wilco summer tour dates

BANDS should probably take more comfort from the premature leaking of a much-anticipated album. Ultimately, it means your fans love you so much they can't wait.

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, whose new record Sky Blue Sky has been sampled by thousands of fans worldwide in recent weeks, reckons any band that thinks otherwise is denying the very reason for their existence.

The internet proved to be the stopgap outlet for the band's breakthrough album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in early 2002, after their label Reprise refused to release it and before Nonesuch Records picked it up.

"In terms of being surprised . . . we really expect it at this point," the lauded singer-songwriter says.

"I think it is antithetical to being a musician to expend any energy on stopping people hearing their music.

"I have no idea of what the percentage of people who would decide not to buy your record after it leaked would be. If you are making something that you really believe in, then you have a choice of a lot more people hearing it and falling in love with the band (when it happens).

"Anyway, most people really want something a little more substantial than ones and zeroes on a hard drive."

Wilco have always offered something more substantial, both live and on record since Tweedy formed the alternative rock band from the ashes of seminal alt-country outfit Uncle Tupelo in 1994.

After Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's success in the mainstream charts, the band followed up with the Grammy Award-winning A Ghost Is Born.

Its 2004 release was slightly delayed while Tweedy received treatment for an addiction to migraine painkillers.

Guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone joined Wilco's touring line-up after Tweedy recovered and are represented on Sky Blue Sky, which is out in May.

Tweedy is effusive about how this incarnation of the band – which also includes John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche and Mike Jorgensen – has contributed to his creative and emotional wellbeing.

"Trading your health for creativity . . . it's a common mistake," he says.

"People have had it beaten into their heads that there's some struggle or suffering that must go with the creative process. I'm convinced that is a self-perpetuating myth. And it seems to be what our cultural obsession with celebrity is about."

Sky Blue Sky is the sound of a band looking up, literally and figuratively, and that is reflected not only by its title but the album's abstract artwork of a falcon chasing a flock of starlings.

"Everyone is obsessed with what's going on in the foreground and the blue sky, it's always there. It sounds very sappy but . . ." he laughs quietly.

"You look at a falcon chasing a starling and it's violence and movement and death and survival but there's a constant there. You have to look past what's going on sometimes and that's what the whole record is about."

It is also the sound of consensus, a state which is virtually impossible to achieve in a band of six members, all of whom are accomplished musicians in their own right.

"We weren't high-fiving all the time," he laughs.

"When you listen to the record, I feel very proud of the fact you can hear everyone's personalities on every song. They are all kicking ass," he says.

Wilco play The Tivoli on Monday April 16. Sky Blue Sky is released on May 19.

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April 12, 2007 - 10:21am — duncan

Re: wilco summer tour dates

Good article, it's good that they are not getting worked up over the album leaking out. I think he sounds a naive when he said "Anyway, most people really want something a little more substantial than ones and zeroes on a hard drive." There is a generation behind him that will not know any other way to listen to music other than playing ones and zeroes on a hard drive.

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