweedy’s song about yearning for some honeypie seems to get special attention.

Performed as a request at the Annual Benefit for Education at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, on March 30, 2012, Tweedy said, “Whoever requested this song also gave me a key lime pie, which, if you listen to the lyrics, I don’t like them. Not to be an ingrate or anything, the whole song is about how I hate key lime pies. But I know it’s hard to get a pecan pie in a pinch.”

After the performance, Tweedy said, “Thank you for your help, and I do like key lime pies, that was a bunch of…I was totally kidding.” A few years later, at the Ryman Auditorium Nashville, Tennessee June 24th, 2014, he introduced “Pecan Pie” as “the only song that my wife knows the name of.”

Tweedy has played the song several times over the run of his family’s Instragram show, The Tweedy Show. Here’s the first time from Episode 7 (3/6/20):

In its nearly 50 solo performances by Tweedy, “Pecan Pie” has long been a fan favorite, but its status as the finest song that the man has ever written is arguably debatable.

What I’m going to guess is that the song is a jokey ditty, that Tweedy likes to joke
about being his best. Whatever the case, it sure makes me want a piece of my own.

Endnote: For some reason, this song doesn’t appear in my book, Wilcopedia. It should have because although it’s a Golden Smog song it was performed over 20 times by Wilco during their early tours which means it certainly falls under the band’s banner. Perhaps future editions can right this wrong.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Summer Teeth”

As the Deluxe Edition of Wilco’s third studio album, Summerteeth, releases this week, the Spotlight shines on one of that record’s most infectious tunes:

“Summer Teeth” (Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, acoustic guitar
Jay Bennett: electric guitar, lap steel, piano, keyboards, bells, backing vocals
John Stirratt: bass, backing vocals
Ken Coomer: drums

“I’ve got summer teeth - some are, some aren’t”

This title track of sorts is a McCartney-esque piece of pure pop pleasure featuring 60s-style oohs and ahhs by Bennett and Stirratt. After some nature sound effects, including a babbling brook and bird noises, the song’s rich guitar flourishes cascade into a mix of Bennett and Tweedy on electric and acoustic guitars, jingle-jangling into the song’s easygoing rhythm. Key line: “It’s just a dream he keeps having but it doesn’t seem to mean anything.”

Matthew Greenwald of allmusic.com heard another strong influence in the track. “After all of the Velvet Underground–influenced songs on the Summerteeth album, the title song is definitely a direct homage, being more than reminiscent of ‘Who Loves The Sun,’” he wrote. “The sunny atmosphere and feel are a combination of influences that range from pop cliché and quotes as well as original pop vision. Utterly charming and positive.”

This makes sense in the knowledge that Wilco would go on to cover “Who Loves The Sun” at their all-covers concert at Solid Sound Festival in 2013, and on one further occasion that year.

Tweedy performs a solo acoustic version of “Summer Teeth” at Calvin Theatre in Northampton, MA in 2005:

Over half of the tracks on Summerteeth have been played live a hundred or more times, but ‘Summer Teeth’ the song has only had around seventy-five airings. Tweedy has played solo acoustic renditions of it a further fifty times, from his live debut of the song at the Lounge Ax in Chicago on the eve of the album’s release in 1999 to a performance at Solid Sound in 2015.

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

You can order the lavish Summerteeth: Deluxe Edition boxset at wilcoworld.net.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “You Never Know”

This week’s Song Spotlight shines on the first single from the band’s seventh studio release, Wilco (The Album):

“You Never Know” (Jeff Tweedy)

In the fourth episode of the popular 60s-set AMC TV series Mad Men, first broadcast on August 9, 2007, Roger Sterling - a senior partner at the fictitious ad firm Sterling Cooper, perfectly played by John Slattery - ponders, ‘Maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all.’ *

In Wilco’s bright, poppy “You Never Know,” Jeff Tweedy offers a similar sentiment. “Come on children / You’re acting like children / Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.”

This song was considered by many to be a tribute to the post-Beatles solo work of George Harrison, with Justin Gerber of Consequence Of Sound likening the “I don’t care anymore” refrain to the hallelujahs of “My Sweet Lord.”

It briefly reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Adult Album Alternative chart in the summer of 2009, and was released as a seven-inch single, backed with the non-album B-side “Unlikely Japan.”

A nearly identical version of the song appears on the charity album The Sun Came Out by the Neil Finn project 7 Worlds Collide. The two-CD set, which also features contributions by Johnny Marr, Ed O’Brien, Sebastian Steinberg, Phil Selway, Lisa Germano, Don McGlashan, Bic Runga, Glenn Richards, KT Tunstall, and fellow Finn brothers Tim and Liam, was a benefit for Oxfam, a charitable organization focused on ending global poverty.

With Neil Finn, best known as the front man of the Australian pop rock band Crowded House, providing additional fuzz guitar, Wilco recorded the 7 Worlds Collide version of ‘You Never Know’ in December 2008 at Roundhead Studios in Auckland, New Zealand. It was released on August 31, 2009, two months after Wilco (The Album).

* This bit overlaps with a Wilcopedia (The Blog) post from last year entitled Mad Men & Wilco: That's Right, There Are Connections (10/10/19).

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

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This Week in Wilco: Jeff Tweedy’s new album, book & video plus an Uncle Tupelo live RSD release

If Wilco fans’ wallets aren’t going to be depleted enough by the upcoming release of the major multi-disc Summerteeth: Deluxe Edition, they surely will be with all the other Wilco-related items on the near horizon. 

First up, Wilco founder/front man Jeff Tweedy’s second book, How to Write One Song, comes out next week on Tuseday, October 13. The follow-up to his 2018 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc., the book’s release will be accompanied by a virtual book mini-tour with Norah Jones & Nick Offerman on Oct. 13, and 14. Info and ticket information is available on Wilco’s official website. 

Tweedy’s third solo album, Love is the King, drops digitally via dBpm on October 23. The vinyl and CD versions won’t be available until January 15, so digital will just have to do for a bit for the ones who desire a physical copy (I’m talking about me). 

Earlier this week, Tweedy shared a video for “Gwendolyn,” one of the tracks from Love is the King. Described accurately on their website as “a little wacky and a whole lot of fun,” involves a close-up of a Tweedy wearing a blue surgical mask looking directly into the camera with a white background.

Once he removes his mask, the bottom halves of a series of somewhat familiar faces lips synchs the song whole Tweedy stares straight ahead. The guest celebrity half faces include Jon Hamm, Elvis Costello, Jeff Garlin, Nick Offerman, Seth Meyers, Robyn Hitchcock, John Hodgman, Norah Jones, Scott McCaughey, and Tweedy’s sons, Sammy and Spencer. Watch it below: 

On November 13, The Autumn Defense, the band that’s so much more than a side project by Wilco members John Stirratt and Pat Sansone, celebrates the 10th Anniversary of their fourth album, Once Around.

The digital re-release includes the original album, along with a bonus track, and a bunch of live tracks from gigs at Amoeba Music Hollywood, and Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia around in 2010. Having seen a few excellent Autumn Defense shows on that tour, I am highly looking forward to hearing this previously unreleased live material. 

Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline, who has appeared on more albums than there are days of the year, is releasing Share the Wealth on Blue Note Records on November 13. The record, credited to Cline’s long running outfit, The Nels Cline Singers, will be available on streaming, CD, and vinyl (yay!). 

Last but certainly not least, Tweedy’s former band, Uncle Tupelo, is going to get the vinyl live double album treatment on Record Store Day, Black Friday, November 27. The recording, entitled Live at Lounge Ax - March 24, 1994, is taken from Uncle Tupelo’s performance which was broadcast live on WXRT. As a bootleg, the show has been circulated for years among fans, but I doubt that’ll stop them from obtaining this upgrade.

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Edward Burch: The Wilcopedia Interview Part 3

This is the third and final part of my conversation with Edward Burch, a St. Louis-based musician who works at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. In the first entry, we talked about Burch’s collaboration with his friend Jay Bennett, a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, on their superb 2002 album, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), which will make its vinyl debut tomorrow, on Record Store Day (September 26).

In the second entry, we talked about Bennett and Burch’s tour for the album in 2002-2003, and also touched on Bennett’s solo work that followed The Palace at 4am, and the years leading up to his death in 2009.

Here, we talk about the Gorman Bechard’s upcoming documentary about Bennett, our shared love of The Replacements, a few of the Wilco songs that Bennett co-wrote, and I tell a story about meeting Bennett after one of their shows in 2002.

Daniel Johnson: “Now, the documentary about Bennett, WHERE ARE YOU, JAY BENNETT? – have you seen a cut of it?”

Edward Burch: “Yes, in fact Gorman (Bechard), the Director, is sending me the color-corrected copy probably in the next couple of days. I’ve seen what is the locked picture print, and it’s coming together very well.”

DJ: “So you like what you’ve seen?”

EB: “The film is doing its best to tell as broad of a portrait of what Jay was about. Not just that the fact that he was a member of Wilco, but looking at his life before, looking at his life after, and I think it’s going to be a really great film. I’m grateful to have contributed what I could to that process.

Neither Jeff Tweedy nor John Stirratt, current Wilco members who actually worked with Jay, agreed to do interviews for the film. So Gorman is using snippets of Jeff’s audio from reading his book. So Jeff’s presence in the film is from either those audio clips, or both Jeff and Stirratt end up appearing from previous interview footage from other sources. But Ken Coomer (Wilco drummer 1994-2001) did agree to talk for the film, as did Max Johnston, Daniel Hurbst who was the road manger, and Jonathan Parker, who was the road tech guy/stage manager. So a lot of previous Wilco-related people appear in the film. But Jeff and John only appear from previous sources. We reached out to them many times.

I sent Jeff a note saying ‘We’re not going to ask you any hard-pressing, controversial kind of things, we just want you to speak of what was it like working with Jay when things were going well. Just let him talk about that. You don’t have to talk about the dissent into drug abuse, or even the decision to let him go. You can pick and chose what you want to talk about. And he wasn’t even really interested in that, which is unfortunate. Because I was around when their creative partnership is at its peak, and they really got along, and they enjoyed each other, and as we know from the records we have from that period they collaborated on some really great music.”

DJ: “I like Gorman Bechard’s films, but had mixed feelings about The Replacements documentary (COLOR ME OBSESSED), but maybe that was more of a personal thing as they are my favorite band. His approach of not actually having any Replacements stuff in it, I don’t know if that went over as well as the concept.”

EB: “Well, I will tell you – the reason we approached Gorman to do the film was precisely because of the Replacements documentary. I’m with you though – the first time I saw the film, I was just kind of like ‘meh’ and not quite getting it. The second time I watched it, I was like ‘oh, now it all makes sense.’  The conceit of the film is here’s a band that does not give a fuck about publicity, or any of the machinations of the music industry, or all of that kind of stuff. So to have a documentary where there’s no footage of the band, there’s no music of the band, all it is is people who have been around at different times in the band’s career just telling their stories.”

DJ: “I definitely need to watch it again.”

EB: “There was something about the Replacements that the way that you came to them. You came to them because somebody that you knew, said ‘oh, have you heard this record? Oh, have you seen them play live?’ It was a band that found its audience because the people who had first seen them or heard them found something within it and they were like ‘this is amazing and I’ve have to share this with other people.’ So, for me, the documentary is all these people sharing and reminiscing about how that particular process came together to help them find their audience. I’m not a fan of idol worship, but certainly when I was in my mid-late 20s, when The Replacements were doing their thing, I was like ‘I fuckin’ love these guys!’

Certainly, part of that was listening to their records. But part of it was friends who would go with me to shows, or the friend who initially turned me on to their records. So the documentary is taking a very non-standard approach, and letting the people who love the band tell you why they love the band. Here, I’ll throw this out to you, and you’ll probably agree: if Bob Stinson never recorded anything except for the guitar playing he does on ‘Nowhere is My Home’ he would still be one of the greatest rock guitarists that the world has ever produced.”

DJ: “I wanted to ask you about ‘My Darling.’ It’s credited to Bennett and Tweedy, but Bennett said he had the song a long time before that, and there was a deal where Magnet Magazine had this review of Summerteeth which said that despite that the album was bright, and sun-shiny sounding, there was a lot of darkness there. They pinpointed the line in ‘My Darling’ that was ‘we were a family,’ and Bennett wrote them saying ‘that’s not dark,’ that it was a positive song about looking back, so it makes me wonder – does Tweedy actually have any song-writing credit in ‘My Darling?’ It seems like it was fully formed before it got to Summerteeth.”

EB: “Here’s what I can tell you. Jay wrote the song. It is his song. I think he, as a courtesy gesture, gave Jeff supplemental writing credit because there are some slight differences musically, or even a couple of lyrical substitutions, or whatever that happened in the Wilco version. I think he did it as a gesture. I would say also that the version that appears on The Palace at 4am – our version credits it as me and Jay, but it’s really mainly Jay. My only contribution to the song was to say, ‘let’s do this descending line like the Big Star song – ‘Lord, I’ve been trying’ – whatever that song is. ‘Try Again.’ That was my writing contribution to the song, which is obviously very minimal. It’s 100% a Jay song. I got a gratuitous writing credit on Palace; Jeff got a gratuitous writing credit on Summerteeth.”

DJ: “It’s interesting to me because Wilco did the song every night on the Summerteeth tour, and they even played it on some TV show, but when Bennett left the band, it’s like he took the song with him. Wilco didn’t do it for years, until a run of shows in Chicago at Riviera Theater in 2006 where the deal was they were playing every song they ever done so, of course, they had to do that song too. Tweedy – I found the bootleg of the show – didn’t give any credit, he just said to the audience – ‘do you want to hear a lullaby?’ Since then, they’ve done it maybe once or twice, but it’s kind of an outlier in the Wilco catalogue.”

EB: “Same goes for ‘Pieholden Suite.’ In the whole of their career, they’ve only done it seven or eight times.” I certainly hope that nothing I’ve talked about this evening is in any way bad-mouthing Jeff. I think he’s a very talented person, and like any human being, he has his own issues. I might wish that he could’ve found within him the strength to deal with Jay especially in the post-Wilco world at a more empathetic level, and it didn’t happen that way. I know that Wilco have done good and interesting work post-Jay, I personally never chose to follow it. That was my own thing.”

DJ: “When you look at a list of the songs that Bennett and Tweedy co-wrote together – that is pretty amazing. Those are the songs most Wilco fans most hold dear. Even if they like later stuff, those are the core of Wilco love. The fact that the last song they ever wrote together was ‘Jesus Etc.’…that’s pretty freaking amazing.”

EB: “Oh, and by the way, just so you know, the lyric ‘Turning your orbit around’ – that is a Jay Bennett lyric.”

DJ: “Oh, I love stuff like that. That’ll probably make the next edition of Wilcopedia! So I have a story – When I saw you and Bennett play at Go! Studios in Carrboro in 2002, I met Bennett and talked with him briefly, and you weren’t around. You guys had been onstage so long that most people had left, and it seemed like you were doing more stand-up comedy than even you were doing songs that night.”

EB: “That happened sometimes.”

DJ: “I loved it though, but then afterward I was about to leave, and my friend said ‘you said you wanted to get the CD, you haven’t bought the CD, why don’t you go and buy it and get it signed? Jay Bennett is right over there.’ So I was like ‘okay, you’re right.’ So I go up there, and I feel like an asshole doing this, but I said ‘hey, I love that band you used to be in.’ And Jay’s eyes glazed over and I said ‘you know, Titanic Love Affair!’ And he laughed. But what’s funnier is that he signed the CD, ‘Thanks for tolerating us!’

EB: (laughs) “What would have been better is if you had a copy of Steve Pride and His Bloodkin*, and said ‘Oh, and I love this band too!”

* Bennett performs on Pride on Pride (1999)

The new vinyl re-issue of Jay Bennett and Edward Burch's 2002 release The Palace at 4am (Part 1) goes on sale on the September 26 Record Store Day Drop at participating independent music retailers. 

Edward Burch: The Wilcopedia Interview Part 2

                     

This is the second part of my conversation with Edward Burch, a St. Louis-based musician who works at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. In the first entry, we talked about Burch’s collaboration with his friend Jay Bennett, a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, on their superb 2002 album, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), which will make its vinyl debut on Record Store Day (September 26).

Here, we talk about Bennett and Burch’s tour for the album in 2002-2003, and also touch on Bennett’s solo work that followed The Palace at 4am, and the years leading up to his death in 2009.

Daniel Johnson: “Now, the tour for The Palace at 4am started out with just you and Jay, but at some point, you actually gained a band.”

Edward Burch: “Yes, so we had Will Johnson from Centro-Matic on drums – Will is a phenomenal drummer – and Scott Danbom, also from Centro-Matic, and he was playing keyboards and occasionally violin. I love those guys - they’re amazing. Then on bass, on one leg, we had John Horton from The Bottle Rockets, and I think it was shortly after he joined The Bottle Rockets so Jay and I were not familiar with his guitar playing. Bob Andrews, who was managing us was also managing The Bottle Rockets. He shows up and he’s completely great and wonderful on the bass.

On one particular day, John just picked up a guitar, starts playing, noodling around, and Jay and I just turn to him like “holy shit!” We didn’t know you could do that! We were this close to switching Jay to bass on tour and letting John play the electric guitar. We also had a friend from Champaign, Derek, also a great bass player. So the full band versions were always pretty fun. We got to play a little louder, get a little more rocking, than we could do when it just Jay and I as a duo.”

DJ: “I have a bootleg from that tour that’s credited to Overserved.”

EB: “Yes, Bennett/Burch Overserved.”

DJ: “During those shows, you guys broke out some interesting covers. Warren Zevon’s ‘Gorilla, You’re a Desperado,’ and Elvis Costello’s ‘Green Shirt.’”

EB: “The bootleg that is probably most circulated of Bennett/Burch Overserved was the final leg of the band tour which was at the Hideout in Chicago. On that one, we also did the Badfinger Song ‘The Name of the Game,’ which I adore; and we also did a very hard-rocking version of the song by Bread, ‘Everything I Own.’ When we were live we were usually very loose in every sense of the word, but there were definitely some moments that were extremely magical. There were also some moments that completely fell apart, and there were some moments that as Will Johnson once later described it in remembering Jay after his passing, some nights it was like walking on a tightrope and you don’t have a net, and somehow you manage to hold it together and you never fall.”

DJ: “That tour seemed like such a necessary thing for Jay, having been in a band that was playing arenas, playing really structured shows with a crew, and then it’s just you guys playing these shows, and I bet it was a blast for him to get away from that structure, that machinery.”

EB: “We had tons of fun, and, on those tours, we were our own loading crew, and all that kind of stuff. Jay was a seasoned touring veteran, but for me, it was the first time I ever went out on a full on national tour. My musical experience prior to that was playing shows in Champaign, St. Louis, Chicago, and just like the general Midwest sort of stuff.”

DJ: “So how did it come about? Jay leaves Wilco – does he give you a call and goes like ‘hey – I want to keep this momentum going, I’ve got a bunch of cool songs, I want to keep playing out live’ - I mean, how did that go?”

EB: “Jay and I had been recording material, some of it had actually started from before he joined Wilco, and we were constantly recording stuff when he would be home on a break from being on tour, and we just sort of kept working on stuff of our own. So we had various songs in various stages of completion. So when Jay got the word that he was dismissed from Wilco, my then girlfriend, who I will refer to now as my then future ex-wife, were staying in a little rental apartment for the summer in Champaign, and then getting a different place to lease for the following year. So it was about 3:30 or so in the morning, and the phone rings, and I get a call and it’s Jay. I’m talking with him, and he’s in a slightly emotional state about being dismissed from this band, but says ‘hey, we’ve have a lot of material and we can go into the studio, start finishing things up, and put out a record, and tour on it – do you want to do that?’

And of course, 3:30 in the morning and I don’t have my sensibilities together, but even at that moment I was like ‘yes – of course.’ Because I’ve always loved working with him.”

DJ: “Did you contribute to any of the albums Jay made after Palace?”

EB: ‘Well, there are tracks that popped up on a few of his records, post Palace, that were left over recordings from those initial sessions. And then I did work with him on the record that he made that came out on Ryko (The Magnificent Defeat) with some instrumentation, backing vocals and minor song-writing contributions and things like that.

So when the touring ended for Palace, there had been a moment where I had had enough of in this case mainly cocaine, the constant drug use that was happening. It was your basic standard rock ‘n roll cliché kind of bullshit. And granted, even though I was fed up, I was also at times a willing participant. Finally, I was like hit this wall, alright, this shit has to stop. This is fucked up.

So that tour is done, we go out in February of 2003. So it’s Jay and I, Steve and Diane from Dolly Varden. There was one show in particular that was a total meltdown that was in Pittsburgh. When that tour was done, and Jay’s divorce is in progress, he moves all of his studio gear out of the house in Arlington Heights into a studio loft in Chicago. His drug use at that point even gets worse. And, of course, we’re all worried about him. We all love him and care about him. There was literally an intervention scheduled.”

DJ: “My impression was that he really became a recluse. Is that correct?”

EB: “I think that there is some truth to that. I think that in part it had to do with him not coming to terms with his pill abuse situation. And so we dragged him to rehab, and he stayed there for a few days willingly – ultimately he was convinced to sign himself in as opposed to him being unwillingly signed in. After that happened, I didn’t hear from Jay for – I mean, I tried to contact him many times – I didn’t hear from him for a year and a half. My guess was that he was pissed that I chose to be among the folks to drag him to rehab – anybody who deals with substance abuse, addiction, things like that, they’re never gonna change what they have going on until they decide for themselves. Okay, now is the moment to make a change. Once he did, I heard back from him.

When I got the call that Jay had died, I was shocked.  I was living outside of Austin, Texas, I ran to Lowe’s to get something and I didn’t bring my phone with me. In those days I didn’t give a fuck about having my phone with me. I get home and my wife’s like ‘you had two calls on your phone while you were gone.’ One was David Vandervelde and the other was Jonathan from Private Studios. I’m just thinking, the only reason any of these two people would be calling is something regarding Jay. Before I called anyone back, my heart sank, because I felt that I knew at that moment what the news was going to be. Of course, when I called – yes, that was the news. I miss him to this day. Because, primarily, he was a dear friend. We enjoyed doing our music together.

One of the things I often say is if I had gotten that call three years earlier – I wouldn’t have been surprised. Because he ultimately got his shit together and was feeling good overall, except for the hip pain, and he unwisely chose to get a fentanyl patch to deal with the hip pain, and it’s pretty common knowledge that he got the hip patch clandestinely – he didn’t get it through a doctor because no doctor would give a fentanyl patch to a patient who wasn’t terminal because those patches can fail, and that’s exactly what it did with him. But at the time he wasn’t using drugs, he was occasionally having a glass of wine, was in great shape except that he had this excruciating pain. And it was the same thing that happened with Prince.

I remember in all the publicity around Prince’s death, Paul Stanley, of all people, making the comment because he also dealt with excruciating hip pain, from all his prancing around the stage with Kiss, and saying ‘everyone dogging on Prince because he chose to take these drugs to deal with that pain, has never really experienced how excruciating that pain can be.”

Coming soon: Part 3 of the Wilcopedia interview with Edward Burch

Edward Burch: The Wilcopedia Interview Part 1

Not long ago, I had a great conversation with Edward Burch, a St. Louis-based musician who works at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. Since this is Wilcopedia (The Blog), I was very interested in speaking with Burch about his collaboration with his friend Jay Bennett, a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, with whom he recorded an album after he left the band, and toured with in the early 2000s.

On September 26, Bennett and Burch’s 2002 release, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), will be released on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day. In Part 1 of my interview with him, we talked about that superb record.

Daniel Johnson: “I am excited about this release on vinyl of The Palace at 4am. I really love that album – when it came out, I played the hell out of it. So I have some questions about it – how it came about, because Jay Bennett had been in Wilco for several years, and was instrumental in some of Wilco’s best recordings, and when he left he took some songs with him, and a few of those are on this album.”

Edward Burch: “Yeah, so there were two songs that were leftovers from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. One was, at the time, called ‘Alone.’”

DJ: “Which was ‘Shakin’ Sugar.’”

EB: “’Shakin’ Sugar,’ yeah – that’s what we called it. So the original Wilco demo was - ‘cause this was a period when Jay and Jeff (Tweedy) were often held up in the Loft studio in Chicago because at the time John (Stirratt) had not quite yet relocated to Chicago, and he was still in Nashville so Jay and Jeff (Tweedy) were doing a lot of stuff just together as a duo whether it was demos or otherwise. So they did this demo for this song called ‘Alone’ and Jay was playing pretty much everything – drums, bass, guitars, and Jeff did his vocal and then there were some other bits put on, and because that song never made the cut on YHF - I mean, it might’ve been a good song for that record, I’m not sure.

Because that song didn’t make it, I think Jay was being a bit, somewhat protective, maybe somewhat reacting in anger or disappointment to his removal from the band he decided that because they’re going to keep playing a bunch of songs that I had a lot to do with writing and arranging, I can take a couple other songs that I had a lot to do with although it was a Jeff lyric and put them on my record. I think that was kind of his mindset. So that’s how ‘Alone’ and ‘Venus Stopped the Train’ ended up on our album.”

DJ: “That’s a real stand-out to me. ‘Venus Stopped the Train’ was like this gorgeous, I don’t know if ballad is the right word…”

EB: “Oh no, it’s definitely a ballad.”

DJ: “Now, Wilco has never released a version of that. They could release their demo of it if they do a YHF Deluxe Edition, but it felt like that was one of those that was co-written that was given its rightful home on Palace.”

EB: “Well, that’s very kind. I obviously have heard, and I know the bootlegs circulate, that has the original demo that’s basically just Jay on piano, and Jeff singing. – obviously, it’s Jay’s music and Jeff’s lyric - but Jeff on that vocal, on that demo, to me it just kills. It’s amazing. I was happy to sing it on the record, and did my best with my capacities, but it’s a great song, and you have to work hard to fuck up a really great song.

So one of the things that Jay and I bonded over was definitely our love of Elvis Costello, and that certainly rears its head on Palace at 4am. We were very taken with the Rhino re-issues of Elvis’s catalogue. The album, Goodbye Cruel World, which in its original release – great songs, but its production was god awful, and getting to hear the early demos and the early working versions of material before they chose the production aesthetic they did, which was heavily driven by the Yamaha DX7, which ruined many great records in the ‘80s.

So we were listening to the extras on the second disc (of the re-issue of Goodbye Cruel World), and were like ‘oh, this is what those songs were supposed to be.’ That was very illuminating about how production choices can influence how a song can be received. So bringing this back around to the fact that Palace on vinyl is finally happening, we always intended that it would happen…”

DJ: “Vinyl in 2002 just wasn’t a thing.”

EB: “No, in fact the joke that we like to make – I say ‘we’ because I’m speaking for Jay even though he’s not here, but he would agree with this – when we mixed mastered that CD in 2002, that’s the period that recording engineers, and musicians referred to as the ‘great CD loudness wars.’ The way things were mastered were pushing things really up, and things could sound really brittle, or otherwise. Of course, our record was insanely dense with a lot of instrumentation, and Mike Hagler, god bless him, when we were initially doing the mixing, his first job was literally…we called him ‘the chainsaw.’ He would go through and cut a bunch of stuff out before we even began to start think about mixing this.

The end result, I think for me and Mike, and maybe Jay – it’s hard to say – we felt that we still might’ve left too much in. But what Mike Hagler, at Kingsize in Chicago – he worked on the Mermaid sessions, he worked on the Summerteeth sessions, he might’ve been briefly involved in Being There – actually what I learned today, I was searching on Discogs, because I was like, I want an LP copy of the My Morning Jacket album, At Dawn, so I was looking on Discogs trying to find a copy, and I scrolled down and was like ‘holy shit! Mike Hagler did the mastering on that record too!’ And that’s like one of my favorite albums of theirs.

So Mike, he was the guy that I chose to approach when Stephen (Judge) from Schoolkids Records got in touch with me, and said ‘I would like to put this record out on vinyl and I was like ‘that’s awesome - we need to make sure that we master it properly to vinyl because Jay’s not here anymore, and I don’t have the ears of a recording engineer to know the sonic specifics, and I know that Jay did, and I would not want to sign off on anything that would not be what Jay wanted for the record to sound like on an LP. I knew that Mike had worked with Jay enough that he knew what Jay would want a record to sound like. So like ‘are you willing to do the LP master for this?’ And of course, he said yes.

The first thing I heard before they did the test pressings was digital. I was like, alright – sounds like we’re in the right place. And then, when I got to hear the vinyl test pressing, I was completely floored. And also a bit emotional, but I listened to it, and like now, it finally sounds like the record that Jay and I wanted to release. The way the mastering happened, it brought certain things forward that you weren’t necessarily hearing in the previous mastering for CD.

One of the things that I absolutely love, and this was something that Jay always talked about, is ‘let’s master like they do for all the great ‘70s records where the drums are pushed a little back but they’re there, they’re definitely holding things together, but they’re not upfront and being loud and crazy, and that sort of thing. The only reason I agreed to get this record out on vinyl was I knew it was something that Jay wanted, and I realized that I needed really good professional help to make sure that we get this to sound the way that it should, and, thanksfully going to the source – Mike Hagler is one of the finest engineers – recording, mastering, otherwise – that our nation has to offer. He’s amazing.”

DJ: “It’s funny that when this album was first released – I think it was April of 2002 – it was the same day as Wilco’s YHF, and Paul Westerberg’s Stereo/Mono album. So it was like this embarrassment of riches that day.”

EB: “I’m as cynical as they come, but the cynical among us would assume that we chose to release Palace on the same day as YHF…”

DJ: “In what’s been written about Wilco, it is presented in that cynical manner with Bennett insisting that it was a coincidence, but I really doubt he had any choice in the release date. Did he?”

EB: “No. So our manager Bob picked a release date. At that point, we had no idea that YHF was coming out, and so when we had the release date then that generated all of the deadlines that had to proceed coming up to that – when we had to have artwork in, when we had to have the masters of the record in – all of that sort of stuff.

Then it just ended up that later we saw that YHF was the same day, and we weren’t displeased because Jay was like ‘hey, I have two records coming out on the same day.’ It was fortunate for us because that meant that a lot of people wanted to do a big story on Wilco, and do a little sidebar on us and we got a little extra publicity but I can assure you that it was never a calculated move.”

Coming soon: Part 2 of the Wilcopedia interview with Edward Burch 

Deluxe Edition of Wilco’s Summerteeth due out on November 6

It was announced yesterday that Wilco’s 1999 fan favorite album Summerteeth will get the Deluxe Edition treatment which is due out on November 6th. Jeff Tweedy and company’s third studio release will be augmented with unreleased studio outtakes, alternate versions and demos plus a previously unreleased live show recorded at in Colorado at The Boulder Theatre on November 1, 1999 (the vinyl version will have a different live performance listed below).

Summerteeth: Deluxe Edition is available as either a 4 CD set or a 5 LP vinyl collection, which is also available as a limited edition color vinyl release.

The 4-CD Track Listing:

Disc One: Original Album

01 “Can’t Stand it” 02 “She’s A Jar” 03 “A Shot in the Arm” 04 “We’re Just Friends” 05 “I’m Always in Love” 06 “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)” 07 “Pieholden Suite” 08  “How To Fight Loneliness” 09 “Via Chicago” 10 “ELT” 11 “My Darling” 12 “When You Wake Up Feeling Old” 13 “Summer Teeth” 14 “In A Future Age” 15 23 Seconds of Silence 16 “Candyfloss” 17 “A Shot in the Arm” (Remix)

Disc Two: Outtakes/Alternates/Demos

01 “Tried and True” (Demo) 02 “I’m Always in Love” (Demo) 03 “All I Need” (Demo) 04 “I’ll Sing it” (Demo) 05 “Two Guitars” - Instrumental (Demo) 06 “Candyfloss” (Demo) 07 “In a Future Age” (Demo) 08 “No Hurry” (Demo) 09 “She’s a Jar” (Demo) 10 “Can’t Locator It” (Guitar Riff Demo) 11 “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)” (Demo) 12 “Summer Teeth” (Slow Rhodes Version) 13 “Pieholden Suite” (Alternate) 14 “I’m Always in Love” (Early Run Through) 15 “My Darling” (Alternate) 16 “Tried and True” (Alternate) 17 “She’s a Jar” (Alternate) 18 “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)” 19 “Candyfloss” (Intro) 20 “Every Little Thing” (Alternate) 21 “Viking Dan” (Outtake) 22 “We’re Just Friends/Yee Haw” (10/29/99 Minneapolis Soundcheck) 23 “Summer Teeth” (Alternate) 24 “In a Future Age” (Take 3)

Disc Three: Live At The Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO (11/1/99)

01 “Via Chicago” 02 “Candyfloss” 03 “Summer Teeth” 04 “I’m Always in Love” 05 “I Must Be High” 06 “How to Fight Loneliness” 07 “Hotel Arizona” 08 “Red-Eyed And Blue” 09 “I Got You (At The End of the Century)” 10 “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)” 11 “She’s a Jar” 12 “A Shot in the Arm” 13 “We’re Just Friends” 14 “Misunderstood”

Disc Four: Live At The Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO (11/1/99)

01 “Hesitating Beauty” 02 “Christ For President” 03 “Passenger Side” 04 “Can’t Stand it” 05 “Forget the Flowers” 06 “New Madrid” 07 “California Stars” 08 “Kingpin” 09 “Casino Queen” 10 “Outta Mind (Outta Sight)” 11 “Hoodoo Voodoo” 12 “Monday”

On the 5 LP version, the Boulder, Colorado, show will be replaced by a live performance by Wilco at an in-store appearance:

LP Five: An Unmitigated Disaster: Tower Records/WXRT 3/11/99

Side One

01 Intro 02 “I’m Always in Love” 03 “Via Chicago” 04 “How to Fight Loneliness” 05 “She’s A Jar”

Side Two

01 “We’re Just Friends” 02 “Can’t Stand it” 03 “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” 04 “Forget the Flowers” 05 “California Stars”

These track listings are indeed mouth-watering as Summerteeth is one of Wilco’s most treasured albums, and for many fans, myself included, November 6 can’t come soon enough.

Summerteeth: Deluxe Edition is available through Wilco’s official site and many retailers.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Art of Almost”

This week’s Song Spotlight shines on the seven-minute leadoff track on Wilco’s eighth studio album, The Whole Love:

“Art of Almost” (Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar 
Nels Cline: electric guitar, loops 
Pat Sansone: Mellotron, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, tambourine 
Mikael Jorgensen: synthesizers, keyboards, programming 
John Stirratt: bass
Glenn Kotche: drums, percussion, cimbalom

With its opening crackle and the churning synthesizer groove that emerges from it, with added digital chimes, The Whole Love’s opening song initially sounds like a call back to the electronic soundscapes of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born. 

“It started out as sort of a late-night slow-jam,” John Stirratt explained to Todd Marten of the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “When it was on our CD of demos, my subtitle for it was ‘Sade Song.’” 

“There are sides of John that I’ve never heard, and I’ve played with him eleven years,” Glenn Kotche remarked in the same interview, an oral history of the making of this song featuring insightful quotes from all of the band’s members. “Like, John can play funky? I didn’t know that. Wilco isn’t necessarily a funky band, but I don’t think there’s any other track where his fuzzed bass is sticking through.” 

Sansone described the song to Marten as an “in-the-computer, in-the-studio exercise,” Cline called it a “science project of a song,” and Tweedy recalled wanting to capture “the sound of broken hard drives, and the sound of data dying.” 

In an interview with Salon’s David Daley, Tweedy added that they “spent months and months and months” on the song. It ended up finishing the way a lot of later day Wilco songs finish, with Cline shredding the hell out of his guitar while the rest of the band work themselves into a frenzy. 

However, the revved-up mood of running to get back to the wasteland - a reference which, along with the line “blame it all on dust,” seems like it was derived from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland—gives the song a very different feel to the more ornamental guitar interplay that concludes such songs as “Impossible Germany” or “Bull Black Nova.”

An alternate take of ‘Art Of Almost’ appears on Wilco’s ten-inch EP Speak Into The Rose, which was released on red vinyl for Record Store Day on November 25, 2011, while a live version of the song, recorded at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth, Minnesota, on July 9, 2013, appears on the compilation College Radio Day: The Album, Vol. 2, released by College Radio Day Records on November 12, 2013. 

“There’s a certain faction of Wilco fans that I think has felt maligned by the directness of the last couple of records,” Tweedy told Rolling Stone’s Austin Scaggs in 2011. “‘Art of Almost’ scratches that itch for them.”

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Can’t Stand It”

This week, the Song Spotlight shines on the lead-off track, and first single from their third studio album, Summerteeth:

“Can’t Stand It” (Jay Bennett, Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy vocals, electric guitar, backing vocals 
Jay Bennett piano, keyboards 
John Stirratt bass 
Ken Coomer drums

This shiny, XTC-ish rocker was written at request of Reprise after Wilco turned in the first mix of Summerteeth. In an echo of Tom Petty’s line from his 1991 song “Into The Great Wide Open” (“The A&R man said, I don’t hear a single”), Jeff Tweedy went off and wrote this song and recorded it with Wilco, before department head David Kahne remixed it in hopes of getting radio airplay.

“Well, we really wanted to make a pop record,” Tweedy told Rolling Stone’s Richard Skanse in 1999. “Warner Bros didn’t think we had a single until we recorded ‘Can’t Stand It.’ They didn’t think we had anything that could be played on the radio, and we were like, But these are our idea of pop songs. We think they should all be on the radio.”

Even with its added bells (literally) and whistles, however, ‘Can’t Stand It’ peaked at #4 on the Triple-A Modern Rock chart, and failed to crossover to the Alternative charts.

However, the song peaked at #67 on the UK Singles Chart, which remains their highest charting single on that chart. This actually isn’t a bad ranking for a song that’s key line is “no love’s as random as God’s love,” and “your prayers will never be answered again.”

Despite being made to order, the song is one of Wilco’s reliable rockers; they’ve played it on every tour, resulting in over 150 individual performances.

A primo live version from the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on May 7, 1999, was released on the compilation CD, On XRT From The Archives Volume 5, and later found a home on the 2014 box set, Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014.

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

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