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.

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Box Full Of Letters”

The cover for the CD-single of Wilco's “Box Full Of Letters” (Reprise, 1995) 

Welcome to the latest entry in the Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight in which an excerpt about a choice track by the band from my book, Wilcopedia, is featured. So let’s get right to it:

“Box Full Of Letters” (Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, guitar

John Stirratt: bass, vocals

Max Johnston: Dobro

Ken Coomer: drums

Brian Henneman: guitars

Wilco’s first single, which appears as the third track on A.M., is a sprightly jingle-jangle of a song concerning a couple splitting up their belongings before going their separate ways, as sung by Jeff Tweedy in a matter-of-fact manner.

Many fans and critics felt the song referred to Jay Farrar, Tweedy’s estranged former partner in Uncle Tupelo. There was a well-documented falling out when that band dissolved, so the assumption does seem apt, but the song’s strength lies in its flexibility; it is relatable to anybody who’s had bittersweet feelings about a breakup.

In an interview with Chuck Taggart of the Chicago Reader, published a week before A.M.’s release, Tweedy said the song shouldn’t be seen as being about his estrangement from Farrar because “it’s just a straight pop relationship song,” before adding, “Jay and I didn’t share records.”

As Wilco’s style developed, such straightforward songs as “Box Full Of Letters’ became a thing of the past. It still pops up in the band’s setlists, but like the rest of the material on A.M., it’s a signifier of a very different era - an era during which Wilco were an alt.country concoction very much in the shadow of Uncle Tupelo. Despite this, it remains one of their catchiest and most enduring songs.

Wilco made their television debut performing “Box Full Of Letters” on Late Night With Conan O’Brien on June 9, 1995; they also made a video for the song, which featured on the popular MTV animated series Beavis & Butt-Head. 

A spare, slowed-down version of the song, featuring only Bennett and Tweedy and recorded live at C’est What in Toronto, Ontario, on November 20, 1996, would appear on the Summerteeth And Sum Aren’t promo CD in 1999, and was later included on the Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014 box set.

Although Wilco have taken lengthy breaks from playing “Box Full Of Letters’ live, with no documented performances of it at all during 1997–2000 and 2003–2007, it continues to be a go-to audience favorite, and in recent years has been played regularly, including at almost every show the band played during 2015–2017.

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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Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Wilco’s first show

“We’ve been practicing in Belleville all week. This is our first show ever.”
- Jeff Tweedy at Cicero’s, St. Louis on 11/17/94

Last night at Wilco’s concert at the Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland in Kansas City, Missouri, front man Jeff Tweedy told the audience that it was the 25th anniversary of the band’s first ever show. 

This proceeded their performance of “Box Full of Letters,” which, when it was first played at their first show at Cicero’s Basement Bar in St. Louis, wasn’t released until over four months later on Wilco’s debut album, A.M.

For their premiere gig, Wilco went under the name Black Shampoo, taken from the title of a blaxploitation flick from 1976. In Tweedy’s 2018 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), he wrote that the use of the odd moniker, inspired by drummer Ken Coomer’s collection of cult films, “seemed like a funny, self-effacing way to begin our musical second chapter.”

Wilco’s line-up on this day, two and a half decades ago, was Tweedy on lead vocal, rhythm, acoustic and lead guitars, Jay Bennett on acoustic and lead guitars; John Stirratt on bass, Max Johnston on Banjo and fiddle, and Coomer on drums.

A raw feedback-filled recording of the show can be found on these here interwebs with very little Googling, so Wilco fans can easily check out what their favorite band sounded like in the beginning. Incidentally, “In the Beginning” is the name of a CDR bootleg I have of the show. You can hear the boot on YouTube:

Listening to the recording of the gig now, which cuts into the first song “I Must Be High,” is an interesting experience as you can hear Tweedy shaking off the uneasiness of the Uncle Tupelo breakup (Tweedy’s former band, which also consisted of Stirratt and Coomer, played their last show at the club Mississippi Nights on May 1st, 1994) and plunging forward with his new project.

Let’s take a look at the setlist, enhanced by some choice between song banter courtesy of the audibly nervous Tweedy.

“I Must Be High” (“The first song on our record, which won’t be out for a long time, but it’s the first song we ever played, and the first time we ever played is on the record.”)

“Too Far Apart” (Referring to the secret nature of their first show: “So, um, how’d you guys find out? It’s all Beatle Bob’s fault.”)

“Box Full of Letters”

“Should’ve Been in Love”

(“We’re gonna do a song in a minute that we used to do in another band…Max has got an experimental banjo solo in it.”)

“New Madrid” (Uncle Tupelo)

(“This is a song that – it might be kinda ill-suited for Cicero’s Basement, but it’s on our record so…”)

“That’s Not the Issue”

(“I have to sing this kinda quiet, so shut up.”)

“Pick Up the Change”

“The Long Cut” (Uncle Tupelo)

“Walk Where He Walked” (Golden Smog)

“Shouldn’t Be Ashamed”“If That’s Alright” (Uncle Tupelo)

“Give Back the Key to My Heart” (Doug Sahm)

“Wait Up” (Uncle Tupelo cover)

“No Sense in Lovin’” (Uncle Tupelo)

“Lost Love” (Golden Smog) (“Practiced that a million times, man.”)

“Passenger Side” (“Maybe we’ll try that one again later or something.”)

“Casino Queen” (“Thanks a lot for letting us play under a stupid fake name.”)

Encore:

“Reincarnation” (Roger Miller)

(“I really would like to thank you for up to this point not hearing anyone yell ‘Whiskey Bottle,’ I appreciate that – did you hear it? Oh, f***. Nothing against the song, mind you.”)

“We’ve Been Had” (Uncle Tupelo)

(“This is a pretty stupid song, so…a stupider song.”)

“Hesitation Rocks” (Originally known to fans as Let’s Hear It for Rock and Roll”)

Second encore:

(“You know, most of these songs we’ve been playing are from our record that’s gonna come out in March. And then, like the one we just played isn’t on anything. And this one’s not on anything. Although we tried to play it like a dozen times.”)

“Outtasite (Outta Mind)”

“Listen to Her Heart” (Tom Petty) 

Having just formed earlier that year, Wilco had a limited amount of material so 11 out of the 22 songs they performed were covers like the Petty show-closer, leftover Uncle Tupelo tracks, and a Golden Smog song that wouldn’t released for four years (“Lost Love” appears on Golden Smog’s second album Weird Tales, which came out on October 13, 1998).

As for Wilco’s originals, they played 8 of the 13 tracks that would be released on A.M., a song that was an outtake from that album’s sessions (“Hesitation Rocks”), and a song (“Outtasite (Outta Mind))” that would later be on the band’s second album, Being There, that wouldn't officially drop until October 29, 1996.

Although neither features any tracks from this historic event, two Wilco releases were released on the show’s 20th anniversary in 2014. Their first ever “best of” comp, a 2-disc, 38-track collection entitled: What’s Your 20? The Best of Wilco (Essential Tracks 1994-2014), and a 77-track box set, Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014.

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

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Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Casino Queen”

This week, the Song Spotlight shines on a song from Wilco’s 1995 debut A.M., which is definitely one of their rowdier tunes:

“Casino Queen” (Jeff Tweedy)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, acoustic guitar

John Stirratt: bass, vocals

Max Johnston: fiddle, vocals

Ken Coomer: drums, vocals

Brian Henneman: guitars, vocals

Daniel Corrigan: vocals

“My dad asked me to write a song about it,” Tweedy told Josh Terry of the Chicago Tribune in 2016. “It’s a real riverboat casino. I took my dad to go to the casino one time, and he said, This could be something you could write a song about. He basically forced me to do it.”

From its dirty licks to its drunken chorus, this track has a distinct Rolling Stones vibe, and could’ve easily fit on one of the band’s classic run of albums from the late ’60s to the early 70s. It’s not hard to imagine Mick Jagger spitting out such lines as “My wife that I just met is looking like a wreck,” and “I’ve been gambling like a fiend on your tables so green.” 

Adding to the song’s boozy, barroom aura, the sounds of bottles clinking together can be heard throughout the second half of the track, notably at the end, as the screams and woos die down. Guest guitarist Brian Henneman, who was brokenhearted at the time, reportedly drunkenly clinked two beer bottles together on the track. “That’s totally contrived,” Tweedy said of Henneman’s contribution to the song to Steve Hyden in 2017. “But those bottles definitely were emptied by him.” 

“Casino Queen,” which was one of Wilco’s first batch of demos, was played at their first official gig, at Cicero’s in St. Louis, Missouri, in late 1994. There, Jay Bennett, who doesn’t appear on A.M., put his stamp on the lead guitar lines originally played by Henneman, who by now was back with his band The Bottle Rockets. Since then, the rowdy song has long been a live staple that Wilco have performed—usually during encores—well over three hundred times.

Robert (Bob) Tweedy passed away on August 4, 2017. At the first show that Jeff played after his father’s death, at the Velorama Festival in Denver, Colorado, on August 11, Wilco performed ‘Casino Queen’ as a tribute. Jeff introduced it by saying, ‘This was the first song that my dad liked that I wrote ... and I think it might be the last song that he liked that I wrote.’

A rousing live version of “Casino Queen,” recorded at the Fox Theater in Boulder, Colorado, on May 5, 1995, appears on the CD single for “Box Full of Letters,” and was later re-released on Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

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

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