Jeff Tweedy

I’ve read in your book How to Write One Song that you like to combine two different words in an unexpected way. The title of your new album Twilight Override fits this perfectly.

I thought it'd be fun to make a triple record called Triple Rainbow. We ended up changing the title, but we made a triple record. I like the way language sounds. I think the sound of certain words has its own meaning, aside from the meaning of the word. When you put any two words next to each other, there’s a kind of meaning generated. Our brains fill that gap.

When I found out you were releasing a 3-disc album, I thought we’d get 10 great songs, 10 decent ones, and 10 fillers. Instead, it turned out to be a very strong project from start to finish. Each of the discs could have been released on its own, and I’d rate each a solid 8.

It would have been really easy to whittle it down to ten songs. Or to separate it out into three records and put them out over time. But once I presented the idea to the band and my management, once they heard the whole thing, nobody tried to talk me out of it. I always feel weird saying my manager because I’m kind of the manager, but I have a couple of friends that I know for a long time, that are my co-managers and my publicist and all the different people I work with.

This isn’t the first time you’ve released a multi-disc album. You first did it with Wilco back in 1996 with Being There. At the time the label gave you a much harder time about putting it out in that form.

I definitely got a lot of pushback at that time. But I’m ambitious and I write a lot. Being There just sounded like those songs needed to be together - whether or not anybody else agreed with me. I couldn’t see any of them surviving into another record. I like literature a lot, and a lot of my favorite books are really long. One of the effects of a really long book on the reader is that you get to kind of inhabit someone else’s mind for a pretty long time. It creates an environment that you get to be in, and I like how records do that. A short record can do that too, because you can just listen to it over and over again.

Along with the announcement of Twilight Override, you published a short essay in which you wrote: And when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation. (…) Creativity eats darkness. What darkness mean to you?

A lot of people, like myself, struggle with mood disorders and depression. There’s something very blurry about the world when you feel like you can see it clearly, yet you know you’re out of step with your normal self - the part of you that has energy, curiosity, and enthusiasm for living and for the world. And so there’s that darkness. It’s also the same when you live in a time where there’s a lot of darkness externally - it does tend to crowd out your enthusiasm, your excitement about being alive. It’s a unique time in American history, where a lot of people are experiencing a darkness that maybe the rest of the world has been exposed to much more than we have. 

What role does art play in all of this?

I do think that you make art, and then art, at its core, says the world doesn’t have to be this way - because you just proved, with each single act of creation, that you can make meaning, that you can make something out of nothing. If we make something out of nothing, that’s a small start. To me, it’s just making a world that would be worth saving.

You mentioned that this is a difficult time for America. Looking back over the past decades, do you see the current situation as unusual?

I mean yes and no. It’s painful to watch people suffering and it's painful to not be able to fix things that are so obviously wrong. A lot of people at my age is just readjusting to world as it is versus the one we thought we lived in. You just have to choose your battles carefully and preserve the part of the world that you have some control over. Hold your friends, your family, and your community close. 

Keep working on that side of things, but you also need to nurture your soul. For me, that means nurturing it through connection, heart, and community. That’s where my focus has been, outside of material ways to help. My family does a lot to support people suffering from poverty in our city, Chicago. I just try to be a conscientious citizen.

Do you feel like you have an album in you that would reflect the current situation in the U.S.? For many, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which was originally supposed to be released on September 11, 2001 (but came out six months later), felt prophetic - with those two towers on the cover and lyrics like Tall buildings shake / Voices escape, singing sad, sad songs or I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue.

I'm not a prophet. Everybody had their heart broken, and then this record came out, and it just so happened to have enough vague references to the thing that maybe everybody else started thinking about. It’s just like when your radio does that after you’ve broken up with a loved one - you turn it on, and suddenly every song seems to be about you. I think that’s what happened more than anything prophetic.

I make stuff, I put it out into the world and the world can make something out of it. I don't just do records that are super interior and only about my private life. I do want to capture what it feels like to be alive in this moment. Maybe in 10 years somebody will look at Twilight Override and think that it's a good example of what was happening at the time. 

Before 9/11 I set out to make a record because it was the first time in my life I was trying to reconcile my beliefs and my morality with the idea of being an American - what that means, and why it’s so easy for everyone to believe in something that doesn’t really exist. Countries, flags and constitutions are made up. 

And I think that's the thing about writing the lyrics. Maybe after some event, accident or moment in life, people will find another meanings in it. Most of the records that mean the most to me, came to me decades later.

With Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was it the first time you realized how much the album’s mixes could shape its impact? Jim O’Rourke gave that record an incredible character.

Well, Jim certainly changed my life and my artistic life. I learned a lot about a different approach to mixing, a different approach to pacing and arranging songs - coming from a completely different place than where I came from. I always wanted the records to sound good; the mix is always important. But there was an inventiveness to the way Jim used a studio as an instrument, as a tool, that wasn’t just trying to recreate the way The Beatles used a studio. It was basically more forward-thinking than copying the same techniques and tricks from the past.

At your solo shows, you’re joined by a band that also includes your sons — Spencer on drums and Sammy on synthesizers and vocal. Have they always been interested in music?

We made noise together and banged on things from a very early age. I’ve never played a note of music around Spencer without him joining in - by tapping, singing along, or something like that. It’s just a natural thing. It’s the way parents might take their son outside to play catch. We would just start making sounds, and Sammy participated in that. I mean, I guess the big difference is whether or not we were ever going to do that professionally.

We know that Lou Reed was your babysitter — who was theirs?

I think Wilco ended up being their babysitter. I know for Spencer especially, when I was gone, he would watch videos of me playing. Both of my kids say that Wilco is their favorite band. I sort of shake my head and think that they’re not cool.

Did any of your songs start out as a lullaby for them?

I think maybe Muzzle of Bees might have been. When they were little I used to sing jazz standards, I'm Beginning to See the Light and things like that.

When did you first realize that you could make music together?

I guess I figured out that Spencer was at that level when he came by the studio after school one day and I asked him if he could throw some drums on a track I was working on for Mavis Staples. And he did it in one take, and it was really great.

He started being like a regular session guy for me. Then Sammy, over time, wandered in, and he found a way in. He’s a great singer and started practicing, learning how to play and program keyboards and things like that. He makes his own music, which is very electronic. He’s just finished a record, which is going to be mind-blowing for people. It doesn’t sound like me at all. There are maybe one or two songs where you can hear some DNA.

I’d like to go back to your books for a moment. You’ve written several, including the very honest and personal memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). Did your experience as a songwriter help you in any way when it came to writing books?

The first book I wrote was very, very different from songwriting, because it was like putting all the things I try to leave out of songs into making my words very clear. It was, like, I don’t know, the opposite of poetry. The main thing that helped me was just having a process and an achievable type of goal on a daily basis - just write a few pages, or write a chapter. Before you know it, you’ve written a book. Keeping your eyes focused on the page in front of you, as opposed to the finished book.

Twój poradnik How to Write One Song, to prawdziwa kopalnia inspirujących cytatów. Jeden z moich ulubionych mówi: You have to stop thinking about anything other than what happened when you were a little kid and you laid on the floor. And you paint on the floor and you lost yourself in that drawing.

I think kids have it figured out, and the world does everything it can to beat creativity out of us. Creativity isn’t valued in a society that just desires order and wants reliable people showing up for work and doing things the way they’re told to do them. Creative impulse is kind of a liability in the way a lot of the world works. So I think the school system - and school systems around the world - are designed not so much to foster creativity, but to make sure it stays within a certain level.

I thought that the education system in the U.S. isn’t all that bad?

It’s not perfect, and there are a lot of different varieties of the educational system. You know, my children were very fortunate because we were wealthy enough to provide some, like, Montesorri education. They were kind of encouraged to learn how to learn.

Yeah, I guess The Loft (Wilco headquarter in Chicago) was the best Montessori playground for them. 

Yeah, you just put a synthesizer in their room, and they’re not afraid of it - they start playing it. I think a kid, before they start worrying about how they look or where they fit in, just has a natural inclination to be absorbed in what they’re making, as opposed to making something to show off who they are. I think it’s better to be absorbed in what you’re making and to wear what you’re making as armor.

Finally, the question I’ve always wanted to ask you: what goes through a musician’s mind when they’re standing in front of 50–60,000 people, starting a show, and part of the stage loses power? Do you happen to remember which concert I’m talking about?

Primavera Festival?

Yes, in 2010.

What was on my mind? I think usually it’s: I don’t want to waste this opportunity. So, let’s do something - let’s figure out something we can do together to make this connection. I think, in that case, we ended up singing Via Chicago, I guess.

Exactly - that was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

Well, that’s what happens when things go wrong - it ends up being way more memorable than the show you played perfectly.