Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Dash 7”

This week, the Spotlight shines on one of Wilco’s most overlooked tunes:

“Dash 7” (Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, acoustic guitar

Lloyd Maines: pedal steel

This spare track has been performed less than a handful of times (three) by the band, making it one of the least-performed songs off of Wilco’s first album, A.M. (1995). It is also the song from the album that they took the longest time to get around to playing live, as they didn’t perform it until February 2008, during their residency at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago, thirteen years after its release.

“That doesn’t happen very often, thanks for being quiet for that,” Tweedy remarked after their first ever performance of “Dash 7,” and then quipped “I was 7 foot 3, when I wrote that song.”

In solo performance, Tweedy has performed the song a documented seven times starting with a stab at it at his wife’s long defunct club, the Lounge Ax, in November of 1997. In 2010, Tweedy performed the song with Wilco guitarist Nels Cline taking on the pedal steel guitar part, at the Solid Sound Festival. 

The Wilco Book contains a lengthy essay by author Rick Moody (best known for his novel The Ice Storm) entitled “Five Songs,”  which over the course of three long paragraphs attempts to break down “Dash 7.”  

Describing it as “the strangest, and most out-of-place song on A.M.,” Moody notes that the song “makes use of modal tuning, and passing chords as a way to get at some really acute loneliness.”

Without completely disregarding Moody’s theorizing about the song, which he admits might be “just a song about touring,” I don’t hear impending doom in “Dash 7.” No, despite the melancholy mood the steel guitar sets, I hear something life-affirming in the softly sung chorus, “Because I’ve found the way those engines sound will make you kiss the ground.”

The song’s title is taken from the nickname for a turbo-prop passenger airplane first built in the 70s. At the time of writing, the last live airing of the song occurred at the Riviera Theatre on December 9, 2014 (available on Roadcase 43).

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

More later...