David Remnick: Amanda Petrusich is a music critic for The New Yorker. Recently, she sat down in our studio to talk with and hear some songs from Jeff Tweedy, one of the great songwriters working today.

Amanda Petrusich: Jeff Tweedy is probably best known as the lead singer of Wilco, the band he formed in Chicago in 1994 as pioneers in the alt country wave. In recent years, he's been working more often as a solo artist, putting out both books and records under his own name. This month, he's releasing Twilight Override, a triple album and a gorgeous, thoughtful meditation on time, aging, fear, and persistence. We're currently living through a moment in which cross-pollination between genres is incredibly commonplace, but for me, when I first heard Wilco, I was floored by the ways in which Tweedy combined a kind of punk scrappiness with that lonesome, yearning country sound. It spoke to the parts of me that were angry, the parts of me that were sad, and the parts of me that were ecstatic just to be alive, doing all the dumb, goofy, transcendent things humans do. His work still feels that way to me, as though it contains everything.

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Love Is for Love]

Amanda Petrusich: I want to just start by saying that I really, really love these songs. I find them incredibly tender and searching and close, and I think inherent to the way they were recorded. I'm curious if that quality, that closeness, was something you were purposefully working toward in the studio, or how you got that sound on this.

Jeff Tweedy: I have always, always gravitated towards the style of recording that's kind of documentary, almost. I want there to be elements where you feel like you can hear someone's fingers, or you can hear-- that it's a sound that was actually made in a room. All the things that I think are going to get harder and harder to fake.

[laughter]

Jeff Tweedy: I don't know, the kind of-- like when you play guitar, you don't really-- you can play the notes correctly, but you almost don't have any control over the squeaks and the buzzes and things like that. To me, that's the beauty of it. It's like it's not going to be exactly the same every time, and I don't know, I love it. Same with the voices. They're not affected in a lot of ways, and there's a lot of group singing around one microphone and a lot of choral singing on the record, which is important to me, too.

Amanda Petrusich: The opening of Cry Baby Cry almost sounds like it was recorded in the back room of a bar. What is that? It sounds like a party.

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Cry Baby Cry]

Jeff Tweedy: It was recorded in my hotel room in Dublin across the river from the bars getting out in downtown Dublin. Those people were all the way, like at least a block away, that you can hear. It was a nice night, so I had the windows open. I honestly, to begin with, we did both. We overdubbed on the one I recorded in my hotel room, and then we recorded a whole new one in the studio, and I kind of liked them both. Then we stumbled upon that transition that feels really satisfying to me, where all of the ambience kind of goes away and you're in a different room at a different time. You know?

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Cry Baby Cry]

Amanda Petrusich: It's a triple album, 30 songs. I'm curious how that came to be. Are you always writing this much material?

Jeff Tweedy: It's whittled down from five albums, so-

[laughter]

Amanda Petrusich: This is in fact the condensed soup.

Jeff Tweedy: -this is the edited version of it. I like going to work every day, and I like having a practice of writing and that tends to provide a lot of material. There was an inspiration to make a triple record. Just kind of like just to fly in the face of how short everything is getting, and how fast everybody wants everything to be. You don't have to listen to it in one sitting. I think the songs, hopefully, stand on their own, but I do like the idea of giving someone almost two hours to be pulled along by an outpouring of songs.

Amanda Petrusich: It feels almost like there's like a little bit of a punk rock. A thread of defiance through this, which is it is almost a sort of resistance to modern life or the way we consume culture now.

Jeff Tweedy: It's driven by a belief in individuated self-expression. That that's a really essential part of rock and roll, it's an essential part of art, in my opinion. It's a continuation of an art form to me, that is defiant. It grows out of a music that was formed around the inspiration and genius of probably the least free of our fellow citizens. I think that's what resonates to me still, is that it's like the best expression of what the dream of America, an American ideal, would be. The individualism, the liberty to be yourself, to think freely.

I don't know. It's not just America. The world pushes against that, I think. When you think about how the internet works, it really is like a conformity machine. It's really efficient with that.

Amanda Petrusich: It flattens everything.

Jeff Tweedy: Yes. I see the value in it. I see the value in people finding each other and how lonely it can be, but I don't think it supplants real community in a way that it is beneficial to people. I think that we should get better at forming communities. That's what this record is also, to me, is spending time just basking in a little community that we've put together for this band, that actually feels like it's a part of a bigger community in the Wilco fan base and my fan base. That's another, like, a reason it's triple record. In a lot of ways, it's like, "Oh, if you're in, you're in. You want to be with us? Let's catch up."

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. The size, too, feels significant, but necessary. As you were saying, the vastness of it feels like an essential part of how it works. Each track feels like it's in conversation with what happens before and what happens after. Does it feel that way for you, too? Like, if you took one song off, it would-

Jeff Tweedy: Yes, I've made single records that feel longer to me. I'm not saying I'm not proud of those records, I just think that I've made records that have an intensity to them, that it kind of wears you out a little bit.

Amanda Petrusich: Which ones are you thinking of?

Jeff Tweedy: I mean, to me, even Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has an intensity to it that feels sort of all at once when you listen through it. It can be laborious if you're not in the mood for the whole, I don't know, to just be in that world for that long. This one doesn't feel long to me at all.

Amanda Petrusich: I did want to ask you a little bit. When you're writing, how soon in the process do you know whether this will be a solo song or a song that could be on a Wilco record?

Jeff Tweedy: In general, anything I write can end up anywhere. I did specifically write a lot of these songs for these voices that I knew I was going to sing them with, and really challenge myself to sing songs that had longer held notes. It's not something I'd gravitate towards. I think there's a subject matter that comes easier to me in thinking about it in the context of a solo record than in the identity of a band. I don't think that I've shied away from having personal topics on Wilco records, and things that I relate to deeply, but there's something a little bit more autobiographical and willing to share it as not as a character, but this is just me singing.

Amanda Petrusich: Are there particular songs or artists or albums that you think, "Well, this is a panacea for me. This works whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or freaked out."

Jeff Tweedy: Well, yes. Lou Reed Was My Babysitter is a song on the record, and it's because I had loaded when I was nine years old, or something. It was part of the record collection I inherited from my brother. I've been listening to that record almost 50 years. I'm still sort of captivated by it. When I was growing up especially, it wasn't revered as an important Velvet Underground record. The fact that Doug Yule sings a bunch of songs that took me years to figure out it's not Lou Reed.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, yes, yes. Me, too, actually.

Jeff Tweedy: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: Can I ask you to play a little bit of a Velvet Underground song?

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Who Loves the Sun]

Jeff Tweedy: That's, I don't know, I think--

Amanda Petrusich: Oh my God.

[laughter]

Amanda Petrusich: So beautiful.

Jeff Tweedy: That's such a cool song.

Amanda Petrusich: Lou Reed Was My Babysitter is also one of my favorite songs on this record. On that song you're really channeling Lou, and not just in your phrasing and delivery, but I think, as you were saying, that song's kind of freedom and attitude.

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Lou Reed Was My Babysitter]

Jeff Tweedy: I don't know, you want me to play the whole thing? I can play you the whole thing. You know it.

Amanda Petrusich: [laughs] I mean, yes, I do, but we can keep talking. I really love the album title. You wrote a little in the album release notes about the word twilight, which I agree is a beautiful word and a sort of melancholic idea, too. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that. Twilight Override. What does that mean to you?

Jeff Tweedy: Yes, the idea of making peace with something ending. Overriding the dread of, if we're looking at the word override, what am I overriding? It's not just-- I mean, twilight's beautiful, so you're not really needing to override that, but you need to override your fear of it. Also remind yourself that twilight, if you wake up and you don't know what time of day it is, it could be sunrise. I'm 58 years old, I would say that that could conceivably be thought of as a twilight. I love that I have something to share with my kids. I love that I have something to share with my kids' friends, and bands I meet, and younger bands.

I love getting to be, hopefully, something to them that I wish some of the bands I really admired had been for me. That's like kind of a guiding principle, is what didn't happen that I wish had happened? When I opened up for somebody, I was like, "Well, one thing for sure is really easy to do, is go say hi."

Amanda Petrusich: Right. Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: A lot of people didn't. It was like, I understand. It was just, you're busy. You have to make a conscious effort to do it.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Your sons are both on this record. That idea of kind of passing a torch. I don't know, taking a minute to say like, "Hey, thanks for being here. This is what I know about this weird work." Do you feel like being a parent gave you that instinct, or helped you hone that instinct of like, "I'm going to show you maybe how this works and try to make it easier for you"?

Jeff Tweedy: I don't know. I feel like I would-- I still probably turn my kids onto more bands than they turn me on to, because I listen to-

Amanda Petrusich: Good for you.

Jeff Tweedy: -a lot of music. Everybody assumes, "Oh, your kids are telling you about this." Like, "No, it's pretty back and forth these days." Just maybe my comfort level around people their age is enhanced by my fatherhood. [laughs]

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: I think it's more really rooted in a sense of gratitude that I've been able to do this thing that I love and I get to do for so long, I think there's a part of me that wants to feel like I deserve it. When you, hopefully, modeling behavior that is accessible to someone else and also presents an idea of a good strategy for living or coping.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. I mean, that reminds me of the word override, too. Because, in a sense, you're trying to, not right the wrongs of the past, or the people who were maybe less friendly than they should have been to you, but-

Jeff Tweedy: Yes, override's a word that we use, and I mean, I'm sorry to get back that, but we use in computer programming.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, of course.

Jeff Tweedy: We're probably more aware of that word from that world.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, certainly.

Jeff Tweedy: So I wanted-- it's like kind of appropriating it and turning it back on the technology itself or something. Like, "I want to override this. I have the ability to override this by singing a song."

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: Because I can't be scared when I'm singing.

Amanda Petrusich: That's true for you, that you can't sing and be afraid at the same time?

Jeff Tweedy: I think so, yes.

Amanda Petrusich: That's amazing.

Jeff Tweedy: I mean, have you ever tried it?

[laughter]

Amanda Petrusich: You don't want to hear me sing, Jeff. No, but I know what you mean, actually, because you're-

Jeff Tweedy: It's like a lot of people would say the same thing about laughing.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: I do think that's true, because it grounds you in the present. It grounds you in the moment. We borrow a lot of fear from our imaginations.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: Overriding that and trying to use my imagination to, again, reject that, and hopefully, make something that I can keep singing. [chuckles]

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. We talked a little bit about-- you spoke a little bit about aging. I mean, you're still pretty young, 58, but it seems like it's all over the album. The idea of time and change and-- I don't know. The question of like, "Well, do we lean into that or do we resist that?" Is aging something you've just started thinking about more recently?

Jeff Tweedy: My wife has been through a lot of health issues for the past 16 years or so. It may be, actually, since I met her. Multiple cancer scares and treatments and things like that. So, I associate that with aging, even though that's not-- she was pretty young when the first cancer was diagnosed and surgically removed. The biggest concern with aging, to me, is obviously your body. Having your body stay in service of your desires. Just being more aware of our body's fallibility, something like that. If time is represented a lot on the record, which I think it is, in some ways I think I tried to organize the record as past, present, and future, with the three discs. It was certainly on my mind, but I don't know anybody that isn't like, kind of obsessed with time.

Amanda Petrusich: Of course.

Jeff Tweedy: Yes, it pushes in on all of us.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, and that idea of sort of hovering, and I don't know, you look at the rest of your life and you think, "All right, I've got a third act coming. What do I want that to look like?" That idea of imagining a future, which is an inherently sort of hopeful thing. Right? To think about how you want to spend the rest of your time.

Jeff Tweedy: Right. How different time feels post-pandemic.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: That shock to the system seems to have really reset our relationship with time.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Yes, I agree. I feel like we don't talk about that enough. There is this sort of strange kind of foggy collective, like denial. [laughs]

Jeff Tweedy: In my opinion, everybody is walking around traumatized.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: Without talking. Yes, literally without talking about it, but it's like, to me, it's just a matter of fact, and with varying degrees of severity. The loneliness wasn't particularly bad for my family, because we were all in one house during the pandemic, but there were people that had their entire worlds turned upside down for a long stretch without any real hope in sight for quite some time.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. I mean, and that was another thing that I think also made us consider the system, like our bodily systems, and the sort of ways in which they can falter. One of my favorite songs starts out describing a prom night disaster. You're a kid in a tuxedo, you're throwing up on the side of the road, it's very awful, very hilarious, but then you sing the chorus, forever never ends. I'm always back there again and again and again. In what ways are you still living that experience?

Jeff Tweedy: I mean, always.

[laughter]

Jeff Tweedy: I just think that we always carry around those. Don't you-- I don't mean to turn questions back on the interviewer, but don't you have that where you realize that you're reacting to a certain situation and it's 100% informed by something that happened to you in the past?

Amanda Petrusich: Of course. Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: That you don't even put it together in the moment, but that you realize, "Oh, I'm not actually upset with the person that I'm talking to, I'm upset with my math teacher.

Amanda Petrusich: Right. Yes, yes.

Jeff Tweedy: Or whatever.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, yes. This is the great pleasure, perhaps, or sort of revelatory nature of therapy. I think when maybe you get led back towards like, "Maybe it's actually this thing."

Jeff Tweedy: Right. I think songwriting is a form of that in a way.

Amanda Petrusich: Of course. Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: Certainly, if you have a process that is more oriented towards self-discovery, there's something liberating about naming it. As like, "I experienced a moment of forever on the side of the road."

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Forever Never Ends]

Jeff Tweedy: Where it got really, really dark, and it's humorous, in a way.

Amanda Petrusich: Of course. Yes.

Jeff Tweedy: As a kid, I probably just assumed that things were going to work out.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

[laughter]

Jeff Tweedy: That's as close to despairing as you can be, and hopeless.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes.

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Forever Never Ends]

Amanda Petrusich: I remember PJ Harvey saying something to me about how much work the instrumentation does and the melody does in terms of providing more context for a story or more meaning for a story. When that disappears and all you have is language, it's a very different challenge.

Jeff Tweedy: For sure. Yes. Oh, yes. Words on the page. That's why rock lyrics generally, even by the people that we revere as great poets, tend to not look like great poetry on the page. Which is kind of interesting because some of the first things that we probably have to read were maybe written down with a melody in mind.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Yes, of course.

Jeff Tweedy: I think. It's because they are so helpful in memorizing something long. Attaching it to a melody, attaching it to a meter, made it so much easier to have a story be transmitted across time reliably.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Yes. That's a powerful-- I mean, that's a powerful force, too. On this record, for me, there's a really palpable thread of, just keep going. Maybe that's what you were talking about, of the structure of past, present, and future. In this sense that life is long and hard and incredible and surprising and, man, you just got to see what happens next. Don't stop. I'm curious if that feels true to you, that subtext of the record. If yes, how you got there. How you got to a place where you thought like, just one foot in front of the other.

Jeff Tweedy: I don't know if I got there. It's just like, just surrender to it just being the facts. I have panic disorder. One of the things that comes with that is feeling like you're never going to be okay, and then you are. I've seen people facing circumstances much more harrowing than I'll probably ever face in my life, with a lot more resolve and fearlessness. I've been fortunate enough to work with Mavis Staples a lot in my life. Like, several records. She lives in Chicago. I always think about her history, the history of the movements she was a part of, her family history, and her joy that is not put on at all. It is so rebellious to me. Defiant. It's like, dance at them. Dance at the bastards.

[laughter]

Jeff Tweedy: I have a lyric on the record, and I was like, not to quote-- [chuckles] that's what we're here for.

Amanda Petrusich: Please. Yes, that's what we're here for.

Jeff Tweedy: I want to dance right into the light. Instead of seeing the light at the end of your life and thinking, "Oh, like--" I do want to be like, "Oh, yes, here we go. Let's--" [chuckles]

Amanda Petrusich: I love that.

Jeff Tweedy: I'm ready.

Amanda Petrusich: That's almost a response to that Dylan Thomas line, right? I think it's Dylan Thomas. The rage, rage against the dying of the light. To [crosstalk]-

Jeff Tweedy: Yes, for sure.

Amanda Petrusich: -instead. Yes, dance right in.

[laughter]

Jeff Tweedy: It's this way, guys.

[laughter]

Amanda Petrusich: I love that.

Jeff Tweedy: The conga line.

Amanda Petrusich: [laughs] Just going to limbo right on into the afterlife. Jeff, I can't thank you enough for this conversation today and that music.

Jeff Tweedy: Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Amanda Petrusich: Such a pleasure.

Jeff Tweedy: It's an honor to be here. Thank you.

[MUSIC - Jeff Tweedy: Love Is for Love]

David Remnick: Jeff Tweedy's Twilight Override comes out this month. You can read Amanda Petrusich on music@newyorker.com. You can subscribe to The New Yorker in that very same place, newyorker.com.

 

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