{"id":896,"date":"2017-06-27T14:18:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2026-06-27T14:22:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T14:22:26","slug":"wilco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"Wilco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

November 2002, Carefree Theatre, <\/strong>West Palm Beach, Fla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cJust so you know, this is not the movie,\u201d Jeff Tweedy said to the seated audience before him. \u201cYou can stand if you want. In fact, we wish you would.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day before the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart<\/em> was playing at this same place, which served as a movie theater when not hosting live shows. The documentary details the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em>, Wilco\u2019s stunning 2002 album, but on this night, standing in the place of the screen, was the actual band. And Tweedy wanted the audience to acknowledge it.<\/p>\n

Which they did, but not before sitting mesmerized by the song \u201cI Am Trying to Break Your Heart,\u201d which Wilco played to a tee with all its assorted bells and whistles. When the show was done \u2014 all 25 songs of it \u2014 I was hooked. I came into this show as a casual fan and left a full-on convert.<\/p>\n

I found Wilco because of Billy Bragg and the Mermaid Avenue<\/em> album collaborations, but for some reason the band itself didn\u2019t impress me at first. Odd to think about it now \u2014 Summerteeth<\/em>, Being There<\/em> and A.M.<\/em> being such strong albums \u2014 but it took Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em> to pull me in, which I imagine it did for plenty of people. It\u2019s clearly one of the finest albums of the 2000s.<\/p>\n

On this night Wilco played a good chunk of it (nine songs), sprinkling in seven songs from Being There<\/em>, three from Mermaid Avenue <\/em>and Summerteeth<\/em> and one from A.M.<\/em> Amid the mix were the quiet gems (\u201cHow to Fight Loneliness,\u201d one of the greatest quiet songs ever), the sing-alongs (\u201cHeavy Metal Drummer\u201d), the rollicking crowd pleaser (\u201cCalifornia Stars\u201d) and the one for the long-time fans (\u201cCasino Queen\u201d).<\/p>\n

I remember watching the band roll through \u201cCalifornia Stars\u201d admiring how tight and well-connected they were. A week later I would see the documentary, which painted a different picture, but time moved on since the filming and everyone just moved on. Tweedy, who has reached somewhat of a cult status at this point, wasn\u2019t a domineering front man, but you could sense he was in charge.<\/p>\n

It was another one of those times I caught a band at its creative apex \u2014 touring on what would be its best album with the confidence that embodies. How great is it for an established band to come into a show having people wanting to hear the new songs (though I\u2019m sure someone in the audience wanted to hear nothing but songs from Summerteeth<\/em>). Ultimately Wilco would make everyone happy on this night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 2002, Carefree Theatre, West Palm Beach, Fla. \u201cJust so you know, this is not the movie,\u201d Jeff Tweedy said to the seated audience before him. \u201cYou can stand if you want. In fact, we wish you would.\u201d The day before the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart was playing at this same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[136],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-wilco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}