Most of the previous entries have been excerpts from Wilcopedia, but since the band has released two records, Ode to Joy and Cruel Country, since my book’s release in 2019, songs from those albums are now being included in this series. This will give folks a bit of a preview of the second edition of Wilcopedia (btw the first edition is at a cool discount price on Amazon!).
This installment of the Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight shines on the next to last song on Wilco’s eleventh studio album, Ode to Joy (2019):
“Hold Me Anyway” (Jeff Tweedy)
The delicious hook in the form of an infectious chorus helps to make this the album’s most friendly and personable song. Like many of the tracks on Ode to Joy, “Hold Me Anyway” commences with Tweedy’s lone guitar which goes on to accompany the singer’s ponderings. In a couplet reminiscent of “Theologians, Tweedy soberly states “I’m like a hologram / Light is all I am.”
While I wrote that this track is a warm one, it does have dark lines about “freaking the fuck out,” and equating oneself with a plastic bag ‘high in an old dead tree.” Such thoughts clear away when the chorus comes around to answer the question, “Are we all in love just because’ with the joyous refrain: “No! I think it’s poetry and magic / Something too big to have a name.”
The seemingly bleak lines that follow about how love is still tragic, and wondering who’s to blame when you die, are sung in the same uplifting manner as the “poetry and magic” moment, with Nels Cline’s fuzzy guitar riffing coming in to punctuate the proceedings. The chorus is repeated three times, with no further verses added, but it’s still a winning song structure that results in one of the album’s most memorable moments.
“Hold Me Anyway” made its live debut at USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway on September 7, 2019 and, like most of the songs on the album, it has been performed over 60 times through the Ode to Joy tour of 2019-2021.
Watch the third live performance of “Hold Me Anyway” at Den Grå Hal in Copenhagen, Denmark on Sept. 10, 2019:
“Hold Me Anyway” has also popped up three times on The Tweedy Show, the popular Instagram program featuring the songs and shenanigans of the Tweedy family. Tweedy responded to the many requests for the song from viewers, who the family refer to as “clients,” with a sweet solo version of the song on Episode 20 (April 9, 2020), then it was performed (again solo) as the opening number for Episode 92 (September 3, 2020), dedicated to a client named Kathy; and was lastly strummed on Episode 183 (June 10, 2021).
But since the song concluded Wilco’s set before the encore at the KettleHouse Amphitheater, in Bonner, Montana on August 7, 2021, it has gone into hiding.
During the tour for Ode to Joy, a large sign held up by a fan, or a client, quoting the song’s key line, “Thanks for the poetry and magic,” appeared at a few shows. Certainly it’s a sentiment that all Wilco fans can agree with.
More later...
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