Wilco has been nominated for six Grammys (and won one in 2004, for Best Alternative Album, for A Ghost Is Born). ![]() In the wake of Uncle Tupelo’s demise in 1994, he founded Wilco, his main project for the past 25 years. Formed Uncle Tupelo, a band that pioneered the alt-country genre, in 1987. That lone word of approval felt like getting a favorable comment from a beloved teacher, written in red ink in the margins of an essay.įor anyone unfamiliar with Tweedy’s work, here’s a CV of sorts. “Right off the bat,” I told him at the start of our call, “I have to say that I read your book and I wrote a song. It’s like a cross between The Osbournes and The Johnny Cash Show. During the pandemic, Tweedy and his family have been putting on a weekly Instagram Live show called The Tweedy Show, where they sing songs and putter around the house. Tweedy called me from a lake house at an undisclosed location in Michigan where he was spending time with his wife Susie and their two sons, Spencer and Sam. While his lyrics can often be dreamlike, his prose is conversational and folksy, like a skilled storyteller teasing out a tale by a roaring campfire. In 2018, he published a memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). How to Write One Song isn’t Tweedy’s first foray into writing prose. I ironed a collared shirt and combed my hair for the call, but at the last minute his publicist informed me that the interview would be “audio only.” (I only mention this because, amid all the current tragedy and strife, I want there to be some record of a trivial hiccup with a publicist in a pandemic.)ĭuring our conversation, Tweedy, 53, was as affable as he is on the page: thoughtful and generous, kind and funny. After I wrote my song, I scheduled a Zoom call with Tweedy to discuss his book and my experience using his songwriting methods. In the book, Tweedy is an amiable songwriting teacher (who occasionally dishes out tough love when needed), and his methods and exercises work. Spoiler alert (I guess): I breezed through the slim 158-page book and, yes, wrote a song. So I was eager to see if Jeff Tweedy, of all people, could guide me back into a regular songwriting practice, starting with just one song. For the most part, we never bothered to record them. Our songs were surf-punk doodles, with titles like “Sternum Shredder” and “Seven Dollar Boots.” None of the songs by either of my bands has stood the test of time. In college, I fronted a more surrealist garage-rock band called Nuns of Summer. ![]() Most of our songs were either about a goofball friend of ours named Kayvon or about how hard we rocked (which in our minds was a lot). ![]() In high school, I played guitar and sang in a garage band called Mall Security. To be fair, I’m no stranger to songwriting, but the last time I wrote a song, the Black Eyed Peas topped the charts. Go ahead, he’d say, let’s see what you got. I imagined Tweedy, with his stringy hair and patchy beard, looking slightly bedraggled under a Stetson hat, standing 20 paces away from me in a dusty road outside an old saloon, with a guitar in hand instead of a six-shooter. Even though that title boasts a modest promise that Tweedy, one of the most gifted and prolific songwriters of his generation, will teach you the ins and outs of penning a single, solitary tune, I took it as a dare. So just imagine how my competitive spirit ignited when I saw that Jeff Tweedy, the beloved singer-songwriter who founded and has fronted Wilco since the early 1990s, wrote a new book called How to Write One Song. HERE’S THE THING about me: I live for a challenge. THIS PIECE APPEARS IN THE HIGH/LOW ISSUE OF THE LARB QUARTERLY JOURNAL, NO.2 9.
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