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[Live & On Record]

JEFF TWEEDY AND OLD 97’s:
OLDIES AND UPSTARTS

Maybe it was the fact that the opening act for Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s solo set a week ago Tuesday at Lilli’s was 19-year-old Ben Kweller, who looked and sounded not a day over 16. Or it could have been the scruffy beard that Tweedy’s now sporting. Either way, Tweedy looked every bit the part of the elder statesmen of alternative country. Of course, having cut his summer teeth as one of the two singing/songwriting forces behind Uncle Tupelo in the late ’80s before going on to found Wilco, sit in with the alt-country all-star band Golden Smog, and earn a Grammy nomination for Wilco’s critically acclaimed Mermaid Avenue collaboration with Billy Bragg, Tweedy is an Americana artist with deep roots. And he’s using this 12-city solo tour, which comes on a break between recording and mixing the material for the next Wilco album (due this summer from Reprise), as a chance to do a little digging back into his past.

The sold-out show at Lilli’s featured material from every stage of Tweedy’s career. There were a couple of promising new songs, a number of crowd-pleasing Wilco numbers (“She’s a Jar,” “Passenger Side,” “A Shot in the Arm”), the rustic Golden Smog folk tune “Please Tell My Brother,” and a pair of cuts from the two Mermaid Avenue discs (“Remember the Mountain Bed,” “Hesitating Beauty”). Most notably, Tweedy proved willing to raid the Uncle Tupelo songbook, offering up “Acuff-Rose” as an encore, even though he’d politely declined to play one Uncle Tupelo oldie by pointing out that it was one of Jay Farrar’s tunes. And, though he left Farrar’s Son Volt out of the list of alt-country luminaries he ad-libbed in the middle of one wry tune about a heavy-metal drummer, he did remember to include Uncle Tupelo.

Three nights later, on March 2, Lilli’s was again filled to capacity for an early performance by the young and rootsy Dallas foursome Old 97’s. The show was part of a promotional tour for the band’s forthcoming third album, Satellite Rides (Elektra; due March 20), and was billed as a listening party featuring a short set by the band, which can and does often entail as few as four or five tunes. When they went on a little before 8 p.m., singer Rhett Miller even warned the eager crowd that they weren’t going to get a full set, but Old 97’s went on to play for almost an hour.

The band mixed new tracks like the wistful rocker “Rollerskate Skinny,” the twangy “Bird in a Cage,” and the Western-accented “Up the Devil’s Play” (sung with a bit of a yodel by bassist Murray Hammond) with several older tracks. Whereas the live set was raucous and playful, the new album follows Wilco’s lead: rather than taking a straight and narrow view of countrified rock, it takes a more expansive view of the American landscape, drawing inspiration, for example, from the sunny California harmonies of the Beach Boys. Tweedy may want to find room for Old 97’s on his list of alt-country luminaries.

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: March 8 - 15, 2001