Wilco

Out of Uncle Tupelo

Jeff Tweedy, born in Belleville, Illinois, in 1967, met Jay Farrar in a high school English class in 1981, and their band grew into Uncle Tupelo. Uncle Tupelo played its last show at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis on 1 May 1994, and within days Tweedy had a new group made from the rest of the Anodyne line-up: John Stirratt, Ken Coomer and Max Johnston, with Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets on guitar. He called it Wilco, radio shorthand for "will comply", and admitted that was a fairly ironic name for a rock band.

They rehearsed in manager Tony Margherita's office and spent June to August 1994 recording with Brian Paulson at Easley McCain in Memphis. The first show, billed as Black Shampoo, was at Cicero's in St. Louis on 17 November 1994. A.M. followed on 28 March 1995, its title a nod to Top 40 AM radio, and Casino Queen, a song about a riverboat casino, became a lasting part of the live set. The band came to regard the record as a failure next to Son Volt's Trace, which outsold it two to one, and Tweedy later said they had been treading water for an audience they imagined.

Being There and Summerteeth

Jay Bennett, found working in a video repair shop in Champaign, joined in 1995 as Henneman left. Being There (1996), named after the Peter Sellers film, spread nineteen songs over two discs, and Tweedy gave up part of his royalty so it could sell for the price of one. Pitchfork later judged it as confident as the debut had been shaky. Sessions for Summerteeth began at Willie Nelson's studio in Spicewood, Texas, in November 1997. Stirratt recalled that Bennett had bought a Mellotron and was going to use it whatever happened. Alongside those sessions the band made Mermaid Avenue (1998) with Billy Bragg, which drew a Grammy nomination and a second volume in 2000. Summerteeth came out in March 1999.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Glenn Kotche, who had played with Tweedy and Jim O'Rourke in the trio that became Loose Fur, replaced Coomer in January 2001. Work on the next album had begun in earnest in March 2000 at The Loft, the band's warehouse studio in Chicago. Jesus, Etc. was among the first songs of the new line-up, and Stirratt said the band clicked when they tried it with Kotche. O'Rourke mixed the record at Soma, cutting and splicing tape until, Tweedy said, it could never be reconstructed. Sam Jones filmed the sessions for I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (2002), which shows Tweedy and Bennett arguing over details as small as the ten seconds leading into Heavy Metal Drummer. Bennett was dismissed once the album was finished.

Reprise rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in June 2001 for lacking a single, and the band left the label with the masters. They streamed it on their website that September, signed with Nonesuch in November and released it on 23 April 2002. Lines about tall buildings shaking, written before 11 September, were heard as echoes of it. Pitchfork called it simply a masterpiece, it topped the Pazz & Jop critics' poll and reached thirteen on the Billboard 200, and Rolling Stone later ranked it the third best album of the 2000s.

The six-piece

In 2004 Tweedy went into rehab for opioid addiction, Leroy Bach left, and Nels Cline and Pat Sansone joined Tweedy, Stirratt, Kotche and Mikael Jorgensen, who had arrived in 2002. That line-up has not changed since. A Ghost Is Born (2004), co-produced with O'Rourke, won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and Kicking Television (2005) captured the new band over four nights at the Vic in Chicago. Sky Blue Sky (2007) and Wilco (The Album) (2009) both reached four on the Billboard 200. Bennett died in 2009.

In 2011 the band launched its own label, dBpm, with The Whole Love. Star Wars (2015) arrived as a surprise free download, followed by Schmilco (2016), Ode to Joy (2019), Cruel Country (2022) and Cousin (2023), produced by Cate Le Bon. Wilco runs the Solid Sound festival at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, entered the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame in 2021, and won a Grammy for the 2022 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reissue. Tweedy has written a memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), and How to Write One Song. Among the influences he names is John Cale's Paris 1919.

Experimentation and avant-garde theory was not directly opposed to beauty.

Jeff Tweedy, on Paris 1919