For the first of three weekend shows at the Bearsville Theatre, Jeff Tweedy performed unplugged highlights from his Wilco and solo catalog, along with three newly penned and unrecorded songs.
Tweedy’s hour and a half, sold-out concert in Woodstock on Friday, October 10, also marked the first of 15 relatively rare solo show dates that will wrap up in Menlo Park, CA at the end of the month.
Tweedy kicked things off with “Feel Free” and “Now and Then,” two new tunes that have yet to appear on an official release. The former has been in steady rotation for the good part of a year, and has playful lyrics and a positive message about individuality.
While Tweedy is used to his bandmates in Wilco backing him up, he seemed equally comfortable with his Bearsville backdrop — several small body vintage Martin guitars with his beloved dead string sound. Before he kicked into the crowd-pleaser “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” he traded one guitar for another that could have been its twin. Tweedy joked that the guitar looked exactly the same, sounded pretty much the same, but had a minor variation in serial number. Guitar nerd stuff for certain.
Solo Tweedy may well be the best Tweedy. He’s alternately the guitar collector, the Gen-X Bob Dylan, the troubadour, and more than a bit of a standup comedian. When the house lights went out momentarily after the second song of the night, Tweedy joked, “I don’t need full darkness ever, I carry that with me.” And he’s right – while his stage banter often elicits laughs from the audience, his solo material skews dark and his lyrical content has directly taken on the weighty themes of familial love and death. Tweedy called “Having Been Is No Way To Be,” “KC Rain,” and “Don’t Forget” his own “dead dad trilogy” and while he may have been leaning into the gallows humor, the songs themselves were confessional and poignant in this intimate setting.
Tweedy seemed almost relieved to have the opportunity to play whatever he wanted to a knowledgeable audience of fans. The diehards in attendance managed to make an obscure song like “Laminated Cat” off of the side project Loose Fur’s first album feel like a sing along to a Top 40 hit (the performance of “Laminated Cat” was probably my favorite moment of the evening, and full-disclosure, yes, I’m one of those mega-fans that owns the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot super deluxe box set on vinyl and obsesses over cutting room floor outtakes. But isn’t that like half of Wilco’s fan base at this point?). Many of the fans in the audience planned a whole weekend around these Bearsville shows and planned to attend all three nights. Tweedy hoped to play a lot of “solo songs or songs I’ve written for someone else. I’ll still play Wilco songs, but I really do play those songs a lot.”
And while the night did rely heavily on new songs, and tracks off of solo albums like Love is the King (“Gwendolyn”) and Warmer (“Family Ghost”, “Evergreen”) or even his Starship Casual newsletter (“Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”), Tweedy did dig out a number of Wilco “Greatest Hits”, which (maybe begrudgingly for Jeff) were still the undeniable highlights of the night. “Hummingbird”, with it’s delightful whistling outro, and a downtempo rendition of “Box Full of Letters” were both excellent. For “Via Chicago”, Tweedy replaced his bandmates with a harmonica necklace, and in turn became a one-man-band. Tweedy’s best analogues really are Bob Dylan and Neil Young, guys who are songwriters at their core. They can rock in an electric setting, but they also have the magnetism, confidence, charisma, and lyrics to hold the spotlight on their own, or to let the song take the spotlight by itself. And they all look cool as hell wearing their harmonicas while also strumming and singing.
Tweedy closed the night on a positive note, dedicating “I’m The Man Who Loves You” to his wife Susie Tweedy, whom he’d hoped would accompany him to Woodstock from their home in Chicago. Unfortunately, Susie Tweedy’s 92-year-old dad was in the hospital and she needed to stay close to him. To this remark, several audience members mentioned Mrs. Tweedy’s father by name, and Jeff chuckled at the parasocial relationship so many of his fans have with him. He’s shared a lot with his fans, but his fans are certainly prone to digging into the life of their favorite singer-songwriter. Tweedy may be creeping towards 60, but he is prolific as ever as a songwriter, a writer of terrific memoirs, and an internet presence in his newsletter. And let us not forget The Tweedy Show, a webcast that many Wilco fans embraced during the COVID lockdown as it drew back the curtain on Tweedy family life, making Susie, Jeff, and sons Spencer and Sammy, something of an indie Partridge Family.
While it might be easy to call Wilco super-fans overzealous, Tweedy’s remarkable songbook and magnetism are certainly worthy of deep study. A few tickets remain for the Sunday evening show — get them before someone else does.
Chicago-based songwriter Elizabeth Moen opened the show with a half hour set. Her excellent vocal stylings which were at times reminiscent of Stevie Nicks and Lucinda Williams were supported by the harmony vocals, bass, and guitar of Gus Martini. Moen’s bluesy and soulful originals like “Fields on Fire” and “The Empty Bottle” felt right at home in Woodstock, the home of classic laid-back rustic albums by the likes of Van Morrison and Bobby Charles. But it was the duo’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s classic “Darkness at the Edge of Town” that stood out the most for its fine performance and unique interpretation.
Jeff Tweedy – Bearsville Theatre, Woodstock – October 10, 2024
Setlist: Feel Free, Now and Then, I Am Trying to Break your Heart, Mine Forever, Via Chicago, Lifetime to Find, Evergreen, Gwendolyn, Having Been Is No Way To Be, KC Rain, Don’t Forget, Laminated Cat, Country Song Upside Down, Hummingbird, I Am My Mother, Lou Reed Was My Babysitter, Box Full of Letters, One Wing, Pecan Pie, Family Ghost, You’re Not Alone, I’m The Man Who Loves You
