{"id":241845,"date":"2025-10-21T20:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241845\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T20:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:32:08","slug":"cover-story-its-a-tweedy-family-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241845\/","title":{"rendered":"COVER STORY | It\u2019s a Tweedy Family Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the dawn of COVID shutdowns in 2020 and Jeff, Spencer, and Sammy Tweedy are driving from Chicago to Yonkers. Sarah Lawrence College is closed, so they\u2019re going back to Sammy\u2019s rented room near campus to retrieve all his belongings. They pack all of it into a minivan and head west. Around 2 AM and about three hours away from the Indiana-Illinois border, Jeff talks through the dark. \u201cHave you guys ever listened to Sandinista!?\u201d he asks his sons. \u201cNo,\u201d they say back. \u201cWell,\u201d he begins, \u201cif there\u2019s ever an opportunity to listen to Sandinista!, let\u2019s do it.\u201d It\u2019s the first time Jeff has listened to the Clash\u2019s fourth record all the way in forty years or so. Maybe it\u2019s not obvious to them now, but they\u2019ll make a record just like it\u2014songs that are \u201cexcessive and luxuriate in an artist\u2019s idea of a world.\u201d They\u2019ll call it Twilight Override<\/a> and make it a hangout. But for now, the Tweedys are just trying to get home.<\/p>\n

Five years later and I\u2019m deplaning at O\u2019Hare. I have to write this story about Jeff and his kids, and it feels nice to be doing all of that in their hometown. The only problem is: I\u2019m paying an Uber driver sixty bucks to drive me so north of Chicago that I can\u2019t even find the skyline or water from my hotel room. So as I prep for daylong meetings and watch the zoo of Marriotts and Hiltons talk to each other through lit-up windows, I put on Twilight Override and fill up from its faucet of inspiration. The album floors me because Self Portrait and New Morning floor me. \u201cOut in the Dark\u201d could\u2019ve been on Schmilco<\/a>, and \u201cStray Cats in Spain\u201d is \u201cAshes of American Flags\u201d\u2018s sibling. The older I get, the more prolific Jeff Tweedy becomes: between 2022 and now, forty Wilco songs have come out; a few weeks ago, thirty more were released under his own name. But good luck pinning down a start date for Twilight Override. I should have known better, considering how Jeff outperforms any and all \u201csong-a-day\u201d exercises. But he settles on \u201cabout two years ago,\u201d likely so we don\u2019t dawdle in the incidentals. What he can tell me is that most of the songs were written with the band from Twilight Override in mind.<\/p>\n

And that band\u2014the Tweedys, Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart from Finom<\/a>, the great guitarists Liam Kazar and James Elkington\u2014is the one that\u2019s backed Jeff on his solo tours, in some iteration or another, since WARM came out in 2018. \u201cOne of the most revelatory things about those shows was how we could arrange songs that didn\u2019t have big, choral elements on their original recordings,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we do it live, they would have these soaring choruses and lots of voices. It felt so good. It felt like that\u2019s where I should start next time.\u201d And that\u2019s exactly what he did, but not before producing Finom\u2019s last record, Not God, first. \u201cThey\u2019re all-timers,\u201d he gushes. \u201cThey\u2019re younger than me, but they\u2019re seasoned pros. And they\u2019re both so incredibly fast at hearing parts and going right to the note that they hear. It\u2019s kind of astonishing, really.\u201d I ask if he\u2019s learned anything from singing with them, and he has, but he can\u2019t tell me what, exactly. \u201cThings are hard for me to say I\u2019ve learned because I don\u2019t understand them,\u201d he concedes. \u201cI\u2019ve just learned them, and that\u2019s been my musical life. I understand how to implement things, but I don\u2019t necessarily understand how to explain to somebody what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer suggests that a lot of the experience is about \u201ctuning yourself, because ideas get tried, performances happen, choices get made about arrangements, and you\u2019re in a constant state of being formed by that, because you\u2019re witnessing cause and effect, and you\u2019re also witnessing novelty.\u201d The vast majority of it is separate from language, he says, and you don\u2019t even recognize that it\u2019s forming you. But there\u2019s a weird inverse to that, Jeff reveals, in not only playing with somebody who\u2019s got an extensive, conceptual background and understanding of music theory, but knowing that you don\u2019t have that and being affirmed about it regardless. \u201cThem seeing that you bring something of value, that you\u2019re not being looked down upon because you don\u2019t have that, I\u2019ve always found it really liberating and validating to having somebody go, \u2018Show me that again,\u2019 and realizing that what I don\u2019t have doesn\u2019t mean that everything is not valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaboration fosters a \u201cconstant striving to learn\u201d for Jeff, and that\u2019s been especially true since he asked Cate Le Bon to produce Cousin<\/a> in 2023. Sammy tells me that his dad\u2019s process of learning is more gradual than his and Spencer\u2019s. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m unlocking specific lessons every individual time I collaborate with anyone,\u201d he says, speaking to his dad. \u201cBut you are further down that road; it\u2019s like a gradient for you.\u201d Jeff admits that he approaches his art like he\u2019s got something to learn from just about everybody, elaborating that \u201cin Wilco, Nels [Cline] and Glenn [Kotche] know music theory better than me. I have always assumed that somebody knows more than me.\u201d I tell the trio that the best musicians I\u2019ve encountered are the ones who surround themselves with players and producers who are better than them. \u201cI think that\u2019s true of any walk of life,\u201d Jeff reckons. \u201cYou\u2019re better off being challenged by the people you\u2019re in the same room with, rather than being kowtowed to. Everybody benefits from realizing that they don\u2019t know very much. The people that are full of confidence are usually the people that are really insecure and don\u2019t know shit and don\u2019t know they don\u2019t know shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

DESPITE SUMMERTEETH, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and A Ghost is Born<\/a> existing, the most important work of Jeff\u2019s career is whatever he\u2019s making with his kids. Sammy and Spencer have both been pursuing music on their own for years now: Sammy has a solo synthesizer gig that he keeps up with; Spencer is playing on more great records than I can count on one hand\u2014most famously Waxahatchee\u2019s Tigers Blood<\/a>, and most recently his fianc\u00e9e Casey Gomez Walker\u2019s debut Case Oats album, Last Missouri Exit<\/a>. But they both always come back and play with their dad, having formed the Tweedy band together a decade ago before couching it into Jeff\u2019s recent non-Wilco stuff. In-between working on Tigers Blood at Sonic Ranch near the Texas-Mexico border and recording Last Missouri Exit barefoot in a hot Chicago basement, Spencer would come back to Wilco\u2019s infamous hideout, The Loft, to work on Twilight Override with his family or home-record \u201cWedding Cake\u201d on their property in Michigan. In fact, he\u2019s always thinking about the Loft. \u201cIt\u2019s the center of my heart, because it\u2019s an embodiment of focusing on what matters and focusing on emotion and not getting tied up in building a wall for a control room. Wilco has built that room up, over decades, to facilitate creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer includes that, making Twilight Override meant watching his dad\u2019s craft adapt. \u201cI know that we\u2019re all going in there without a specific, finite thing that we need to do. We\u2019re going in [the studio] to follow a process. It was especially so knowing that we\u2019d have other voices, singing and instrumentally. I knew it would, even more quickly, lead to different discoveries than when it\u2019s just our own personalities.\u201d Sammy looks forward to bringing his dad\u2019s song into their final form and see[ing] a bunch of masters at work,\u201d like his brother and engineer Tom Schick. Jeff chimes in to say that Sammy and Spencer have been involved in all of that since they were rugrats, when he was in the Wiggleworm Dads. \u201cWe listen to other people\u2019s music, but they\u2019ve also been involved in my process of driving around and listening to my own music and trying to hear things in it and refine it,\u201d he elaborates. \u201cHaving two kids that are super into music, super smart, and listening with fresher ears than mine, for as long as they\u2019ve been able to communicate and weigh in on things? I trust their opinions, and I\u2019ve enjoyed being able to share that side of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that you are listening to what we think about it could so easily not be the case,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cIt could so easily be like, \u2018You guys don\u2019t know shit.\u2019 And maybe that\u2019s the norm, or what people would usually expect from a parent, or a more traditional type of dad. But I\u2019ve always been grateful for that, that we\u2019re listened to as people, but even more so about your expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a beautiful thing about music in general, that every single person\u2019s feedback matters,\u201d Sammy adds. \u201cBecause it\u2019s all subjective. If it hits a person in some way, I\u2019m interested in hearing about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the authority of your own heart,\u201d Spencer affirms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re an empathetic person,\u201d Jeff considers, \u201cI do believe you hear with everyone\u2019s ears in the room. I think we\u2019ve all experienced it, trying to play something for somebody that\u2019s just not into it and not getting it. You hear it differently, it\u2019s diminished. Listening to something in a room with somebody that you can tell is really feeling it, it\u2019s exalted. It\u2019s enhanced. That\u2019s one of the reasons, I think, that parents like to play music from their childhood to their kids\u2014so they can hear it again with that freshness and that sense of discovery. But, really, what we\u2019re all doing is rationalizing that these kids have had a Tweedy-only diet of music since they were kids, and they\u2019re not allowed to listen to anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sammy\u2019s synth work on Twilight Override is a quiet marvel in the background of nearly every track but especially \u201cCaught Up in the Past.\u201d When he was fourteen, Jeff bought him an MS-20 mini synthesizer and it sat untouched in his room \u201cas a source of shame, because it was so intimidating,\u201d he says. \u201cThat intimidating nature of the electronic instruments, the fact that they don\u2019t look like the things I had seen being played my whole life\u2026 It\u2019s not a guitar, it\u2019s not a bass, it\u2019s not a drum kit. It was like learning how to do a Rubik\u2019s Cube really well.\u201d Synthesis became his way into music, because it was far enough away from his dad and brother\u2019s world that it could be his thing. So he worked on his knowledge of the instrument for ten years, building a modular in his bedroom and making thousands of hours of electronic music on his own until it got to become a part of his dad\u2019s music, which meant \u201cmaking the synthesizer something that covers the whole frequency spectrum,\u201d much like an effect you might have heard on a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song. That means using sampling to build orchestras and leads, or to add a train whistle into the backdrop of a country song. Sammy\u2019s synth passages on Twilight Override is, in my mind, equivalent to the use of a Moog on \u201cSpace Odyssey\u201d from The Notorious Byrd Brothers, where you don\u2019t even know that it\u2019s a Moog making those secondary sounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it makes sense, in hindsight, that he has a really active and imaginative mind,\u201d Jeff says about Sammy. \u201cWhen he would pick up a guitar, it would be my thing. If he sat behind the drum kit, it was his brother\u2019s thing. There wasn\u2019t an opportunity for him to sound like the things he had in his head. But the synthesizer allowed him to make things that felt imaginative and creative right away. It became much more satisfying, because he could make something nobody else can make. I was really happy when it finally started clicking for him, that the synth was something that he could use to find a way into the world that his brother and I were already sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of Twilight Override began just like Jeff\u2019s other solo material: with the Tweedys\u2019 voices only. They recorded \u201cCry, Baby, Cry\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t It a Shame\u201d together before anyone else could get to the sessions. \u201cThere were times where I was like, \u2018All right, well, maybe this is the way we should go, because there is something so simple and satisfying about being this family of voices,\u201d Jeff remembers. But showcasing men and women singing together, he says, and having women\u2019s voices be a prominent part of that family of voices, felt essential, because it was the sound they were all chasing after being on tour and hearing voices together in dressing rooms. \u201cThe way it sounds without any PA, when this group of people sit in a room together and sing, it\u2019s really one of my favorite things.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2020, Spencer regaled Pitchfork about working with his dad<\/a>: \u201cThe biggest obstacle for me was that I\u2019m super precious and anxious about creative stuff. There have been a lot of times where my dad and I have worked together, and I was wound a little too tight about how things were going to turn out, or if we were making something that felt right for us.\u201d Hearing the undone, \u201cBig Pink-style\u201d drum work he\u2019s doing on a lot of Twilight Override, you\u2019d be right to assume that his perspective on preciousness has changed. \u201cLife is only worth living with this degree of wildness and letting things be,\u201d he confirms. \u201cIt\u2019s a funny thing, because we\u2019re still painstaking. We spent two years making this record, we listened to it hundreds of times, we were constantly bringing it back up on the mixing console to make things how we want them.\u201d He and the band weren\u2019t ignoring details, either, sometimes going as far as making one-word changes right before mixes were due. \u201cIt\u2019s about the attitude with which you do that. We\u2019re not fussy, and we\u2019re doing all of that with this spirit of keeping our eyes on what really matters. And what really matters is how it\u2019s making us feel.\u201d The nits that the Tweedys pick are not in service to perfection or to condense vulnerability. \u201cYou can hear a mistake, you can hear us follow something that was unexpected,\u201d Spencer concludes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to make an idealized version of something,\u201d Jeff adds. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make sure that this version that we\u2019re going to share with the world has every opportunity to speak and communicate. A lot of people spend a lot of time stressing out about trying to sound like a machine, trying to come closer to a machine. I think the things that we obsess over are the things that make sure that we\u2019re doing due diligence to not sound like a machine.\u201d The whole point of Twilight Override, Spencer tells me, is to \u201callow something unexpected to happen,\u201d because few feelings are better. \u201cSaddest Eyes\u201d is a product of that ideology: \u201cWe had never played the song together before, other than the several times we recorded it, and listening back to it the first time, being like, \u2018Oh, my God, we listened to each other and that exists\u2019\u2026 It\u2019s insane to feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why the hell did these guys make a 3-disc album, an art not lost but impossibly under-explored? The motivations were part-ambition, part-family, Jeff says, but separating that ambition \u201cfrom the joy of it being done with my family\u201d was difficult. \u201cAs the songwriter, having the strong emotional support you get from your family strengthened my resolve to actually do it. Because, there were many times when we were like, \u2018Okay, this is just asking for it.\u2019 We could make this into a double record. We probably could make this into a single record, if we really had to. I could have probably, easily, found voices that would say it\u2019s not a good idea\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were some,\u201d Spencer speaks up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I still, to this day, don\u2019t understand what the argument against a triple record would possibly be, other than cost,\u201d Jeff continues. \u201cBut we worked to make that pretty close to what a double record is these days. We did our best to make that affordable.\u201d There\u2019s also an argument to be made that, because so many folks have such unlimited access to music all day long, they aren\u2019t consuming a 30-song album like they would have when, say, All Things Must Pass came out, or something. But that never discouraged Jeff from making Twilight Override. \u201cThere was no reason not to say what we wanted to say. And my children were very, very helpful in giving me that permission to be big-hearted and dream big about the idea that there\u2019s not a market for being big-hearted, but a need for big heartedness. There\u2019s a need for working against smaller, frivolous things\u2014working towards saying, \u2018Hey, sit down and listen to something for two hours.\u2019 I know it\u2019s a lot to ask, but is it? Is it that much to ask, considering how much time people spend playing Candy Crush? It\u2019s really not.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps that Twilight Override is the best record Jeff Tweedy\u2019s made in twenty years\u2014solo, Wilco, or otherwise. Its length is in elite company, indexed into history next to other 30-song releases, like The Beatles and Sandinista!, But its abundance isn\u2019t brand-new in Jeff\u2019s catalogue: Wilco put out Cruel Country<\/a>, a 21-song project recorded while the band was making Cousin; before that, he and his sons made the double LP Sukierae. Some of the best efforts of Jeff\u2019s solo career occur when he\u2019s got ideas coming out the wazoo. This time, it\u2019s personifying inanimate objects, like an ashtray on \u201cCaught Up In the Past,\u201d or going into spoken-word mode on \u201cParking Lot\u201d which was a fresh, intimidating idea embraced (with trepidation) by Jeff for the first time in a musical context. \u201cI definitely have a tougher time listening to my speaking voice than my singing voice. It\u2019s such a weird thing, but I\u2019m making peace with that. [Recording that] was really unsettling, but also seemed very effective for those words. Singing those words would have made that song not work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album holds within itself a history of rock and roll, alluding to other musicians or referencing them directly, like having some Paul Westerberg<\/a> stylings showing up in \u201cEven Here We Are,\u201d or the \u201ca complete unknown\u201d mention in \u201cEnough.\u201d Jeff calls out Mick Jagger and Keith Richards by name once and puts Lou Reed in a song title elsewhere; his \u201cCry Baby Cry\u201d nearly has the same disc-three placement as the Beatles\u2019 \u201cCry Baby Cry\u201d on the White Album. I ask him if the \u201cget yourself born in the U.S.A.\u201d lyric in \u201cFeel Free\u201d is meant to be a nod to Springsteen. It\u2019s not a conscious one, he admits. \u201cI always think of that line as being more like, \u2018How absurd is it to think that you could get yourself born anywhere?\u2019 But you end up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEchoes of Springsteen\u2026\u201d Sammy whispers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole culture is an echo of Springsteen,\u201d Jeff says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Twilight Override is lived in and never shocking. The songs don\u2019t lull or make me question, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t he give ten of these to Wilco?\u201d (\u201cIt\u2019s whittled down from five records,\u201d Jeff clarifies, grinning. \u201cAnd the Wilco guys have already put dibs on a lot of those songs.\u201d) The band travels on familiar folk and country paths but makes every step feel inventive, mitigating an exhaustive runtime with humor, delay, sincerity, and experiments done both consciously and not, like \u201cFeel Free,\u201d a palindrome that starts in a different key before rocking back and forth between two chords, one minor and one major, and a repeated phrase sandwiched between rhyming couplets. It\u2019s a damn religious experience, the longer you sit with it. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to reward people, even if they don\u2019t listen to it again and it\u2019s just one two-hour sessions where they give it a chance. I think that that\u2019s not going to be a wasted amount of time,\u201d Jeff says. \u201cIt has a potential to be a lovely thing. And we erred on that side, that that dream of making some long, big, lovely thing is not a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rachel Bartz<\/p>\n

IF YOU READ JEFF TWEEDY\u2019S LAST BOOK, World Within a Song, then you know that bands like the Replacements and Ramones fundamentally changed the way he thinks about music, because he was a punk rock kid in the generation after the one Brian Eno claimed started bands because of the Velvet Underground. But every time I play Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, my mind is taken over by the thought of how many people picked up an instrument for the first time\u2014or turned one inside out\u2014because of it, in the aftermath of September 11th. And I do wonder when bands in my generation will get thrusted into a similar moment, or if we\u2019ve even met that band yet. But we have met Jeff Tweedy, and a part of me has let Twilight Override soothe me today, in the residual of ICE raids, anti-trans legislation, and genocide. But can art\u2014rock and roll, specifically\u2014really change the world now? Could it ever? I do wonder how many people saw the Ramones as a novelty or a joke, and I wonder how many people Wilco as one, too. And I wonder who felt seen and liberated by their music. It\u2019s impossible to predict what a song will do for the people who pick it up. Always has been.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut on a micro level, or an individual level even, it all still has the potential to make somebody in some room by themselves, or walking down the street with headphones, go, \u2018I could do this,\u2019\u201d Jeff gestures. \u201cMaybe the world looks a little different, or maybe it doesn\u2019t have to be that way, but every little bit of people putting music and themselves out into the world with confidence and being themselves on purpose in front of other people, I think that gives other people permission. And that alone maybe isn\u2019t something you can track, but I do think that that still has the potential to be world-changing, because the world is made up of individual worlds that we all carry around with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twilight Override sounds like an encapsulation of the ideas Jeff has been writing about for three decades, like addiction in \u201cToo Real\u201d or spirituality in \u201cBetter Song.\u201d There\u2019s something to be said about making a record this big at the age of fifty-eight, or \u201cwanting to fight back against the ennui.\u201d But this is Jeff Tweedy we\u2019re talking about, and \u201cI always want you around\u201d always becomes \u201cand the hurt gets harder to hide.\u201d I think that says a lot about the type of writer he is when the collapse of the free world is this overwhelming and cruel: optimism holds even near misery. \u201cIt\u2019s disorienting,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut music has been there for me as a solid ground\u2014as a conflict-free zone for the struggles I was having mentally, in different periods of my life. When it\u2019s external pressures making me feel that way, it works the same way. Music does the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff\u2019s aware of the messianic impulse in what he\u2019s about to say to me, but he says it anyway. \u201cI do feel like a congregation has grown up around me, over thirty years of making music or more, that I feel I would be lying if I didn\u2019t say I feel some responsibility towards. And to me, what that says is: If I can dream, if I can hope, if I can focus on making something, I have to. It\u2019s not just for me. When you make it visible to others, there\u2019s a viable strategy in rejecting the world as it is and believing in a world within your power.\u201d Sammy and Spencer have been witnessing their dad cultivate this attitude for their entire lives, and that responsibility sits deeply with them, encouraging them to have meaningful, even uncomfortable dialogues about creative purpose. \u201cI\u2019ve always been self-conscious about art being enough of a participation in society, or in trying to make things better,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cI\u2019m more at peace with that now than ever, for a variety of reasons\u2014one of them being just asking myself, \u2018Would I want a world where nobody makes art?\u2019 Of course not. But then I think, \u2018Well, maybe we shouldn\u2019t make art so much. Maybe most of my days should be doing something else more material.\u2019 I just have a lot of faith in the value [of art] and it helping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff speaks directly to Spencer: \u201cIs art enough? It\u2019s not. It\u2019s not enough, but it\u2019s not nothing. And a lot of times, it feels like nothing, because the culture perceives it as being very frivolous and self-indulgent. And I get that, but I don\u2019t think that it\u2019s enough and I don\u2019t think that we\u2019ve ever felt like it\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it has value,\u201d Spencer responds. \u201cI\u2019ve definitely been concerned about the frivolous-feeling nature of things that are so rewarding. It is so personally rewarding to me. But then I ask, \u2018How can this really be\u2026 okay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes not doing it help anybody?\u201d Jeff asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cWe\u2019re modeling things that we think are constructive and make life better. You\u2019re not tearing people down or hurting people when you\u2019re making stuff. You\u2019re even less so hurting people when you\u2019re doing that with other people, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing on [Twilight Override].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years ago, when I was more of a doomer and really more depressed, I had a really deep suspicion that musical work is a little selfish,\u201d Sammy reveals. But he eventually got older, quit throwing his hands up in the air, and started looking at the tasks laid out for him as a human being. Then, he began to feel confident about creativity\u2019s place in the world, in culture. \u201cArt and music are pretty essential to that,\u201d he says. \u201cIf there\u2019s a world worth saving, this is that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the idea that not making music would allow somebody else to make music, if that was something that seemed not completely irrational, you\u2019d probably contemplate it,\u201d Jeff says, addressing his sons. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a rational thought. The rational parts, to me, are: \u2018How do you share this thing that you get to do, not just with people that you don\u2019t know but with people you do know and with bands you admire?\u2019\u201d That\u2019s why Wilco started Solid Sound, to share their audience with other bands and build a place where everyone can give what they love away.<\/p>\n

And that even goes back to the nineties, when Jeff\u2019s old band, Uncle Tupelo, was on tour with Michelle Shocked and The Band<\/a>. During a rehearsal, Rick Danko came up to him and said, \u201cYou sound desperate. You should always sound desperate. Don\u2019t lose that.\u201d I ask Jeff how important it is for him to remain desperate so many years later. \u201cI don\u2019t know if my desperation was the same as Rick Danko\u2019s, but I assume that we were talking about the same thing,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI think I get what he meant, and I think that it is very much intact in me, and that is I care deeply. I believe that I care deeply. I know that the world affects me in a way that feels painful, because I care deeply, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m unique in that. I think a lot of people care deeply and it hurts. The desperation to me is: How do you soothe that aching feeling? But also, how do you connect and how do we get each other to see each other?\u201d<\/p>\n

Filibustering, he continues: \u201cI\u2019m desperate to be seen, probably, to some degree. There\u2019s something narcissistic about it, that I\u2019m desperate to be loved. We all are. The artist is just more willing to stand on stage and admit it. That\u2019s something that\u2019s always been weird to me about going out on stage: the audience automatically knows something about you that you don\u2019t know about them, and that is what you\u2019re willing to do to be loved and seen. And that\u2019s a desperate act, in the face of a world that feels like it\u2019s coming apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think the songs on Twilight Override are desperate?\u201d I ask him, genuinely.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he says, gently, before repeating either the line that opens the last song on the record or the words of his eldest son: \u201cHas it ever been enough?\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the dawn of COVID shutdowns in 2020 and Jeff, Spencer, and Sammy Tweedy are driving from Chicago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-241845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}