Over at WaPo's Click Track yesterday, pop critic Chris Richards asked his readers to explain to him the allure of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who played a solo show at the Lincoln Theatre last night with The Autumn Defense. I'm betting that had he attended last night's show, the experience of Tweedy's emotive voice singing songs stripped of all extras would have erased his confusion.

The Autumn Defense is the side-project of Wilco's bassist John Stirratt and guitarist Pat Sansone. Theirs is a more decidedly more '70s California vibe (Gram Parsons). While Wilco has moved away from the steel-pedally sound that ran through early records like AM and Being There, Stirratt and Sansone are still doing it pretty well.

You can see the additional photos from both sets here.

In which Steve Kolowich, a Wilco devotee, and Ted Scheinman, a recent convert, discuss last night's show at the Strathmore.

Steve: Ted, you're a concert-going man. NPR has called Wilco "the best live band in America"; I've been talking your ear off about their chops for months; and your girlfriend has been burning CDs like it's her job to prepare you for the transfiguration you were meant to have undergone last night upon seeing the band play live for the first time. So my first question is: Did it live up to the hype?

Ted: First off, excellent reporting. It's true that I've been rotating Kicking Television on my wagon's negligible speakers for ca. six months now—partly out of laziness and mostly because of Nels Cline.

Who, incidentally, is a frightening figure to observe from the photo pit. His pinky finger is longer than my sister's hand.

So, yeah, lots of buildup. But they're definitely monsters in concert. The band covers so much ground—there's this loping thing with Tweedy in the middle, strumming unperturbed while Rome burns around him. From a bang-for-your-buck perspective, I can't bring to mind a band that maxes out the possibilities of live rock in the same way.

Though that acoustic set: dragged on a bit, no?

Steve: That seemed to be the consensus of the audience. You'll recall that at one point during that set, somebody in the crowd yelled "Turn it up!" Jeff Tweedy's response was my own: "I think you're sort of missing the point of this." The point being that after blasting us with "Bull Black Nova" and other noisy numbers, wouldn't it be nice to assemble a tiny living room on the foreground of the stage, let everyone have a seat, and take it easy with a warm, acoustic version of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?

The interlude also served as a good foil to what economists call "the diminishing marginal utility of Nels Cline's face-liquefying shreditude." I'm as entranced by the man and his alien digits as much as the next guy. But bear in mind that Wilco played three and a half hours; that's long enough to make anything lose its luster. Watching Cline wield a more delicate weapon for about an hour made it all the more satisfying to watch him rage against second-chair Pat Sansone during "Hoodoo Voodoo" near the end.

You've shredded an ax or two in your day, Ted. Who do you think won that battle? (Subquestion: Do you suppose when Woody Guthrie wrote "Hoodoo Voodoo," he'd have ever imagined it as a platform for a thrashing electric guitar contest?)

Ted: Yeah, the acoustic "Spiders" was definitely a surprise. (And, possibly, yet another instance of Tweedy fucking with us. Remember those Hawaiian windchimes in the coda to "California Stars"? What a cheeky bastard.) As for the chops-fest itself, I know you're siding with Sansone. My ballot goes to Cline, not just because he played more notes, but because during the call and response, he managed to fill each of his two-measure allotments with something more than nicely phrased blues-isms. Sansone was fantastic. But he sounded suspiciously like a Warren Haynes imitator in a roadhouse blues band. Whereas Nels Cline sounded like Nels Cline.

To answer your subquestion: I think Tweedy's cracks about Tea-Partiers would have offset Guthrie's distress at hearing his song so gloriously mangled.

I get what you're saying, pace-wise; if nothing else, the acoustic hour demonstrated that Wilco applies the same measured-dynamics approach to its concerts as it does to its songs. I also think that the median age of the audience (41?) meant that, when your skull wasn't getting rocked, you were getting contact sleepiness from the dude next to you wearing earplugs. (Also: Dude, really? Earplugs during the acoustic set? Are you gonna wear those to Jimmy Buffett in August?)

Steve: The dynamic between the band and the audience was amusing. The Strathmore is a beautiful, wood-paneled concert hall nestled deep in suburbia. And while Tweedy might be getting a little old for those skinny jeans he was filling out, I doubt he's accustomed to crowds that seem to have coordinated a country-club dress code, possibly via phone tree, so he couldn't help but make jokes about how he was worried they'd break the place and poke fun at our poor showing singing gang-lead on "Jesus, etc."

Also, some dude in the bathroom told me Rahm Emmanuel was on hand, entourage in tow. I can't verify that, although that guy in front of us who snapped at me for requesting "Handshake Drugs" may as well have been him. (What, not esoteric enough? Didn't stop you from dancing to it, friend-o.)

Assuming our audience is not as patient as Wilco's, we'd better cut to the closer: Highlight of the show?

Ted: Um, standing so close to Tweedy that I could've tuned his guitar?

I kid. Probably a tie between that final unraveling in "Via Chicago" and the time Tweedy ripped a Neil Young-once-removed solo for two minutes while standing on one leg. Also, it happened quick, but "I Hate It Here" got a great treatment last night.

How about you, old-timer?

Steve: Gah! I was going to say "Via Chicago." That song is Wilco's live show in a nutshell: It's soft, it's loud, it goes wild without ever losing control, and it feels like home.

But since you already said it, I'll go with "I'm The Man That Loves You," with Glenn Kotche leaping into the beat from atop his bass drum.

Thanks for the chat, Ted. Let's do this again—maybe loop in Rahm next time.

Photograph by Ted Scheinman

Two things about Son Volt’s new album, American Central Dust, to start: First, there’s little here Son Volt hasn't shown us before. Second, it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.

The record finds Jay Farrar back on the road, searching for meaning beneath America’s fingernails. He gives us grainy portraits of Rust-Belt Americans, portrayed with such reverence that one might imagine Farrar as a candidate for elective office were his paeans not so genuine (and irreligious). And Son Volt, which rose (like Uncle Tupelo before it) from the dust of troubadours, describes the land in the same terms as its forebears, and often from the same perspective: the seat of a moving vehicle, with America whizzing past the window.

It’s a seat the band has occupied since it first hit the road with Trace, in 1995. In American Central Dust, however, something’s different: The view from the car window is grim: “plastic bags fly from trees, proximos of cavalier progress / memories and landscapes in triage, disappearing averages, permanent changes.” They find the cities they love—Reno, San Antonio, Nuevo Laredo—“bleeding, but stubbornly shining.” Accordingly, the enthusiasm of Trace is gone; nothing on American Central Dust approaches the invincibility of “Live Free” or the exuberance of “Route.” Instead, Farrar gropes wearily for solidarity in this modern wasteland; for others—mechanics, drifters, dreamers, even Keith Richards—who, “like Leadbelly said, ain’t got no use for the bourgeois town.” The devil-daring attitude that Farrar set out with at the beginning of his road trip has dimmed. His original travel companions are gone, and the road is strange and put upon by unwelcome signs of change. One senses that Farrar's search has shifted from a quest for truth to a quest for the places where he used to seek it. His gas gauge ticking toward empty, Farrar will settle for a few familiar faces amid the ruins of the America he once knew. (So much for No Depression.)

But while American Central Dust is an extremely dark album, it is also a remarkably good one. Tragedy makes for good art, after all, and Farrar is right on cue with his devastating, axiomatic lyrics, uttered in that unceremonious baritone. The record has been panned for being the same, tired alt.-country rock Son Volt has tread for a decade and a half, executed tiredly. Critics point to Wilco’s acclaimed forays into electro-pop and experimental noise, and ask why Farrar’s lyrics and musicianship hasn’t evolved like former Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jeff Tweedy’s has. Tweedy doesn’t sing about the road anymore; his recent material—which has included ballads to his wife and a retrospective of his band’s sonic journey—bespeaks a man who has moved on from the road, both mentally and musically.

What critics who persist in measuring Farrar against Tweedy don’t understand is that as wonderful as Wilco’s transformation has been, it was never Son Volt’s job to change; it’s Son Volt’s job to stay the same while everything else changes—to remind us of how America used to be, and how we used to describe it. Let Wilco play with dissonance and smuggle out insight in riddles (what the hell are spiders doing filling out tax returns?), and let Son Volt celebrate the Old, Weird America with three chords and the truth. There's room for both, and we need both.

For his part, Farrar makes it clear in American Central Dust that he has no plans to renounce the road, no matter how many Wal-Marts they build alongside it. “Roll on with the dreamers / believers in the steel-eyed soul,” he sings on “Roll On,” a sedate but resolute tune that serves as the album’s thesis. Son Volt's America might crumble to dust; but to that dust, the band will always return.

Here's what our dear, dear Jule Banville–just gimme a sec to dry my eyes–had to say about tonight's musical offering at the Rock & Roll Hotel:

If Elizabeth and the Catapult hit its debut a touch sooner—and landed an iPod commercial, of course—it’d be Elizabeth Ziman, and not Leslie Fiest, singing with Tweedy on the new Wilco album. Instead, Ziman’s folksy, jazzy chamber-pop trio has built a loyal downtown following in New York, where Ziman grew up, and packed the Red and the Black last month at the start of the Taller Children tour.

JESUS! Did somebody say WILCO? WILCO ALERT! Lizzie and her Cat-o-pole playing music after the jump. Show deets right this way.

The critical buzz around Wilco’s latest, self-titled album has centered on the notion of identity. Some have heralded Wilco (the album) as a reclamation of the insouciance of the band’s early albums, while others—particularly City Paper’s own Aaron Leitko—have described it as a tour of the band’s sonic arc over the last decade. But aside the reflexivism of its latest studio release, Wilco at Wolf Trap on Wednesday reiterated what might be the band’s most enduring legacy: its ability to put on one hell of a live show.

Conor Oberst and his new entourage, the Mystic Valley Band, opened to a disappointingly sparse early-evening crowd. Perhaps the Wilco faithful hadn’t gotten the memo on Bright Eyes’s recent identity-tweaking, which has resulted in two wonderful forays into Americana, including a self-titled album of his own. Oberst hasn’t quite mastered the down-home look—he wore skinny jeans rolled to the shins above clunky loafers, along with boxy, unnecessary shades—but his lyrics were rife with roots symbology (religion, boardwalk romances, The Road, etc.), and the warmth of Mystic Valley’s jouncing chord progressions proved an unexpectedly nice vehicle for Oberst’s hoarse, often aharmonic voice. Barnburners such as “NYC–Gone, Gone,” “Moab,” and “I Don’t Wanna Die (in the Hospital)”—which seemed more suited to a sweaty juke joint—were lost on the thin, seated, pre-Wilco audience. Shame.

After entering to the theme from "The Price is Right," Wilco opened with “Wilco (the song),” the opening/title track from the new record. Whether the album is a mission statement or a cliff notes on the band’s evolution, the song exemplifies the band’s introspective turn. The lyrics play like an infomercial: “Do you dabble in depression? / Is someone twisting a knife in your back? /Are you being attacked? / Oh, this is a fact / that you need to know /… Wilco’ll love you, baby.”

There was a lot of love in the building. A group of fans near the stage at one point stood on their seats to reveal lettered tee shirts reading “Wilco (the fans),” prompting frontman Jeff Tweedy to observe, “this parenthetical thing has really gotten out of control.” [Indeed: The venue’s souvenir kiosk featured a host of meta-merchandise, including “Wilco (the tote bag).”] The notoriously prickly Tweedy, his babyface framed by a mess of a graying, scarecrow-like hair, was in jovial spirits as well: He indulged hardcore fans with “the most requested song in the history of our Web site”—a tune called “How to Fight Loneliness,” from 1999’s Summerteeth. To the subsequent applause, Tweedy quipped: “That sounds like 36 people…” He even let The Luckiest Fan in the World—some dude wearing a blue polo in the front row—strum his solo on “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” while he knelt at the edge of the stage and worked the frets.

Guitar solos, particularly those perpetrated by freakout artist Nels Cline, were the order of the night. The set list primarily featured those songs from the Wilco oeuvre that melt from easy-riding singalongs into lengthy, facemelting noise tantrums—notably Sky Blue Sky’s “Impossible Germany,” in which Cline collapsed about like a string-joint doll while Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone harmonized on the Allman Brothers-esque backing arpeggios, and A Ghost is Born’s “Handshake Drugs,” in which Cline, Tweedy, and Sansone collaborated on a dissonant shredding sesh while John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotche, and synther Mikael Jorgensen held together the basis groove.

These moments of still-catchy chaos were often punctuated by dramatic use of the stage lights, which would backlight the band as silhouettes against a single row of moonlike bulbs, smoldering like a landing spacecraft or a convoy of semi trucks. In one memorable instance, the lights went blinding white, illuminating Wilco in a gods-of-rock tableau centered by Kotche poised atop his drums, head thrown back, arms akimbo. Kotche then threw himself back down into his throne with a cymbal crash and launched the band into a rollicking rendition of “I’m The Man Who Loves You.” Ah, yes: love.

“The last time we played here was nine years ago,” Tweedy said at one point. “We were opening for Natalie Merchant.” Wilco’s stage charisma does well to mask the fact that the band is old enough to step back from itself far enough to make an “identity” album. But while the group’s discography is complex and variegated enough to stimulate bookish theses in critical circles, the experience of seeing Wilco perform live is a purely visceral one.

[To read Leitko’s insightful album review, click here. To see more of Brandon Wu’s photos from the show, click here. For post-show chatter on the Wilco forum Via Chicago, click here. For a sampling Wednesday's easy-grooving/face-meltification, see the embed below (more videos from the concert here).]

John Stirratt joined legendary alternative country pioneers Uncle Tupelo as a bass player in 1993 for their final release, Anondyne. After Uncle Tupelo's ugly divorce, Jeff Tweedy was awarded custody of Stirratt and they went on to form the much-lauded Wilco.

In a band that used to have a reputation for shedding members, Stirratt has remained a steady force on bass and vocals while collaborating on every Wilco release. He has also pursued other projects, such as a 2004 album with his sister Laurie Stirratt of Blue Mountain, and the band Autumn Defense with his Wilco band mate Pat Sansone.

City Paper spoke with Stirratt about Wilco's seventh studio album, Wilco (the Album) to be released on June 30. The band is scheduled to perform at Wolf Trap on July 8 with Connor Oberst.

Washington City Paper: It's not often that a musician can say they were there at the beginning of an influential musical movement like alternative country. What's your sense of the legacy left behind by Uncle Tupelo?

Stirratt: Well, I was a real part-timer coming in at the end, but it felt a lot like Wilco did in the early days, in that not a lot of people were coming to the shows [laughs]. It's been fun to watch people's interest with Uncle Tupelo grow over the years because when it was happening there was not that much interest. They continue to sell records, though, which is great.

Washington City Paper: As the longest serving member of Wilco, along with Jeff Tweedy, it's well documented the changes the band has gone through. What's the one thing you can point to that has remained the same in Wilco since the beginning?

Stirratt: Jeff's tunes and Jeff's voice as a centerpiece for the whole thing and how it allows for collaboration.

Washington City Paper: Has it gotten harder to work on other projects with your sister or Autumn Defense as Wico's popularity has grown? Has it helped Autumn Defense by bringing Pat Sansone into Wilco?

Stirratt: Bringing Pat in really did help, and it made the schedules consistent. I'd have to say that having a family has been the main factor in determining my time, and that's a good thing since you tend to do better work when you have to prioritize, as opposed to just wandering into the studio.

Washington City Paper: Considering Wilco's high profile support during the election for then-candidate Obama, is the band still politically engaged or have you put that behind you after the election? Have you ever had someone tell you they won't listen to your music because of your political stands?

Stirratt: [Laughs] I've heard rumblings, but no one has told me anything directly.

Our history with the president really is an extraordinary thing. We've known him since 2004 and he represents what we love about America. And it has been surreal how it all happened.

There are political minded members of the band who have not stopped paying attention to what's going on, but maybe the overt political messages and declarations from the stage will tend to happen only during election years.

Washington City Paper : Wilco (the Album) suggests there's no new overt sonic agenda. Even though Sky Blue Sky wasn't billed as experimental as you other releases, it still had a definitive sound. Did the impromptu nature of what transpired in New Zealand contribute to putting down an album of just....songs?

Stirratt: We were interested in getting the best sound we could get. There have been records in that past that may have had some limitations that are taken for a sonic agenda. We wanted the capability to go for a denser sound, a sturdier higher-fi sound with basic tracks on this release.

But every record does have a sort of story, and for this one we were in a very comfortable situation recording in the New Zealand summer when it was winter back home. We did strive to get the best sound, and Jim Scott's [Wilco (the Album) co-producer and engineer] fingerprints are all over it. There's also something similar since he [Scott] recorded "Can't Stand It" from Summerteeth. This is the first time we've recorded with him since that track. I loved his demeanor then and this record does reflect his sound.

Washington City Paper: Wilco has covered several bands — like Steely Dan and Big Star — do you choose a cover based on the influence that an artist has had on the band?

Stirratt: It's prompted by various elements. The Farrelley brothers thought of Wilco and that particular Steely Dan song ["Any Major Dude Will Tell You"] for a movie, so that was somewhat dictated to us, and covering Big Star's "Thirteen" for a tribute album was really indicative of all of our love for Big Star. It's different scenarios each time. But it is more of a request nature.

Washington City Paper: Sky Blue Sky drew some Grateful Dead comparisons, is there a sense that bands like the Dead have far more influence than previously thought?

Stirratt: The Dead may have a lot more influence on us than people may think, especially American Beauty through Terrapin Station. I have also had people tell me there is a certain timber in Jeff's voice that is reminiscent of Jerry if you listen real close.

Nels [Cline] grew up in California actively buying records at that time, and he would say he was more of a Quicksilver Messenger Service sort of guy, but I know those early Dead records so well and its really stamped on all of our DNA and almost innate now, the same as it is with the Rolling Stones. Though with Sky Blue Sky there were other influences as well that came from all of our record collections.

Washington City Paper: Do you feel successful in knocking down the album by album narratives constructed for you, like "the second best band out of Uncle Tupelo", "the band from that movie about how bad record companies suck", and "the band with a revolving door of members" by the virtues of focusing on playing and releasing music? Do you have a sense that you don't have to listen to the chatter any more?

Stirratt: It has been nice to leave that stuff behind and get to a state of what the band is now. This new record [Wilco (the Album] I have to say is really honest record and a good snapshot of where the band is. The current line up has a lot of room to grow and the sky really is the limit.

Washington City Paper: The band dealt with the leak of Wilco (the Album) by immediately steaming the album off the Wilco site. How much does thinking of piracy and the business side occupy you guys?

Stirratt: Well, we cast our lot with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and there really is no way to backtrack on that model. I think the principles behind that idea are sound—that if you have a good record it's going to be something people are going to want to buy later. The leak is almost part of the process now and you get ready for it and stream the album immediately.

Washington City Paper: Favorite song to play live on the current tour?

Stirratt: I'm looking forward to playing "Everlasting" and "Deeper Down" from the new album.

Wilco's new album leaked yesterday, a month and a half ahead of its release date–which actually isn't bad, considering the band's last two albums leaked two months prematurely, and the one before that slipped out nine months earlier than planned. But album leaks don't seem to piss off frontman Jeff Tweedy nearly as much as audience members chatting during live shows or band members asking for backpay, and Wilco reacted coolly by streaming the whole album on its Web site. (Link after jump...)

The album is self-titled, a tactic usually employed by new bands looking to optimize name recognition. For a deeply established band like Wilco, it may be more of an affirmation. Some have noted that this album marks a return to the playfulness of the band's earlier records. On this reading, the decision to call the album Wilco might have been an attempt by the band to reclaim this identity: We are Wilco, this is what we sound like. The opening track, also called "Wilco," is less a song than a mission statement:

Are you under the impression
this isn’t your life?
Do you dabble in depression?
Is someone twisting a a knife in your back?
Are you being attacked?
This is a fact you need to know (oh, oh, oh, oh):
Wilco’ll love you baby

I am reluctant to call the new record "playful," insofar as I am reluctant to force-fit any album–least of all one by so manic-depressive a band as Wilco–into the confines of a solitary adjective. Playfulness is certainly an ingredient in Wilco. (One might infer this from the album's cover–a Bactrian camel presiding over a rooftop cakewalk). But there are also plenty of melancholy slide howls, laid-back grooves, and at least one high-distortion noise tantrum.

What most struck me was not Wilco's buoyancy, but its sense of zen-like calm. "You Never Know" is an epistemological critique of the vanity of each generation that assumes it is the endpoint of history. "You and I," a pleasant little duet with Feist, reflects on lovers' inability to know each other's true depths, while "Country Disappeared" professes that it doesn't matter because we're all we've got regardless. "Solitaire" acknowledges the folly of pretense, which leaves Tweedy free to un-self-consciously conclude, in the final track, that love is everlasting. He plays like a man who has taken stock of life's uncomely truths and made peace with them. If Wilco comes off as playful, that may be the reason why.

Anyway, these are first impressions. I may have more to say once the album and I become more intimately acquainted. In the meantime, have a listen for yourself.

For some reason, everybody wants to make a movie about Wilco. The Chicago based band has been the subject of, or at played a significant role in, two full-length documentaries already. And during most of that screen time, the band is grumpy. Remember the scene in The Man In The Sand where singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy insists that Mermaid Avenue, Wilco's collaborative album with Billy Bragg, be re-christened Hard Feelings? Remember watching him roll his eyes while former guitarist Jay Bennett dithered with the mixing board in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart?

But Trixie DVD, the film production company founded by Brendan Canty (formerly of Fugazi) and Christoph Green, has had the good luck to catch the band in a better mood and, as a result, its contributions to the Wilco-film genre–including the Jeff Tweedy solo-tour DVD Sunken Treasure–have been among the finest.

This Saturday Ashes of American Flags, Trixie DVD's recently completed Wilco concert film, will have its DC premiere as part of the DC International Film Festival. Canty and Green were kind enough to speak with Washington City Paper about making the film, the reasons that they love Wilco, and why the band is less grumpy these days.

Interview after the jump:

Washington City Paper: So how did you wind up working with Wilco in the first place?

Brendan Canty: Well, it’s all out of love. Basically we were doing Burn to Shine series and we had made this one film together here [in DC]. It had Bob Mould, Evens, these other bands. My friend Bob Weston, from Shellac, said, “You should come do one in Chicago.” So we booked the whole day and I thought, “I would just love to get Wilco involved,” not only because they’re a big band and that helps everybody, but because they were putting out records like A Ghost is Born.

I had been listening to them for a couple of records, but Ghost really hit me. They were exploring more noise. That’s the interesting thing about the band. They’re a profoundly, like, traditional band, they can tap into old Americana. But that they were also adding this other layer on top of it, this noisy experimental avant stuff that made it really interesting to me.

When we finished that edit [of Burn to Shine: Chicago] I sent them a cut of it and they really liked it. Then we did Jeff Tweedy’s solo acoustic tour DVD, Sunken Treasure, and all the promo films for their last record. This is the first time they gave us the budget to go out and have 9 or 10 people on the road with us for 10 days. It was just a matter of building trust over a period of a few years.

But it all stems from the fact that we were intrigued by the records Jeff started to make. And when Nels Cline joined, that was perfect, just the greatest choice. He used to open for Fugazi in LA, when he was in The Geraldine Fibbers. Now he has this huge new playground of more traditional songs, but he’s more bracketed time, forcing him to be super disciplined.

The players in the band–Glen Kotche, Nells Cline, and Mike and Pat—that’s where this all comes form. That crew is really, to me, the best band n rock and roll right now. If you watch them as musicians…I’m just blown away by how much space they give each other. They really take the time to write songs, to write a setlist, and to play with some degree of purpose, some sense of arc. Anyway, that’s where all this comes from. Now you’ve got me gushing at how much I love their band.

WCP: Wilco had attempted to do a concert film before with filmmaker Sam Jones [director of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart], but the band chose not to release it. Why didn’t it work out? What did you guys decide to do differently?

Canty: You know why that was, it was because Sam was shooting on 35 mm. That requires a lot of lighting. It has to be a lot more staged and the lights get kind of bright. That can be disconcerting people on stage. When Fugazi did Instrument Jem Cohen brought these big lights out to Roseland and it felt really awkward on stage. What we did differently, which worked, is that we used all digital cameras. They’re much more malleable–you can adjust them on the fly to whatever lighting situation you have and be super stealthy. With Sam, it was super lit up and they looked stiff, they were stiff. This one, not so much.

WCP: In the movie the concert footage is broken up travel montages and interview segments, it’s not just a straight concert film. Why did you make that decision?

Green: Basically we just wanted, the idea was that if you shoot a single concert it’s never going to be very involved. We wanted to do something on being an American band. I was very influenced that Sigur Ros film Heima, it kind of shows what it means to be an Icelandic band. We wanted to show what it’s like being an American band and it’s hard to imagine a more Americana band than Wilco.

Canty: The reason why we put that stuff in there is that it’s hard to get people from once side to the other of a 1.5-hour concert movie. We’re not trying to make the Last Waltz, this is more of a road movie. We wanted a film that contextualized every performance environmentally and also geographically. There’s a lot of footage of the different states that they’re driving through. We booked in Cains Ballroom in Tulsa and the Ryman in Nashville–buildings I knew and loved from Fugazi and the band themselves knew and loved. Those served as a nice backdrop. That’s an important aspect of the whole process for me–that it’s not some isolated weird performance. It’s the getting there, the space, and the people. Also, we try to get the best performances and then sequence them in a way that makes people love them all the more.

It also gives you time. In a single concert film, you don’t have the time to sit with the band and get all the other information. That’s one of the most important aspects of this film. The last film about Wilco, it was all fighting, people were fighting all the time. This is sort of the answer to that. Everything is totally cool now, you see people with a lot of love and mutual respect.

WCP: With the interview footage, were there things you were specifically trying to coax them into talking about, or did you just kind of generate conversations on the fly and get some happy accidents?

Green: Well, a little of both. We had themes we were trying to get at, about America. Like, if you’ve been driving across America on how the towns change. But you never know if that’s going to take, if people are going to able to talk about it. I wouldn’t call it a happy accident, but we got the stuff about Nel’s neck fusing and Jeff losing his voice. It gives you a picture of what it’s like being a 40-year old rock star.

WCP: Wilco’s performances are usually more than two-hours long but the movie doesn’t quite stretch out that far.

Canty: I would never make a two-hour-and-a-half-hour documentary about anything. 1.5 hours is super long it’s hard to get somebody to sit through that. We tried to give it some sort of ebb and flow so you’re not sitting there getting hammered constantly, because fatigue is a huge issue with me. I know when I’m sitting there in a theater they get to the other side of that loud bit of “Handshake Drugs” or “Kingpin”, you’re grateful for the three minutes of talking because you can rest and build back up so you can start hearing things again. Because guitars, man, will fucking kill you, as far as I’m concerned. If I put the loudest most rocking Wilco songs in there for an hour-and-a-half I don’t think anybody would sit through it.

WCP: Did you worry about that breaking up the energy of the performance at all?

Canty: You know I really looked at the in between bits as trying to inform the performances. Like, that introduction piece about traditional music going into the Nashville bit–to me that’s really crucial, not so much for what he says just for the fact that he thinks about it. He thinks about his place in relation to Woody Guthrie or whoever. Then, when you actually see him at the Ryman in a cowboy suit playing “Via Chicago”–which is totally a traditional sounding song that totally deconstructs into absolute noise–to me, that’s totally interesting.

WCP: How much did the performances change from night to night?

Canty: Well, the setlist is always different. Also, the reason why we included “Impossible Germany” in the film is because that night they were having a little bit of a hard time. I mean, it was a long ass drive to Mobile, and it was almost a hurricane outside, and everybody was really whooped. But they hit this point during “Impossible Germany” where Nels did that solo and suddenly it felt like the whole mood of the entire set changed and they all woke up really quickly and the whole audience woke up really quickly. After that, it was a fabulous show to the end.

WCP: There’s a point in the movie where members of the band talk about the Walmart-ification of small town America. What made you want to include that?

Canty: The real estate boom has gone bust at this point or, at least, it’s ebbing. But at the time, a year ago, we were still at this point where places were being torn down to build condominiums all over DC and all over the nation. To me, that’s a threat to the things that I care about in this world. And if you’re out on a bus driving around the country six-months out of the year it’s the kind of thing that will drive you crazy. If you pull into a town and it’s the same as the last town and over and over and over again, then that’s a problem. Everybody has commented on it, it seems a little trite to even mention it. That is the view from the window of this band. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the view from the window of my house. I see these changes all the time across DC. I don’t want to be an old curmudgeon, but we are losing a lot of what made our cities great. From having driven across this country dozens of times it’s not symptomatic it’s actually the problem. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it. Maybe as capitalism fails us, we’ll have a chance of reviving the small town mentality that we used to have.