https://www.instagram.com/p/DQKG4V1DrCF/?igsh=NGJ2aTRkcXNmcThx
For those not on Instagram, Wilco and Billy Bragg will be performing Mermaid Avenue live at Solid Sound next year. I’d be all over this if I was in the US. I LOVE all three Mermaid Avenue albums. I wonder if they’ll bring it to the UK…
I have to say, having seen the Man in the Sand documentary, I didn’t think this would ever be likely…
My first time seeing Wilco was in 1998 when they were touring in support of Mermaid Avenue, Vol.1 which just so happened to be on the touring version of The Newport Folk Festival that year at Walnut Creek amphitheatre in Raleigh, NC. I knew very little about them at the time but most certainly enjoyed their set. I didn’t purchase any of their records until the following year when I became more fully immersed in all things alt.country after joining the Raleigh-based Guitartown email discussion list. I picked up summerteeth shortly after joining that spring which remains my favorite of their records.
Also on the bill were Joan Baez, Lyle Lovett (who talked about playing the Cave in Chapel Hill eons ago), Nanci Griffith (with a special guest appearance from Darius Rucker on Vic Chesnutt’s “Gravity of the Situation”), Marc Cohn, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, etc.
Summerteeth was the first Wilco I ever got, too. For 99p on cassette from a record store in Glasgow! (Also got Teenage Fanclub’s Grand Prix the same day for 99p.)
I can’t decide on my favourite Wilco album. I think the best one is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. My favourite is probably Being There. But it might be Summerteeth.
I absolutely love the Mermaid Avenue albums. Some of Jeff Tweedy’s best songs have gone to other projects. California Stars for one, Please Tell My Brother is another.
summerteeth for me hands down, though it might be a point of entry thing since it’s the first album of theirs I heard in full. Still, I think it stands on its own merits and was a pronounced departure from their previous records. It definitely has Wilco’s unique stamp but is also a bit of a standalone record that seems heavily influenced by a combination of power pop, Big Star, Pet Sounds, and Sgt. Pepper’s in the production styles and hefty hooks.
The first thing I heard by them was “Casino Queen” on MTVs 120 Minutes. I later picked up a free cassingle of it either at The Newport Folk Festival or during one of the HORDE fests, I don’t remember. The next thing I heard was Being There which a kind soul on the Guitartown email list sent me on CD-R along with Uncle Tupelo’s Still Feel Gone. The only thing I’d heard by them before was Anodyne which I liked well enough but it didn’t really move the needle for me as far as prompting me to seek out more of their work.
Not trying to be a smartass, I assure you but I was thinking “California Stars” was a Woody Guthrie song. If not for being invited to be a part of the Mermaid Avenue project by Nora Guthrie I seriously doubt he would have come across it any other way. That said, I do realize he had a hand in composing the music for it, if that’s what you mean
Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at. The lyrics are 100% Guthrie’s. I always think the soul of a song is in the melody. That’s Tweedy, in that instance, no doubt inspired by a brilliant lyric.
“They hang like grapes on vines that shine and warm the lovers glass like friendly wine”.
Amazing.
Wilco/Tupelo underline, more than anything else for me, my theory that music is inextricably linked to a time and place in your life. I was discovering the Wilco back catalogue, and the Uncle Tupelo greatest hits, during a particularly exciting and happy time in my life. That music now takes me back to those days, and as such, will always be special to me.
Now I’m older, sadder, touched by grief and such like. Those records take me back to better days. This sounds gloomier than I mean it to. Oh to be young again, I guess is what I’m saying.
Despite being a fan of country music that veered left of center in the 70s and 80s I was late to the alt.country party. I was aware of it but it wasn’t really until Trace (1995), Strangers Almanac, Vols. I and II of the Revival comps on Yep Roc (all from 1997), and Cheri Knight’s Northeast Kingdom (1998 according to Wiki but I’m pretty sure I purchased it during my first trip to Austin in 1997 after hearing “Rose In the Vine” on KGSR).
This all presaged my full immersion that came in 1999 after discovering the then recently launched Guitartown email list. It’s a reminder of how big of a role the internet played in helping create community and expanding the fanbase for artists in those days. It also led to me meeting fellow members face-to-face and forming lifelong friendships with them. Heady times for sure. In retrospect I’m not sure if such a climate exists anymore as social media has become so rife with toxicity, unfortunately.