After more than 30 years together, Wilco still puts on a hell of a live show.
Waxahatchee opened the concert with a full backing band, including Jeff Tweedy’s son, Spencer, on drums. Her 45-minute set included songs from her last two studio albums, Saint Cloud and Tiger’s Blood, though she did throw in her newest single, “Mud,” which was released in March.
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Wilco took the stage around 8:45 p.m. — Jeff Tweedy casually waving to the crowd, wearing a bright red button-down shirt, dark jeans, and a denim jacket. They launched into “Spider (Kidsmoke)” and then “Wishful Thinking,” from the band’s 2004 Grammy winning A Ghost Is Born.
The band played some newer songs, such as “Evicted” from 2023’s Cousins and “Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull” off of 2022’s Cruel Country. But they knew everyone was there to see Wilco play their classic, older stuff, which Tweedy acknowledged as he nonchalantly introduced the more recent material. And they didn’t disappoint, blazing through “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” “War On War,” and “Jesus, Etc.,” balancing the old with the new.
One of the highlights of the show was guitarist Nels Cline, fresh from an afternoon side gig at the local community performing arts theater Barking Legs, ripping through “Impossible Germany.”
Being Mother’s Day, Tweedy dedicated “I’m My Mother,” from Cruel Country, to all of the moms in the audience, and to those who were missing theirs. “I miss mine,” he said.
The theme of the night seemed to revolve around the passage of time. Before they played the next two songs—“Box Full of Letters,” from the group’s first album, 1995’s A.M., and “Annihilation,” from their 2024 EP Hot Sun Cool Shroud — Tweedy told the audience that they had been playing them together lately to show their artistic growth over the years. “The capo goes from here to here. The Beatles didn’t do that,” he said, referring to the small device on the fretboard of a guitar that changes the pitch of the instrument.
Tweedy, noting how nice it was to be back in Chattanooga, shared a story about passing through on a family road trip to Florida when he was 8 or 9 and visiting one of the city’s most famous tourist attractions, Lookout Mountain. “I don’t remember Florida, but I remember Chattanooga.”
Throughout the show, Tweedy took note of how far along we were in the evening. “We’re getting close to the end,” he said. The audience, unhappy with that, heartily booed, to which he responded, “I mean in general.”
When the lights did go down and the band waved goodbye, we knew there would be an encore. They reemerged to play four songs, starting with “California Stars” from their 2001 collaboration with Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue. Ensuring everyone that the show was finally over this time, Tweedy announced, “Okay this is it!” and ended with the rousing “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” from Being There. An appropriate choice, reinforcing the idea that the older we get, the more we should take stock of how far we’ve come.
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