Jay Bennett Gets His Documentary Due With Some New Records Too

In the last episode of Wilcopedia (The Blog), the focus was on the coverage of the 20th Anniversary of the release of Wilco’s breakthrough masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but there’s an important sidebar to the story that wasn’t given ample space.

That would be that the album’s co-creator, former Wilco member Jay Bennett (1963-2009), is sharing the same anniversary as his collaboration with Edward Burch, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), was released on the same day (April 23, 2002) as YHF, and the multi-instrumentalist is the subject of a new documentary, Gorman Bechard and Fred Uhter’s JAY BENNETT, WHERE ARE YOU?, which dropped on DVD/Blu ray on April 19.

Bechard and Uhter’s film is a thorough portrait of the life and career of Bennett from his upbringing in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, to his time in the power pop group, Titanic Love Affair, and then onto his defining role in Wilco, mastering various instruments, and collecting all kinds of vintage gear along the way. Bennett had joined Jeff Tweedy and company too late to be a part of their debut, A.M., but just in time to be a touring member, and his influence in the studio was big on the band’s still rootsy, but much wider-ranging second album, Being There, and even bigger on the orchestral pop of the follow-up, Summerteeth.

As the legend goes, the sessions for YHF were where Bennett and Tweedy’s once infectiously fruitful collaboration fell apart, which resulted in Bennett’s departure. The filmmakers have assembled a rich roster of interviewees to take us through these sometimes uneasy background beats including Bennett’s mother Janis, his musical partner, Edward Burch; Greg Kot, who wrote the first book on the band, Wilco: Learning How to Die (2004); original Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, former Wilco production manager Jonathan “JP” Parker, British singer/songwriter Billy Bragg, and Nora Guthrie. Tweedy declined to be in the film, so he’s represented by excerpts from the audiobook of his autobiography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

Of course, some of the ground well trodden in Sam Jones’ I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART - i.e. Bennett and Tweedy’s awkward, edgy argument during the YHF sessions – is trodden over again, but it’s really affecting to hear phone recordings of Bennett trying to cope with the sad situation, and to get his friends’ takes on how damaging his portrayal in that documentary was to him.

Bennett followed up Palace at 4am, which got its first ever vinyl release last year, with five solo albums, the last two of which, Whatever Happened I Apologize (2008), and Kicking at the Perfumed Air (2010), were released on vinyl together on Record Store Day, in gate-fold packaging that makes it look like the soundtrack to the documentary, but very little (none?) of the music is actually in the film. No matter, it’s a cool double album that captures the last chapter of the man’s immaculately tuneful career. And the 2LP set comes with a DVD of the documentary too.

JAY BENNETT, WHERE ARE YOU? is a loving doc depiction of a man who lived for music, and left a large stamp on the sound of Wilco, and in the hearts of all the rock ‘n roll lovers who came into his orbit. With hope, the abundant passion within Bechard and Uhter’s portrait will help to keep the master musician from fading into a footnote. I believe it will be greatly beneficial to Bennett’s legacy, and I’m not just saying that because a quote of mine from Wilcopedia appears in the film. Well, maybe a little.

Extras: The five hours of bonus material includes full interviews with Coomer, Bragg, Jay’s mom, Janis; Deleted Scenes, Q&A with Directors, World Premiere Tribute Concert, and more (including something called “Ketchup, Ketchup, and More Ketchup,” which I obviously haven’t watched yet).

For more about Bennett, and this documentary, please check out my epic three part interview with Edward Burch: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

More later…

Gorman Bechard's Jay Bennett Documentary Premieres Tonight In Chicago

Tonight, the World Premiere of Gorman Bechard’s WHERE ARE YOU, JAY BENNETT? will go down in Chicago, Illinois, at the David Theater. As Wilco fans know, Bennett was involved with the band during a very crucial  era. The documentary will likely do deep on the stretch of albums that Bennett made with Wilco from 1996-2001. 

Filmmaker Bechard puts it like this, “If you love Being There, Mermaid Avenue, Summerteeth, and/or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, this is a film that will captivate you, and fill in the blanks about a great musician who’s truly a part of your musical life.”

 

Bechard had help releasing his Bennett project via a Kickstarter campaign.140 backers stepped up to pitch in to reach the final funding goal and then some.

 

As a long-time fan that came in on the groundfloor, Bennett had always been seen as an essential member of the band, close to an equal partner as he was doing a lot of writing and engineering. As Bennett’s story was told in another documentary WILCO; I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, a few books, scores of blog posts and magazine articles, it will be extremely interesting to see what Bechard’s film brings to the table.

 

Watch the trailer for WHERE ARE YOU, JAY BENNETT? here.

 

I wish I could be in Chicago to see Bechard’s obvious love and on the big screen too. Like many, I’ll have to wait for the DVD or whatever streaming service may offer it. I’ll have to settle for seeing the doc another place/another time.

 

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, check out Bechard’s website, whatwerewethinkingfilms.com, for info for not only the Bennett film, buts his vast array of other works including docs on the Replacements, Sarah Shook, Archers of Loaf, Lydia Loveless, and Grant Hart. Bechard has also made many dramatized movies such as PSYCHOS IN LOVE, THE KISS, FRIENDS (WITH BENEFITS), and BROKEN SIDE OF TIME among them.

 

The site, also gives access to music videos, and short films produced by the fiercely independent filmmaker.

 

More later…

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.

More later...

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

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.

More later...

Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”

This series has been on hiatus since late last year, but it is starting back up today with the spotlight shining on one of Wilco’s best known songs:

“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (Jeff Tweedy)

The striking opening track of Wilco’s fourth studio album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, has become a signature song for the band.

It earned such status by being a game-changer in terms of the perception of who the band are and were. It sounded like no other song they’d done before, yet it had the familiarity of Tweedy’s laid-back rasp for fans to latch onto.

Beginning with arguably the best opening couplet of any of Wilco’s albums, “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue,’ the song proceeds through punctuating walls of sound that seem to contain every instrument that exists, which isn’t so far-fetched as it sounds.

In a 2002 interview, former Wilco member Jay Bennett claimed to have played pump organ, Wurlitzer, two different pianos, a ‘noiz’ section (including toy piano), distorted synth, and manually re-amped drum effects on the track. It’s an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production, for sure.

“The arrangement of it evolved over a long time,” Tweedy told Martin Bandyke in a radio interview. “A lot of the pieces that kind of come and go, and the layers of noise, and just the chaos of it was an environment that evolved around the song more than something really mapped out initially. I think over time, the shapes started to emerge more.”

Midway through production of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jim O’Rourke was brought in to work with Wilco on the material, in particular this troublesome track. O’Rourke worked wonders on the song, weaving the sonic sections back together into a compelling albeit intermittently noisy narrative. 

Despite wanting to engineer and produce the album himself, Bennett admitted to Kot that the opener had been “a freaky fucked-up song, and [O’Rourke] made sense out of it.” (Fans can—and should—consult the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos bootleg to get an idea of what the song originally sounded like.)

As the finished, O’Rourke-assisted song became the intro to the album, critics took major notice. Rolling Stone magazine’s senior editor, David Fricke, called it “a minutely detailed portrait of the singer as blind drunk. Vibes, drums, piano, fuzz guitar and bicycle bells stumble over one another like they’ve been thrown out of a bar, and Tweedy slurs his metaphors in a heavy whiskey breath.”

Pitchfork’s Brent S. Sirota chimed in by describing the “slightly disconnected, piano-led” track as being ‘delicately laced with noise, whistles and percussive clutter, like some great grandson of ‘A Day In The Life.’”

One thing that more than a few critics noted was that amid the cacophony-filled breakdown at the song’s end, Tweedy can be heard singing “I’m The Man Who Loves You,”  foreshadowing the song of the same name that follows later in the album. This doesn’t appear in the demo, or in any live version of the song.

When Wilco play the song live, it sometimes starts quietly, with a lone acoustic guitar figure; others times, it sounds like somebody has just powered up HAL 9000, as a electronic hum, ominous buzzing, and sci-fi-sounding synths fill the air.

More than a few live versions of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” are officially available: a stunning airing of the song recorded during Wilco’s May 2005 residency at the Vic Theatre in Chicago appears on Kicking Television, while another exemplary take on the song, filmed at the Mobile Civic Center in Mobile, Alabama, on March 3, 2008, was included among the bonus material on the 2009 DVD Wilco Live: Ashes Of American Flags. 

That same year, another Chicago band, J.C. Brooks & The Uptown Sound, released a cover of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” that reworks Tweedy’s abstract lyrics into pop soul come-ons.

“When I sing “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” the unspoken line, I think, is if I could,’ Tweedy told D.I.W.’s Trevor Kelley in 2002. “I can only break my own heart - I can’t break yours. I look at most songs as reminders of an idea or something that has helped me.”

With nearly eight hundred live performances in the years since, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” is a helpful reminder of an idea that few of Wilco’s concerts are without.

An excerpt of a skeletal acoustic take of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” accompanies the credits at the beginning of Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary of the same name. Watch it below.

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(s) Spotlight: “Red-Eyed And Blue” & “I Got You”

Since I missed the last couple of Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlights, I’m presenting two tracks this week, but they are ones that many fans think are the same song. “Red-Eyed And Blue” and “I Got You (At the End of the Century),” from Wilco's 1996 double record Being There are usually attached especially as “Red-Eyed” often seques into “I Got You.” But they have been played separately as I discuss below.

“Red-Eyed And Blue” (Jeff Tweedy)

“I Got You (At The End Of The Century)” had been played over two dozen times before it gained the song that would that would function as its prologue for most of its subsequent live airings. Like many of the songs on Being There, both songs were road-tested at numerous gigs during the band’s heavy touring phase in the mid-90s.

“Red-Eyed And Blue” seemingly details the mindset of a broken-down musician who’s drugged up and frustrated in the studio because he can’t quite capture how much he misses his absent lover on tape. Or at least that’s one interpretation, being that there are only twelve somewhat vague lines in the song, but the music fills in the real story between those lines. It ends with a piano figure that is repeated as a guitar riff in the opening of “I Got You,” then built upon as the song explodes into being.

A live version of the song, performed by Tweedy and Bennett at C’Est What in Toronto, Canada, on November 20, 1996, appears on Alpha Mike Foxtrot, but there it doesn’t lead into “I Got You,” even though it did at the show in question. ‘I Got You” appears on another disc in the four-CD set, in all its All Over The Place glory, proving that the two songs can stand alone.

“I Got You (At the End of the Century)” (Jeff Tweedy)

This harmonized rocker, which could be taken as a call out for love amid fears about the impending Y2K, appears on the first disc of the double-CD edition of Being There (or side two of the album on vinyl) in an effective segue from the slow-burner ‘Red-Eyed And Blue.” But although the two songs have also been paired together hundreds of times in performance since 1996, ‘I Got You” made its live debut a year before ‘Red-Eyed And Blue,” at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 28, 1995.

Apart from its appearance on Being There, ‘I Got You” is also on the 1996 promo-only ten-inch EP All Over The Place (pictured below) What the liner notes refer to as the ‘Shakey’s Pizza” version was recorded live to DAT on July 9 at the Lounge Ax in Chicago. This same version also appears on Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

In 2012, Wilco recorded a new, stripped-down version of ‘I Got You,” very similar to the All Over The Place cut, for the soundtrack of Judd Apatow’s autobiographical comedy This Is 40. A few years later, the bonus disc of outtakes included with Being There (Deluxe Edition) offered two further versions of ‘I Got You.” The first is an interestingly orchestrated alternate take; the second is labeled ‘Dobro Mix Warzone.” This take has a rawer feel and a very loose structure but somehow holds together.

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: “Jesus, Etc.”

As it’s September 11th, this week’s Song Spotlight shines on the Wilco song that is most associated with that day in 2001: “Jesus, Etc.” This is despite that the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot track was written and recorded several months before the tragic events of 9/11 occurred. Read on for more:

This is an edited excerpt of Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com) releasing on 9/17; pre-order here.

“Jesus, Etc.” (Jay Bennett, Jeff Tweedy) 

According to a 2002 interview with Jay Bennett, the title of one of Wilco’s most beloved songs was derived from his ‘lazy late-night CD labeling.’ In the same piece, Bennett said the song was ‘the last addition to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,’ and ‘was written by Jeff and me (in the old school you got a verse, hey, I got a chorus method) one very late night, long after many of these wedges had been driven between us. We still had some magic going on right up until the end. That’s one of my favorite songs that Jeff and I wrote together.’

The late Bennett was far from alone, as ‘Jesus, Etc.’ is a favorite among many fans and critics due to its ultra-melodic, violin-driven groove and Tweedy’s weary yet somehow urgent vocal, which seeks to soothe the listener with the notion that each star “is a setting sun.”

Tweedy corroborated Bennett’s recollection of the song’s creation in a 2002 interview with The Nation. “It’s one of the last things we recorded [for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot], and I think it’s one of the only things that Glenn, our [new] drummer, plays on that wasn’t a re-approach of something that we’d already recorded, or a song that had been around for a while,’ he explained to Hillary Frey. ‘It’s one of the first songs of the new line-up, and it came about very quickly. And then it got a really inspired performance.”

He went on to tell Frey that he and Stirratt had collaborated on the string arrangement for the song, and that ‘the goal was to have each section of the song commented on a little bit differently with the string texture.’ Adding a lot to the performance on the album was Jessy Greene, a violinist from St. Paul, Minneapolis, and a former member of Geraldine Fibbers and The Jayhawks. Greene guested with Wilco for the first live performance of “Jesus, Etc.’ at First Avenue, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 29, 2001.

She would go on to lend her strings to the song at Wilco’s concert at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis on July 30, 2002, and she appeared with the band when they performed it on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in September 2003. As has been well noted elsewhere, Tweedy & company launched a free internet stream of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in September 2001.

This, of course, was when the world was still in shock from what happened on 9/11, and many listeners found it impossible to separate lines like “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs,” and “skyscrapers scraping together” from that month’s tragic events. Even in the knowledge that Bennett and Tweedy wrote the song in early 2001, the timing is still pretty chilling.

Zach Schonfeld and Ryan Bort, in their ranking of Wilco’s albums for Newsweek (notably posted on September 11, 2016), wrote that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s original slated release date was “a curious trick of history, considering prophetic classics ‘Jesus, Etc.’ and ‘Ashes Of American Flags’ are frequently assumed to be about the 9/11 attacks.” 

A live version of “Jesus, Etc.” (sans strings) features on Wilco’s 2005 live album Kicking Television, highlighting the then-new line-up of Nels Cline, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone, John Stirratt, and Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy has said that “Jesus, Etc.” is one of their most requested songs, and that they play it “damn near every night.” 

That accounts for the almost eight hundred performances from 2001 to today. The founder/frontman has also played it more than a hundred more times either in solo acoustic sets or with his side project, Tweedy, with his son Spencer. Confirming its status as a Wilco “standard,” the song has been covered by artists as diverse as Norah Jones, Bill Fay, Puss N Boots, Paul Dempsey, and The Mynabirds.

“Jesus, Etc.” was also one of the twelve Wilco tracks to be given the instrumental bluegrass treatment on Pickin’ On Wilco: Casino Side (CMH Records, 2004). Often—particularly during the 2009-10 tour for Wilco (The Album)— “Jesus, Etc.” has invoked a massive audience sing-along, with Tweedy letting the crowd take the first few verses, à la live versions of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” Some nights, Tweedy has let them sing damn near the entire song.

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Wilco video of the week: “Outtasite (Outta Mind)”

As my book Wilcopedia is coming out in a few weeks (pre-order it here), I want to highlight the various sidelines throughout the band’s career. One notable strand is the group of videos that they produced from “Box Full of Letters” from A.M. in 1995 to “Someone to Lose” from Schmilco in 2016.

Now, the age of music videos has long past with MTV and VH1 barely ever showing them, and bands, in the years since, making videos mainly for the internet in hopes that they go viral. Wilco hasn’t made that many videos (which used to be called promotional films), so this series of videos of the week most likely won’t last very long (unless I dig up some real rarities).

No matter, there’s some great ones to cover and this week we start with one of their best from 1996: “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” from Wilco's second album, Being There:

The video involves the then line-up of Wilco (Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett, John Stirratt, and Ken Coomer) skydiving in California’s Paris Valley while lip-synching, and miming the song with instruments in mid-air. The parachuting footage wasn’t faked in a studio - they impressively had to go up 29 times to get all the necessary footage.

But while most of the footage is authentic, some shots were faked as this picture, taken by Stirratt, attests *.

The enormously fun video resembles something out of the Beatles’ 1965 classic comedy musical film “Help!” but it didn’t get a lot of airplay on MTV or VH1.

That’s a shame because it’s a rocking, and winningingly signifier of the Being There era, where Wilco were finding their footing while learning when it’s alright to be silly. So to say, they were in mind, and in sight. Things could only go up from there.

* This photo was included in the booklet for the essential 4 CD collection, Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014.

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