Wilcopedia

Daniel Cook Johnson

Description

Part reference manual, part collector’s guide, part critical overview, Wilcopedia is an insightful album-by-album, song-by-song guide to the music of the most important American rock band of the twenty-first century. It offers a thorough appraisal of the entire Wilco canon, with detailed insights into every album and song the band have released, as well as side projects, collaborations, covers, and more.

Since their formation in 1994, Wilco have become one of the most acclaimed and influential bands of modern times. While previous books have told their story in a biographical sense, Wilcopedia zeroes in on the music, tracing the evolution of the band’s material from the studio to the concert stage, from the formative Uncle Tupelo recordings through the mold-breaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to latter-day gems Star Wars and Schmilco and beyond.

Throughout their twenty-five-year career, Wilco’s founder and primary songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, has led his band through various shifts in line-up and genre that have kept fans on their toes and made their music difficult to categorize. While they are largely considered an Americana act, their music has touched on hard rock, electronica, pop, soul, punk, folk, and more—and Wilcopedia covers it all.

Sujets

• Styles
• Genres
• Rock
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 13 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781911036548
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A Jawbone ebook
First edition 2019
Published in the UK and the USA by
Jawbone Press
Office G1, 141–157 Acre Lane
London SW2 5UA
England
www.jawbonepress.com

Volume copyright © 2019 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Daniel Cook Johnson. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

Jacket design by Paul Palmer-Edwards
Ebook design by Tom Seabrook
contents

the introduction
1. wilco/the prologue/1987–1994/in the beginning there was uncle tupelo
2. wilco/the personnel
3. wilco/the songs/1994–1998/music is my savior
4. wilco/the songs/1999–2004/i was maimed by rock’n’roll
5. wilco/the songs/2005–2010/i was tamed by rock’n’roll
6. wilco/the songs/2011–present/i got my name from rock’n’roll
7. wilco/the live releases/it’s not the same without rock’n’roll
8. wilco/the film & tv appearances
9. wilco/the covers
notes and sources

wilcopedia/the introduction
"People have told me they think it’s very Americana and all that. I don’t know what they’re talkin’ about." Bob Dylan
This remark, made by Dylan in a 1984 interview, is quite amusing in light of the fact that nearly thirty years later, he co-headlined the Americanarama Festival Of Music tour—a tongue-in-cheek way (adding - rama to anything can do that) of packaging Dylan with the younger rock bands My Morning Jacket and Wilco for a twenty-six-date trek across the USA in the summer of 2013.
As a music genre label, ‘Americana’ is relatively new. It has been around for a long time as a label for the nostalgia for the good ole days of early America and its cultural folklore, but as pertaining to a type of music, it wasn’t until the 90s, when it started to be used as a label for a radio format, that it really became a thing.
Americana is defined by the Americana Music Association (itself founded in 1999) as ‘contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B, and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw.’
In the 1970s, Mavis Staples was a gospel/soul singer, but in 2011, her first ever Grammy win was in the newly created category of ‘Best Americana Album’ (a 2009 renaming of the ‘Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album’ category, which had itself only been created in 2007). The album was her thirteenth solo record, You Are Not Alone , and was produced by the founder and frontman of Wilco, Jeff Tweedy.
Before the term ‘Americana’ was used, there were the labels ‘alternative country’ (aka alt.country), ‘insurgent country,’ ‘no depression’ (the title of the debut album by Uncle Tupelo, which was itself inspired by Carter Family’s song ‘No Depression In Heaven,’ recorded in 1936), and, in the 80s, ‘cowpunk.’ This is the scene that birthed Wilco, the band formed by Tweedy in 1994, shortly after Uncle Tupelo played their last show.
Tweedy recruited fellow Uncle Tupelo members John Stirratt (bass) and Ken Coomer (drums) and added multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett for the launch of his new band, with Brian Henneman of The Bottle Rockets also playing guitar on their first record, A.M. , but it would take a few years for them to really make a mark.
Around the same time, Jay Farrar, whom many perceived as the leader of Uncle Tupelo, started his own group, which he dubbed Son Volt, inspired by the famous labels Sun Records and Stax/Volt. Many critics and fans believed that Farrar would be more successful than Tweedy, largely because Son Volt’s debut, Trace , received greater acclaim than Wilco’s debut, A.M. But as history has shown, Wilco would rise to greater success on their following albums— Being There , Summerteeth , and particularly Yankee Hotel Foxtrot . Wilco achieved this largely by evolving their sound out of the alt.country genre into more adventurous rock terrain.
Wilco became a cause célèbre upon completion of their fourth album, 2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , when their label, Reprise, rejected the record. Wilco left Reprise, which was owned by Warner Bros Records, and then, after streaming the album online, found a new label, Nonesuch Records, which ironically was a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The album was also made in the midst of some controversial line-up changes, with Coomer replaced by Glenn Kotche, and Jay Bennett unceremoniously kicked out of the band. In 2002, pianist and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen joined Wilco, followed a few years later by multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and guitarist Nels Cline. This line-up remains to this day.
In the years before the current line-up, there were three other members—multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach (1997–2004), pedal-steel guitarist Bob Egan (1996–98), and another multi-instrumentalist, Max Johnston (1994–96)—which brings the tally of Wilco members to twelve, with only Tweedy and Stirratt remaining today from the original band.

I’ve been a fan of Wilco since the beginning, and I’ve collected everything I could associate with them—vinyl, bootlegs, magazine articles, posters, TV appearances, B-sides, DVDs, and more—over the past twenty-five years. This book attempts to put those items into perspective, while celebrating the band’s existence.
From 2010 to 2016, I wrote for the website examiner.com as the ‘Wilco Examiner.’ I posted setlists and essays about songs, and reported news about the band’s activities, including the work of the members’ various side projects. It was during this period that I started this book, with the goal of putting Wilco through the same scrutiny that others have put on rock icons such as The Beatles, David Bowie, and Bob Dylan, all of whom have encyclopedias dedicated to their work. Lesser legends such as Elton John and Madonna have encyclopedias in their names, too—Madonna’s is amusingly entitled Encyclopedia Madonnica —and this book has been inspired by those tomes as well. Other rock reference books such as Rough Guides and FAQs also factor in my work here.
At a solo performance not long ago, Tweedy made fun of an audience member who called out a request for him to play something from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos , replying that it was ‘an esoteric slice of fandom.’ In a sense, Wilcopedia is a collection of many esoteric slices of fandom, and it exists to encourage fans to seek out such essential recordings as the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos . It’s part reference guide, part history, part critical overview. It aims to put together all the pieces of the Wilco puzzle and make sense of their mythology.
In presenting this project, I acknowledge that many hardcore fans will find omissions, and I hope their feedback will lead to more complete editions in the future. Please keep that in mind when reading this book. It’s my take on Wilco’s history and output, and my viewpoint will certainly differ from those of a lot of their followers. For others who are new to the band’s canon, Wilcopedia should help guide them through the wealth of wonderful material that the band has put out into the world.
There are two essential books about the band, Greg Kot’s Wilco: Learning How To Die (2004) and Tim Grierson’s Wilco: Sunken Treasure (2012). Both put Wilco’s history into linear narratives and provide well-observed insights into their rich career. I have used both as reference material, and I quote from them, but I tried to not have a lot of overlap from those books in these pages.
I also wanted to stay away from gossipy or personal sidelines such as Tweedy’s strained relationship with Farrar, or his stint in rehab, or his wife Sue Miller’s bout with cancer, unless they are touched on in various songs. In other words, Wilcopedia is about the music, man.

Wilco have in many ways transcended the Americana classification. It’s difficult to imagine a newcomer to their music hearing their latter-day work, such as the song ‘Art Of Almost’ or the whole of Star Wars , and considering it Americana music, but the label has stuck. In 2016, the New Yorke r ’s Paul Elie wrote, ‘Wilco is to the music called Americana what the Eagles were to country rock: the group that at once perfected the style, transcended it, and got popular enough to push their old bandmates even further to the margins.’ While I get the comparison, I would’ve preferred to see The Byrds in that analogy. (I side with The Dude from The Big Lebowski : ‘I’ve had a rough night and I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!’)
Like all bands, Wilco are an amalgam of their influences. Strains of The Band, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Big Star, The Byrds (a lot of B bands!), Fairport Convention, The Replacements, The Rolling Stones, Television, and Neil Young, among many other touchstones, can be heard in their music. The closing section of this book compiles every documented cover version the band have performed throughout their career, and works as a guide to the songs that have helped to shape their sound. My hope is that it’ll encourage fans to seek out music by the artists and bands whose songs have been a crucial part of Wilco’s large repertoire.
Wilco’s current line-up, together since 2004, is the most solid, most stable, and longest-running version of the band, and they don’t appear to have any plans of stopping anytime soon. While there will surely be new Wilco music—possibly by the time this book is published—when it comes to appraising the first twenty-five years of their storied career, Wilcopedia will love you, baby.

Daniel Cook Johnson
Summer 2019
1. wilco/the prologue/1987–1994/in the beginning, there was uncle tupelo
‘From the ashes of Uncle Tupelo’ is a well-worn cliché to fans of Wilco, but it nonetheless provides a fitting beginning t