MPC: Honky Tonk Layer Cake

Pop-up tour diary day 2/8

Welcome to Metal Prism Chutes, an eight-day pop-up newsletter from the Wilco/Waxahatchee Southern tour.

At Southern Grooves in Memphis. Photo by Colin Croom.

Fill a reach-in cooler with Bud Light.

Build a bar around it.

Build three bars on top of that bar.

Do that in ten buildings on ten city blocks.

License the name of a platinum-selling singer and plaster his face all over.

Hire bands of local killers for every floor. Max out the PAs. Make them scream with a twang.

Open all the windows. Take them out of the frames, even, and the doors off the hinges.

Fly in ten thousand tourists.

Open the coolers.

Sell Bud Light for $9.

You’re the developer and sole proprietor of Broadway Street in Nashville, a nationally registered historic place. Congratulations!

We loved the show in Nashville last night, Wilco and Waxa alike. Sometimes the crowd and our bodies/hearts/minds just line up in a way to make an especially good-feeling show. (Luck Reunion was like that too.) I felt tight in the gut. I’ve written about this before but not here. I think a big part of playing music (just drums?) with feeling has to do with your gut, literally the muscles in your core. I think they relate to your spirit. That’s where you wind up and store enough energy to have something to give in the song.

It’s a funny thing, because I wouldn’t ever tell anyone to feel tense when they play music. You don’t wanna sound stiff or scared. But what I’m reaching for when we play is tension without tenseness. Tight tight tight and loose, a paradox.

As I think about it now, I’m realizing there might be an anatomical solution to the paradox. Your stomach is a knot, but your arms are spaghetti? Something like that.

But if you’re listening to me, make sure not to think about this too much, and don’t forget to breathe. And don’t tighten your body so much that the muscles in your neck stop the blood from reaching your head and you get a headache during the first three songs of the set, like I sometimes do.

After the show, a guy ambled up to my friends Chloe, Warner, and me on a corner on Broadway Street. Stetson hat, boots, beer-themed bachelor party t-shirt.

He held out a partially eaten hot dog, silently. Generous eyes. You want a bite of my dog?

No. But thanks!

P.S. Another update from Broadway Street, one year ago.

P.P.S. I just announced my first solo show in five years (?!), on May 30. A fundraiser for Brave Space Alliance at the First Church of Chicago in Hyde Park. Julia Steiner from Ratboys, Chet Zenor from Lucky Cloud, and Tory P-Lopez will be my band. Details below.