As a four-piece with Bailey Wollowitz on drums and Al Nardo on second guitar — check out Stereogum’s Band To Watch profile on the duo’s own band fantasy of a broken heart — Water From Your Eyes were still brilliant (and brilliantly noisy), with Brown looking a bit like Joey Ramone with their black hair and sunglasses (they also sported a Chicago Bulls jacket). They also got nothing but cheers for speaking up about Palestine.
One Sunday Evening
The crowd at Solid Sound is smaller on the third day for a lot of reasons — no Wilco, general exhaustion, people having kids or jobs or trains and planes to catch. But in some ways Sunday is the essence of the festival, the day for Wilco side-projects and some of the best wild cards (like Young@Heart, Miracle Legion, and Halvorson/Fujiwara), and the comedown of Jeff Tweedy’s final set.
But first, on the big stage, there was Iris DeMent, joined by bassist Liz Draper and guitarist (and singer-songwriter in her own right) Ana Egge. The country folk legend held the then-sunbaked crowd rapt with her impossibly wise and beauteous warble, while telling stories of John Prine and (of course) closing with “Let The Mystery Be.”
DeMent frequently referred to that evening’s Wilco set, not realizing it was actually Jeff Tweedy & Friends on the schedule. But it made more sense for her to open for Tweedy & Friends anyway, since the Wilco frontman’s solo sets are a bit more folk and country. Jeff and Spencer Tweedy have led this working band for years now, and it’s one that also includes Liam Kazar, Finom’s Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham, Sammy Tweedy, and guitarist James Elkington (who stole the show in the same way that Nels Cline does with Wilco, albeit in more of a Clarence White way with this band).
They’ve got a record coming soon, and one of several new songs, the ‘70s-ish “Feel Free,” went over big, especially with an applause line of “Feel free/ Let It Bleed or Let It Be/ John and Paul/ Mick and Keith.” Tweedy also kept apologizing for the fact that so many of his songs were about death — “We were supposed to be playing Glastonbury right now, but then they heard the songs and said maybe you should stick to your own festival” — but they’re also about life and love, and survival as much as mortality. At Solid Sound 2019, Scott McCaughey played the festival with the Minus Five on his first full tour after suffering a stroke, and joined Tweedy for the song that namechecks him, “Let’s Go Rain.” Then it actually rained. Followed by a rainbow. “Stupid rainbow,” Tweedy said at the time.
You’d think there’d be no way to top that, but McCaughey did, popping out of the wings stage left as his old friend sang his name, triumphantly thrusting his arms in the air to great applause, and then reappearing for a post-song hug.
“That’s the best sit-in of all-time,” Tweedy said.
