I used to love Wilco and I’d see them every time they came to Madison or nearby, but a series of disappointing albums and rising ticket costs have kept me from seeing them much the last couple years. Still, when a Wilco-obsessed friend who lives in Florida asked if we wanted to meet her in St Paul for a show we figured if she could come all the way from St Petersburg for the show, we could drive the four and a half hours to meet her.
Funny thing was, she almost didn’t make it. Bad weather in Minneapolis and several flight cancellations kept her from leaving Atlanta on her scheduled flight. She was on standby for the last possible flight that would get her to MSP in time for the show, and miraculously was somehow the very last person they let on the plane. Rather than go to the show on empty stomachs we decided to forgo the opener and have dinner at a bar across the street. Besides, we’d heard that being Liam Finn’s kid doesn’t mean you can sing. Plus we had reserved seats, so we didn’t have to worry about getting a good spot. We arrived on the balcony level but still outside the actual room just as he finished his last song, seems what we’d heard was true.
I’d listened to the ridiculously titled Wilco (the Album) a few times and hadn’t gotten into it, the opening track, “Wilco (the Song)” (yes, really) was especially painful. I felt the same about their previous effort Sky Blue Sky (or is it Blue Sky Blue? I never remember), so I wouldn’t say I was all that excited about the show. Whether it was the pre-show beers or the fact that sometimes songs are better live than they are on record, I didn’t find those tracks nearly as trying tonight. But it was the songs in between those that really made the show worthwhile. The reason that everything after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was such a disappointment was that YHF was such a revelation. Songs like “Heavy Metal Drummer” and “Jesus Etc” are among my favorite Wilco songs ever, which explains why I got so excited when they started the latter.
Tweedy had prefaced the song by saying that Iowa City had really impressed him the night before by singing along, and he just didn’t think that we could match that. After which the audience proceeded to sing the entire song with very little prompting from him.
I probably would have liked it better had Tweedy sung it, but I have to admit that I was pretty impressed with the fact that everyone knew the words. Tweedy was charming throughout the night, thanking us all for coming, and telling us how nice we looked in a teasing/sincere voice. There were a lot of songs from A Ghost is Born, but they were the good ones, like “The Late Greats” and “Spiders” which minus the noise freak-put of the album version is a pretty good song.
There were even more surprises. John Stirratt traded his bass to Tweedy for a guitar and stepped to the center microphone to sing “Just That Simple” from AM, certainly their most overlooked album during live shows. The only constant member of Wilco other than Tweedy, Stirratt usually seems to be avoiding the spotlight. “Monday” from Being There was a little emotional since it mentions TLA, the acronym for the band recently deceased Jay Bennett was in before Wilco. When Gary Louis (of the Jayhawks) joined the band onstage to play guitar on “California Stars,” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who expected a Golden Smog song. However the biggest surprise was the encore. I hadn’t heard the ridiculously infectious “Hoodoo Voodoo,” another of Mermaid Avenue’s Woody Guthrie lyrics/Wilco melody songs, in several years and had given up hope of it ever returning to their set list. While he didn’t do the throat-shredding vocals that made the song so distinctive, it still sounded great, and it was like seeing an old friend.
I now can’t believe I thought I didn’t want to go.
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