{"id":6864,"date":"2025-11-21T10:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/jeff-tweedy-live-in-indiana-were-not-gonna-indulge-any-more-balderdash-152244\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:40:19","slug":"jeff-tweedy-live-in-indiana-were-not-gonna-indulge-any-more-balderdash-152244","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/jeff-tweedy-live-in-indiana-were-not-gonna-indulge-any-more-balderdash-152244\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Tweedy live in Indiana: \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna indulge any more balderdash!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIs there something tense happening?\u201d Jeff Tweedy asks the crowd at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theatre in Bloomington, Indiana. Or, more specifically, he asks two warring factions near the front of the theatre: one party that proclaims very loudly and perhaps drunkenly that the \u201cdead\u201d crowd should stand up and dance to the music, and the other party that can\u2019t see around those standing up. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIs there something tense happening?\u201d Jeff Tweedy asks the crowd at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theatre in Bloomington, Indiana. Or, more specifically, he asks two warring factions near the front of the theatre: one party that proclaims very loudly and perhaps drunkenly that the \u201cdead\u201d crowd should stand up and dance to the music, and the other party that can\u2019t see around those standing up. <\/p>\n

Tweedy appears flabbergasted at the disruption, but barely misses a beat as he expertly defuses the situation. \u201cI appreciate you asking me, as if I\u2019m the one in charge,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI just work here, sir.\u201d When someone chimes in from the nosebleeds, Tweedy responds, \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna indulge any more of this balderdash,\u201d as he and his band launch into \u201cFeel Free\u201d.<\/p>\n

They were going to play that song anyway \u2013 the guitar tech has already brought out the appropriate instrument \u2013 but it\u2019s a perfect exclamation point to this strange conflict of concert etiquette. The song, from Tweedy\u2019s excellent new triple album Twilight Override<\/em>, is his version of Isaac Hayes\u2019 \u201cDo Your Thing\u201d or The Isley Brothers\u2019 \u201cIt\u2019s Your Thing (Do What You Wanna Do)\u201d, an exhortation to express yourself in whatever way seems appropriate to you: \u201cShave your head in the sink. Be brave, don\u2019t think.\u201d Like so many of Tweedy\u2019s recent songs, it\u2019s warm and funny and welcoming: a big-tent anthem by a guy who, as he tells those sit down\/stand up litigants, just wants \u201ceverybody to have fucking good time.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an egalitarian quality to Twilight Override<\/em> and this tour, which Tweedy has extended into the new year. The band includes his two sons, Sammy and Spencer on keyboards and drums respectively, along with their old friends Liam Kazar on guitar, Macie Stewart on violin, and Sima Cunningham on bass. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re spread out across the stage in a line, everyone visible and no-one obscured. The old guy takes centre-stage, of course, but often lets the young \u2019uns play and sing lead. Sammy grabs the mic to sing the heavy metal chorus of \u201cForever Never Ends\u201d, on which his dad remembers being his son\u2019s age and getting drunk at the prom. On several songs Tweedy steps back to let the band jam for a bit, as Kazar takes a guitar solo or the rhythm section destroys the coda of the Sukierae<\/em> track \u201cDiamond Light Pt 1\u201d. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the most unexpectedly poignant moment in the show is when Tweedy introduces his band, which he calls his \u201cextended family\u201d: \u201cI knew every one of the people on this stage when they were little kids. And two of them I knew before they were little kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

After seven weeks on the road together, this band are loose and limber, moving easily through these knotty grooves and bright choruses with a casual precision and a collective personality very different than Wilco\u2019s. For one thing, everybody sings. Their subtle but sharp vocal harmonies are some of the underrated joys of Twilight Override<\/em>, and they\u2019re even more prominent onstage \u2013 not a frontman and his backup singers, but something more akin to a family choir.<\/p>\n

But is it a tense situation? This band, like Tweedy\u2019s day-job outfit, savour the friction between beauty and distortion, between his precisely structured melodies and the scribbly passages on \u201cOne Tiny Flower\u201d (which opens the show) and \u201cNew Orleans\u201d. Tweedy warns us not to get lost in nostalgia on \u201cCaught Up In The Past\u201d, but every song seems to have some reference to one of his heroes: \u201cGet born in the USA,\u201d he exhorts on \u201cFeel Free\u201d. He has a song called \u201cCry Baby Cry\u201d, which shares its title with a White Album tune. And they end the set with \u201cLou Reed Was My Babysitter\u201d, whose krautrock verses barrel into a punk chorus that goes, \u201cThe dead don\u2019t die! The dead don\u2019t die! The dead don\u2019t die!\u201d<\/p>\n

His own love of music may be Tweedy\u2019s most enduring subject. It fuelled Wilco\u2019s first handful of albums, which sound conflicted about his relationship with music: rock\u2019n\u2019roll promises everything and delivers little. As much as he loved The Beach Boys and Big Star, he wasn\u2019t always optimistic. Especially after the recent release of the massive Ghost Is Born<\/em> anniversary boxset, which documented perhaps the direst moment in Tweedy\u2019s life, these new songs sound a little more hopeful, a little more settled, a little less immersed in that internal tension. With this band he\u2019s reaching out well beyond himself, curious to see how music affects a community.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it helps that he gets to share that music \u2013 his own music, his favourite music \u2013 with these younger players, who won\u2019t let him play the curmudgeon. On this current tour, they\u2019ve been adding songs relevant to whichever city they\u2019re in, which not only gives fans a unique setlist but possibly eases the tedium of touring. Here in Indiana, they cover \u201cDoing Something Wrong\u201d by Magnolia Electric Co, whose founder Jason Molina lived in Bloomington on different occasions and was signed by the local label Secretly Canadian. While Tweedy laments that he could not help the troubled artist because he himself was barely functioning at the time, he sounds so natural singing Molina\u2019s melodies and lyrics that he could easily do a whole covers album.<\/p>\n

The same can\u2019t quite be said for their version of \u201cI Want You Back\u201d by The Jackson 5 (who hailed from Gary, nestled far up in the north end of Indiana). After one false start, they all start trading off vocals, each band-member reaching up into their falsetto and trying to replicate Michael Jackson\u2019s liquid-mercury phrasing (Sammy Tweedy comes the closest). It\u2019s goofy and barely holds together, but everybody, especially Tweedy, looks like they\u2019re having a blast playing something they\u2019ve barely rehearsed. The sense of fun is infectious: nobody has to be told to stand up.<\/p>\n

SETLIST
One Tiny Flower
Caught Up In The Past
Parking Lot
Forever Never Ends
This Is How It Ends
Low Key
World Away
KC Rain (No Wonder)
Betrayed
Mirror
Stray Cats in Spain
Out In The Dark
Cry Baby Cry
Flowering
New Orleans
Diamond Light Pt. 1
No One\u2019s Moving On
Feel Free
Lou Reed Was My Babysitter
ENCORE
Twilight Override
Family Ghost
Doing Something Wrong (Magnolia Electric Co cover)
I Want You Back (Jackson 5 cover)
Enough<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Jeff Tweedy live in Indiana: \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna indulge any more balderdash!\u201d<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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