Mad Men & Wilco: That's Right, There Are Connections

What does the acclaimed AMC show Mad Men (2007-2015) have to do with the acclaimed rock band Wilco? Well, let me tell you. First, we’ll start with Mad Men’s star, Jon Hamm, who plays ad exec Don Draper. Hamm has said in interviews that he’s a big fan of Wilco, as well as Son Volt and their antecedent, Uncle Tupelo.

In 2009, Hamm submitted a playlist for iTune’s “Celebrity Playlists” that included the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot track “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” He provided commentary for the track: “This is my favorite song from my favorite band. Hands down. There are a lot of things Wilco does well, and they do all of them on this song.”

Hamm also picked Uncle Tupelo’s “Screen Door,” of which he said, “There is a simplicity to this song (and this band) that disguises its innovation and depth. The fact that this band produced two equally kickass bands is testament to just that.”

Over the years, Hamm has had a number of other connections to his favorite band. Wilco’s “A Shot in the Arm” appeared in the 2011 film, FRIENDS WITH KIDS, in which Hamm co-starred with Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, and Jennifer Westfeldt.

Hamm posted a video via Twitter in 2016 in which he encouraged his internet audience to go to their local independent record store to listen to Wilco’s album Schmilco. You can watch the video here.

In 2018, the actor moderated “Let’s Go - A discussion of music and other topics with Jeff Tweedy and Jon Hamm,” during which Hamm admitted to being a Wilco groupie. 

But Hamm’s piece de resistance has to be earlier this year when he appeared at the Solid Sound Festival to perform a piece entitled “Fishing” aided by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche.

Hamm’s co-star, John Slattery, who portrays Draper’s collegue, Roger Sterling, has also often extolled the virtues of Tweedy and company. He also posted an iTunes playlist which contained two Wilco tunes: “You and I,” of which he wrote, “just saw the song sung live at the Wiltern, and it was like I was the only one there. Is that weird?”

“Impossible Germany” was Slattery’s second choice: “I always wondered if this lyric came from a list of tour dates. Impossible: Germany; unlikely: Japan. Nels Cline is amazing.”

Also notable in the world of Roger Sterling, there’s a moment In the fourth episode (broadcast: August 9, 2007) of Mad Men, in which Roger, Senior Partner at the fictitious ad firm Sterling Cooper, ponders that, “I don’t know, maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all.”

In Wilco’s “You Never Know,” the first single off of Wilco (The Album), Jeff Tweedy sings a similar sentiment: “Come on children / You’re acting like children / Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.” 

In Time Magazine (August 24, 2009), Slattery praised Tweedy and company’s then newest release:

“Wilco (The Album) is another brilliant offering from the best band in the biz. They take the poetry of lead singer Jeff Tweedy and make it rock. They never repeat themselves, and they take chances. They’re students of music and sound and poetry.”

Elisabeth Moss, who portrayed secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy, also posted a playlist alongside Hamm and Slattery’s that contained a few Wilco songs. Sadly, it’s been removed by iTunes so I can’t tell you what they were. If anybody knows, please drop me a line.

That’s all for now. I’m going to go see if I can make any other connections between Wilco and TV shows. 

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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Wilco setlist: Budweiser Stage, Toronto, Ontario 10/8/19

Wilco’s tour continues in Canada with a solid setlist that features a debut a song from their new album. Here’s the rest of songs played:

“Bright Leaves”
“Before Us”
“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”
“War on War”
“One and a Half Stars”
“If I Ever Was A Child”
“Handshake Drugs”
“Hummingbird”
“White Wooden Cross”
“Via Chicago”
“How to Fight Loneliness”
“Bull Black Nova”
“Random Name Generator”
“Reservations”
“We Were Lucky” (live debut)
“Love is Everywhere (Beware)”
“Impossible Germany”
“Box Full of Letters”
“Everyone Hides”
“Heavy Metal Drummer”
“I’m The Man Who Loves You”
“Hold Me Anyway”
“Misunderstood”

Encore:

“California Stars”
“The Late Greats”

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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Wilco Wednesday Song Spotlight: “Cruel to Be Kind”

Okay, so obviously this is not really a Wilco song. It's a Nick Lowe song that Jeff Tweedy and co. covered during their tour for The Whole Love in 2011, but it is really featured here because it was just announced that on Record Store Day, on November 29, there will be a 40th Anniversary release of a 7-inch of “Cruel To Be Kind” featuring Lowe's original single backed by the B-Side of “Cruel To Be Kind” performed by Lowe and Wilco in 2012 for an iTunes session.

So here's the Wilcopedia entry for the song:

“Cruel To Be Kind” (Ian Gomm, Nick Lowe) 

Wilco’s version of the brilliant British singer-songwriter Nick Lowe’s only Top 40 hit, the 1979 power-pop classic “Cruel To Be Kind,’ has the distinction of being their only officially released cover that features the song’s original performer. Here's the original video (then called promo film) for the song:

With Lowe on lead vocals, they recorded the song for an eight song iTunes-only release that dropped online on January 17, 2012. The performance followed their fall 2011 tour together, for which Lowe opened for Wilco as a solo act and would then come out to join them during their encore for a stab at one or two of his songs. 

The first such appearance was at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on September 25, 2011, and involved Lowe and Wilco performing a cover of Kentucky singer-songwriter Jim Ford’s “36 Inches High,” which Lowe had previously covered for his first solo album, 1978’s Jesus Of Cool (released as Pure Pop For Now People in the USA). 

At their next show together, where they played ‘36 Inches High’ a second time, they added Lowe’s “I Love My Label,” another Jesus Of Cool track, which Wilco had covered at Solid Sound the previous June. Wilco and Lowe continued playing “36 Inches High’ and “I Love My Label” at their next few shows. 

Then, after a break during which North Carolina–born artist Jonathan Wilson filled in as Wilco’s opener, Lowe showed up at their show at Roundhouse in London, England, in late October, where he played “Cruel To Be Kind” for the first time with Tweedy & company. A month later, Lowe again joined Wilco for “Cruel To Be Kind,” but this time at two shows shot for the long-running TV series Austin City Limits, filmed live at the Moody Theater on December 1 and 2, 2011. 

One of these night’s performances of Lowe’s bouncy power-pop ditty was included as part of a compilation of both nights’ shows that made up an hour-long program that aired on PBS on February 4, 2012. From then on, Wilco and Lowe (or “Wilc-Lowe,’ as Tweedy joked more than once during their run) performed “Cruel To Be Kind” at every remaining show of their 2011 tour. 

This led to the iTunes Session version of the song, recorded at Wilco’s Chicago loft in December 2011, which to my ears is just as definitive a take on the song as the one recorded by Rockpile for Lowe’s second solo album, 1979’s Labour Of Lust. I'll leave you now with this:

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Wilco’s Ode to Joy: Review Round-Up Part 1

One thing has been certain since Wilco’s latest album, their 11th studio release, Ode to Joy, was released on October 4: it may already be considered the band’s most divisive record ever.

On a Facebook fan page I regularly frequent, A Shot in the Arm: the Wilco Fan Group, there have been folks saying they are through with Jeff Tweedy and co. because of the album, citing its sparseness, plodding progressions, and, worse, calling it boring.

I admit that it took me several listens before I appreciated Ode to Joy’s sound and sentiments. I enjoyed seeing fellow fans go through similar feelings as they listened and re-listened to it, then posted about how the album was finally reaching them.

But that’s the fans – what about the critics? Well, the response to Wilco’s newest has so far been positive across the board. Below, I am linking to some of the first wave of critiques of Ode to Joy, and you’ll see that rock writers still love Wilco in a major way. Click on the headline to see each review:

Wilco: Ode to Joy review – yet another winning set (4 out of 5 stars) - Phil Mongredien (The Guardian, Oct. 6, 2019)

Wilco, Forever In Competition With Its Own Best Work, Tries Shifting The Stakes – Matthew Perpetua (NPR, Oct. 3, 2019)

Wilco’s 11th album is direct and spacious, centering on the beauty of quiet revelation. – Jason P. Woodbury (Pitchfork, Oct. 7, 2019)

Album Of The Week: Wilco Ode to Joy - Chris DeVille  (Stereogum, Oct. 1, 2019)

Wilco’s (Provisionally) Anti-Depressant ‘Ode To Joy’ (4 out of 5 stars) -Will Hermes (Rolling Stone, Oct. 2, 2019)

Wilco’s Ode to Joy Is a Thrilling New Beginning for the Band By Craig Jenkins (Vulture, Oct. 4, 2019)

I’ll be keeping up with the reviews as they are still coming in, and I’m anxious to see if there will be a bad one - one that mirrors the disappointment of many folks’ posts. With all this discontentment over this spare, perfectly plodding, and not-at-all boring little record, there’s got to be a critic who sides with these wounded people, right? We shall see.

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: “A Shot in the Arm”

Today’s Song Spotlight shines bright on one of Wilco’s most dramatic and stunning tracks:

“A Shot in the Arm” (Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett, John Stirratt)

Jeff Tweedy: vocals, acoustic guitar, twelve-string guitar, synthesizers 
Jay Bennett: lap steel, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, drums 
John Stirratt: bass 
Ken Coomer: timpani

Kicking off with one of the best and most intriguing opening lines of Tweedy’s career, “The ashtray says you were up all night / When you went to bed with your darkest mind,” “A Shot In The Arm” is a Summerteeth standout, and one of Wilco’s biggest live crowd pleasers.

In his 2018 memoir, Tweedy attributes the influence of the award-winning American author William H. Gass on the song’s desperately dark lyrics. “There would be no ‘Something in my veins / Bloodier than blood’ without his genius,” he writes. 

Despite its edginess, this intensely tuneful track has a lavish-sounding production that includes ELO-style instrumentation and a catchy circular progression. It appears in two forms on Summerteeth: first as the third track in the song cycle, then as a bonus alternate take toward the end of the album, as an unlisted “hidden” track. 

A remix of the song by Warners executive David Kahne appeared as a B-side of sorts on a CD single for “A Shot In the Arm” that was issued in spring 1999. In the liner notes to the 2014 4-CD rarity set Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Tweedy says of the remix, “I personally think this sounds like a dated mess, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the feeling I had about the song and what the song meant to me. But it’s interesting to listen to because it sounds like an artifact from a very different time in music.” 

“A Shot In The Arm” is one of Wilco’s most performed songs, with over nine hundred live airings to date. A version recorded at the Vic Theatre in Chicago appeared on Wilco’s 2005 live album, Kicking Television, and their 2009 live DVD, Ashes of American Flags included a rendition filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on March 2, 2008. 

Here’s a clip of Tweedy and co. performing the song at the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England on June 25, 1999:

There is also a solo acoustic take of the song performed by Tweedy on his live DVD, Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Norrthwest, filmed  at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene, Oregon, on February 4, 2006.

Tweedy had first played “A Shot In The Arm” at the Lounge Ax on March 25, 1999; a year later, to the day, Wilco premiered their full-band arrangement of the song at the Gruenspan in Hamburg, Germany.

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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Watch Wilco perform “Everyone Hides” on last night's Colbert

Wilco appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night on CBS to perform “Everyone Hides” from their 11th studio album, Ode to Joy, which releases this Friday, October 4th. The song is the second single from the upcoming release following “Love is Everywhere (Beware),” which dropped last summer.

Watch the performance here:

Wilco released a video for “Everyone Hides” on September 17, which you can watch here.

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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Wilco to appear on Stephen Colbert tonight

Wilco will appear on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight (11:35/10:35c) to perform material from their upcoming album, Ode to Joy, which releases this Friday, October 4th.

Jeff Tweedy and co. will be the musical guest on Colbert’s popular CBS program, which will also feature guests Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her daughter, Chelsea.

Previously, Wilco appeared on the show on February 4, to play “Random Name Generator” from their 2015 album Star Wars, and later that year on September 21 to perform “Someone to Lose” from their then newly released record, Schmilco. On both episodes, Tweedy participated in skits with Colbert. One of which you can watch here:

Last year, Tweedy went on the show alone to promote his memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), and his accompanying solo album, Warm. After Tweedy’s interview, in which he said that doing his first talk show sit-down interview was “the coolest thing that's ever happened to me,” he performed “Let’s Go Rain.”

It’ll sure be interesting to see what Ode to Joy track makes the cut. Or if Tweedy takes part in another silly skit. Well, both of those really.

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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