Wilco is back. While this may not be breaking news in the world of auto-tuned wonders littering the pop charts, it’s a pretty big deal for fans of a band that started out a quarter of a century ago in the alt-country corner of the room, before evolving into an eclectic indie rock band more concerned with unique creative expression than fitting into a neat box.
And while perpetual engine Jeff Tweedy seemed the busiest member of this sextet during the three-year gap that followed Wilco’s 2016 album, Schmilco, thanks to the pair of solo albums he released (2018’s Warm and 2019’s Warmer) and his autobiography, last year’s Let’s Go [So We Can Get Back]: A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.), fellow founding member John Stirratt wasn’t exactly sipping hot toddies at home up in Maine in the three years that preceded the release of Wilco’s 2019 album, Ode to Joy.
Stirratt not only spent that time touring as a duo with singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne, he also got involved in running a hotel in North Adams, MA. But at this juncture, singer/guitarist Tweedy, bassist Stirratt and the other Wilco members are focused on resuming a tour to promote Ode to Joy, the group’s 11th album.
Despite the length of the hiatus that followed “Schmilco,” for Stirratt, at no time was there a question over whether the Chicago-based outfit would hit the studio again.
“I don’t think there was any feeling that we were going to stop or anything like that. There was an unusual rollout for those last two Wilco records. Star Wars and Schmilco came out a year apart,” he said. “So it turned into this kind of three-year album stifle and it seemed like a good time to go away, along with the fact that our drummer had gone to Finland for a year so his wife could do some work. It seemed like the timing was good all the way around.”
The seeds for Ode to Joy were planted by Tweedy and drummer Glenn Kotche, both of whom sought to make a more atmospheric record goosed along by the latter’s rhythms and the former’s wistful croon. Comfortably ensconced in middle age, Tweedy’s lyrics are wrapped in a cloak of self-awareness. It’s particularly true with the melancholy “Everyone Hides,” where the song’s chorus caps off couplets like “If you’re selling yourself on a vision/A dream of who you are/An idea of how it should be/And a wish upon a star.” Elsewhere, Tweedy’s experience of losing a loved one is at the heart of “White Wooden Cross,” with its layering beautifully strummed guitar and Kotche’s subtle timekeeping, while the lumbering cadence of “We Were Lucky” gives guitarist Nels Cline a chance to cut loose with a bit of six-string squall and howl. For Stirratt, who counts the mid-period Byrdsian “Love is Everywhere (Beware)” as a favorite song to play live, says Tweedy’s and Kotche’s planned-out approach to the new album was a different, but welcome, departure from prior recording experiences.”
“Since that period of Jeff starting to put out solo records, his writing process has changed a little bit to the point where he’s working on different things. Things have been a little more rushed out in our lives than in years past. We hammer everything out on the floor arrangements-wise. But most of the arrangements are pretty set,” Stirratt said.
“In this case, Glenn and Jeff got together to work on these drum sounds and drum performances, along with acoustic guitar and some bass. We sort of created these kinds of big, dry drum sounds. It kind of set the tone for the record. Everyone else convened and sort of just worked through the rest of the instrumentation after the fact, from that point. We never really recorded like that before. It’s a change in process. A lot of times it paid off.”
Stirratt knows all of Wilco’s recording history, given that his relationship with Tweedy dates back to Uncle Tupelo, the storied Americana outfit Tweedy and Jay Farrar founded in Belleville, IL, in 1987. After Uncle Tupelo split into what became Tweedy’s Wilco and the Farrar-led Son Volt, Stirratt found himself with Tweedy and the rest of Wilco on a wild major label ride that took them through stints with Warner Brothers and Nonesuch Records, before the band released The Whole Love, the group’s first album on its own dBpm imprint in 2011.
“It’s nice to have control and know that we have an audience that’s still interested in physical product to some extent,” Stirratt said of having the dBpm imprint.
For now, Stirratt is eyeing a return to the road with Wilco, first for a run of dates with Sleater-Kinney (a tour rescheduled for August after the pandemic torpedoed the outing last summer) and a West Coast run in October. An appearance at Summerfest, along with a few other shows are sandwiched between those two tours.
He’s also used some of his time to write music for The Autumn Defense, the side project he’s in with fellow Crescent City native and Wilco multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone.
“I needed to sort of get back into the headspace of songwriting, when you’re not under the gun. So I’ve just been concentrating on that and really trying to get some really good, worthwhile songs together myself for The Autumn Defense,” Stirratt said.
