Weekly Neil: Jeff Tweedy And The Old Country Waltz

I went to see the Wilco frontman solo and kept thinking about Neil

First off: This is not an interview with Jeff Tweedy. (Maybe someday.)

But man, how about Jeff Tweedy? A few weeks ago I traveled west to see him in a theater at SUNY Buffalo State University and was struck by how assured, how confident, how completely in command he is even when it’s just him and four guitars up on a stage in front of hundreds of people. It’s a far cry from the slightly detached lone rock star captured before, during and after a solo show in the early 2000s in Sam Jones’ definitive Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

The setlist was terrific, blending Wilco favorites like (the song) “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” with deep cuts like “In A Future Age” and plenty of solo-show staples like “Radio King,” his wonderfully spry tune from Golden Smog in 1995. I entered the show expecting something sleepy and sedate, as a lot of Jeff’s recent solo output has been, and was elated to discover the show had the opposite effect. I walked out of the theater energized, my brain buzzing with new appreciation for recent Wilco stunners like “Ambulance” and “A Lifetime To Find” and, most surprising of all, a strong urge to probe back into the trio of late-2010s/early 2020s solo releases I’d initially written off.

Warm, Warmer, and Love Is The King do have their drowsy moments, but so do plenty of modern Wilco albums. They also have highlights like “Gwendolyn,” which might actually be the best song Jeff’s written in the last half-decade. To me, it’s perfect — a pop song dressed in folky clothes and accessorized with glam guitar lines. As good as anything on Star Wars, which makes it impressive he played nearly every instrument on it himself (apart from drums, handled by his son Spencer).

“Gwendolyn” also boasts two lines I find to be very much taken from the Book of Neil in spirit if not precise language. About halfway through the tale of its title character (who could charitably be called a mess and who ultimately ends up locked up), Jeff sets a scene: “The sun beating down like a big trombone / That's right when I start missing home.”

I’ve talked before about how Neil lacks the outright poetry of his peers like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but it really doesn’t matter. Neil’s vernacular is much wobblier, beer-warm at times and powered by a desire to express what he’s feeling right now. Revisions, though not altogether absent, are uncommon. Neil would liken a hot sun to some low, blowing brass because it feels good and also unexpected.

Jeff’s next trick is even more Neil in its payoff. After Gwen’s taken away, the narrator expresses relief and says essentially that he does believe he’s had enough: “Sun coming up like a piece of toast / That's right when I started heading home.” Bellissimo.

In 2010, Wilco were a decade out from the album that made them iconoclasts, and their reputation was sound. They had rebuilt the band itself, too, shedding members of that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era and replacing them with the dizzying talents of Nels Cline and sound mechanics Mikael Jorgensen and Pat Sansone. In other words, they were solid. The Whole Love, an underrated album, opens with a long showcase of their dual identities: tender soft-rockers with experimental and noisy tendencies.

It made sense, then, for them to cover “Broken Arrow.” Neil penned that song during his Buffalo Springfield days as a project going in several directions. (In short, Wikipedia lists its genres as psychedelic rock, art rock, proto-prog, and jazz fusion.) On record, the song begins with a live recording of “Mr. Soul” before devolving into a swirling hiss. Then, a beautiful and orchestral introduction before the tender folk ballad begins.

Wilco performed it at the nonprofit MusiCares’ tribute to Neil, the same evening Elvis Costello turned “The Losing End (When You’re On)” into a high and lonesome wail and the Red Hot Chili Peppers oddly covered “A Man Needs A Maid” (or perhaps not so oddly). But it made complete, perhaps almost too much, sense. Wilco, auteur experimentalists, helming early Neil at his most experimental. They both knew hot to subvert expectation and offer subtle transformation within the folk tradition.

In other words, Jeff knows Neil. He’s frequently covered “The Old Country Waltz” in solo shows. Wilco has covered “Cinnamon Girl” and “Helpless” and “Out On The Weekend” and even dug into the deepest cuts on his quarantine-era livestreams in 2020, giving the dozy number “Try” a go from home. Wilco opened for Neil on tour in 2008, around the same time he told GQ which Neil album was his most-listened to, at that time anyway. “Tonight’s the Night. Easily,” he said. And he continued:

If I made a list of my favorite songs from Neil Young’s career, it wouldn’t be all of those songs. It might not even be any of them. It’s more the idea of it as a record. It’s an insight into what a record can be. It’s like an anti-record or something, and something I think that Wilco kind of aspired to at some point. Maybe even to our detriment.

I don’t think you can manufacture that kind of mood or vibe. It was just a document of a place and time. I guess that’s what I mean more than anything. That record informed what it means to take a more documentary approach to record-making. Tonight’s the Night doesn’t feel finished. It also feels like a window into a particularly dark period of his life, and that’s pretty fascinating.

Near the end of Jeff’s set in Buffalo, he broke out a fan favorite from Wilco’s first album: “Passenger Side.” It’s a funny and juvenile song about drunk driving that also seems wise beyond its years, making it a pitch-perfect slice of mid-’90s alt-country. “Roll another number for the road,” Jeff sings to begin the second verse. “You’re the only sober person I know.”

The explicit reference to one of Neil’s booziest tunes from Tonight’s The Night sets an immediate tone and provide the template for a sonic sequel. Jeff, sober for decades now, sings it as a wizened 57-year-old who has lost none of his sense of playfulness. (Neil, at 78, hasn’t lost his either, even as he’s slowed down a bit by the natural forces of time.)

But what’s the most Neil Young song Jeff has ever written? And what does that even mean, anyway?

You might think it means most guitar or even the most guitar solo. But we can agree that “Impossible Germany” — perhaps the signature song of this modern version of Wilco — has both and yet is not even remotely Neil in composition, sound, or texture.

So, what’s the most Neil song in the catalog? For me, the answer is clear.

It begins with Jeff barely singing, mostly whispering a melancholic domestic scene in the aftermath of a fight. He alternates between two chords (A minor and G major), a very Neil move, before something quite dramatic happens. The song breaks the hell open, yielding a lightning-cry coda that extends until Jeff, channeling the debilitating panic attacks he grappled with due to crippling depression and addiction in the early 2000s, goes fucking nuts on the guitar. It’s Neil-coded for sure, grimy and thick, but it also transcends his influence into the realm of the sublime. Looking at the devil in the eyes and holding the fear close.

Before I realized Nels Cline wasn’t yet in the band when they made A Ghost Is Born, I assumed the expert fret virtuoso handled those duties. Upon learning it was actually Jeff, a skilled guitarist of his own merit, I felt unbound by possibility. If this guy could write a song as visceral as “At Least That’s What You Said” and leave most of the emotional impact to jarring, ugly bursts of sound he made on his fretboard, I could maybe try my hand at doing the same.

During lockdown, around the time he covered “Try,” Jeff sat down with his son Spencer on drums and they banged out a very contemplative version of “At Least That’s What You Said” that I can say quite profoundly changed the way I think about creativity. On record and onstage with a full band, the song begins quietly and explodes with a rich backdrop of instruments. With only Spencer’s primitive kit and Jeff playing a small guitar through what sounds like only natural amplifier textures, they’re forced to keep things together even as Jeff skates away for some improvisational runs. He has to handle both rhythm and melody and he can’t rely on the scuzz of his axe to fill the space. It’s all very intimate and raw in a way that I find endlessly inspiring.

I hadn’t seen this video until after I had made and released some music of my own. But I’ve not yet played that music for anyone live. If I do, I’d like to tap into that exact energy and see what happens.

That’s Jeff’s gift to me, via Neil’s gift to him. Sometimes you’ve just gotta plug in and start up a tune. Hey, look at that. They’re playing the old country waltz.

Jeff Tweedy’s on tour through Wednesday, October 30.

“The Old Country Waltz,” written by Neil Young, from American Stars ‘N Bars (1977)