Jeff Tweedy @ The 9:30 Club and Atlantis, 6.27-28

When Jeff Tweedy plays by himself, there is nothing between him, the listener, and the words. Songs that might’ve felt massive and almost-maximalist carry a soft intimacy. Lyrics that might’ve stayed behind the noise step into the spotlight.

Experience is untranslatable; this one felt like a remembering joined with a looking forward to, very much like the joy and comfort a hug.

We saw him first at the 9:30 Club, and second at the Atlantis (we won the lottery for the latter). He managed intimacy both nights, though the latter show quivered on a different frequency. Jeff noticed it too, remarking several times on how different the crowd felt; on Tuesday, he teased the 9:30 Club crowd that they were less interested in beauty and more interested in “the communal aspect and [wanted to] sing along.” On Wednesday night, he praised the crowd while joking about the previous night that “the bigger the crowd, the dumber the crowd,” adding, “It’s just science. On this stage, we believe in science.” It never felt mean and we all laughed together.

Events in my life and lives of those I love have changed my perspectives on many of Tweedy’s songs. I can see the ghosts of family – and all it means – across the entire discography. The familiar emotions are still there, but the journey from No Depression to Cruel Country becomes easily couched in the experience of childhood, parenthood, marriage, and friendship.

Making a family and having a family are different things, and they mean different things to all of us; how we interpret the world is the only true expression of individuality. In his book and across conversations, Tweedy has articulated that so much of his early writing was to or for his mother, in some way, or that she somehow haunted those songs. When I learned this, the idea of her became easy to find. And I found my own mother, my grandmother, and the ghosts of who I was (and am) throughout. Still, of course, we still resonate with the way Tweedy tangled with discontent, self-love/loathing, the constant aching discomfort of learning how to be.

And family kept mattering in the songs. Sky Blue Sky and very nearly everything that’s come since simmers with how-not-to-fuck-up-your-kids (and yourself) too much. And he does it with grace and humor, smiles and sideways glances, and so much honest love and fear. Love is the king, he sings on his last solo album. Love is simple, yet not always easy, he seems to say. But we do it anyway.

Across the two nights, he played a host of songs from his oeuvre, with only two repeats (“Jesus, etc” and “Hummingbird”, the latter following a request and Tweedy sharing that he’d “fucked it up” on the first night), including songs from Wilco, Golden Smog, his solo albums, a few that remain unreleased, and even one of those he wrote for Mavis.

He gifted the audiences a small selection of his “Wilco rejects” (from Warm, Warmer, and Love is the King); on the first night, he played just a pair – “Gwendolyn” and “Having Been Is No Way to Be”, the latter less common and both a personal favorite and a happy surprise. But on the second night, in a room where the songs rang with more clarity, he offered four, including a duo for/about his father: “Don’t Forget” (“we all think about dying / don’t let it kill you” – a perfect line) and the sweetly heartrending “Evergreen.”

Before the duo for his father, Tweedy introduced “Guaranteed” with a story about how he wrote it; he brought it to his wife as a lovesong, and read her the lyrics: “We’ve been through A lot / Me and you / Hospitals and bars / I know how it hurts / I’m a piece of work / And you’re a work of art.” She told him the last line was a little too much. As he finished the story, he shrugged, issued a half-smile, and started singing. When he sang the first verse for the audience, they laughed when the work of art became “and you’re no walk in the park”. Our laughter turned to something like a heart-filling sadness as he sang about the strength of loving in the face of tragedy, and when he ended the song with the quiet admonition, “don’t let your pain go to waste”, we all paused before we clapped.

And lastly, during the encore, he added, “A Robin or a Wren”, and when he quietly sang, “I’ll be alive” with the audience at the song’s end, it felt like a prayer, a promise, and a thank you all at the same time.

There is romance in so directly stepping into the past, to a place that once was, ceased to be, and is new again. The only real changes from the original 9:30 Club (of which Atlantis is a replica) are its location, its slight increase in size, its cleanliness, its smell, and the poles that are now blessedly vertical lights. In reflecting that he’d played so often at the old 9:30 Club, Tweedy exclaimed, “I’m old!” while bantering with the audience. He then listed the times he’d played at the old 9:30 Club, including 4 shows with Uncle Tupelo (opening for Dead Milkmen and Teenage Fanclub, as well as headlining twice), and just once with Wilco before the venue moved from F street to its current home on V Street. He joked that he doesn’t have a pole to hide behind anymore, but admitted to a little more comfort with being in the spotlight.

I wonder, here and now, if music is the easiest way to feel across and outside time. It shelters us inside our memories and gives space to relive them safely, so that we can experience them at that particular moment in a new way, to be transformed in the now and the then.

While I stood on the second floor of the Atlantis, looking over the stage, memories encoded in the music washed over me. I could see my kid-self listening to Wilco in my freshman dorm room, going to Record and Tape Traders to buy AGIB (and I think tickets to a show? Did that exist?). I could see my young adult self getting lost in The Whole Love, and then all of my older young adult selves seeing Wilco and Tweedy at Solid Sound across a half-decade.

And for me, the through lines of my experience are the people I love.
I see my brothers’ faces – given and chosen – and the faces of my parents.
I see my wife’s face, always the same and ever-changing.
I see my own face, the one I’m learning to love.

It might be true that “love” is Tweedy’s most-used word (noun). A half-dozen times, he sang, “This is what love is for” and “Our love is all we have” and “I’m the man who loves you” and “I’m always in love.” And yet, these don’t begin to cover the breadth of love in his songs. “I’m still here when you wake up to me” could be to anyone and everyone, including parents, lovers, children, and ourselves, while “remember to remember me” is the kind of enjoinder that begs for and promises the love that exists instead the act of remembering. Love might sometimes be wild and unfettered, but so too is it cultivated.

Tweedy mentioned his wife often throughout the night, still-smitten some 30ish years after they met. When he told the story about “Guaranteed”, someone in the audience cheekily asked if he was still married to her (after she criticized the lyrics). He responded quickly, “We’re more married than we’ve ever been.” Later, someone else in the audience yelled, “We love Susie,” and he said, “I love her too” as easily as breathing.

And when the audience shouted with admiration, Tweedy said he loves us, too, half-shuffling in that kind of smiling discomfort unique to Midwestern Americans. And in the encore, when he sang,