BEING THERE: Wilco/Sleater-Kinney @ The Mann

Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER The post-global-pandemic resumption of live music events seems like the sort of thing that should be accompanied with some fanfare, some skywritten announcement or proclamation from a town crier. Something. It’s a big deal, and the abrupt shutdown a year-and-a-half ago of nearly everything — including most painfully, for many of us, live music — was a stark reminder never to take for granted the opportunity to attend, participate in and share these collective cultural experiences. But that’s old news, anyway: just when post-global-pandemic life may have looked back in June as though it were within […]

FROM THE VAULT: Heroes & Villains

Photo by Christian Lantry EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in the pages of MAGNET MAGAZINE in June of 2002, in advance of the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. We are reprising it here in advance of Wilco’s performance at the Mann Center on Sunday August 22nd, with special guests Sleater-Kinney. BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR MAGNET so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. That was written by William Carlos Williams, an American poet. Best I can tell, he was talking about the significance of insignificance, that little things truly do […]

BEING THERE: Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival @ MassMOCA

Photo by JOANN LOVIGLIO EDITOR’S NOTE: Heading up to Solid Sound Festival (aka Wilco-Con) tomorrow — throwing this up to get in the mood. FYI, that immaculate recording of Wilco’s set at 2017’s Solid Sound that I link to below is full-on Band of Tweedy godhead, if you’re into that kind of thing. “A few years ago timed slowed down, we got a diagnosis [wife Sue Miller was diagnosed with Lymphoma] that derailed things so we played songs to each other, me and [my son] Spencer, to speed up the time. Killing time without hurting anyone else. That’s what [the […]

EXPRESSWAY TO YR SKULL: Q&A W/ Nels Cline

  BY KYLE WEINSTEIN Well-known for his role as the wizardly guitarist of Wilco, Nels Cline has accrued an impressive discography and a heaping sum of musical projects and collaborations spanning the early ‘80s to present-day. Cline has collaborated with countless musicians, including Thurston Moore, Elliott Sharp, Zach Hill, Julius Hemphill, and many more, encompassing a diverse range of genres such as free-jazz, noise-rock, funk-rock, and so on. In 2016, Blue Note Records released Nels Cline’s Lovers, a romantic concept album of instrumental renditions of classic love songs. Last year, Ars Nova Workshop founder and Artistic Director Mark Christman commissioned […]

CONTEST: Win Tix To See Wilco @ The Mann!

  It has often been said that Wilco is the American Radiohead — an edgy, 21st-century rock band whose audience only seems to grow the more they challenge it. Less remarked on is the more obvious fact that they are also the new Grateful Dead — populist guarantors of the heartland verities of cosmic Americana. Like the Dead, the continuum of Wilco’s concertizing has come to matter far more than their individual albums. Which is why it is so crucial that you get to the Mann tomorrow night to see them, or risk falling hopelessly behind on the whole ‘heartland […]

FROM THE VAULT: Heroes & Villains

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story first appeared in the June/July 2002 issue of MAGNET MAGAZINE   BY JONATHAN VALANIA so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. That was written by William Carlos Williams, an American poet. Best I can tell, he was talking about the significance of insignificance, that little things truly do mean a lot—like if you could surf the past in a time machine and you did something as small as, say, kicking a stone in the Stone Age, it could send a ripple through the entire fabric of history. […]

THIS JUST IN: Wilco @ The Mann 6/4

  Tickets go on sale Friday, February 12th at 10AM online via MannCenter.org, Ticketmaster.com, 800-745-3000, AEGLive.com, & the Mann Center Box Office. PREVIOUSLY: It has often been said that Wilco is the American Radiohead — an edgy, 21st-century rock band whose audience only seems to grow the more they challenge it. Less remarked on is the more obvious fact that they are also the new Grateful Dead — populist guarantors of the heartland verities of cosmic Americana. Like the Dead, the continuum of Wilco’s concertizing has come to matter far more than their individual albums. For the better part of […]

FREE WILCO: Let Wild Dad-Rock Rumpus Begin!

  A.V. CLUB: Demonstrating that just because it was around in the ’90s doesn’t mean it doesn’t understand the internet, Wilco just became the latest band to release a free surprise album on its website. Called Star Wars and adorned with a painting of a cat—because, again, Wilco knows what the people like—the album consists of 11 original songs and is available as a free download on the Wilco website. Just enter your email, follow the link, download the .zip file, and boom. New Wilco album. MORE

WE ARE FAMILY: Meet The Tweedies

  BPM RECORDS: Jeff Tweedy, best known as the founder of the pioneering Chicago rock band Wilco, will release a new album Sept. 16 through his own dBpm Records. The album, Sukierae (sue-key-ray), is not quite a solo effort. It is the debut release by the aptly-monikered duo, Tweedy, which features 20 new Jeff Tweedy-written songs, performed by Jeff in a musical collaboration with his 18-year-old son and drummer Spencer Tweedy. “When I set out to make this record, I imagined it being a solo thing, but not in the sense of one guy strumming an acoustic guitar and singing,” […]

VIA CHICAGO: Q&A w/ Wilco Guitarist Nels Cline

  BY JONATHAN VALANIA Wizardly Wilco axeman Nels Cline plays Johnny Brenda’s on Friday (May 2nd) with The Nels Cline Singers in support of the new Macroscope, as part of an Ars Nova joint. Widely regarded as one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time, Cline has performed on more than 70 albums  — with the Geraldine Fibbers, with Wilco, with the Nels Cline Singers and a host of collaborators, including Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Willie Nelson and drummer Alex Cline, his identical twin brother — over the course of an auspicious 34-year career. Last week we got him […]

CONCERT REVIEW: Wilco @ The XPoNential Fest

Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER It has often been said that Wilco is the American Radiohead — an edgy 21st Century rock band whose audience only seems to grow the more they challenge it. But less remarked upon is the more obvious fact that they are also the new Grateful Dead — populist guarantors of the heartland verities of cosmic Americana. So it makes perfect sense that Wilco should headline the second night of the XPoNential Music Festival, curated by WXPN, a radio station that has astutely bridged the divide between edgy and crunchy and, […]