This is one of the few spots in my life where the algorithm has been beneficial. I loved your music, along with all you named, and now Drive By Truckers, Nathaniel Rateliff, and many others are keeping the momentum going, and it would be hard for me to tune in without the algorithm who introduced me.
Your list of bands and interests mirrored my own so much… so much 90s rock made me seek shelter in country and its various rock hybrids. you must have dug lone justice too, no?
Another fascinating article from you. I’ve been a big fan of Caledonia since its release and sorry to hear that two of the players have since passed away. That’s a great record from start to finish. Very interesting hearing about how it was recorded. I had no idea…. I was fortunate to have caught Uncle Tupelo when they were still together. It was at the Paradise with, I believe, Teenage Fanclub. What a show! I remember that Jeff Tweedy was very vivacious and energetic while Jay Farrar either seemed miserable or just very painfully shy onstage. This would have been in 1992 or 1993. I’ve seen Wilco twice, in 1996 or 1997 and again in 2008. Both were two of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life.
Thanks. Yes, from my experience very very different dispositions. I’ve learned to be more accepting when people aren’t social. There are so many possible reasons.
Agreed. I have my own social difficulties, which reminds me that I had thought of Juliana as being very aloof, until I read her incredible autobiography, and learned to have much more compassion for her. I’ve recently been listening to the I Don’t Cares for the first time and am just blown away. Cannot believe the greatness. .. I’m glad you’re still friends with all of your former band mates and looking forward to your memoirs someday.
In some songs, I have a distinct drawl on my first album or two. I guess my suburban voice wasn't enough. I have tamed it back to suburban by now, but I can't help but think all those Hank Sr. albums had an impact on young me. Or maybe it was Mick Jagger's Southern Accent that got to me!
another great back story to your career and musical influences! Love that inspiring note at the end... 'the best artists are breaking down walls as if their lives depended on it. I’m here for it, but I’m ready to leave it to the youngsters this time.'
I had a dream last night where, waiting for a Wilco show to start, I had a convo with a younger fan about the pre-AGIB days of Wilco, the struggles around Jeff's addiction, the unconventional release of YHF, and all the way back to my high school/college days when I first discovered Uncle Tupelo on a compilation disc covering CCR's “Effigy”.
I woke up this morning to find your story, and maybe unconsciously I saw it while scrolling, but hadn't read until now.
That No Alternative compilation disc led to me buying Anodyne, eventually discovering Trace, and then finally checking out the red CD under W that had been staring at me forever, with the AM radio waiting quietly for me to notice.
I wasn't old or aware enough to catch a UT show before they split. My first Wilco show was at Mabel's in Champaign in 1996, touring in support of their newest release, Being There.
Frat bros gave Jay Bennett a hard time. He did his usual thing where he melted every instrument he touched. The band was so full of energy, it felt like the floor would give way. It was my one and only date with a cute girl from Belleville that I had asked to the show after our stats class, only because she was cute and from Belleville. (Gotta shoot your shot!)
On a side note, I did also see Son Volt in Champaign that year at a small sit-down theater. The contrast between the two shows couldn't have been more polar. I loved Son Volt, but they always felt like a heartbreak when I saw them live.
A long-time friend of mine burned a bootleg disc of Tweedy’s last solo shows at Lounge Ax, before it closed forever. I listened to it non-stop, amazed by how effortlessly he could meld his voice with his guitar.
By the turn of the century, a new girlfriend talked me into buying a guitar. I never took lessons, but I made a binder full of pages printed off of Gumbo Pages, mostly tabs and chord progressions of Wilco and UT songs. I taught myself the basics, and those songs are something I still carry with me, 25 years later.
Again, sometimes weird things happen. One song, out of nowhere, set me on a musical voyage that would last me for the rest of my life.
I have a dream where I fill a fan in on the “old days” only to wake up and read another fan's account of the “older days”.
When we were growing up, country music was so prevalent on pop radio you didn’t even think, “Oh, that’s country!” Beyond Glen Campbell & the ubiquitous John Denver, there was “Harper Valley PTA”, “Stand By Your Man”, “Ode To Billie Joe”, “Rose Garden”, “Delta Dawn”…for some reason the female vocalists made a bigger impression on me. And of those songs from the ‘60s, they were played with great frequency on pop/AM radio throughout the ‘70s.
Even Rock fans couldn’t avoid The Eagles catalog, Linda Ronstadt, or The Rolling Stones who from 1969-1978 had 1 or 2 countrified tracks on every album. The Beatles were dead but as a band or solo they had long been country dabblers too. So many others.
A few months after I quit high school early to go to college (lThe Other Great Escape), I got the call to throw together a covers trio to play the 1981 Fontbonne Girls Academy Jr. Prom. The money was amazing $150 each (or $144 more than playing originals as an opener at Boston’s The Rat or Cantones).
I sang lead & played bass. We played The Eagles’ “Already Gone” for its attitude & new great personal meaning for me. Did America’s “Sister Golden Hair” (which I still have a soft spot for) too. Somehow we played their prom’s theme “Always & Forever”. But we also reduced the cheese factor with The Clash’s “Train In Vain” & The Neighborhoods’ “Prettiest Girl.” Being a Catholic school at least one of the nuns glared at me as we modified the chorus of “I Saw Her Standing There” to “How could I dance with her mother?” Still got paid though.
The pay differential between playing all originals in clubs & covers at teens dances was my 1st brutal lesson in music biz economics as a 17 y.o. It would be far from my last.
Very cool. I have some new band names and albums to check out! I had a smashingly fun K-tel record with Linda Ronstadt and the Bellamy Brothers on it. At 7 years old I didn’t know what country was, I just knew I loved it. That is until I left the record on the windowsill and the sun warped it into permanent unplayability. 🤣
Saw UT in San Francisco that same year. Epic show. Those first 3 Wilco records always stand out as the best, and their live shows for those records remain at the top of my list of all time greatest.
Saw Tupelo at Toad’s Place as part of a package tour that Michelle Shocked put together to support ‘Arkansas Traveler’: UT, Taj Mahal, The Band post Robbie but pre Richard’s demise. At the show I bought a corduroy ball cap that was embroidered Uncle Tupelo which I wore everywhere until my dog Henry decided he liked it more.
Great article/post. Definitely a bit of trip back in time for me. Steve Earle bridges Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard (my Dad and Grandpas music) to Metallica and Slayer for me. The Jayhawks were immediately adaptable to my ears. As my tastes evolved to appreciate Beat Happening and Mecca Normal and the stuff I was hearing on the Duke and UNC radio stations in high school made way more sense to me. Uncle Tupelo wasn’t a stretch but still a thunder struck type moment. And UT helped me appreciate Friends of Dean Martinez and Tarnation more when I heard both. I think UT even helped me get Reverend Horton Heat and the Supersuckers more (I linked both to punk initially, but country is in their blood).
Jessie Dayton these days is a favorite and he bridges my metal and punk tastes to a ton of great Texas music from way back.
I’m not familiar with Caledonia but will get there now. I loved the BB and Juliana’s solo work (might still have a fan letter response from her from my senior year of high school).
As one of those radicalized by Uncle Tupelo to embrace my country music roots as well as my love for melodic punk, I appreciate you sharing this kinda parallel story to my own. I grew up in Morgantown WV (Blake Babies came through there several times, yes?) and moved to NYC to pursue music. The first person I met and played with in New York gave me a cassette with Still Feel Gone and March 16-18 on it and I wore them out. Eventually the whole UT catalog. I started a band called Star City and we played around NYC, made a couple records and toured some, but never quite reached escape velocity. After that I did some recording with Jay Bennett and released an EP, hoping to get picked up for a full LP, but my daughter was born, we left NYC and I ended up in Iowa to get an MFA in fiction. Now I make my living making YouTube videos. It’s a weird trip. I sure missing the mid-90s though.
Caledonia is my favorite solo album of yours - maybe because of my predilection for Wilco, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Bottle Rockets, Slobberbone, et al.
Thank you. I’m proud of that one. Holds up pretty well.
This is one of the few spots in my life where the algorithm has been beneficial. I loved your music, along with all you named, and now Drive By Truckers, Nathaniel Rateliff, and many others are keeping the momentum going, and it would be hard for me to tune in without the algorithm who introduced me.
Very cool
You name dropped enough of my favorites, especially Townes, that I’ll check your stuff out. Thanks.
I appreciate that.
Here's the video I shot at that 1992 Jake's show, along with the story of almost missing the show:
https://sacramentomusicarchive.com/1992/11/10/uncle-tupelo-jakes-bloomington-in-11-10-92-xfer-from-hi8-master-videotape-w-dat-audio-live-tweedy/
Not the first time I’ve heard of someone going to Bloomington IL by accident. In my memory Coomer was on drums for that show.
Your list of bands and interests mirrored my own so much… so much 90s rock made me seek shelter in country and its various rock hybrids. you must have dug lone justice too, no?
Yes!
Another fascinating article from you. I’ve been a big fan of Caledonia since its release and sorry to hear that two of the players have since passed away. That’s a great record from start to finish. Very interesting hearing about how it was recorded. I had no idea…. I was fortunate to have caught Uncle Tupelo when they were still together. It was at the Paradise with, I believe, Teenage Fanclub. What a show! I remember that Jeff Tweedy was very vivacious and energetic while Jay Farrar either seemed miserable or just very painfully shy onstage. This would have been in 1992 or 1993. I’ve seen Wilco twice, in 1996 or 1997 and again in 2008. Both were two of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life.
Thanks. Yes, from my experience very very different dispositions. I’ve learned to be more accepting when people aren’t social. There are so many possible reasons.
Agreed. I have my own social difficulties, which reminds me that I had thought of Juliana as being very aloof, until I read her incredible autobiography, and learned to have much more compassion for her. I’ve recently been listening to the I Don’t Cares for the first time and am just blown away. Cannot believe the greatness. .. I’m glad you’re still friends with all of your former band mates and looking forward to your memoirs someday.
I loved and still love it
Love you!
In some songs, I have a distinct drawl on my first album or two. I guess my suburban voice wasn't enough. I have tamed it back to suburban by now, but I can't help but think all those Hank Sr. albums had an impact on young me. Or maybe it was Mick Jagger's Southern Accent that got to me!
Man, I was never a confident enough singer to try on an accent. Not much grease in these pipes. Not much red dirt either.
another great back story to your career and musical influences! Love that inspiring note at the end... 'the best artists are breaking down walls as if their lives depended on it. I’m here for it, but I’m ready to leave it to the youngsters this time.'
Thank you!!!
Sometimes weird things happen.
I had a dream last night where, waiting for a Wilco show to start, I had a convo with a younger fan about the pre-AGIB days of Wilco, the struggles around Jeff's addiction, the unconventional release of YHF, and all the way back to my high school/college days when I first discovered Uncle Tupelo on a compilation disc covering CCR's “Effigy”.
I woke up this morning to find your story, and maybe unconsciously I saw it while scrolling, but hadn't read until now.
That No Alternative compilation disc led to me buying Anodyne, eventually discovering Trace, and then finally checking out the red CD under W that had been staring at me forever, with the AM radio waiting quietly for me to notice.
I wasn't old or aware enough to catch a UT show before they split. My first Wilco show was at Mabel's in Champaign in 1996, touring in support of their newest release, Being There.
Frat bros gave Jay Bennett a hard time. He did his usual thing where he melted every instrument he touched. The band was so full of energy, it felt like the floor would give way. It was my one and only date with a cute girl from Belleville that I had asked to the show after our stats class, only because she was cute and from Belleville. (Gotta shoot your shot!)
On a side note, I did also see Son Volt in Champaign that year at a small sit-down theater. The contrast between the two shows couldn't have been more polar. I loved Son Volt, but they always felt like a heartbreak when I saw them live.
A long-time friend of mine burned a bootleg disc of Tweedy’s last solo shows at Lounge Ax, before it closed forever. I listened to it non-stop, amazed by how effortlessly he could meld his voice with his guitar.
By the turn of the century, a new girlfriend talked me into buying a guitar. I never took lessons, but I made a binder full of pages printed off of Gumbo Pages, mostly tabs and chord progressions of Wilco and UT songs. I taught myself the basics, and those songs are something I still carry with me, 25 years later.
Again, sometimes weird things happen. One song, out of nowhere, set me on a musical voyage that would last me for the rest of my life.
I have a dream where I fill a fan in on the “old days” only to wake up and read another fan's account of the “older days”.
Thanks.
Cool, I played Mabel’s. That was my band’s first sold out show outside of the Northeast and Chicago (sold out Lounge Ax a few times).
I think we always tend to believe that great things would last forever. Mabel's, Lounge Ax, the list goes on.
At least the Hideout is still true to that promise, but not many places still hold true.
When we were growing up, country music was so prevalent on pop radio you didn’t even think, “Oh, that’s country!” Beyond Glen Campbell & the ubiquitous John Denver, there was “Harper Valley PTA”, “Stand By Your Man”, “Ode To Billie Joe”, “Rose Garden”, “Delta Dawn”…for some reason the female vocalists made a bigger impression on me. And of those songs from the ‘60s, they were played with great frequency on pop/AM radio throughout the ‘70s.
Even Rock fans couldn’t avoid The Eagles catalog, Linda Ronstadt, or The Rolling Stones who from 1969-1978 had 1 or 2 countrified tracks on every album. The Beatles were dead but as a band or solo they had long been country dabblers too. So many others.
A few months after I quit high school early to go to college (lThe Other Great Escape), I got the call to throw together a covers trio to play the 1981 Fontbonne Girls Academy Jr. Prom. The money was amazing $150 each (or $144 more than playing originals as an opener at Boston’s The Rat or Cantones).
I sang lead & played bass. We played The Eagles’ “Already Gone” for its attitude & new great personal meaning for me. Did America’s “Sister Golden Hair” (which I still have a soft spot for) too. Somehow we played their prom’s theme “Always & Forever”. But we also reduced the cheese factor with The Clash’s “Train In Vain” & The Neighborhoods’ “Prettiest Girl.” Being a Catholic school at least one of the nuns glared at me as we modified the chorus of “I Saw Her Standing There” to “How could I dance with her mother?” Still got paid though.
The pay differential between playing all originals in clubs & covers at teens dances was my 1st brutal lesson in music biz economics as a 17 y.o. It would be far from my last.
Video or it didn’t happen!
Ha! If only. It was 1981!
Very cool. I have some new band names and albums to check out! I had a smashingly fun K-tel record with Linda Ronstadt and the Bellamy Brothers on it. At 7 years old I didn’t know what country was, I just knew I loved it. That is until I left the record on the windowsill and the sun warped it into permanent unplayability. 🤣
Saw UT in San Francisco that same year. Epic show. Those first 3 Wilco records always stand out as the best, and their live shows for those records remain at the top of my list of all time greatest.
💯
Saw Tupelo at Toad’s Place as part of a package tour that Michelle Shocked put together to support ‘Arkansas Traveler’: UT, Taj Mahal, The Band post Robbie but pre Richard’s demise. At the show I bought a corduroy ball cap that was embroidered Uncle Tupelo which I wore everywhere until my dog Henry decided he liked it more.
Great article/post. Definitely a bit of trip back in time for me. Steve Earle bridges Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard (my Dad and Grandpas music) to Metallica and Slayer for me. The Jayhawks were immediately adaptable to my ears. As my tastes evolved to appreciate Beat Happening and Mecca Normal and the stuff I was hearing on the Duke and UNC radio stations in high school made way more sense to me. Uncle Tupelo wasn’t a stretch but still a thunder struck type moment. And UT helped me appreciate Friends of Dean Martinez and Tarnation more when I heard both. I think UT even helped me get Reverend Horton Heat and the Supersuckers more (I linked both to punk initially, but country is in their blood).
Jessie Dayton these days is a favorite and he bridges my metal and punk tastes to a ton of great Texas music from way back.
I’m not familiar with Caledonia but will get there now. I loved the BB and Juliana’s solo work (might still have a fan letter response from her from my senior year of high school).
As one of those radicalized by Uncle Tupelo to embrace my country music roots as well as my love for melodic punk, I appreciate you sharing this kinda parallel story to my own. I grew up in Morgantown WV (Blake Babies came through there several times, yes?) and moved to NYC to pursue music. The first person I met and played with in New York gave me a cassette with Still Feel Gone and March 16-18 on it and I wore them out. Eventually the whole UT catalog. I started a band called Star City and we played around NYC, made a couple records and toured some, but never quite reached escape velocity. After that I did some recording with Jay Bennett and released an EP, hoping to get picked up for a full LP, but my daughter was born, we left NYC and I ended up in Iowa to get an MFA in fiction. Now I make my living making YouTube videos. It’s a weird trip. I sure missing the mid-90s though.