I've got an interview with Jeff Tweedy going up on the site later this week, and when I talked to Tweedy a month ago, it was the first time I'd talked to him in 17 years. In 1990, when I was writing for The Red & Black, the independent student newspaper of The University Of Georgia, we got a copy of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression, about a month in advance of the band's first-ever Athens gig. I dutifully took it home and popped it onto my turntable–yep, my turntable–and by the time I made it to the end of the first song, "Graveyard Shift," I was trembling.
(Aside: I've had this experience only a few times in my life, where I put on an album for the first time and the first song–previously unheard–left me wrecked. Aside from "Graveyard Shift," the two most memorable were Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," off Purple Rain, and The Replacements' "I Will Dare," off Let It Be.)
So I set up a phone interview with Uncle Tupelo's manager for the purposes of writing a show preview for The Red & Black, and was more than a little bummed when instead of getting Uncle Tupelo's primary songwriter Jay Farrar–the man behind "Graveyard Shift"–I was put on the line with Tweedy. And as I recall, Tweedy wasn't exactly the chattiest guy in the world. (Though to be fair, I was a shitty, shitty interviewer when I was in college. Remind me to tell you sometime about how Ira Kaplan once hung up on me.)
But the show was great, and I played the hell out of No Depression for a solid year, right up to the day that I unexpectedly stumbled across Still Feel Gone at the local record shop. In those days, it was hard to get updates about the activities of any indie band, but Uncle Tupelo in particular was notoriously below the radar, so Still Feel Gone sort of came out nowhere, both in terms of its physical presence and the louder, rowdier, more adventurous music the album contained. (It's still my favorite Uncle Tupelo album.) I was more prepared for the arrival of March 16-20, 1992 because it was recorded in Athens, and released just before I graduated and moved away. I wasn't prepared for it to be an acoustic record, especially coming on the heels of Still Feel Gone's punky rumble. But I loved all three of those early albums, and I really liked–if not quite loved–Anodyne, Uncle Tupelo's major-label debut and overall swan song.
Like most people, I pegged Farrar's Son Volt as more likely to achieve long-term success than Tweedy's Wilco, even though Uncle Tupelo always needed Tweedy's sweet rasp to offset Farrar's gruff gulp. And sure enough, while I liked both their debut albums, Son Volt's Trace was a much more assured record than Wilco's A.M.. After that, the paths diverged.
But let me stop right there, because I don't think there's any point in setting up yet another Farrar vs. Tweedy face-off. It's true that I've gotten more out of Wilco (and Loose Fur for that matter) than I have out of Son Volt or Tweedy solo. But aside from the latest Son Volt album–which I haven't gotten yet, though I will eventually–I've respected and/or liked everything Farrar's worked on. I wish he'd shown more stylistic range, if only because his voice, while rich, still induces fatigue in me over a typical 40-minute record (especially when the songs hold to the same droney, mid-tempo folk-rock level). I only bring up the two men's disparate post-UT careers here because a debate in the comments section of Kyle's review of Son Volt's The Search influenced the course of my latest conversation with Tweedy.
We've been having a lot of discussions, both on the site and behind the scenes, about the future of our comments. On the one hand, we love knowing that people out there are reading, and care enough to say something. Writers tend to be lonely and vain, and before we introduced comments, we typically heard almost nothing from readers, unless someone was pissed about something we wrote. Even when we had comments for registered users only, the action was steady but rarely heavy. Since eliminating the registration requirement, it's been a bit of a free-for-all, with the usual assortment of trolls, egotists and would-be wits sharing space with a lot of welcome enthusiasm and intelligent discussion. By and large, we think the good stuff outweighs the bad, even when our egos get bruised.
That said, it's hard not to be a little gun-shy, imagining what kind of comments we're going to get. I wake up some mornings, knowing that something potentially divisive that I wrote a week ago is about to get posted, and I often have butterflies. But maybe that's a good thing. Keeps me accountable. I've always tried to take a reasoned approach to reviews and blog posts. If I'm writing about something I think is good, I try to acknowledge the shortcomings, and if I'm writing about something I dislike, I try to mention why others might feel otherwise. These days, with reader voices in my head, I try harder than ever to defuse any sniping ahead of time.
So when I got ready to talk to Tweedy about Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, an album I really love (with some small reservations), I wanted him to answer the complaints I'd already heard from some readers and colleagues, that the new album is too soft, too safe and too jammy. The result was an interview that started out amiably, and gradually got a little tense, entirely because of me and my line of questioning. Tweedy was gracious and good-humored throughout, and answered everything I asked honestly, with none of the reticence he showed back in 1990. But the more I kept pushing, the more (understandably) exhausted he became. When the interview ended, I told him how much I liked the record, and apologized if I ruffled him. He apologized right back. Listening back to the interview later, the tension wasn't as obvious as it felt at the time, and the final transcribed version probably won't read as all that confrontational–though I do worry that people will think that Tweedy's being unduly defensive, without knowing the tone and flow of the conversation.
I'm not sure if I should blame our readers for the way the interview went, or thank you. Because I think it's an interesting interview, and that Tweedy does a good job of defending what makes Sky Blue Sky so special. My review of the record will also be up this week too–by mid-week, you'll be sick of hearing me yammer on about Wilco, if you aren't already–but the review doesn't say anything about where Sky Blue Sky fits in my own personal Wilco cosmology. My favorite now–and maybe always–is Being There, which is such an explosion of tunefulness, youthful energy and honest soul-searching. Second is A Ghost Is Born, which I rank with Neil Young's Tonight's The Night and John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band as one of the all-time great attempts to turn exhaustion and fear into palatable rock music. Those are Wilco's top tier. Sky Blue Sky–so lovely, so deeply felt, and so well-played–ranks just below, on the same tier as the Mermaid Avenue albums and the Loose Fur projects. The next tier–the "B+" tier–contains Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth, two albums chock full of good songs fighting against some overly fussy production. And then there's A.M., merely good.
Even though Sky Blue Sky is arguably Wilco's most accessible album since Being There, I don't expect it to be as well-liked, because it's a throwback to an era of relaxed vibes, easy tunes and instrumental prowess–and that's an era that a lot of people have trained themselves to dislike. But it moves me, and I think Tweedy does a good job of defending what Wilco's up to, as you'll see in a couple of days.
Give yourselves credit for the assist.