Wilco

Unintentionally, the Chicago band Wilco has become a modern media darling. Musically, critics trip over themselves to praise every album the band releases. And members of the band provide enough internal drama to keep their names in the type of magazines that usually only cover the eight bands being played over and over again on the mainstream radio. In the 10 years since Wilco formed, they've become very hip without becoming overexposed. Bass player John Stirratt said that's a good thing.

"I think any time you have more people in a room listening to you, there are people that are there just for the spectacle, or something that may not be directly related to the music," Stirratt told Recoil during a January telephone interview.

For this reason, and because the band's previous album, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (2002), sold a half-million copies, Wilco prepared itself for some criticism when releasing its latest album, A Ghost Is Born, last year. It never came.

"The critics have been so great to us forever, to have backlash… it was obvious," Stirratt said. "Especially with the band having a little more of a profile after the last record. I definitely steeled myself for it."

Stirratt called Recoil ?two weeks after the band had played a New Year's Eve show in New York with the Flaming Lips. For 30 minutes he discussed the band's new album and picture book, and fielded questions about the band's tumultuous history. He's very soft-spoken and polite, and in many ways is the Yin to frontman Jeff Tweedy's Yang. It's Tweedy who makes news for his prolific songwriting – and more recently for his addiction to painkillers – and it's Tweedy who was on stage stumping for Senator John Kerry leading up to the Presidential election.

"I remember him not saying much during [the time of] Summerteeth (1999) and that era, but I think since before Yankee Foxtrot Hotel he made more of a concerted effort to talk like that or to be funny," Stirratt said.

Long gone is the stage fright that seemed to envelop Tweedy during Wilco's infancy. In fact, it's been 10 years and five albums since the band regrouped from Uncle Tupelo's breakup. Also long gone are the other original band members and the alt-country feel Wilco called their own through three albums. It's tough to pinpoint when they made the shift to pop rock and then experimental rock, it just sort of happened.

"There are definitely no right-wingers in our midst," Stirratt said. "And I think we're all definitely behind [Tweedy] one hundred percent."

"Maybe ninety-five percent," a laughing Stirratt added.

While no members of the band quit during the recording of the new album (multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach quit shortly after), according to Stirratt the process was no less frustrating. "It was just trying to find the best ways to present the material, just trying to find the best shape the record should be, and having trouble getting there."

What resulted is an album that in some ways is an extension of Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, but flipped inside out. In the band's press kit, Tweedy is quoted as saying the band wanted to focus on making the music in the studio instead of in the production room. Stirratt added that instead of adding the non-traditional sounds after the music was recorded, the band tried to create them organically. There is more room for instrument experimentation – a situation no better exemplified than on the song "Less Than You Think."

Stirratt explained the 10 minutes of buzzing as an exercise in self-generating loops. He said they just loved watching their instruments play more or less on their own. "It's trippy, it's really fun to do. Just to hear sounds, you know, just to let yourself go. I don't want to say it's like meditation – well, it is like meditation, frankly. Just turning everything off and accepting what happens out there." The sounds heard are more or less the result of turning on the amplifiers and leaving the room.

There were other times throughout the recording process that Wilco used the time to satisfy their own curiosities without worrying about what fans or critics would think. Stirratt said they tried to create little mini-albums after each day of recording, so there was something tangible to listen to at day's end. Instead of just recording drums on day one, or vocals on day 13, they tried to work all instruments in, and just kept the tape rolling as they experimented. Often they'd turn on a 30-minute reel and Tweedy would just read some lyrics as the band tried to improvise or keep up. As much as any of their previous albums, A Ghost Is Born is a product of these mini-albums.

Wilco has never really gotten the mainstream success many feel they deserve, even though each album has been critically acclaimed, and A Ghost Is Born nominated for two Grammy awards. Surprisingly, Stirratt admitted they once tried.

"When we delivered Summerteeth, [Warner Brothers] said the all-time cliché: 'We don't hear a single.' And they paid for us to go back in the studio and record another song that they heard on a demo."

At the time, Wilco wanted to compromise, and agreed to do it. But the seeds were now planted for what eventually led to Wilco buying the finished tracks of Yankee Foxtrot Hotel for $50,000 and financing their own tour before landing with Nonesuch Records.

"We didn't look at it like we were caving in that much," Stirratt said of recording the more "commercially viable" track. "It was like, 'Okay, they're paying us to go in and do another song – what's so bad about that? Luckily now we're in a situation [where we] would never dream of doing something like that."

The record label fiasco and the subsequent departure of guitarist and Wilco original Jay Bennett were all captured in Sam Jones' 2002 documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. Stirratt called the documentary a bad idea from an album-recording standpoint, but curiously the band chose to rely again on an outside medium to promote A Ghost Is Born.

The Wilco Book, a 160-page hardcover published in 2004 by Picturebox, Inc., gives a behind-the-scenes look at the band. It's filled with pictures, essays and original drawings from the band members, and it also shows how each band member draws their inspiration and adds to each album.

"This is one of the things I think the Picturebox book has been a really nice reflection of what I really think the band is – which is kind of a weird consortium of people that do different things," Stirratt said.

Wilco is far more than a vehicle for Stirratt and Tweedy, even though they are the only original members left. Stirratt described their recording and rehearsal space (The Loft) as a salon. People just sort of float in, do their thing and float out. There is always something going on, and creativity is everywhere.

Wilco will hit a tour stop at the Kalamazoo State Theatre on Feb. 26. Stirratt said the set lists have been mostly new material from A Ghost Is Born, with maybe five songs from Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, three from Summerteeth, and a few songs from Wilco's older albums. Tickets are $28.50 and are available at the State Theatre ticket office and all Ticketmaster locations.

February 2005