WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 972 - Jeff Tweedy

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

Jeff Tweedy doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on the past. But he awakened a whole lot of it while writing his new memoir. That means he has fresh thoughts on his mind about Jay Farrar, Uncle Tupelo, the early days of Wilco, and coming into his own as a musician and producer, which is on display in his new solo album, Warm. Jeff also talks with Marc about his experiences with mood disorders, painkiller addiction, parenthood, and converting to Judaism. This episode is sponsored by YouTube Music, Nightflyers on SYFY, YouTube Music, Quip, and the New York Times Crossword App. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. How's it going? First of all, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and Jeff Tweedy fame is on the show today. And I know a lot of you people wanted him to be on the show. And I was hesitant for a while, not really hesitant, but I feel like Wilco is one of those bands that, you know, I was a big Uncle Tupelo fan. And then when they broke up, I weighed both of them out. I got the Sunvolt record, Jay's record.

I got Jeff's Wilco record. And I listened to the first two of each of their albums solo or with the new bands. And then I kind of drifted. So it wasn't, I know Wilco is a great band and Jeff's a great artist, but I hadn't kept up. It wasn't, I didn't like them, but I hadn't kept up and I feel insecure and weird to book people if I don't keep up. I obviously, I listened to a few of the records as they came, but I didn't,

I felt, I just felt like I didn't know the catalog as well as I should. So when I got the opportunity, I locked in and I listened to it. Now, I'll talk about that in a second. The other thing I want to talk about is that I'm at the Ice House this Sunday, December 2nd, 7 p.m. show. You can go to WTFpod.com slash tour for the link or icehousecomedy.com for tickets. That's going to be the last long set for months probably, which is not great for me. But it's a reality because I start shooting GLOW this week. I'm going to be immersed in that. That is sort of all-consuming.

I may do some short sets on weekends, but I'm going to be off the grid a bit. I will find the time to do this, obviously. We bank some interviews. I'll get them in when I can, but I'm going to be off the grid. I'm actually considering really getting off the grid. Something just got sparked in me, actually, and it happened because of something to do with this show. And it happened because of something to do with this show. And I'm just always overwhelmed with the reactions of this show, with the impact it has. But this thing just kind of, oh, man. So here's the email.

Rock on, Mark. Hey, Mark, three years ago, you interviewed Steve Albini on your podcast and you asked him what the most important album he had worked on in his career was. I thought he would talk about working on Nirvana's In Utero or Pixie's Surfer Rosa, but instead he talked about an unknown musician named John Grabsky and his album Teeth. John's story of battling cancer by making a rock album with his favorite producer of all time was really inspiring to me. After listening to the episode, I contacted John's family and Steve Albini to see if they would be interested in helping me make a short documentary film about John. That film is now complete. It's called Rock

Versus Cancer and is now available for people to watch on YouTube. We decided to release it today to coincide with National Giving Day. This was a couple days ago. And I hope that people will watch the film and be inspired to give to cancer research. Thank you for the show and thank you for inspiring

this film. The film, Rock Versus Cancer, if you go to YouTube and just search for rock versus cancer this is from a guy named jacob kindberg uh who made the film and uh if you go to youtube.com and search search rock versus cancer you'll get the the first two things that come up are the trailer and the 18 minute documentary and uh it's it's powerful, man. And it just got it. You know, I'm a nutbag.

You know, I'm I'm I'm a compulsive person. I'm always sort of distracted and engaged in things that aren't necessarily the the best things. Or I don't know if they're things that I want to be doing or I just feel compelled to do them. And, you know, there's a lot of things in culture and in our lives where you just, you never have a second to think or do, constantly distracted, constantly working your brain over and just like seeing a little doc like this, given the situation and really kind of makes you wonder like what, you know, what are we here for? What is life supposed to be?

What what's important? And, you know, sometimes I get so fucking caught up with such bullshit. I just I'm just constantly distracted by bullshit. And I really wonder whether or not I'm engaged in life. And I'll tell you, man, watching a thing like that, you know, is pretty phenomenal. So if you have a second, you know, check that out. I don't know. I didn't really have any part in it other than it gave this guy the idea.

And I'm happy. I'm happy I did that. I'm happy. Yeah, it was really something else. Yeah, I start shooting glow this week. As I'm speaking now, I'm shooting. I started a couple of days ago. About a week ago, I got my haircut for sam sylvia

and uh yesterday i i buzzed off my soul patch for sam sylvia and i imagine when i go down there later today to do a one-line scene and i get my hair blown out and I put on my Sam glasses, I will inhabit Sam. We can only hope. We can only hope. The thing I'm hoping most for is that this season is that somehow I engage more deeply in the acting process. Obviously, it's something that I'm relatively new to. And as people who listen to this show, you hear me talk to actors and I'm always looking for a lesson or two. And I hope that manifests this season. I think it's going to be a great season.

As some of you know, the season last year left off, second season left off with me and the crew, me and the ladies, going to Vegas. So this season will be in Vegas. We will be doing GLOW in Vegas. I think that's all I can tell you. And I honestly don't know that much more.

I've only got the first two scripts. And I have a sense of where my character's going, which I had not done the last two seasons. I guess it was offered to me, but I don't remember it being offered to me that there was the option to talk to the showrunners and get sort of a character arc for the season, which I neglected to do the last two seasons. I don't remember it being offered to me, but I did do it this time,

and I have a sense, and it's going to be good. I think it's going to be surprising. I don't think everything you expect if you're a glow fan is going to happen the way you expected it. I don't I didn't expect it to happen the way that they told me it was going to happen. But anyways, that's the process I'm about to enter. And it is all consuming. But I will check in.

I will obviously be doing the show here twice a week with guests but i think the thing that suffers the most is the uh the stand-up really because i can't get out in it as much as i like to get out in it and like i said this sunday at the ice house will be the last hour in a while and i was doing some work at the comedy store last week i got a few new bits working. And I'm excited to do that. 7 p.m. at the Ice House. Come out if you'd like. Sorry I sound a little heavy hearted. But I don't know man.

I'm just busy and humbled somehow. It happens. You get time to think. You get time to reflect. You spend time with family. You think about yourself. Think about changes you have to make in your life as life goes on. And you get heavy hearted. But it's okay. It's okay. At least I'm connected with the weight. Better being heavy hearted than cold hearted. When your heart is heavy, you know you have one. Wow.

Did I make that up? I don't think that's an uplifting adage, but it is something. It is something, right? So Jeff Tweedy. Look, I listen to AM. I listen to Being There. I listen to Summer Teeth and Yankee Hotel, Foxtrot.

I listened to them all when they came out. But then I drifted. And I don't know that I put those albums into the context that they belong in. And I didn't want to do a disservice to the interview. But I've done this before. And I knew he would be an interesting guy. But I also got the sense that I don't know how talkative he is. Is he going to?

I don't know. And I met him once. I met him a couple of years ago at a small event at someone's home and I liked him. And then we had talked then about, you know, getting him on. So, you know, the book comes out and here comes Jeff. And I'm like, well, I got to lean in, man. I got to lean in and listen to the shit. So I did. I went through all of it again. And I listened to a lot of ones I hadn't listened to. And it's sort of it again. And I listened to a lot of ones I hadn't listened to. And it's sort of astounding. And I talked to Jeff about this, just the production and the balance of the instruments.

I mean, I'm a fan of the band. And there's something about production that either is going to make something of its time or make something timeless. And the timeless part is rare, but I'll tell you, most of that Wilco stuff, it can exist forever and it's its own thing production wise and lyrically. And then I started wondering, well, why don't I listen to it at much? I don't know. Maybe me and Jeff have too much in common. Maybe it's the heavy hearted thing. Maybe it's the existential sort of rumination thing. I don't know. I don't listen to it enough, but it was it was sure great to sort of check in with it and get it all in my head before I talk to him and sort of skim through the book.

So I hope that you enjoy this because it was sort of a long time coming for some people and and for myself. The new book, Let's Go So We Can Get Back, a memoir of recording and discording with Wilco, etc., is available now wherever you get books. And his new solo album, Warm, comes out tomorrow, November 30th. So this is me talking to Jeff Tweedy. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice?

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Yeah. Can you sleep? Are you able to sleep? Have you hit that age where you can't sleep late? No. That's good. I'm a polyphasic sleeper as a wow the term for it i now i uh now i need to know what it may what is that i i rarely sleep more than three or four hours at a time

right but i make i i'm able to go to sleep almost immediately immediately you can go now yeah i could go now i could get i could get a good half an hour in right now if i needed it yeah so so that's how it works so you do four you're up and then later you'll hit a 20 minute nap like periodically like after sound check before the show um well but it'll work for you like i can that's a that's a good way to be in the sense that if you can do the 20 minute nap and then just be like boom yeah you can do it i can do that i i you know i can even do like an hour and a half nap and and pop up and be pretty pretty together yeah yeah you know they always say you're supposed to not nap more than 20 minutes or something like that but i i balderdash i don't yeah no i if i if i do an hour and a half you know then like

then i'm uh i can either i'll be fucked after that or i'll be great yeah but sometimes it takes about 10 15 minutes to wake up from an hour and a half nap you know there's so much i think it's just in as like a survival strategy for being on the road sure for my like all of my adult life. So just being able, you know, there's so much waiting around in rock music. So just being able to knock out hours of it by being unconscious. Yeah, it's better. It's better than the sort of like the anticipation, like, you know, those guys got to set that up. And then we, okay, we got an hour, two hours.

Okay, now the doors are open. People are coming in. Got another hour. Yeah. And then you wake up, where are we going to eat? I don't know. Is there a place? Yeah.

That thing? There's a, yeah, the food's usually taken care of these days. It's not as much of a hunting and gathering situation as it was early on you're trying there's catering or there's you know there's a plan yeah being executed by someone by somebody's in charge they know what you like to eat they can find the place i'm pretty simple really well i mean i try and eat vegan. How's that going? It's pretty easy, actually. More than I would have thought. And certainly, if you're playing big cities, it's no problem at all.

But what was the decision process on the vegan thing? Was it your wife vegan? My youngest son became fairly adamant about the idea of the whole family becoming vegan and then he's he's kind of abandoned it he's like a vegetarian now he's at college he said it's too hard he sucked all you guys in and now he's like yeah i'm eating fish yeah exactly yeah he's a pescatarian now. No, he, so yeah, he planted the seed. And then my engineer that I work with all the time at the studio is vegan. And he's been vegan for like 30 years. So I found it very easy to just order what he orders for lunch every day.

Yeah. And so that was one meal knocked out every day. Yeah. That I didn't have to think about. Right. And breakfast you can skip. And I go there every day. I go to the to think about. Right. And breakfast you can skip. And I go there every day. I go to the studio every day.

So it just became. Your studio. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In Chicago. Correct. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, as I get older, I'm just, right now I'm fucking,

I got myself strung out on nicotine again with these goddamn, these. Like I was off of these for a while. Uh-huh. The lozenges. Yeah. And then like I started hitting cigars. Uh-huh. And-huh and then like yeah i thought like i could just handle it i didn't i've been through this cycle so many times and then like two three cigars a day i'm fucked and then i'm like i need to get on these to get off of the the cigars you gotta get off the cigars i have i have to

i have like a i have a prejudice against cigars i I don't know why. In general? In general. The affectation of it? Yeah. I get that. I wasn't really on them publicly. I was on them on my porch. Yeah.

Well, that's good. And before I go on, no, it was really about having been a smoker for a long time. Just a fucking drug. It's just a nicotine. I had one of the stupidest maneuvers in terms of nicotine management you could ever execute, which was I started smoking to quit chewing tobacco. Well, you grew up with the chew? Yeah. So, yeah, I started smoking when I was like 24 years old or something like that. To get off the chew.

To stop chewing. The dip. Yeah. It was more socially acceptable for one when i moved to chicago yeah dipping is never there's very few circles no uh where that's socially acceptable and in the circles that it is it's usually two other dudes right right you're just spitting into a beer bottle and trying not to drink each other spit by accident right yeah and that and once that happens then you've lost lost a friend, lost a wife, lost a...

That's a bad day when you take that one slug, a dip, a spit. Yeah. Where'd you grow up again? Southern Illinois, closer to St. Louis than Chicago, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. It fascinates me that there are certain dudes, and I know a few, a guy from Nashville, a guy from Ohio, that grew up dipping. Like, you know, it's just, it's a regional thing. It's not, you know.

Yeah, I worked in a liquor store that basically you could do whatever you want. You could try any alcohol you wanted. How old were you? I was 18. Oh, just right when you turned 18. Well, it wasn't the legal drinking age. But you could legally work there? All you wanted. How old were you? I was 18. Oh, just right when you turned 18. Yeah. Well, it wasn't the legal drinking age.

But you could legally work there? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. They did all kinds of illegal things there. They made me a night manager at 18. At a liquor store. At a liquor store and gave me a gun. You'd leave it in the safe.

At the end of the day, you'd do the deposit and you'd take the gun with you to go drive to the bank and do the night deposit. Oh, like a.38? I have no idea. I never took it out of the holster. I was terrified. You just strapped it on. But they would do things like, hey, I left something for you on the copier. And you'd go back there and there'd be lines of cocaine on the copier and they oh it's just the worst place but but yeah so looking back on it though i mean like at the time was it the worst place or like i

mean when i was younger if there were two lines on the copy i'd be like no thanks man um well yeah there was something so i, sort of appealing about that. But there was such a deep, you know, pang of understanding that there's something really wrong going on here. These people are really awful. The guy that was my boss, he was just the manager of one store. These people owned like a few stores in the region and he got fired i guess for being like a a coke guy guy or whatever i don't know what happened provided had supplied whatever he came back and robbed the place with the gun with the gun yeah

during the day he knew where the gun was yeah and then everybody's like hey yeah hey frank yeah take everything you need yeah and what happened you end up in jail that i think you did yeah yeah he was just he was just one of those uh dark side guys yeah yeah there was a lot there was boy i could go on and on about that place but i i don't know How'd you get that gig? All of my friends worked there because it was like somebody stumbled upon it in my group of friends. It was in the neighborhood? And then it was just like, okay, these guys will hire anybody, everybody. And then they rented, my friends rented a house about a block away. Yeah.

And so, yeah, it was like the best stocked bar in southern illinois because robbing the place blind right you just wheel you know just roll uh kegs out on the loading dock and people would swing by and pick them up and so it created a whole uh circle of alcoholics and drug addicts yeah no it was like it was uh, it was, uh, yeah. Um, I don't know. It was just an endless supply. How old are you? I'm 51, 51. I'm 55. So, I mean, but that was a time, you know, I mean, that was sort of like when you're, uh, you're a little younger than me, but you know, back then, you know, that, that was rock and roll. You thought you were living it right uh i don't know i think that there was um i'm i'm like a rule follower really really by nature yeah kind of yeah we brought up with it

uh no not necessarily i just like i don't know there's i'm just always i've always been really suspicious of of bros or you know like or like a male that kind of male bonding um i was never really comfortable with it like well i mean yeah but i mean bros are bros but like i mean it seemed to me that back then like when i was in high school you know i knew who the bros were i knew who the jocks were i mean i wasn't fighting with them i knew who the freaks were but there was sort of a middle range of gats that weren't bros or freaks. But they had a good time. I mean, not to be too heavy about it, but I think even when I was participating in any kind of debauched behavior,

I had the baggage of coming from a fairly damaged family by those types of things. So it was never allowed to be completely fun in my mind, I think. And that wasn't an issue of necessarily the self-awareness of what could happen, but just sort of like, it's bad memories. Well, no, it's just like, I see where this can go yeah and and and i really don't want to go there um but did you find you didn't have control over that oh eventually yeah for sure yeah what'd you grow up with how many siblings in your family um i have two i had two brothers and a sister uh uh one of my brothers passed away but i grew up um i'm 10 years younger than them so they they were all pretty much gone by the time so i was like kind of the baby and an

only child in the in the household i grew up in so by the time you were 10 they were all gone they're gone yeah there wasn't even one to give you records well no actually i i got a lot of records you did them there was it was really kind of like uh saving uh saved my life really i mean my sister is the oldest so she had all the most amazing you know just pop 45s of the time and motown and all that with my with my aunt gail which this is how we do it in southern illinois my aunt gail is, is a little bit younger than my sister. Yeah. So my grandmother and my mother were pregnant at the same time. Oh wow.

My aunt and my, my sister went to high school together. Right. So anyway, so their records got combined and I got, I inherited those. And then my brother, um, my oldest brother had a collection of records that was really advanced like college uh serious record collecting at the time oh yeah he went he went to college in oregon and he came home and he had all these like uh space rock records like you know hawkwind and oh really almond duel and craftwork oh yeah yeah and a Aphrodite's Child and all this like just really mind expanding stuff. Out there, kraut rock stuff. Yeah. And, you know, he intervened

and prohibited me from mailing off a Columbia House Record Club thing. Oh, yeah. He stopped you from the Aerosmith ELOe walsh hole for for a penny yeah for a penny i had him yeah i got him yeah he said you know now i'll give you my records and he did he he lived up to his promise and he he he just left this giant crate of you know stuff that's hard to find today no no i know i i i didn't know anything about that stuff what hawkwind yeah i didn't even know they existed. Yeah, right. Do you know what I mean? There's like 12, 15, 20 records.

Yeah, no. It's like in Lemmy was- Lemmy was there. Yeah, Ty Siegel turned me on. He got me into that shit. Yeah, yeah. And Amandouli, is that what it's called? I always called it Amandoul.

Amandoul, yeah. I just got into that stuff. But that was going into your what, 15-year-old head? Oh, even younger. Yeah. into that stuff but that was going into your what 15 year old head oh even younger yeah like you know like uh you know 10 or 10 or 11 something like that so you had the pop music of uh what the 70s yeah with from 60s 60s and 70s yeah and then you had that way out on the other side yeah and it all you know when you're that age there there's no, you know, there's no critical guideline that's being, you know, foisted upon you that's drawing lines in between these two things.

Other than radio. Right. But the radio was so stagnant, you know, it was playing the same songs that my brother listened to on the radio. Right. And that he warned you against. Yeah, exactly. the radio right and that he warned you against yeah exactly well that's weird because if you think about like the you know the first few wilco records like that there is that element of that sound you know finding its way in with the space noises and stuff yeah no it's it's um um you know it's a formative experience that i think does probably uh explain a certain amount of, I don't know,

just not being particularly monogamous with any genre. You know, just like I never really cared about that notion that you define yourself. Yeah, definitely. You definitely do all the genres. Yeah, all of them. Every one of them. Every one of them is yeah

is represented on one or one or the other of the records but i did find i i did really notice because i think i met um michael jorgensen yeah uh at a party not long ago and he you know he sent me his record of this of the nasa yeah yeah yeah the space sounds yeah yeah and then i started to be able to identify like going back listening to some of the catalog you know in preparation to talk to you that there is a sort of sonic weirdness that seems to emanate from him through a lot of the records right that that is sort of like some of the stuff you were just talking about right for sure yeah now like is that something that happened organically i mean because it's it's odd that the layers of of like re-listening to a

lot of the earlier stuff i mean the production on it is so is so beautiful and so spacious and so you know kind of like the band like in some ways but the but not unlike garth hudson you know you have a a weird sort of keyboard thing going on. Oh, sure. Yeah, I think that started a little bit before Mike, but certainly Mike was in, you know, a good fit when he joined the band. Oh, he joined later. Yeah, yeah.

So that wasn't even him. Who was doing that originally? On the Summer Teeth record, I think it's probably the first record where we started incorporating like synthesizers and sounds that would be associated with space. Yeah. But it was like Jay Bennett. And in some cases, it was, you know, whenever it's like something you can play on a synthesizer with one finger, it's probably me. You can do it. I can handle this.

Yeah. This will make all the noises on its own. Exactly. It arpeggiates. Yeah, I can just. I don't even know what an arpeggio is, but this is doing it. So where does, like, in that background, so you're alone in the house, you know, you're 10 10 and all your siblings are out and you got their records and what's your old man do he worked on the railroad he really worked on the railroad

all the live long day yeah it's for sure yeah no yeah for 46 years he worked on the railroad doing what uh he um he started out working underneath the trains, like, you know, cleaning. He was kind of around for the transition from steam to diesel. He was like, he dropped out of high school to take care of my mom. He got her pregnant. Yeah. And so he got a job on the railroad. He started off underneath the train.

Yeah. And then at some point, somebody figured out that he was pretty smart uh-huh and even though he didn't have a high school diploma they had sent him to arizona to learn how to program computers oh yeah and he learned how to program computers with punch cards and he eventually became superintendent of a switching yard which is you know a giant concentration of track where all the trains get rearranged. Yeah, you can't fuck up there. Yeah, so it was his living, breathing railroad 24 hours a day. And is that something you spent time on?

Did you go down to where he worked or anything? No, no. Never? No, I was pretty sheltered from it. He wanted to keep you away from trains? Yeah, I write about it in the book a fair amount. You know, just like, because my mom, my mom for some reason did not want me to associate

with any of my dad's friends from the railroad or anything. They weren't allowed in the house. Really? Yeah. Rough guys? They were pretty, yeah, they're pretty disgusting. In what way? Oh, just.

Foozy? Well, filthy. You know, like what way? Oh, just. Boozy? Well, filthy. You know, like actually, you know, dirt. Grimy? Yeah. For one, I think that's part of the reason she, one of the excuses she gave for not wanting them in the house. But they, yeah, they just told the worst, most disgusting stories and cursed. disgusting stories and and so we're just and because you were the youngest it had she learned a certain number of lessons from the older ones and like you know was were you more sheltered or

more insulated for sure i don't know if she learned any lessons but she definitely uh uh it felt like i was i was facilitating a uh an unwitting role of being her companion. I was like a mama's boy. I was a thing. Everyone was gone. Your dad's at work, but you still got this one. I was an uncontested Oedipal victor. You won without even fighting.

Without understanding what that is. It wasn't a tough fight. No, no. but understanding what it was what that is it wasn't a tough fight no no so uh yeah my brothers my brothers did end up working on the railroad and like my cousins and my uncles and everybody worked on the railroad but but i was i was i was told very uh very early on that it was not what i was going to do she She had higher hopes for you? No, not necessarily. I just think that she just didn't want me to be on the railroad. I'm not going to let you become one of those monsters,

one of those train monsters. She, rightly or wrongly, I don't know, she associated a lot of the demons that plagued our family and brought her overall clan. I think she associated it with the railroad too you know like drinking and and a lot of things like that yeah what were some of the other demons booze booze and alcohol and you know all that stuff yeah all that booze and alcohol booze and alcohol yeah booze alcohol hooch hooch rage sadness drugs to it. I don't know if she associated that with the railroad so much as she just associated it. It was a lifestyle she saw.

Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think it's just a cause and effect that maybe didn't have a whole thought out correlation in her mind. But it was a part of the whole thing it's just like better safe better safe than sorry right let's just cut that world out of this she saw they were a bad crowd yeah yeah for sure right and so what did she do well she dropped out of high school too and um amazingly enough i mean she taught herself how to draft, uh, to, to do drafting and, and, uh, she got hired by a kitchen design firm in, in our town and she started installing and designing kitchens.

Right. Oh, that's good. That's good work. Yeah. She was really, you know, I still have a lot of her drawings, but, you know, she was really good at, you know, she figured it out. I mean, I think that that's the one thing I really recognize that I learned from my parents as I've gotten older and since they're both gone now is that, you know, they did kind of give me this, you know, belief that you can teach yourself how to do something. Yeah. Right.

Vicariously, I just kind of picked that up maybe. I don't know. Like I said, I didn't recognize it until recently. Oh, yeah. But that probably made it a lot easier to teach myself how to play guitar. Right. Because it wasn't unimaginable that you could figure out how to do something. Well, it's interesting, though, and I wonder if you had that experience writing the book

because what I've written is that you do have those kind of realizations because you're forced to be introspective and look back and reframe the history of you. And then all of a sudden you're like, wow, maybe that's why I'm like this or maybe this is why this happened. Oh, for sure. It's like writing is remembering, you know. Yeah. There's something about it that requires that, I don't know, that introspection.

I definitely unearthed a lot of things that I haven't thought about in many, many years writing my book. Were there like in each period? You know, because it's a pretty it's a big arc in the book well i'm not you know like the thing that was really daunting going into writing a book is like i don't feel like i'm particularly um nostalgic as a person i'm not like super sentimental about uh i don't spend a lot of time reflecting on the past i i'm i'm i stay pretty busy yeah making stuff and looking forward to doing stuff. Right.

Things like that. But, yeah, the process of writing the book, I started being surprised by how much detail I could remember about things I hadn't thought of in a long time. Well, I don't know if that's like necessarily. It's sort of, you know i i'm the same way you know i certainly don't think about the past much primarily because at a certain point in your life you've got to accept your past and and and move forward with as few regrets as possible and resolve the shit right that you know you can resolve right but in terms of sort of like sitting there going like okay it was so much better when i don't have any of that i don't have any of that either yeah it's like it just keeps getting better well yeah because

you know as the world as the world falls apart yeah uh you know just you just get you know you have more evidence that you can survive shit survive shit and also like you know as you get older the the things that were once so pressing and and important in life or death like you know as you get older the the things that were once so pressing and important in life or death like you now you're like why did i even give a fuck yeah well as you yeah right as you move forward every single fucking minute is a smaller fraction of your life that's right that's why i keep thinking about not being able to sweep anymore because i'm 55 and i just can't sweep past 6 30 7 30 and i think if there is any sort of spiritual sense in the world, it's God saying, like, you might want to be awake for this.

We're running out of time here. Yeah, you need to start, like, taking bigger bites. Yeah. But that's a beautiful thing in terms of executing this, because I imagine songwriting and the poetics of that are sort of a rendering of feelings, right? Yeah, it's a different muscle. Right, sure.

It's a different whatever. Yeah, it can come in, it can float, it can just come. But when you're sitting there with a narrative of you, like I just, there are moments where you're sort of like, oh fuck, that's why I do the. Did you have a lot of that? Yeah, a lot of moments of recognition. Like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Now that I put it all in writing, I can see that. Like what? What was a big one well i mean an easy one to to recall is that you know my one of the only records my parents had when i was growing up was a record of steam engine sounds uh like trains yeah you know yeah i don't know why my dad had this record do you think that that would be the last thing you'd want to listen to when he gets home but um but but i used i used to love it, and I loved that alongside. Hawkwind. Well, maybe not Hawkwind, but even earlier than that, alongside the Monkees or something.

And that seems to me where I'm still kind of located in terms of my musical appetite is somewhere between just listening to anything. Yeah. And a really beautiful pop structure right yeah um so that was that was part of it what about what about reflecting on like where does country music come in and what you know your relationship with with jay you know that i mean that's pretty old stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. There were some musicians in my family on my dad's side. Some of my uncles played guitar, and then their children, their cousins, that were more my siblings' age, they played music

and tended to be country folk music and stuff like that. So I was exposed to it through that. But it was really, Jay and I met, we shared a little bit of an interest in that in high school. We were more into punk rock. Yeah. And then at some point, we both liked Bob Dylan a lot. And when you start doing the cross-referencing of,

where did Bob Dylan get this stuff? You're led back to Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, and you're led to Hank Williams and things like that. So for us, it just all became punk rock, really. The feelings behind it. The directness and the sincerity, the honesty of it all felt like it was a part of something. And the self-actualization of it, maybe we wouldn't have put it in those words at that time.

But even like soul music or early rock and roll, all of these different types of music where people kind of like liberating themselves and freeing themselves from some um you know you know i guess confining definition of what they're allowed to be normal expectations the expectations of society right that you know there's another way to think right it doesn't have to be like this that right yeah there's a perception that is going has has been altered and changed

by this person doing this right and that comes through on the record right like which like what now so we're talking what the late 70s early 80s maybe it was the early 80s for for when jay and i met was early and what was because those kind of uh those sort of defining friendships that become creative are sort of um they're powerful and interesting because you're sharing ideas you're sharing sort of similar tastes and you're discovering things together and like in terms of like what was what was the dylan album that you the first one where you're like holy fuck we each jay had older brothers also and so we each came to each other with dylan records oh yeah in tow you know yeah uh uh but we were you know we were exploring and finding punk rock records together what were the what were the punk guys that you um well the clash yeah um uh the minute men oh yeah uh we'd drive to st louis because they had

record stores where they would have things that we could kind of like learn about and look for and i love that part of this of our history like our guys our age is that like you had to find the place that had them or know the guys that had them or were getting them from england or knew where the concert was going to be yeah no it wasn't like uh hey i wonder what disco was all about and then all of a sudden you have all of disco yeah right yeah at your fingertips right no you really had to you know you had there was like a network a nationwide network of of zines and people with cassette tapes and ordering records. Yeah, you had to talk to people. Yeah.

So you'd go to the record store in St. Louis? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and just go and dig through stuff. There was actually kind of a cool record store in the town I grew up in, but eventually it closed down and the only places to go were over the river. Yeah. Did you have a guy at the record store?'s always those dudes it's sort of like what'd you get what do you got yeah um yeah we would we would pool our resources jay and i and and and a couple other friends that would go with us sometimes it was it was kind of verboten to buy the same

record somebody else bought. Oh, you had to find a new thing. Well, just because we didn't want to waste our money, we wanted to hear more records. Right. And so there would be arguments over who got to buy which Meat Puppets record or which, you know, like they're sometimes just be like, fuck it. I want one, too. I'm going to have this record. I need to own.

Meat Puppets, too. Everyone's got to have one of those. Exactly. Yeah. Go get your own. just be like fuck it i want one too i'm gonna have this is a record i need to meet puppets too everyone's got to have one of those exactly yeah go yeah it's your own that's those are that was a those ones like the ones like um like the meat puppets and the minute men were really on their own track you know like like the ramones were great and they were you know but you understood that was an understandable form you know it was established you know that rock form it was just you know turned inside out a little bit but the minute men and the meat puppets like where the fuck are they coming from right it was a trip man yeah totally yeah i mean yeah the ramones kind of um they're i don't know unassailable in terms of their musical contribution and everything but but yeah, it's like a fully formed persona that dropped out of, it's a little bit of a miracle, really.

Yeah. You know, I always think of it. But it's like something, you don't aspire to be the Ramones. Right. You can't. Right. But you can aspire to be the Minutemen. Sure.

Not doing the same thing as the Minutemen. But finding his own. But three normal dudes making something that is super twisted and unique to themselves and very particular. Yeah. You know, to their whatever, their idiosyncrasies. Have you talked to Mike Watt before? I have, yeah. He's got his own language.

Yeah, totally. Econo. You have to learn how got his own language. Yeah, totally. Econo. You have to learn how to meet him somewhere in between here and San Pedro. Yeah. You will understand San Pedro by the end of the conversation. I haven't spent a whole lot of time with him, but Nels Klein is a good buddy of his. Oh, yeah. He has played with him a lot.

So I've heard a lot of Nels Klein is a good buddy of his. Oh, yeah. He has played with him a lot. So I've heard a lot of Nels speaks. Fluent San Pedro. Fluent Watt. Do you have, I find that with Dylan records, there are ones that I think I know, and then I go back to them and I'm like, holy shit. I went out and I've been accumulating copies

of Planet Waves out of fear that they might not exist anymore. Like I got six of them. Yeah. Yeah. Because I recently put it on the turntable and I'm like, Jesus, this is like the greatest sounding record ever.

Yeah. That band was like the band in that record is sort of like, what is it? It's a miracle of some kind. Yeah. It's for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the one that everybody told you not to get. Exactly. And I'm like, what the fucking idea? I put that in my head, like this isn't a good one and you put it on. It's like,

this might be one of the best ones. It's hard to do that with Dylan because of the different periods. Yeah. But that one, that band is so tight and so loose at the same time. Yeah, that happens so much.

There's so much, punk rock did a lot of damage. punk rock really kind of well i mean it just that's where lines in the sand started being drawn around specific genres or types of music or or even how you look more more often than not um and uh that's not particularly musical or admirable as a philosophy to draw a line. But it was like, you know, I remember super hardcore punk friends of mine being absolutely just appalled that you could listen to Neil Young, that you would listen to Neil Young. Boy, they turned out to be wrong. Yeah, exactly. Have you talked to them recently?

No. that you would listen to Neil Young. Boy, they turned out to be wrong. Yeah, exactly. Like, have you talked to them recently? No, no. Yeah. Neil's one of those things where somehow or another, most of those records, you know, the ones that, you know, we all know, I know he's done a million, which is always a trick for me when I talk to those guys. It's like, you know, I should just get caught up and listen to some of their records.

And you're like, you know, four of them. And then it's like, oh, there's 50. Yeah, right. But the thing about Neil it's it's really has its own time like it doesn't it's not beholden to a period like you can listen to it and i think that's true with a lot of your music as well where it's like it's not production wise attached to an era nor is it you know um in terms of its own aesthetic attached to a period in time it just floats on its own ether oh that's that thank you that's a very high compliment in my uh my mind yeah uh yeah uh yeah it's it's a hard it's a hard thing to aim for i don't think do you aim for it no i don't aim for it i aim for feeling something listening

to a record well you know what i aim for is um i love records so much and i and i have so many records and records that mean so much to me and i i aim for a record that i don't have yeah that's what i aim for i aim for trying to make a record that is you know maybe i can hear that it's adjacent to some other records i have right but a record that i don't feel like i have in in your records like you know as you do do different ones of them represent different points of life for you like do you are there records like that you go back to because i have so many records now i don't even know what i have and then when i start to see like what have i played twice this month or three times this month what have i sat and listened to the whole way

through right do you have those um i i'm still i'm still more focused on finding records and discovering stuff yeah but i do you know i do there's some reliable inspiration about going back and listening to planet waves or or something like that, for sure. In writing the book, actually, I went back and listened to a lot of stuff that was really important to me from the time, a lot of Minutemen records and stuff like that. of uh it in that context and and have it hold up to me now oh yeah to have it feel like okay this is still um i don't know it's just that you know why you liked it well it's just it doesn't i don't know it's like music that doesn't have uh any risk of failure or there's like there's no failure isn't a part of the equation no one was going to fail making this music because it's so purely intended to be an expression right oh yeah you

know yeah i can see that but but yeah but finding another person finding jay was like um you know i describe it in the book as like finding a message in a bottle or something yeah like you know another another person to talk to yeah and. And when did you guys start playing together? I mean, how did that sort of unfold? Well, I was still really learning how to play guitar. And so we, you know, we started playing together almost immediately. And a lot of the early, you know, moments of making music together was based around standing in my bedroom and playing guitars together and Jay showing me

how I'm wrong about playing like a Ramones song or something. You know, Ramones are a great entry level bar chord thing to do. So yeah. And was he a country guy? At that time? No. I mean, At that time, no. I mean, he came from a family with really legitimate folk bona fides. Like his mom and his dad played folk instruments and everybody in his family was musical. So he was definitely kind of versed in it. But he was like me. He was interested in establishing his own identity musically or finding his own music. Yeah. And punk rock was really what it was for us.

Did you feel like you did? But I mean, Uncle Tupelo wasn't really punk rock, was it? No, because by the time we were carving out what kind of music we could play, we had discovered that folk music and country music came easier to us than being angry, being super angry. The first Uncle Tupelo record, I think you can really hear the stop, start, minute men type of arranging and things like that yeah you

weren't angry you were just moody we're uh depressed like yeah you went to the colicky it's funny that like you know that that adage of uh depression is anger turned inward you know that that there's some truth to that yeah for sure yeah and you hear that in in in uh treatment yeah sure yeah in the recovery racket yeah yeah that's a yeah i've never quite understood what that means exactly but it does sound right it does sound like you know like being unkind to yourself yeah it's the difference between fuck you and fuck me. Yeah, right, right. Well, yeah, I guess it's just two different ways of looking at the world.

I'm always under the impression that if I'm upset about something, it's probably my fault. I probably did something wrong. Yeah? Well, I just looked at the world in a way that i would set myself up for disappointment or something you know oh yeah right well that's uh i think that that's that sort of thing like you're never going to be as good as you uh it doesn't matter what you do either right like i mean i have that too like but it's lessened a bit as i've gotten older the the expectations you know i don't even know what i don't even think they're meetable most of the time.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, it's embarrassing to admit how difficult it is to relate to people sometimes. Yeah. To think that people could see things so differently. That's really a struggle. Right. You mean creatively or in the mass population?

Just in the mass population. Well, yeah. Just to be okay. And to understand it as not being necessarily right or wrong, but that there are some people that just are not self-reflective or philosophical. Yeah. And that's all I do.

Right. And what's even more annoying is they seem okay. Yeah. No, exactly. No, they seem totally happy. Yeah. And then, you know, what are you supposed to do with that besides hate their guts? Exactly.

Full-on resentment. You can't, you got to be missing something. Yeah. Wake up, man. It's a sad world out there and we're all sad inside. Yeah. You do not deserve whatever is doing that for you. How dare you have peace of mind? Well, I mean, when did that start to, to sort of, you know, manifest itself, you know, cause

it is a part of a, like a lot of people who are creatives disposition, you know, the struggle with, uh, self judgment with not, you know, you know, with insecurity, with never being happy with your work, with, you know, substance abuse, substance abuse and all that. I mean, I have all of those things, but I've been sober a long time. You're sober now. Right. So, like, you know, when did that start? Because, I mean, I didn't I don't remember seeing the movie about you, but I heard it was rough. Yeah. that start because i mean i didn't i don't remember seeing the movie about you but i heard it was rough yeah um oh i i mean i think that i have mood disorders that go back to childhood you do like how do they manifest when you were a kid like you were detached oh i i think i it took

me a long time to understand and recognize that I was probably having panic attacks and anxiety at an early age. Yeah. And I've made some, you know, some non-scientific correlation in my mind between that and migraines, which I started having when I was as far back as I can remember, maybe even like six years old or something. migraines which started i started having when i as far back as i can remember maybe even like six years old or something my massive high headaches and debilitating you know vomit all day kind of really yeah so i i think that that's all related somehow uh to what you're talking about yeah just like um it just came early on well i mean I mean, because when I try to track my own shit, I'm surprised with somebody that has the disposition you're describing. Something that stood out to me that you said earlier,

which was like, I look forward to whatever. Yeah. Now, I take that as a positive thing because I tend to dread almost everything. Yeah. And somehow you don't have that? With the anxiety? That's how my anxiety works. It's like, oh, fuck.

Jeff Tweedy's coming over and I didn't listen to enough. God damn it. How's that going to go? Oh, yeah. It's going awful, man. By the way, it's just the worst. Worst interview you've ever done. You can't wait to get out of here.

just the worst interview you've ever done you can't wait to get out of here um i um i definitely have um i don't know i'm more worried about being uh the way anxiety feels bad to me is that i feel trapped in a moment that i can't get out of and you know that your brain locks i want to be anywhere but here right now and the way I feel right now. Oh, right. Right. And that's exactly that's like that's alcoholism 101. Right. So. So I maybe I definitely have some really strong innate survival instincts. Sure. And maybe that's a part of it. You know, maybe it's like just like knowing that I've gotten through those feelings that i never thought i would get through in the moment you know it also strangely if you look at it in the right way it might be how you get through those things

like you know what i mean like you don't crumble you know you're like a minute it's happening right right yeah no i've like i've got up on stage in that condition. I've shown up for my kids' school plays in that condition. You know, without... Just awkward. Basically completely trapped in my head. Oh, yeah. You know? I've been having that lately.

Yeah. It's weird. Yeah, it's an awful feeling. Because, like, you know, phones don't help. Mm-hmm. You know, and certain things about modern life don't help. But, like, a lot of times I realize, like, you know, I'm among people. You know, it doesn't happen when I'm talking to people.

It's always a relief, no matter how much I'm anxious about it. Once I'm in it, I'm, like, present and I'm there. Yeah. Or if I'm on stage doing comedy. But, like, a lot of times if I'm just in the world, in my car, out in life, even with my girlfriend or with other people, I'm like, Yeah. Or if I'm on stage doing comedy. But like a lot of times if I'm just in the world, in my car, out in life, even with my girlfriend

or with other people, I'm like, where the fuck am I? Like you feel like you're walking next to yourself. Yeah, that's like, I've realized I'm always leaving situations

where I was socializing with people and wondering, replaying everything that was said and done. Oh, yeah. Because I don't feel like I was entirely present. And so I'm like, what did you do while you were there talking? That guy wanted to talk about the Cubs,

and you were asking him where we go when we die. Yeah. Or something like, you know, I don't know. Too much information guy. Yeah. You're the guy that's like, like, you know, I don't know. Too much information guy. Yeah. You're the guy that's like, yeah, okay,

you know, that's all great. But like, what's the point? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is.

It is kind of like, yeah, you know, the cubs, they're all going to die. Yeah. All of them. Some of them might be even dying right now.

You don't really know. We're all kind of dying. I, I, I, you know, the mortality thing, I don't't like i don't fester on in the immediate way because the way that works with me is sort of like i am dying you know it's

not sort of like what happens or we're gonna it's sort of like when i can when i go to that fear i'm sort of like what what's um it's happening now what how do you handle it um you think about it i do i mean i'm fairly obsessed with it as it as a source of things to write about and think about. It's just the strangest thing in the world to me. Knowing? That we all share that. That's one of the only things we all have in common. Yeah.

It doesn't end well for anybody. Yeah, exactly. All the, you know, the most amazing talents and geniuses and everything throughout history, they all died. And, you know, like. No one figured that one out, how not to do that. Right, exactly. And then you think, well, you know, what were their strategies for living that allowed them to be able to if other people have been able to cope with that knowledge? Right. How am I how what can I learn to be better at coping with that knowledge and not be debilitated by it or made more fearful about living?

Yeah. You know. Right. Well, it seems like music, when you talk about that as being a through line in your songwriting, there's also some sort of elevated appreciation of these moments and relationships

that you say you're detached from. Maybe your brain is sort of processing the feelings of being in those moments. Yeah, I think that's the plane I'm kind of stuck on a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, as you're having it, you're like, your brain's kind of like working it somewhere. Yeah.

Because I don't know where you pull your songwriting, where the craft comes from. I mean, outside of getting it on the paper. But like I do a lot of my creativity happens on stage and I don't know why or how I'm delivered the tag. You know, what's going to make that. Like I corner myself in front of people, you know, to where I'm like, I got to get out of this in a funny way. And then it comes.

Yeah. So like, what is your process of pulling poetry out of the air? It's basically trust in in the process that's a true you're describing trust right just like this um this faith that something funny is going to happen yeah and or uh and that it's not the end of the world if it doesn't right you can make that funny that didn't happen exactly yeah um you you've we have honed this skill of getting out of this um and and allowing yourself to go into your subconscious and come back unscathed right you know yeah yeah yeah um yeah i i mean i have a i have a lot of different processes that i just trust that i enjoy and I disappear.

My sense of ego being like the guide of the ship has disappeared. And it's just something I'm doing. Interesting. And that's a meditative almost place? Like you sit down to do it? Yeah. I do it every day. I make something every day and it's always um the

goal it doesn't always happen but the goal is to kind of disappear and then look at your watch and go oh i've been doing this for like two or three hours and and what do you what do you what do you do in two or three hours what do you you get a uh generally speaking is it a page is it is it a do you go stream a consciousness? It could be anything. It could be like a guitar part for a song I'm working on, or it could be a set of lyrics. I do this thing on almost all of my tracks that I record at the loft when I'm working on new songs.

I hum or mumble something where i think words are going to go right with a melody yeah and a rhythmic structure that i think is going to fit yeah and that allows me to keep working on the song without having lyrics oh right and then at some point i sit down and i translate with the mumbles the mumbles yeah you know and and you know your your brain is wired to do that you can't listen to chaos and and nonsense without your brain wanting to hear words so if you listen to it over and over and over enough you just hear words right and so i write those down i'm surprised that at some point you didn't do just a mumble song uh who how do you know i have i don't i i don't know the full catalog yeah well no there are definitely certain uh there are verses and things and songs that are on records that were

never finished that i just like never found the right thing for but it sounds enough like language that it's there and you go on you know go on the internet and like look up my lyrics on yeah you know somebody else's somebody else's transcribed into something. Sometimes I'll just sing that. So you have the Google search on your name just so you can fill in a couple of mumble holes. Exactly, if I need to. So the thing that's amazing that I'm realizing as I talk to you is that like whatever you guys set out to do you know you and jay and and that the first band that you know somehow or another because i remember when

you guys broke up and i remember at the time you know having like i started i was aware of you for you know with anodyne and then like i had to go back for the other ones at some point but i remember there was a point where you know the the two paths taken where i i had to go back for the other ones at some point. But I remember there was a point where the two paths taken where I had to sort of make a choice in a moment. I was aware of you enough that I was sort of like, well, now who do I go with, mom or dad here? I couldn't. Such a weird thing. It's stupid, but that's the way sort of loyalty to music goes. I really loved Uncle Tupelo, and I loved that last album you guys did.

And part of my brain, I think what it is, is like, how could they go now? Yeah. They just did this. Well, that's the way I felt, actually, at the time. I actually thought that for all of the in combat incompatibility yeah right present in the way our personality's clash right that we kind of achieved something that transcended that and yeah like worth kind of like well this is this is worth working on right other things yeah I believed that at the time for sure I was

definitely I was definitely kind of uh i don't know blindsided by the right by him taking off yeah yeah yeah because it was one of those things like as a person as just a fan of music and not a guy who's ever been in bands but a guy who like you know i get you know i'm not a complete nerd but like you know i appreciate things but there are certain bands where it's sort of like right when they hit like well this is it you know now they got a bass right and then it's like we're done and i'm like holy fuck yeah it's so yeah okay so you were blindsided and then you guys went your ways yeah yeah and i was i was really kind of i was sure uh that wasn't going to have a record deal. I pretty much accepted that it was Jay's band

or that most people at the record company and most people in general looked at him as the lead singer and the main songwriter in the band. So I was really kind of shocked that they gave me any opportunity to make any more records. So did that like so that happened, you know, after the breakup, you both got deals, separate deals. We both basically got the Uncle Tupelo deal. Uh-huh. But starting over. Right. But it was sort of interesting that the way you went, because I was sort of a, you know, a Stones kind of blues oriented person person that you know that jay's first record was sort of like i get this you know it's not you know it's not challenging me that much and you

know i can go with the group but i could completely identify how both of you were the band you were and that was the point i was trying to make is that there is a through line that through your evolution that the sound of who you are persevered all the way through and i think the same with him that you can feel you guys you know doing what you do but you know you broke something open and he you know stayed on a line in a way and that's not a criticism no i you know i've kept up with jay's recorded output and listen to everything and yeah i think he's been true to himself and worked hard and made a lot of great music. And I don't personally get at this point in time why there would be any need to. No, I'm over that.

Oh, you're over picking a side? No, I'm not picking sides anymore. I'm old. It was just, it was really, because I thought, that was only a reaction. But once you guys both came up with it. There is a knife. I just noticed this. Listen, man, I don't want any trouble.

I like both of you guys. I like you more right now. Yeah, because I'm right here. And I've got a knife. Yeah, exactly. No, it didn't really last long because it was so different. They were both so unique and you, you both were putting out, you know, good work, but it was just sort of, it is, I don't, you know, he's not here to say anything and I'm certainly not saying anything negative, but it seemed that, you know, once you got free of it, that, you know, your, your, your whole brain and the possibilities of what music could be kind of broke open. It might have been out of fear. It might have been out of I don't know what.

But all of a sudden, you elevated, you challenged yourself in a degree that really defined your sound for the rest of it. I think it's sort of... Uncle Tupelo was much more engaged in narrowing things down to a thing that we do. Right. And I think that AM, the first record I made after Uncle Tupelo, is still kind of playing by those rules. Right.

You know, where within what my parameters were as a songwriter and what I'm capable of singing or whatever. Right. Yeah. Where within what my parameters were as a songwriter and what I'm capable of singing or whatever. Right. It's still kind of coloring in those lines that we'd worked on since we were in high school. Yeah. And then I think after A.M. and Trace both came out, it was like an epiphany that that those that don't have to i don't have to color in those lines anymore those you know those were arbitrary you know we we drew those around ourselves and comfortable and then for the most part i i do feel like jay drew those lines yeah and that's that's not a criticism either that was like you know that was kind of his uh you know his his uh comfort zone yeah you know yeah so so yeah it wasn't it wasn't a conscious effort to uh that's interesting you say comfort zone because you you know you are perpetually uncomfortable and you learn to live with it and that's your survival trait so you know it would make sense that after a certain point you're like well, well, I could, you know, do it. Yeah, I just started, like, thinking that I liked, like, I mean, if we're going to go back to the original records,

I liked the Monkees and Hawkwind. Steam Engine music, Steam Engine sound. Yeah, and, like, so those are pretty wide parameters, and a lot of stuff fits in between all of those things. So, yeah, it was just like, oh, wow, I can try and incorporate more of what I love into this thing and see if anybody cares. And then you surrounded yourself with musicians that it seems like in the first four records when when it says produced by wilco you know what does that really mean because it seems like you know you've you've got you've always surrounded yourself with exceptional players of different kinds with a lot of range and that there's a certain space to all the records that you know

is is patient and deliberate and and not overcompensating for anything that there's a balance and that nothing sounds like Wilco Records. What is the process of that on a sort of a group level of production? Well, it's been different on every record. And, you know, the first, all the records up until A Ghost is Born, none of them have the same lineup on them. Right. There's slight changes or a few personnel changes between each record.

But I don't know. The reason that it says produced by Wilco generally is because we didn't opt to have a person that is hired as a producer. Oh, so you just work with the engineer. Yeah, I would just work with an engineer. And then with the philosophy that you shouldn't really be deferring to somebody else. I get the appeal. I can see that it's comforting. And as a person that's produced records for other people,

comforting and i can as as a person that's produced records for other people i do know that that there there's something that's really helpful about it yeah for some for some artists but right for us we felt like we needed to um take ownership of all of these you know decisions we were making and that i don't know i think we felt like we did make good decisions when we were deferring to someone else. Yeah. And I can understand that. Yeah. The Glimmer Twins, you know. Yeah, exactly. But but but like then later on, like I'm sort of fascinated with Jim O'Rourke a little bit. So like what you're and I don't know him, but I know he's like work with Joanna Newsom and I have a solo records, a couple of them. Now, when you work with somebody

like that who is sort of a you know genius in his own right when you work with somebody like that is it because you're like this guy I respect this guy he's going to do something with me and my sound that I'm not going to be able to find by myself for sure I mean um uh yeah Jim Jim's a one-of-a-kind right uh you know just like a bona fide genius right musical genius and um i was it would be wrong you couldn't really work with jim without um allowing him to do his thing yeah there wasn't you know there's no scenario where you just have jim be a producer right just allow something to happen in the studio. Why would you bother to have Jim O'Rourke?

Yeah, and he did A Ghost is Born. And Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. We worked together on that one, kind of like brought most of the tracks in already recorded, and then we kind of rebuilt them. See, if you haven't seen the movie, that's good because that's actually the part that's not in the movie. Yeah, which is?

Is the actual making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Because I think that the filmmakers had kind of run out of money by that point and Jay was, I don't know, Jay was very minimally involved in that stage of it because he, I don't know, for a lot of different... Yeah, Jay Bennett. And then, but we started working at a different studio

other than The Loft, and it was kind of Glenn Kochi, who had just joined the band, and Jim and I, for a long period, kind of remixing the stuff that we'd already recorded and kind of rebuilding sections. It was a kind of a crazy process cause we would, we would record a whole new sections and just splice them in on tape. Yeah. And we didn't really have,

uh, all the technology we needed. So we would, uh, we would mix, like say the first verse in chorus yeah and then put it on tape and then wipe the board and start over and mix the next verse in chorus Wow and then cut the tape and splice those together and then do that some real analog shit you could never you could never remix Yankee Hotel foxtrot it's not in it's not in one place it's not like onica it's not i don't think anyone would want it

you know of all the records no but people always i don't even know if you could i don't even know probably remaster it for sure i guess right there's some some you know master tape somewhere but but the overall idea of like of going in and pulling up faders and it sounding like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, that doesn't exist. Can't do it. Their tracks don't exist. Right.

Yeah. And that's not in the movie is that process. And that was the record where everyone was like, whoa, this is otherworldly. This is a new thing. So it was that kind of meticulous, strange work that can't be replicated. Right.

It was like just throwing a whole bunch of crazy ornaments on a tree and then taking away the tree or something. Right, right. Yeah. And I imagine so that experience really sort of was one of those kind of cathartic and pivotal changes in how you looked at music. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. pivotal you know changes and how you looked at music yeah for sure uh just is just uh learning a little bit more about the studio through you know jim's one of my best buddies so i've gotten to spend i've learned a lot from him spent a lot of time with him he's uh he's very generous with

his musical knowledge and yeah and uh you know turning you on to records and stuff like that he's a great buddy you know to listen to music with records and stuff like that. He's a great buddy, you know, to listen to music with. Well, that's great to have that guy. But, like, it was weird because I don't, again, this is a world, like, I missed out on a lot of things. And somehow or another, you know, people send me records because I talk on a microphone. And at some point from his label, I got maybe one of his solo records, right? And I put it on. I had no idea who he was, but it was one of those records where I'm like what the fuck is going on here right like what is this like you know elevated pop shit you

know what like what is happening there's a lot you they're just records you put on you walk out of the room and you go back in the room yeah what yeah and that way i had that experience with him yeah for sure i mean there yeah and And that was a big learning. I don't know. Big lesson learned from working with Jim is that it wasn't it's not just purely sonic. Yeah. It's not just like putting a weird sound right on a recording. Yeah. It's it's working musically. There are things that are working against each other, like counterpoint wise. And, you know, like there's actual real music theory happening that's allowing the music to do all of this, like emotional manipulation.

That you didn't know about. That I definitely know about because I listen and I love music and I could stumble to those moments. Right. And I aspired to stumble to those moments. Jim was able to just go, oh, that's what you want to do? Here, put these together. Here's the math.

Yeah. And so I learned a lot from that and retained a lot of that, I think, going forward. Just not that I gained a deep knowledge or understanding of music theory but definitely was learned enough to kind of get from point a to point b a little bit faster yeah as a self-taught like kind of yeah you know illiterate you need you need a wizard to come in yeah for sure yeah the last few records you've been working with the same people as well right in the production area. What's that guy's name?

Tom Schick. And where'd you find him? The first record we did together was the first Mavis Staples record that I produced. Oh, yeah, that was great. The guy that had been booked to engineer that record kind of bailed at the last minute. And so I kind of lucked out the last minute yeah and so i kind of lucked out and and uh found tom at the very last minute and we've been working together on everything since then we just really have a you know very compatible work ethic and style of of

i don't know moving around the studio he's really fast and really, you know, intuitive. Oh, good. And, yeah, so he actually ended up moving to Chicago. And, you know, I see him every day. Oh, yeah, that's nice. And you've got a whole operation there. You've got an office. You've got the loft with studios.

You've got people coming in there and recording at the place. Yeah. And you actually did some stuff out at, you were out at Willie Nelson's place? Long time ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it in Spicewood, Texas? Peternalis? Oh, I don't know.

Like, I was looking at some of the stuff. It might be in Spicewood, but it's called Peternalis. The only reason I know it is because I actually drive out from Austin to a barbecue place in Spicewood any time I'm in Austin. And people don't seem to know about it. It's called Opie's, and it's right in Spicewood, just sitting there by itself in this large corrugated tin hanger. So I just wanted to know if you ate there.

No. All right. No. No, I'm sorry. It's okay. I don't remember. Might have eaten there. I don't remember.

Yeah. Well, yeah. It was before I got help. Yeah. Well, how did that all happen? How did that bottom look? Like, when did the drinking start destroying things? Well, oddly enough, I quit drinking when I was 23 years old.

Yeah. Was it bad? It was bad enough to scare me, given my family history. But the problem was that I thought that as long as I didn't drink, everything was going to be fine. Right. But, but, but you could do a lot of other things or I could smoke weed or I could, you know, eventually I found pills and found opioids. Oh really? Yeah. And that's what I actually went through rehab for. It'll be 15 years since I was in the hospital in March. And were you taking them as prescribed initially or how did it work? No, not initially, but then there was a period where

I was being prescribed opioids legitimately. Yeah. And with some wiggle room in my mind that I was doing something officially sanctioned by a medical professional. Which one? Oxy's? Vicodin, Percocet. Old school. Morphine. Oh, yeah. You know, I was able to get my hands on a lot of stuff.

Do you listen to any of the music and think like, well, that was submerged in opioids? Not really, because I actually wasn't particularly good at performing or writing or doing anything do any of the music and and think like well that was submerged in opioids not really because i actually wasn't particularly good at performing or writing or doing anything in that state it was something that happened more on the road uh-huh um and uh generally generally my my artistic life has been a pretty far ahead of me in terms of health or mental health. Right. Oh, that's good. So, yeah, I feel like I lucked out in that regard.

I didn't write a lot of songs glorifying that. If anything, I wrote some that were kind of upset about the situation. But in terms of the sound, because if I listen to Iggy Pop's The Idiot, I'm like, this shit is underwater. It didn't affect orally what you heard. No, I don't think so.

But I mean, I was good at quitting. Yeah, oh sure. So I could actually have periods where I- Work and yeah. As you know, quitting isn't really the problem no it's starting again yeah yeah yeah it's stopping yourself from starting again that moment yeah so what uh what did that bring you to your knees as they say in the uh in the in the literature um i had a uh ghost is born was finished and it was was about to come out and I was scheduled to do a European press tour.

Yeah. And I was panicking so much, just spending whole days in the throes of anxiety. Yeah. And I had lost like 30 pounds and I couldn't see myself getting on a plane. And I was trying to figure out a way to go do this thing. And I had a really, really awful therapist at the time who was kind of pouring gasoline on the situation. Not enough of them know about addiction. Well, yeah, he was, I think he was borderline criminally negligent.

He told me that I shouldn't take any antidepressants because it's bad for my creativity. Wow. But I should go ahead and take the Vicodin or the opioids because they make you feel good. Was this guy a musician? No. Well, actually, he was. He aspired to be. There you go.

He would read me his poetry sometimes. Oh, boy. Yeah. Oh, and so this guy's solution that was going to be, you know, fix the whole problem was he was going to start traveling with me. Oh, that's interesting. What he suggested. Yeah, it's like Brian Wilson. You got that guy.

Yeah, and my manager and I were like, had a moment of clarity. It's like, okay, this guy's a nut. I need to get the hell out of here. How long were you with him? I was with him for a while, you know, like five or six years. Wow. Yeah. Huh.

And so, you know, I just, he actually drove me home because I couldn't drive because I was panicking so much. And he dropped me off at my house and sped off the therapist yeah yeah and my my wife and I was like I like let's just go to the hospital I need to be checked into somewhere uh-huh um I can't function I don't want to be around my kids I don't want to do this yeah and um we went two days in a row they they turned me away the first day the second day they told me about a place that was a dual diagnosis facility you know and i was like you know why hasn't somebody told me that this exists yeah before dual diagnosed meaning meaning health and addiction correct yeah yeah which uh it's like the the second somebody described that as being an option yeah it was like go i

take me to there yeah yeah that is where i need to be yeah and how long were you in uh i was in a month and then uh another month or two i can't remember in a halfway house oh really you did the whole thing i did you didn't want to infect your family with your emotional and psychological inconsistency? I was, anything was better than what I had been through. Right. And I wanted to do whatever they told me that I needed to do. Even if I thought it was overkill or ridiculous. Right.

As they say in recovery, my best thinking had put me in that situation. So the halfway house must have been humbling. Yeah, it was insane it was it was uh it was um i'm really glad i did it yeah you know i don't know if it was the you know the best environment for me i i i was very fortunate that like a lot a lot of people have to make a whole new life for themselves they have to cut out family members even you know they have right and i had a place to go really with a lot of supportive people right but it was good it was good to be uh to stay in an environment where i was focused on yeah what i needed to do the humility of that yeah yeah and then do you do the thing uh well i i do in in uh uh you mean go to meetings and stuff like that i i still see the same doctor i actually met in the hospital and i i feel like that has worked

for me in the way that i think meetings work for people someone to you know to talk to about recovery, about sobriety. Meetings is like a really great egalitarian way of providing group therapy for a lot of people. Yeah, and also keeping the focus on the illness. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I haven't lost sight of that side of things. And where does the conversion to Judaism come in? side of things and where does the conversion to judaism come in uh my youngest son was going through uh hebrew school preparing to be bar mitzvahed and he was struggling with the uh the whole ordeal of it and not wanting to go and learning the songs and yeah and learning his Torah portion. And I made an offer to him.

I said, I'll go with you, and while you're in Hebrew school, I'll talk to the rabbi every week and see if he'll allow me to convert. Really? And once we get through this whole thing and you're having your bar mitzvah, I'll do my conversion ceremony.

And that was enough to get him to go every week because he had to go because I'd pick him up from school and I'm like, well, I have to be there, so you have to come with me. And have you been bar mitzvahed? No, not technically. I think you can do that if you want, can't you? I probably could. Actually, when Spencer, my oldest, was bar mitzvahed, Susie's father, my stepfather.

I mean, not my stepfather. Your father-in-law. Father-in-law. He was bar mitzvahed because he was too poor to be bar mitzvahed when he was younger. Wow. He didn't have a quarter for Hebrew school. Wow. And they kicked him out.

So you always were good with bringing up the kids Jewish, but you didn't really have a stake in it in a certain way. I wanted us all to be on the same team when the shit goes down. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, you know, like this, I don't want there to be any gray area here. Right, yeah. If we got to get on the train, we're all getting on. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so you have my wife's sense of humor that she thinks she won't ever travel to germany because she thinks that every every time she hears anyone saying anything in german they're saying get in the oven uh-huh yeah well i mean there's a you know we learn that yeah in a way you know the fear of that and the the need to uh always remember yeah so but as a spiritual system do you use it or no um or is it more of a a thing that you are now i find myself extremely comfortable and attracted to secular juda, you know, obviously a really liberal reformed congregation. My kids were bar mitzvahed

and I did my conversion. And the notion that sold me was when Spencer was going through his bar mitzvah, he told the rabbi that he didn't believe in God. Yeah. And the rabbi said, that doesn't matter.

Yeah. He said, you know, it matters that you look, that you search. Yeah. And I said, well, that's exactly what I believe. And so that was what made me super comfortable with having any kind of spiritual identification. It's interesting because I bet as a rabbi in his heart, he knows that the searching is actually a dialogue with God. Right.

Right. Right. Well, actually, this is an incredible rabbi who was 103 when he passed away. Wow. And once he let go of his congregation, he revised his entire theology in to to account for there not being a God because he and he said now that he didn't have after he had nobody to take care of anymore, he was able to look more clearly. Interesting. He's a fascinating guy.

And he said, you don't need God to be good. You don't need this. But the idea that God would ignore all of these prayers during the Holocaust and during everything is absurd. Yeah. Right, right. So he just removed it from the equation. He just removed it from equation, revised his entire theology. And who does that at 90-something years old?

That's when he had retired. A guy that stopped believing the bullshit. Yeah. It was really, really great. And that was... I can go with that. I guess to suspend your disbelief in order to have faith is one thing, but to accept life as it is and still find peace and be a decent human is also practical. It's less a kind of magical thinking.

Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, it's a pain in the ass to be an asshole. It's exhausting. But sadly, for some of us, it's the first reflex. Sure. You know, what you got to do if you got the asshole bug is you got to get a little space in between acting like an asshole, which is instinctual. And just so you go like, hey, don't, don't.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can stop yourself 90% of the time. You're doing pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. As long as like all that 90% of 90 percent of the energy is isn't coming out

in the 10 like if you're if you're stocking up right that 10 could be pretty fucking gnarly yeah right yeah yeah so you gotta yeah i i struggle with that yeah so the the new record is a jeff tweedy record correct what makes that different different guys just me just me it's all you it's all me except for the drums which is spencer my oldest son and glenn coachy plays drums on one track uh-huh and uh i my drumming debuts on one track that's the first that's exciting did your son teach you how yeah kind of no it's heavily edited it's okay and what's it like working with your kid how old is he he's 22 uh uh it's great it's uh highly recommend working with your own dna you know uh something you know music requires a lot of trust and intuition and and um you know something

that borders on telepathy yeah you know or or, you know, without a lot of magical thinking, again, you just have to, I don't know, find that way to communicate musically. Yeah. And it's, it was really just incredible when Spencer and I started doing it more, you know, in a legit scenario other than just playing together in the basement or whatever. Right, right. That a lot of things that I had experienced with other musicians where I really grew close to them were automatic.

Oh, yeah. And he's very, it's like we have one brain. Kind of do. Yeah, kind of. And what's the other kid doing? He's going to school, Sarah Lawrence, doing he's going to school uh sarah lawrence and he's a great uh finger picker interested in a lot of noise synthesizer stuff and hasn't fallen far hasn't fallen far from the tree either you know you and your wife are good yeah we're good we're good We're still dealing with her. She has some cancer issues that we're able to treat.

So we're working on, you know, it's a slog. It's a demoralizing slog. Sure. But she's doing great. Good. And what about, is there resolution with you and Jay? I don't have any ax to grind. You know, I think that from my perspective, I think there's some resolution. with you and Jay? I don't have any ax to grind.

I think that from my perspective, I think there's some resolution, but it's not, mom and dad are probably not gonna get that back together. Oh yeah, but you haven't talked? We've talked periodically, just very, very briefly, just like in a more matter of fact.

It's like i get an email from jay occasionally that's like just uh do we do we have any more demo tapes or anything like that yeah yeah professionals yeah yeah oh and that's okay yeah sure okay uh well it was great talking to you great luck with the book i hope the new record uh sells well do you want to try and play a song on these mics? I could try it. Okay, I'll stop it and we'll set up. All right.

Let's see. Hold on. Yeah. I could try it. Listen to it. Which way? Which is it? That way?

You know what? What? Can I hear what it sounds like with one mic? I think this will sound better. I know what it's like to not feel love. When a sunny day starts to rain, keep me in mind I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like to not feel love even when I'm wide awake I keep turning back one page I can't find the plot And something else is taking shape I know what it's like to keep losing your place My shadow stays Even when I'm miles away

Waiting outside I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like To not feel pain Even when the lights are dim In my window I have a twin I'm always looking out

And he's always looking in I know what it's like Starting over again I know what it's like starting over again I know what it's like, I know what it's like I know what it's like, I know what it's like I know what it's like to not feel loved Far away, on the fireworks display Quiet and bright

I know what it's like I know what it's like to not feel love Even when it's years away I still think it's yesterday I can't find the plot That something else is taking shape I know it's a lie when you say it's okay I know what it's like I know what it's like

I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like

To not feel love Yeah, that was great. All right. That's off the new record. Yes, it is. I just listened to it with all the full produced version. Yeah, yeah. So nice to hear it just like that. Oh, thank you.

Thanks, Jeff, for talking. It was really lovely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So that was beautiful. It was like the way he, like, it was so funny because I haven't really recorded music in this room. At best, even at the old place, I was bad at it. But, like, I had a way of doing it. And he was like, no, I'm going to just do it this room. At best, even at the old place, I was bad at it. But, like, I had a way of doing it.

And he was like, no, I'm going to just do it this way. And who am I to argue with that wizard? Who am I to argue with the wizard Tweety? And it sounded pretty great. So, as I said, his new book, Let's Go So We Can Get Back, a memoir of recording and discording with Wilco, et cetera. It's available now. And tomorrow, the new album, Warm,

his solo album, comes out. That's tomorrow, November 30th. And I will be at the Ice House December 2nd, Sunday. No, I'm not going to play music today. Not after Tweety did. Boomer Lives! Anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls.

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