Ghosts in the machine
Wilco finds success in spite of the music biz
John Kendle



For the past five years, Wilco mainman Jeff Tweedy has lived a fairly public life.

While the 39-year-old singer/songwriter hasn’t quite pimped himself out to The Surreal World, he has exposed his private existence and creative process in ways most image-conscious, modern-day musicians would avoid. The 2003 film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart was ostensibly a document of the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the band’s groundbreaking 2002 album — but it also captured Tweedy’s troubles with ulcers, migraine headaches and panic attacks. His artistic single-mindedness was also laid bare as he ultimately asked longtime band member and collaborator Jay Bennett to leave Wilco during the making of that album.

In interviews he did to promote Wilco’s last studio album — Grammy-winning 2004 effort A Ghost Is Born — Tweedy spoke openly about his health problems and confessed to being addicted to painkillers. He even decided to enter rehab just as the album was to be released.

So, despite the fact that Tweedy is possibly the only American heir to the Quixotic legacy of Bob Dylan, it’s not exactly shocking that the first question he’s asked by a Canadian journalist during a telephone conference is “How’s your health?”

“Never better, thanks for asking,” Tweedy says, then expands somewhat. “I feel like I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been.

“I haven’t had a migraine in two years and I haven’t had a cigarette in a year.”

That his well-being is even a matter of discussion is a function not only of Tweedy’s openness but also of the fact that an awful lot of people want him healthy because they need him to continue making the kind of nerve-tingling music he has been creating with Wilco since the group formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo in 1994.

Through five studio albums, two collaborations with Billy Bragg (the Mermaid Avenue collections of Woody Guthrie material), a movie, an outstanding live recording — and an ever-changing cast of musicians — Wilco has challenged, toyed with and made nonsense of the notion of ‘roots music’ since its inception. In the Wilco canon, spare acoustic love songs coexist with 12-minute blasts of dissonant guitar fuzz.

At the same time, the group is perhaps one of the ultimate symbols of the ‘little guys’ who got one over on the mainstream music biz. When Wilco submitted the finished version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to Warner-owned Reprise Records in 2001, the label flatly rejected the album, saying it had no commercial potential. After much wrangling, anger and brow-beating, the band ultimately bought the recording from the label for $500,000 and then landed a deal with Nonesuch, another Warner-owned company. YHF went on to become the group’s best-selling album to date.

A Ghost is Born solidified Wilco’s status as an anything-goes rock band. While the group’s approach is rooted in a certain musical tradition and its lineup dictates what sounds can be made, Tweedy and his bandmates — guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist Mikael Jorgenson, drummer Glenn Kotche, multi-instrumentalist and bassist John Stirratt (the only original member remaining from ’94) — are unafraid of any approaches that make sense to them.

Since last year’s release of the compelling Kicking Television live album, the sextet has been corralled in its studio/rehearsal space, known as ‘The Loft,’ in Chicago, working up material for a new studio album that should see the light of day by next spring, Tweedy says.

Some of the new songs will air on the band’s current tour, its first cross-Canada jaunt since 1997, but the singer says they’re not about to give away the farm.

“We’ll try not to play too many new songs in one show, maybe three or four songs on any given night,” he says. “The process of recording is going really well. We have 30 or so songs kicking around in various stages of completion. I can tell you it’s the weirdest thing but it’s not weird at all. (We’ve been in) this Brill Building stance or something, where everything is organic but at the same time it’s pretty arranged. People who’ve heard it describe it as classic in the way it’s put together. It’s very traditional and natural-feeling for us.

“But if I could tell you exactly there’d be no point in releasing it.”

Tweedy says the band is no particular hurry to complete the new album because live shows, side projects (he has one with Kotche and Sonic Youth’s Jim O’Rourke, Kotche just released his third solo record, and Cline has his own band as well) and other activities will keep the group members busy for quite some time.

“One of the luxuries of being able to make a living playing live is that it’s not like you have to rush to get a record out to change the world,” he says.

When the subject of Wilco’s rather malleable membership is brought up, Tweedy maintains that he sees every lineup of the band as the best one.

“This is the same (one) we’ve had for two years,” he says. “I don’t anticipate it changing. To me this is the defining lineup of the band and hopefully it will last for a while.”