What’s Up With Wilco: March 2022

Seeing as it’s now mid-March, and I haven’t posted in a bit, it’s a good time to bring us up-to-date with all the happening Wilco whatnot. 

Since my last post, the big news is still Wilco’s upcoming celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, beginning with a five show run at Union Palace in NYC from April 15-17, and then three shows at Auditorium Theatre in Chicago from April 22nd to the 24th.

The first few Union Palace shows (4/15, 4/16) are sold out, but tickets are still available for the remaining dates. Go to Wilco’s official website, wilcoworld.net, for more information.

I had also previously reported the rumor that a 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of YHF is being prepped for release later this year, but there’s been no news on that front that I can find. 

But on the murmurings of Wilco being at work on a new album, Jeff Tweedy wrote in his Casual Starship Newsletter that he and his bandmates were “chipping away at some new music,” and shared a work-in-progress snippet entitled “Eye Glue (Amazing Grace),” which he said “is fairly representative of roughly a third of the material” that they’ve sorted through. Listen to the excerpt here.

 

Next week, it will be the two-year anniversary of The Tweedy Show, the live Instagram program that came about because of the pandemic lockdown in March 2020. For over 212 episodes, the Tweedy family has well served their fans (or clients as they’ve been called) with hundreds of performances of Wilco songs, Tweedy originals, and an encyclopedic range of iconic rock covers, interspersed with zany verbal shenanigans between Jeff, Susie, Spencer, and Sammy, as well as cameos from famous friends, and other family.

Many, not all, of The Tweedy Show episodes are available on YouTube, so there’s lots there to keep fans busy. But don’t go looking for the famous first episode that caught Jeff in the bathtub taking a bubble bath, because apparently that’s one that’s missing. The one that inspired this promo art by Jumble® cartoonist/Wilco fan Jeff Knurek, that is:

Finally, those who like to Netflix and chill may have heard Wilco pop up in a recent episode of Space Force. The silly workplace satire, which stars Steve Carrell as the head of a new military division devoted to conquering the heavens, featured the band contributing a demo for the Space Force Anthem.

We get to hear a bit of Wilco’s entry in a boardroom scene in episode six, “The Doctor’s Appointment” (February 18, 2022), of the newly released second season. Space Force social media director, F. Tony Scarapiducci (Ben Schwartz) informs his coworkers that he’s found the winner in the “Space Force Anthem” sweepstakes: “Indie rock darlings, Wilco.”

The familiar acoustic sound of Jeff Tweedy and company then fills the conference room, with the lead singer softly singing, “If you’re looking for a beautiful space, with a place for everything you love - closets and pantries and cabinets and shelves…”

 

Upon hearing this, Carrell’s character, General Mark R. Naird, asks “Why are they singing about cabinets and shelves?” F. Tony explains that, “Wilco thought that Space Force was a group of people that come to your house, and offer storage solutions, make everything cleaner, and I did not correct them.”

 

More later...