- You've played in Austin for a really long time.

Is there a favorite venue you like to play or somewhere you wish you'd go back and play again?

- I wish I could go back and play Liberty Lunch again.

(audience applauding) I mean... - [Interviewer] I think we would all like Liberty Lunch to be back.

- It was one of a kind, kind of place, right?

I don't know if we ever played another place that was kind of indoor/outdoor.

(chuckles) And some very memorable shows happened there.

But Austin's always been, like, extraordinarily kind to us and welcomed us from the very beginning, and Uncle Tupelo also.

But Wilco's first show was in Austin.

We played a show with a different name because it was in a really small place, but I think the first show as Wilco was here.

- [Interviewer] Well, this is definitely a home game for you and not an away game I will say.

Good.

Yes, hi.

- Hey, thanks for being here, Jeff.

I was fortunate to see Uncle Tupelo at Liberty Lunch, as you mentioned, and have great memories from that show.

So, I hope this isn't too delicate of a question, but I wanna know, do you still have any relationship with Jay or Mike?

- Not really.

I mean, I don't have any animosity towards either one of them.

Jay and I have had to discuss things occasionally over the years because we've put out reissues of the records and it's always been totally fine.

There's no rancor or anything like that, but it's not a close relationship.

And with Mike, I mean, Mike was always on a different, like, kind of, I don't know, Mike had a real job even in Uncle Tupelo, you know, that he wanted to stay at.

(chuckles) And, I don't know, I've seen him, I saw him at one of my parent's funerals and it's all warm when we get to see each other, you know?

- [Interviewer] Son Volt record comes out, do you listen?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I always wanna check it out.

It's always fascinating to me.

- There's another one.

I don't wanna be a microphone hog, but I do have a follow up question and that is, when you did an in-store at Waterloo Records as Uncle Tupelo.

When it was time for you guys to sign my album, Jay totally disappeared, never to be seen again.

Was that pretty typical of his behavior?

(audience laughing) Okay, that's a great answer.

- Good answer.

- That's a great answer.

- Smart answer.

Way to go.

All right.

How's it going?

- Pretty good.

- Look, it's Kurt Vile.

It looks like Kurt Vile.

- I'm Oliver.

- Hi Oliver.

- I've been to many, well not many, but a lot of Wilco shows.

As I've- - Speak into the mic.

- Oh, sorry, all right, am I good?

- Yeah.

- As I've gotten older, my dad has introduced me to a lot of your music and it's been, I'm a guitar player and it's been actually amazing.

And I had a question about you have a very specific style of soloing, almost like I go to "A Ghost is Born" immediately, like at least that's what you said, almost spasm-my guitar playing.

And I was at the show last night and I even saw some of it come out with your band.

And I was curious, how did you grow to find like your sound and that style and how would you recommend someone else growing to find their sound?

- That's a great question.

- Well, thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

I love playing the guitar, but I've never been really adept at absorbing other people's techniques.

So it's kind of the only thing that comes out of me to be honest.

And I think that I've made peace with that over time and given myself permission to play like that, even though I know it doesn't sound like somebody that's good at the guitar technically, (audience laughs) because I think it's emotionally pure.

And I think that the whole point of playing an instrument is to only sound like yourself and your technique is the only technique that matters ever.

Everybody can mirror someone else's technique, but if you figure out a way to say what you wanna say with a guitar and everybody knows that it's you playing the guitar, which I hope is the way people absorb what I'm doing on the guitar, I can't guarantee that.

But I think that if you hear me play a solo, you might go, "I think that's Jeff Tweedy," that's my goal.

I think that's what you should be doing with an instrument.

- Thank you so much.

(audience applauds) - Where did you get that shirt?

- (indistinct) the show last night?

- I got shirt last night at the Paramount.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Nice.

- An excellent shirt.

Hi.

- Hey Jeff, I wanted to ask you a question about a song.

A friend of mine was at one of your DC shows and they said that you said that the "Sign of Life" was the truest lyrics you'd ever written.

And I just wondered if you could explain a little bit about why you said that.

- Well, I say that occasionally when we introduce that song, "Sign of Life" 'cause there are a lot of little very deeply personal nuggets in that song.

But the one that I'm usually referring to, which is just kind of funny to me is, and nakedly honest is the lyric I hover above, buy it now.

(audience giggling) It's like... (audience laughs) that's what I think, you know, and, you know, people don't think of their songwriters and artists as being people tempted by online transactions, (audience laughs) you know, so it's a little bit of a nakedness that I think is honest personally.

- Who among us, right?

- Yeah.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- That's excellent.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- Hello.

- When you reflect on your journey as a musician, what is the thing you are most proud of or the thing that you think about the most in your upcoming to this point?

- I got to a certain point in my life like a little while ago, maybe 10 years ago.

And where I did, like we were talking about, I felt like all my dreams really did come true, and that's kind of crazy.

And so it causes a certain amount of reflection of like, how did I end up here?

Could I recreate this career if I wanted to?

Could someone else do it?

And I don't think so.

I think that the only part that I can take credit for is I do believe I've worked hard and I have a really strong work ethic, but everybody that gets to a position like mine, I think has had a certain amount of luck, a certain amount of good fortune.

Certain paths you took ended up being the right one.

And the only way I can say that I've played a part in having that good luck is I do think that the main driving goal in my life has been making decisions that create an environment for me to get to do this again tomorrow.

And that's the main... I've never wanted, (chuckles) I don't know, I've never made a decision based on how much, what's the most amount of money I can make.

Maybe I have made some decisions like that, but you know what I mean, like, not in the long term or, you know, what's gonna make me the most famous the fastest or something like that.

It's really the thing I've been most scared of losing and, you know, I'm concerned with preserving is my ability to do this and the, you know, create an environment where it's sustainable.

And so we've worked towards having our own studio, our own pressing plant, our own label, like just working through ways to stay self-sufficient.

And that's probably helped me a lot.

- Well, just thank you, to this question of luck.

What's the luckiest thing that happened to you in your career?

- Warner Brothers dropping us, I guess.

(audience laughs) - Right?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Right.

That's an excellent answer.

- Hey Jeff, thanks for taking my question.

We all got to witness, I guess, about two decades ago, the creative process of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" in a documentary.

I'm hoping that it wasn't as difficult to make this album "Twilight Override" with your family as that one was documented.

But I was curious about what the creative process was like working with your sons.

I was at the show last night, the sound was incredibly tight.

Everything, you know, flowed amazingly for those of us who were there.

And I'm just curious at how that compared, that process compared to creative process that went into this album.

- Oh, I couldn't fire my sons.

(audience laughs) That sounds really nasty, but no, it was not... It was a total labor of love and... Just to get to work for two years on this project with them, I respect and love their minds and how they think about music.

And so it's really invigorating to be challenged.

And then our extended group of people who were all on stage with us last night, who I've known all of them since they were little children and they've all grown into these genius musicians.

I think it's really, I don't know, it was just sort of really lovely, lovely time.

It really felt from the very first sessions for this record, like we had an achievable goal that we are all clearly focused on.

And that doesn't happen for myself even sometimes, it takes a while to get to that.

But this record really was laser focused for like two years of what it is we wanted to make and what it was gonna be.

And so, you know, they're just great collaborators.

- Congratulations to you.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming to the show.

- A couple more.

Sir.

- Hi Jeff.

I'm Eric.

- Hi, Eric.

How you doing?

- Doing well.

Yourself?

- I'm hanging in there.

- (laughs) So I'm a little late where I don't have a lot of the original pressings of the albums and stuff, but I do have reissues and box sets and I see on those, those were produced with Cheryl Pawelski.

And just wanted to ask, what was it like working with someone else to put out your or y'all's music?

- [Interviewer] And say who she is please.

- Cheryl Pawelski is an incredible archivist and she works with a lot of different people's archives and puts out incredible packages for lots of different artists of their archival material.

She's won Grammys doing that.

She won a Grammy with us for one of them.

I would go nuts if I had to do that job because she immerses herself in the past and the stuff that I don't want to spend that much time thinking about.

So it's just incredible good fortune to have someone like her interested in my music and our material.

She knows more about it than I do, and every once in a while I can help her answer a question, you know, she'll play something for me.

"Do you remember this?"

And I'm like, Nope."

(audience laughs) "I have no idea where that came from."

"Did you write it?"

"I think so."

(audience laughs) Yeah, and then I'll do deeper dives into notebooks and stuff like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I remember it now."

But those records wouldn't exist without someone spending that amount of time and love putting them together and it would not be me.

- [Audience Member] All right, that's great.

Thank you.

- I wanna say that also, by the way, I meant to tell you that this record actually similar to "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was filmed, a lot of the recording process and writing process of this record was filmed a lot of it.

So maybe we'll get to see how not dramatic it was.

(audience laughs) - [Interviewer] No plan for a documentary though?

- No.

- None yet.

Okay.

Two quick ones to end.

Yes sir.

- Hi, Jeff.

- Hey.

- How are you doing?

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for your albums being some of my best friends.

About two and a half years ago my father passed away.

Yesterday was his birthday, and I wanted to go to your show, but I decided to stay home with my girlfriend and just mellow in that.

One of the last songs I played for my father was one of your songs and it was called "Even I Can See," and so I don't have a question, but I just wanna say thank you.

- Oh, thank you so much.

- And I appreciate that so much and thank you for just being there in dark times, so thank you.

- I appreciate that.

I mean, thank you so much.

I'm really happy that... That's the nicest thing to get to hear from anybody about music, art you put out into the world.

I sang on one song a long time ago.

Is any song worth singing if it doesn't help?

And I truly believe that it's not worth singing if it doesn't help.

And so I try, and I actually think that one of the criteria for a song for me is to think that there's possible that it could help and actually to know that it helped me.

Writing songs helps me a lot.

So I think they kind of start with that kind of underlying purpose.

So to know that that has happened for anybody, I really appreciate it, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Appreciate it.

- Okay, last one.

(audience applauds) - Hi there, Mr.

Jeff.

- Hello.

- I had a quick question about you as a songwriter and your songwriting experience.

Whenever you're writing a song, whether it be a guitar riff or just lyrics, would you say you pull your inspiration from your thoughts or from your feelings?

- I don't know, I think that that's a process that I believe in that kind of suspends thinking and feeling and allows you to identify what you're thinking and feeling.

So it kind of feels like it's maybe backwards.

Like I don't really feel inspired a lot of the times I sit down to write, but I get inspired by discovering what I am feeling, what it is that has been underneath my thoughts and underneath my feelings.

Sometimes we have feelings.

We don't know why.

I think most of the time we probably are directed by feelings that we have not identified the source of.

And songwriting is a great gift to be able to know yourself a little better.

So I think that's the answer.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- [Audience Member] I agree with that as a songwriter myself.

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] When will there be another Wilco record?

- You know, we're always making music, so I don't know.

Could be soon.

Could be a year or so.

- Another thing you won't tell me?

- I can't tell you.

I think there's a clear idea of what we're gonna do with the next record, but it's... - Still a ways out.

- Still a ways out.

- Okay.

We are so lucky to get to spend time with Jeff Tweedy.

Give him a big hand.

(audience applauds) Good to see you all again.

- Thank you.