Wilco

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WILCO

Formed: 1994, Chicago, Illinois

Members: Leroy Bach, guitar, keyboards (born Chicago, Illinois, 21 August 1964); Glenn Kotche, drums (born Chicago, Illinois, 31 December 1970); John Stirratt, bass (born New Orleans, Louisiana, 26 November 1967); Jeff Tweedy, lead vocals, guitar (born Belleville, Illinois, 25 August 1967). Former members: Jay Bennett, guitar, piano, vocals (born 15 November 1963), Ken Coomer, drums (born 5 November 1960); Max Johnston, mandolin, dobro, banjo.

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Hit songs since 1990: "Heavy Metal Drummer," "California Stars"

Following the demise of beloved country-influenced rock band Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Jeff Tweedy and his band Wilco emerged as what critics called one of the most inventive, emotionally resonant American bands of the 1990s and 2000s.

Tweedy formed Wilco in 1994 with several ex-members of Uncle Tupelo, among them drummer Ken Coomer, bassist John Stirratt, and multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston. The group's debut, A.M., followed closely in the footsteps of the Uncle Tupelo style, which blended country music accents with rock, folk, and punk rock into a widely emulated modern country rock sound dubbed "no depression" after the name of Uncle Tupelo's 1990 debut album. However, with the addition of guitarist Jay Bennett in 1995, Wilco embarked on a new path that would lead them far from the nouveau country rock movement.

The two-album set Being There (1996), which won critical acclaim but was commercially unsuccessful, is the work of a band that was not simply stepping away from its previous sound. Like the Beatles in the late 1960s, who traded their simple pop ditties for complex, lushly arranged rock symphonies, Wilco completely reinvented its approach by abandoning, for the most part, its country sound and focusing on a broader palette of musical influences. Gone is the twangy sensibility of A.M. and in its place are baroque psychedelic dirges ("Sunken Treasure"), theatrical orchestral flourishes, and bubblegum-pop love songs such as "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" and the lovelorn "Red-Eyed and Blue."

Songs such as "Misunderstood," which features the lyrics, "There's a fortune inside your head / All you touch turns to lead / You think you might just crawl back in bed / The fortune inside your head," firmly established the hoarse-voiced Tweedy as a songwriter with a rich emotional range and an earthy, poetic style in the vein of one of the most important American folk artists of the early twentieth century, Woody Guthrie. Author of the quintessentially American anthem "This Land Is Your Land," Guthrie penned countless political and union songs such as "Dust Bowl Blues" and "Tom Joad" in the 1940s, setting the stage for the folk revival of the late 1950s/early 1960s which birthed such modern legends as folksinger Bob Dylan.

In 1998 Wilco was invited by English singer/songwriter Billy Bragg to collaborate on a project that added music to previously unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics. The resulting album, Mermaid Avenue, which was fraught with behind-the-scenes creative tension between Bragg and Tweedy, was nevertheless a commercial and artistic triumph. In reimagining Guthrie's songs as everything from rock to soul, it reveals a previously underappreciated tender side of the folk icon in songs such as the acoustic ballad "California Stars" and the rollicking "Hoodoo Voodoo"; a sequel, Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II, was released in 2000.

In between the Mermaid Avenue sets, Wilco released its most ambitious album to date, Summerteeth (1999). Though many of the songs are built on traditional pop structures, the emotionally wrenching tales about true love, infidelity, and fighting loneliness are frequently spiked with beeping, sonar-like keyboard figures, a ghostly banjo, and studio-manipulated sound effects. Tweedy's music had, by now, shed nearly all of its twangy edge for the heady, unorthodox feel of songs such as "She's a Jar." The emotional centerpiece of the album incorporates the keyboard-produced sounds of melancholy strings, train whistle harmonicas, and lyrics that mix love and longing in a dark manner ("Are there really ones like these / the ones I dream / float like leaves / and freeze to spread skeleton wings / I passed through before I knew you"). Rather than paying homage to the country rock of Gram Parsons, Tweedy seemed more interested in following in the footsteps of Beach Boys' studio wizard Brian Wilson and his "Teenage Symphonies to God." While the maverick arrangements were seen by some as the hallmark of a talented pop songwriter shooting himself in the foot by trying to be overly avant-garde, the unique touches furthered Tweedy's reputation as a wildly gifted songwriter unwilling to compromise his art for pop stardom.

With Artistic Triumph Comes Career Uncertainty

That independent streak would be sorely tested after the delivery of the group's widely regarded masterwork, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002). If previous albums took liberties with traditional song structures, the band's fourth effort threw out the book entirely. Songs dissolve into washes of radio static, peals of ringing bells, arrhythmic piano runs, and disjointed rhythms, while the album's opening song, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," leads with one of the most intriguing lyrics of Tweedy's career, "I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue." Frustrated with Tweedy's reluctance to re-record any of the album's quirky, complex songs, Wilco was dropped by its longtime record label, Reprise Records, in 2001. The squabble with the label was chronicled in film-maker Sam Jones's documentary "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" (2002), which gave a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the artistic battle. Drummer Ken Coomer departed the band around this time and was soon followed by multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett. Chicago drummer Glenn Kotche replaced Coomer, while guitarist/keyboardist Leroy Bach replaced Bennett.

Left with a finished album and no record label to release it, Wilco posted the unreleased music on their website in late 2001. Though Tweedy had performed some of the songs during a solo acoustic tour in the winter of 2001, the website finally allowed fans to hear the collection on which the band takes their experimentation, with tape manipulation and abstract noise, to new levels while again retaining their command of pop smarts. The nostalgic, straightforward pop rock songs "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "Kamera" show the band's ability to play it straight, complete with three-part harmonies and recognizable pop song structures, though neither is what one might call conventional. Both serve as something of a musical palate cleanser for the more esoteric efforts on the album. "Radio Cure" hums with acoustic guitars that scrape and buzz over a ghostly, heartbeat drum figure until the sounds of helicopters and a haunting counter rhythm on vibraphone overtake the song midway through. When "Ashes of American Flags" breaks down halfway through its acoustic lament under a bizarre wash of white noise, Tweedy is able to steer it back on course before the song collapses in a heap of hissing feedback and warped tape. In Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy created a work that was the antidote to the manufactured pop of the day, one brimming with subtle musical flourishes and complex lyrics which reward repeated listens.

Wilco eventually persuaded Reprise to give the album back to them free and clear; they then signed a deal with Nonesuch, a label also owned by media conglomerate Warner Bros. Longtime manager Tony Margherita was frequently quoted as saying that Warner Bros. paid Wilco twice for an album they did not want. When it was finally released, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was hailed by everyone from the New York Times to Rolling Stone magazine as a masterwork by one of America's most talented bands. During an era when the music business was focused on hit singles over artistic advancement, Tweedy and Wilco survived turnover and turmoil to emerge with music that challenged as it matured.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

A.M. (1995); Being There (1996); Mermaid Avenue (1998); Summerteeth (1999); Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II (2000); Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002).