(Posted February 20, 2010)
My ears are still ringing. Last night, in the tradition of the Munger boys, I brought my youngest son Jack, my third son, Chris, and his girlfriend, Sarah, to a concert. Not just any concert, mind you, but the triumphant return to Duluth of the alternative Chicago-based rock band Wilco. As in Jeff Tweedy, iconoclastic singer-songwriter and front man of the band. As in Nels Cline, the man who makes guitars sing. There are, of course, four other lads who stand with and behind Tweedy and Cline to form Wilco’s impressive wall of sound at live concerts. They are not forgotten. But last night, it was clearly Tweedy and Cline’s show. They were so loud, Jack’s twelve-year-old ears needed ear plugs, which Sarah and Chris went in search of and found between the first act, Califone, and the main doings. Problem solved. Jack took a nap. Dad was in awe.
There is a long line of tradition behind Wilco and the music I love. Tweedy and the band was tagged, along with British folk singer, Billy Bragg, by Nora Guthrie, daughter of seminal plains poet, Woody Guthrie, to take a gander at lyrics Woody had written in the later days of his life, when he was struggling with Huntington’s Chorea (a fatal neurological disease) with an eye to creating a new catalog of Woody Guthrie music. Wilco and Bragg stepped in and, the result, two albums under the title “Mermaid Avenue”, is a remarkable achievement of collaboration. In fact, one of the tunes Tweedy penned to Guthrie lyrics, “California Stars”, is a personal favorite; a good a mesh of tune and words as any Springsteen, Young, Chapin-Carpenter, or Dylan song. Before the concert, I kiddingly told my buddy, musician-attorney Mark Rubin, that I was going to stand up in the balcony of the DECC Auditorium and scream out, “California Stars!” in hopes Wilco played the thing. Didn’t have to. It was on their play list and when they started the ballad, tears welled in my eyes. No shit. Tears!
The link between the past, Woody the bare-bones troubadour fighting Fascism with his acoustic guitar, and the present, Wilco, the tightly orchestrated powerhouse of a band playing to boisterous college kids (and a few old freaks like me), is so clear, so defined in that song. Any wonder that Bob Dylan (whose home of Hibbing, MN was referenced by Tweedy mid-concert as he described the band’s drive from Saskatoon, their last gig, to Duluth), sought out the dying Guthrie as a young and struggling musician in the early 1960s? Any wonder that The Boss insists on playing Guthrie songs whenever the occasion permits? Guthrie. Dylan. Springsteen. Tweedy. It is a solid and well-bred line of music that I was privileged to enjoy last night.
My only disappointment? That Wilco didn’t learn “Running Back to Saskatoon” by the old Canadian band Guess Who on their way back to the States and play the tune for the crazed mob at the DECC. Imagine Nels Cline’s inventive fingers working out the lead guitar licks to that old pearl. Of course, that little slight of hand might have been this old man’s demise.
Peace.
Mark
