The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: Jeff?

Jeff Tweedy: Yes?

Marc Allan: It’s Marc Allan, in Indianapolis. How you doing?

Jeff Tweedy: Pretty good, how are you?

Marc Allan: Good, good. Having a busy day?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah, sorry.

Marc Allan: No, that’s okay, it’s not a problem. I’m sitting here doing other things, so. It’s tough to be in demand, huh?

Jeff Tweedy: All right. Just I don’t get over here very often, to the office, so. When I get over here, there’s lots of stuff to do.

Marc Allan: Yeah I guess like every other critic in the world, I’ll tell you I really enjoy this record, I think it’s terrific.

Jeff Tweedy: Oh thanks.

Marc Allan: And I was thinking that the title is too short and maybe that if you had a longer title, you would’ve called it, “Being There Would Be Infinitely Preferable to Being Here.”

Jeff Tweedy: Sure.

Marc Allan: Yeah . And that’s sort of the message of the record, isn’t it?

Jeff Tweedy: Um, I don’t know if there’s a specific point or message. I think we might of had one in mind, when we were still thinking about making it a single CD. But it felt better to have it kind of clouded up by the whole double thing. So I don’t know.

Marc Allan: I want to ask you about some of the songs and then KingPin really struck me a lot and especially the rhyme of Dimetapp and spinal tap. And I figured that’s another thing that’s sort of prevalent. That you’re kind of balancing the child thing and the rockstar thing, aren’t you?

Jeff Tweedy: Kind of, yeah. It was a little easier making the record, because we made it in Chicago. But now that we’re touring a lot, it’s a little harder, you know, but. I feel bad I’m gone as much as I am now.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . How old’s your little boy?

Jeff Tweedy: He’s just a little over a year now.

Marc Allan: Oh that’s great. Yeah, so just starting to walk and all that and all that?

Jeff Tweedy: Yep, he’s starting to walk and talk and getting his teeth and it’s hilarious.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that is a good age, yeah. Are a lot of these songs, I mean, were you thinking about your son and the prospects of leaving him when you were writing?

Jeff Tweedy: I was thinking about the prospect of being a dad, actually, when I wrote a lot of materials before he was born, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm .

Jeff Tweedy: And then a little bit, while the record was recorded right after he was born. So, yeah it was definitely on my mind, you know, how to spend a lot of time, a lot of years, thinking about one thing, particularly, kind of mono manically directing all my energy towards music and just wondering if that was gonna be a really horrible thing for, I’d be able to switch gears enough to be a good dad, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . And have you?

Jeff Tweedy: I think so. I mean it’s kind of ironic. I felt good about it and kind of came to terms with it in a lot of ways, making the record and now it’s I’m back in the middle of it again, because I have no choice. I’m like out on the road and it’s really hard to just think about anything else, you know.?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Jeff Tweedy: I miss him terribly, but it’s like, you’re so immersed in it, you know, I tend to stress out about it the same way I used to, you know, just like, I like playing music a lot, but where I stress out about it is just wanting to get better and you know, and things like that. It’s really unimportant.

Marc Allan: Yeah, are you so far, the kind of dad you thought you’d be?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah, I think, you know, we’re really, I mean, when I’m home, I’m home 24 hours a day, generally, and we like, I think we’ve bonded quite a bit, compared to a lot of dads in the first year. Been kind of a house dad and did all the feeding and changing diapers and things like that, that I know my dad never did, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Well dads are different these days.

Jeff Tweedy: That’s for sure.

Marc Allan: Yeah, also in KingPin, are you saying, living in Pekin?

Jeff Tweedy: Pekin, Illinois, yeah.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that’s what I thought. And I thought, “God that’s a strange thing to say.” Have you have you been to Pekin?

Jeff Tweedy: Uh no, I’ve never been to Pekin. But I just kind of pictured it you know, just um, I don’t know. I think the idea was, it’d be great to be like a big fish in a small pond.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that’s not the small pond you wanna be in though. I think,

Jeff Tweedy: No, probably not.

Marc Allan: I think that’s a real polluted gene pool there, myself. I’ve lived and worked in Springfield for a couple years and have a good friend who lives in Peoria and so I’ve been through Pekin a few times.

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah.

Marc Allan: And uh, yikes .

Jeff Tweedy: Well, anyway, maybe I should’ve gone there.

Marc Allan: That’s okay, it’s like,

Jeff Tweedy: I’ve never been to New Madrid either, so.

Marc Allan: Yeah , right, okay. On Out of Mind, how hard was, that which has an obvious beach boy sound, how hard was it to create that sound? Was it as complex as everybody says that it was for the Beach Boys?

Jeff Tweedy: Well I don’t think it sounds as good as the Beach Boys, for one thing. No, it wasn’t. It was a lot of fun, you know, luckily we had access to that real echo chambers and we had access to several pianos. So it’s like, and I think it’s a lot easier for to do that now, because, you know 24 track recording isn’t really what they had to work with. I know Phil Spector recorded the Wall of Sound stuff, which you know, obviously is the main influence on those Beach Boy recordings. It was all of the musicians like 20 of them, in a single room and it was recording on four track or eight track. And that’s why it sounds better, you know? That’s why it is the wall of sound. We kind of made a partition of sound.

Marc Allan: How did you do it, I mean was it routine, or is it something different or special that you did?

Jeff Tweedy: Um, I mean, we just, honestly most of the recording, we were just having a good time and we’d do a song a day and that song took us a day to do. We set up in the morning with, tracked it with two pianos, acoustic guitar and drums for the basic track and then we added two more pianos. Then I think there’s six piano tracks, two clavinet tracks, two bass tracks, kettle drums and then two sets of drums. We just kept playing through it with different set ups and piling stuff on top of the original take and then we went and all sang in the bathroom, you know? I mean if you listen to it, it’s pretty loose. It’s a pretty loose thing, you know, overall. I mean we just thought it was fun, you know, it sounded fun, we were matching it up against Be My Baby and every time we put Be My Baby on, we’d go, “Oh well we got like 75% of it right, maybe.” You know, unfortunately, I can’t sing like Ronnie Spector, you know?

Marc Allan: Right.

Jeff Tweedy: That would’ve made it probably a lot better.

Marc Allan: Yeah, probably you know you say that about being loose and the whole record feels loose, I mean, the thing that I like about it so much is, aside from changing styles, it just has the kind of we’re gonna go in and make the kind of record we want and we’re not gonna worry about fashion, or what’s popular, or anything like that. We’ll just go in and record the kind of songs we want to record.

Jeff Tweedy: Well, yeah I mean I think, God, it’s just so much easier that way. It just shouldn’t be so hard I don’t think it should be so hard. I mean it’s really easy to think, “Wow this is really important record for us career wise, “or you know all those things.” And I just, I can’t take that kind of pressure. Like have a lot more fun just thinking we’re, I mean looking at the reality of it, you know? We get to make a record, might as well enjoy it while it’s happening and do things that we’ve never gotten to do before, or take advantage of the fact that we have some money to spend on the production of this. So let’s just go ahead and rent the god damn congas if we want them, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah, but that, was that always your attitude toward recording and the business?

Jeff Tweedy: No in the past, I’ve always felt like it’s best to like just try and collect moments on tape and kind of overwhelmed by the possibilities that a studio presents to you. So I always in the past, like definitely always felt like it should be loose and like a kind of a document of the time and place and the songs you have at the time. But, in the past, that whole like I think, the methodology was more to just play it live, to eliminate all those possibilities and hopefully get like a solid performance that doesn’t need anything else. And very rarely, when we do over dubs in the past, just because we wanted to keep it pure. This time around, it just, certainly bored with doing that and it’s like, “Well, I don’t care how pretentious it is, “or how stupid any of this stuff is, “it’s pretentious to make a record. “It’s pretentious to be in a rock band. “You might as well revel in it, you know?”

Marc Allan: Did you think about trying to recreate it live and can you recreate it live, or do you care to recreate it live?

Jeff Tweedy: No I don’t care to recreate it live. I mean we play the songs live and they hopefully come across, but they come across in a different way, you know. If we went to make the record tomorrow, with the same songs, I’m sure that a lot of them would be completely different. I mean we tracked different versions of a lot of those songs that had nothing in common with the way the ones, the versions that are on the record. Just like, I think the idea is to get to a point, as a musician, not like really thinking about being a virtuoso or anything, but just where you’re comfortable like knowing what the song is and then adapting to how everybody feels at the time and like what the environment’s like, or adapting to like an audience is the same thing. Certain songs will have more of an edge than the record some nights. Some nights, it might just be kind of lethargic, because of fatigue, but hopefully always like just an honest representation of what you’re doing and thinking about at the time, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah, did you save the alternate takes for the future box set?

Jeff Tweedy: That’s for the next record, actually, is the box set.

Marc Allan: okay that’d be great.

Jeff Tweedy: Box set of all of original material, though.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . Okay. You know, there’s so many comparisons made between this and other records and the one that I haven’t read that really jumps out to me I think, is several of these songs remind me of Muswell Hillbillies by the Kinks. Is that a record you know and?

Jeff Tweedy: I love that record.

Marc Allan: Okay.

Jeff Tweedy: That’s like one of my favorite records of all time.

Marc Allan: Okay.

Jeff Tweedy: Not very many people know about that record, because I mean when I think of the Kinks they think, you know, like the early 60s, You Really Got Me and all that stuff. But that’s like my favorite period of the Kinks, like Everybody’s A Star, Muswell Hillbillies. What’s that?

Marc Allan: The album, what is it, Lola Versus the Power Man, or whatever it’s called.

Jeff Tweedy: Right.

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Jeff Tweedy: And like that period when he was like kind of getting into American styles, but at the same time, writing these really poncy lyrics. You know, being a rockstar.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm

Jeff Tweedy: You know?

Marc Allan: Yeah, so.

Jeff Tweedy: Like a, I’m sorry, Sitting in My Hotel on a, you know that song?

Marc Allan: Um.

Jeff Tweedy: It’s on Everybody’s A Star.

Marc Allan: Haven’t heard it in a long time.

Jeff Tweedy: I haven’t heard it in awhile either, but I did the other day and I realized that I probably ripped off the idea behind that song. And like maybe in 13 different instances on my tracks.

Marc Allan: When you sing It’s the End of the Century, just those words and on Was I In Your Dreams, you sound like Ray Davies too, I think you know?

Jeff Tweedy: Well that’s like the ultimate flattery to me. I think Ray Davies is a pretty underappreciated like songwriter and the Kinks are a pretty underappreciated band in the grand scheme of things, you know, I don’t think they’ve ever really got their due, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . Yeah, oh I agree with you completely.

Jeff Tweedy: Same with like Mott the Hoople too. There’s a lot of English bands that since everybody seems to focus on Gram Parson’s and Neil Young and all that stuff with us, I always find it really weird that, it just makes me think that nobody has paid that much attention to the bands that really are probably more operative in describing Wilco, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah I would not have picked them up, but I mean the Kinks, I just like thought were pretty obvious, but then again, you know, I’ve said that to people and they’re like, “I don’t know that record.” You grew up in Belleville, right?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah.

Marc Allan: I mean how do you know that record? Did it make, and it’s weird, that things like that didn’t seem to make a huge impact in the mid-west.

Jeff Tweedy: Well I mean, it might not be like every kid in the, you know, I don’t know. Records aren’t like they used to be. As with the CD thing, God, damn near to history of recorded music is available to anybody anywhere. And it’s just a matter of being interested in it. I’ve been interested in it for a long time, since like buying ridiculous amounts of music, to try and find stuff that keeps me going, you know. At some point and time, I don’t remember when, the Kinks thing happened for me and I’m not, I always feel like I should try and find everything that you can buy something that really inspires you that way and Muswell Hillbillies record really jumped out at me, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great, because like I grew up in New York and have lived in Indianapolis for nine years and when I talk about bands like the Kinks, I get a lot of blank stares from people, you know?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah.

Marc Allan: And living in Springfield the same thing, you know, just people come over and see my records and I’d have all this stuff that they’ve never seen or heard of before.

Jeff Tweedy: Uh-huh.

Marc Allan: Which is unusual, so.

Jeff Tweedy: Well I mean you can’t find it all, that’s the best thing.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . Red Eyed Blue, that song reminds me of something and it’s just not coming to me. Is there a particular influence on there, I mean, especially early on in that song, the verses?

Jeff Tweedy: The chord progression initially, kind of it sounds like an Eddie Money song.

Marc Allan: No, that’s not it . I wasn’t thinking of that.

Jeff Tweedy: Oh. No, not really. I mean that was like one of the songs we were just playing, you know? Just trying to like, well we liked it really with really sparse at the top like that and so it was one of the kind of song, where we really felt like we could make it into a full band kind of thing. So, just kind of created it’s own little universe, I don’t know how, but I wasn’t really thinking of anything specific. On most of this stuff, really, it was more like later, recognizing that that sounds like this or that sounds like that. The only song to really set out to make it sound like something, was the second version of Out of Sight, or Out of Mind.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . The two discs idea, I just think that that was an absolutely brilliant idea, because you could like, I think I’ve read where you said, “Well we could’ve cut one song off of it, “to fit this on one disc.” But it’s impossible to listen to 70 minutes in a row, isn’t it?

Jeff Tweedy: It’s not good for you, no. It’s like, at some point during a 70 minute listen, you’re gonna start thinking about all the things that you gotta be doing. You know and that’s what was great about records, you know, like 15, 20 minutes on a side and then you either listen to the other side, or you get back to it in a couple days and you know where you left off, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm .

Jeff Tweedy: With CDs, if you listen to the first half, you never really go to a middle of a CD and start like listening to the second set, you know, it’s like you get to make two sets out of it. And with doing two CDs, we kind of got to do that, because it’s more tolerable to listen to 35 minutes and then 40 minutes, in a sitting.

Marc Allan: Yeah. Did the, how did that go over, the record company okay with that and does it cost a lot more to do it that way?

Jeff Tweedy: Well no, it doesn’t cost that much more. CDs are really cheap to manufacture, but we did a couple, I mean that was the only thing we really had to debate was like how to make it cheap. We like the cardboard packaging, surprisingly enough, was cheaper to do and we did, we took a royalty cut, so we could make it cheaper.

Marc Allan: Oh well that was nice of you.

Jeff Tweedy: Well it’s percentage and nothing, so it’s just like.

Marc Allan: Oh really, you’re that, you’re expecting that to do that well?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah .

Marc Allan: A percentage of nothing, that’s great. There’s obviously a lot of talk and a lot of things have been written about this band and alternative country and did you deliberately try to get away from that on this record?

Jeff Tweedy: Um, I’d be lying to say that we didn’t talk about it a little bit, but more than trying to get away from it, we were just, we never really saw ourselves as that. You know, we never really thought that, that was the goal, or the idea behind the band, you know, was to be part of a country rock thing. You know, we felt like, we just didn’t wanna be afraid of, I don’t know how to put it. We just wanted into it saying, more than we really wanna get away from this, we were just saying, we really wanna like not think about that and do things that we feel are honest to what we really like, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm . Yeah, because I mean alternative country it sounds cool, but from what I can see, it’s not like, the hugest movement around. Plus, you really don’t sound very country, or alternative really.

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah I think it would have really killed us and killed like the whole idea for us and like and maybe it would’ve been really easy for us in a way, to go in and make a pretty straightforward record, that just had like those kind of songs on it. Like, Forget the Flowers and you know, whatever had a country element to it. I think we could’ve made a record, even off just the stuff on the double record, we could’ve probably put something together that fit into whatever idea they’re trying to proliferate as being a movement, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Jeff Tweedy: But it wouldn’t have been very satisfying for us.

Marc Allan: Yeah, besides, being part of a movement. I don’t think that pays off very well. I mean I know that’s not what you’re looking for, but it’s like, you know, movements are nice, but they die out and then you gotta find your way back into the kind of public consciousness again.

Jeff Tweedy: I’ve always just admired bands that were bands, you know?

Marc Allan: Right.

Jeff Tweedy: That, yeah. I mean if, you know, on a totally different level than just making the record, Wilco is definitely trying to distance ourselves from the whole notion that we’re poster kids for some alternative country rock movement, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Jeff Tweedy: That’s ridiculous. Who needs that?

Marc Allan: Exactly. Two other things if I can and I’ll let you go. Do you have any relationship with your ex-band mate in Son Volt?

Jeff Tweedy: Mike? Sure, I talk to Mike occasionally.

Marc Allan: That wasn’t the person I meant, but okay . But not the other one, huh?

Jeff Tweedy: I don’t talk to Jay very often, no.

Marc Allan: Oh okay. And finally, for another story I’ve been doing, I’ve been asking everybody I interview, what’s the strangest, funniest, oddest encounter that you’ve had with a fan?

Jeff Tweedy: Oh, there’s been pretty many bizarre ones. Um… Ah, let me think. I don’t know . Let’s see. Um… I’ve had a lot of weird ones that kind of relate to Uncle Tupelo since Wilco started, you know?

Marc Allan: Okay.

Jeff Tweedy: I don’t know how interesting that would be for your article.

Marc Allan: Oh, I don’t know. Go ahead and tell me one.

Jeff Tweedy: I had this woman come up to me after a show and she had the Wilco CD and she asked me to sign it and I signed it and she asked me if I could get everybody else to sign it. Everybody after a show is generally, all over the place, you know, at the bar, you know, in the van or the bus. So I like, “Um, okay.” And I went and tracked everybody down to sign this woman’s CD. This isn’t very exciting.

Marc Allan: No go ahead.

Jeff Tweedy: Had it all signed up and I brought it back to her and I handed it to her and she goes, “You know, I really liked Uncle Tupelo “a lot better than Wilco.” And I said, “Fuck you, give me that back. “I’m gonna give you one that’s not signed, you know?” What’s the point? “I really liked what you were wearing yesterday, “a whole lot more than whatever you’re wearing today.”

Marc Allan: I really liked you before you opened your mouth . Yeah . I really liked you before you said something so stupid.

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah.

Marc Allan: That’s perfect. That’s just incredible. That is just incredible.

Jeff Tweedy: Oh and then there’s some other people, like fans came up after that and I was like, still flabbergasted. So I told them the whole story.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm .

Jeff Tweedy: And one of them said, “Oh you must get that a lot.” I said, “You know what? “You can all go to hell. “Leave me alone.”

Marc Allan: Well, I’ll tell you the exact opposite. I like Wilco a hell of a lot better than Uncle Tupelo, so .

Jeff Tweedy: Me too, man, I don’t understand it. No I’m like happy with Uncle Tupelo, I’m happy people remember it and all that stuff. But you know, it’s like, you always wanna feel like your best stuff is ahead of you, or like, you know, it’s just and more in the moment than worrying about that. I had a similar experience in Oswald recently. We were playing and people get totally out of their mind drunk when you play in Norway. There was just kind of, sort of upwardly mobile looking little middle aged man, looked like he might have been a rock critic, I don’t know. Standing there and we’re playing and he yelled for Sunken Treasure. So we played it. And he yelled for the Lonely One and like, “Okay.” So we played it, you know, we were doing a lot of songs and then he yelled for Box Full of Letters and we did a waltz version of it, which we’ve been doing a lot lately, you know, like a slowed down, kind of country version of Box Full of Letters, just to keep ourself interested, you know? Then we went off and came back on and before I could get on the stage, he stopped me and wanted me to sign his CD. I said, “I’m going up to play right now, “can you wait until we’re done?” And he’s like, “No, no, sign now.” So I signed it and he’s like, “No, to me. “My name is,” I don’t know, whatever his name was like Ven or something you know? But I was like, “No, I’m sorry, I just signed my name, “that’s as good as it can get right now. “We’re like, everybody else is on stage waiting for me.” So we go up and we start playing some more songs and we’re in the middle of a song and he walks up to the front of the stage, it’s just like a restaurant, really small, really low stage and he comes up and he goes, “Play Box Full of Letters.” And we’re like, “We played it for you, man. “We played every one of your requests.” And he was like, “No you did not play it. “I want an electric Box Full of Letters, “because my box is only half full of letters.”

Marc Allan: Oh man!

Jeff Tweedy: He was the most demanding person I’ve ever encountered in my life. It’s like, and most people would be thrilled to get like one song played that they yelled out.

Marc Allan: That’s for sure, yeah.

Jeff Tweedy: So then I sang Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? to him, after I gave him a bunch of shit from the stage. I told the whole story right after that, after that song, on stage. I’m like, “This guy here . “Stand up, show everybody who you are. “You know him, I mean I’m sure you’ve seen him, “he’s been requesting songs all night. “We’ve been accommodating this man all evening. “He’s still not satisfied.” So I sang Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? to him and sat on his lap.

Marc Allan: Oh man. That’s good.

Jeff Tweedy: He was like, he wouldn’t talk to me afterwards. which I felt like that was the desired effect.

Marc Allan: That’s just great. Man after all you did for that guy, that’s funny. That’s funny. Anyway, anything else, oh there is one other thing I forgot to ask you. Your fiddle player left, right? Do you have somebody else playing?

Jeff Tweedy: We don’t have a fiddle player, but we have a guy that’s traveling with us that’s playing pedal steel and some national and just some you know, various string stuff, to kind of create, actually the pedal steel helps a lot with the new material, because it can kind of cover some of the organ parts and some of the more droney things that are happening on the record.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm .

Jeff Tweedy: And Jay switches off now, between guitar and piano and organ, so we have those things live now too.

Marc Allan: Uh-huh, okay and the new guy’s traveling with you. Who is he?

Jeff Tweedy: He’s Bob, Bob Egan.

Marc Allan: Bob Egan.

Jeff Tweedy: He used to play in Freak Water.

Marc Allan: Okay, all right. And anything else you want me to tell people that we haven’t talked about?

Jeff Tweedy: Um… We wear a size 10 shoes almost across the board, if they wanna bring us some shoes.

Marc Allan: Okay . Do people bring you shoes ?

Jeff Tweedy: No.

Marc Allan: Okay. All right.

Jeff Tweedy: But I like shoes a lot.

Marc Allan: Okay, any particular kind? Bruno Magli, those?

Jeff Tweedy: Yeah, Versace. Slip ons.

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm .

Jeff Tweedy: You know? Naw, I’m just kidding. I actually do have a lot of shoes, but. No I can’t think of anything.

Marc Allan: All right, that sounds great. Listen, I appreciate your time and I’m looking forward to seeing you, see you next week.

Jeff Tweedy: All right.

Marc Allan: Take care.

Jeff Tweedy: Thank you, bye.

Marc Allan: Bye.