Jeff Tweedy knows the world is overwhelming. So, for his latest project, the vast and enthralling triple album he's calling Twilight Override, the Wilco frontman decided to overwhelm the world right back. Over the course of nearly two hours of music, he explores the wondrous and all-too-fragile miracle of life, from foolish (but kinda cool) childhoods, to the elusive nature of time, and all the ways small choices can lead to big moments. These are songs about simple joys in everyday life, and how you can still find and hold onto those joys even when everything seems bad.
Twilight Override is also about community and family. Tweedy recorded the album with his sons, Spencer and Sammy and a group of friends at his Chicago studio, The Loft. Along the way, he experienced loss and grief, and somehow came through it all full of gratitude and wanting more.
You can hear our full conversation from the All Songs Considered podcast with the "Listen" link at the top of the page and read edited highlights below.
Twilight Override is out on Sept. 26.
On the opening song, "One Tiny Flower"
"Well, it's a pretty improvised piece of music, and initially was a poem set to a piece of music that was flexible enough for us to not play it the same each time we tried to play it. So, we played it like three or four times. Each one was pretty different. But the overall poem was directed at the notion [that] somebody somewhere must have jumped over a tiny flower like we have the impulse to do sometimes and fallen to their death. Which is a crazy thing to think about. This impulse to preserve some insignificant-to-us [flower] ends up ending someone's life."
On seeing beauty in darkness
"If you look at the horizon at sunset or daybreak, that point where light and dark meet, that's what we all think of as beauty. That's where the beauty lives, in that space. It's blurry and leaks into it each other. There seems to be a clear line. And just above it, there's this sort of mysterious array of colors and we're drawn to it. It's symbolic in ways that we don't tend to even comprehend most of the time. But to me it's just a good example of how nature provides. Those two things are so beautiful next to each other."
On the song "Parking Lot"
"I couldn't figure out a way to sing this poem. I couldn't really figure out a way to put it to music until I came up with this piece of music. And then, I don't know, at some point it just struck me that I should just try and read this poem over this piece of music. And I did. I did it on acoustic guitar on my phone. And it seemed to work. It seemed to be kind of almost startling to me, too, to have to listen to my speaking voice.
"I feel I think about young little Jeff [referenced on this song] all the time. I feel very connected to that kid. I think that as an artist, that's kind of your goal, I think, is to be conversant with this less-formed version of yourself, less-opinionated version of yourself, this more creative version of yourself, this sort of emotional sponge taking the world in, not knowing anything. And I completely feel like I'm the same person. One of the things that causes anxiety sometimes is just waking up and realizing I'm 58 years old because I do not feel like that. And I think most people that as they age, they have a similar sensation. It's like, wait, what? You know, when did this happen? It's just really curious. I don't know how to describe it. I know that that guy, that little kid, was pretty intense and sad and and struggling to connect with friends, struggling to make sense of a lot of things. But in a lot of ways still kind of had some things figured out. I was really sensitive, a really sensitive, kid. And it's obvious that I retained a lot of that sensitivity."
On the song "KC Rain"
"There are a lot of songs on this record where I think, 'Well, I could have just summed the triple record up into that one line.' And one of the lines of that comes up [on this song] is, 'I was born a little sad.' Some of it is just cosmic luck. I think about my hometown a lot, because I left. And I grew up thinking that people don't leave. And I grew up with a prevailing attitude that if you leave, you think you're better than us. And that was stultifying, I think, for a lot of people and effective at limiting people's dreams and their horizons. And then I also think I'm trying to make peace with that, because I don't think I'm better than that. I don't think I'm better than them. I think that if I had not had this certain twists and turns of cosmic luck that we're talking about -- I'm dreaming about being a guy that had found a different thing, you know, and would be engaged in his passion and sharing it with somebody else. I'm talking about all the alternative 'mes' in that song. I'm singing or talking about them with empathy or with a sort of admiration even, I think."
On the song "New Orleans"
"Well, I can tell you something that makes me cry about it. The day that I recorded the guitars that are in the middle of that song, which I feel like are very emotional and very broken and chaotic and beautiful, I just feel like I stumbled upon this sound I went for. I was looking for this sound and I got closer to what was in my head than I expected to get. And we ended up recording layers of this sort of fractured guitar that did most of the emotional heavy lifting I felt in the song. There's this underlying sort of sadness and fear, but you know that it's about a parade in New Orleans. But the day that I recorded those guitars, my friend Steve Albini died that evening. We were at the hospital with his wife until about four in the morning. And my wife and I came home and [my son] Sammy was at home with us. And my kids grew up with Steve and being around Steve. And so Sammy was up wanting to know what had happened. And so we sat up and we talked a little bit and cried. And I was having a tough time processing this. I still am. Honestly, because it didn't seem like somebody like that could die. So, we talked for a little while and he was crying. I was feeling fairly numb and stoic. And then Sammy asked what I had done that day on the record, because we've all been making this record together. You know, my children and we listened to that. And he hadn't heard it yet. And it was extremely emotional. We both cried a lot. And it was like it had unlocked something that allowed a certain amount of grief to pour out. I don't really know. I don't know why it had such a profound effect, but it made me feel like there was something more meaningful about that part and would always be more meaningful to me about that part going forward, because it would always remind me of that night. And it does."
On the song "Feel Free"
"I was fascinated with the phrase 'feel free,' you know, like more in a negative sense. Like, 'Oh, you want to do that? Feel free to ruin your life, you know?' It seemed like it was a kind of an interesting phrase that was a little bit of a Rorschach test. When you just looked at it on the page, which comes to you first: this invitation to liberate yourself or a dismissive comment regarding someone else's attempt to liberate themselves? And so that alone probably would have steered me towards trying to write a song around that phrase, 'feel free.' But inevitably, what ended up happening is I came up with a poetic form that was appealing to me: 'feel free.' rhyming couplet, 'feel free.' And it was really satisfying to write verses like that. And so I wrote tons and tons of them, and I basically sang the ones that ended up meaning the most to me off of pages and pages of them that were in front of me. Some of them I felt embarrassed about. Some of them I wanted to keep. Some of them I thought we would edit out later. And none of those things happened. It didn't seem like the song made sense unless there were a lot of them. It seems like the more verses we put in that song, the more powerful that line ended up feeling."
On "Stray Cats In Spain"
"It's a real story. It's definitely one of the more direct, at least to me, songs written about a specific thing. You know, Stray Cats were the first band I ever saw live. And it was in a small rock club. It was before they were a big, big act. So Wilco was on tour in 2019. In Spain, we were playing a festival. We had a day off day before the festival. Festival is going on right down the street from our hotel. So I walk over there, you know, because we have passes and the Stray Cats are headlining the stage we're going to be playing on. So, as I'm walking there, before I even knew the Stray Cats were playing, I was just marveling at all of the rockabilly people around me. What's going on? It's like everybody is dressed up in the tiger prints and the leather jackets and their pompadour and poodle skirts. And I got to be immersed in that and also have this full circle moment watching the Stray Cats play basically the same set I saw them play 30 years earlier. It made me really happy. It just seemed very, very poignant, very beautiful.
"One other interesting thing about that song is that I wrote the song, we put the song out as one of the early tracks that people can listen to off the record, and it went up on Instagram, and Slim Jim Phantom, the drummer for the Stray Cats, commented. He said, you know something like, 'Go get em, Jeff, you know? Or, rock on,' with some hearts and stuff. And God, that made my day. That's like the sweetest thing ever."
On the final song, "Enough"
"First of all, I thought it would be fun to end a triple record with a song called 'Enough,' you know. But it was also at the beginning of the record at one point. I think what it means to me at this point is that, it's really sad and really painful, this life. And I can't get enough of it. And that's kind of amazing because I think most people feel that way. It's really, really tragic when someone loses that will to live. But most people have a strong will to live in spite of all of that sadness and suffering and inevitable suffering. That is extremely hopeful and powerful to me. It's the kind of thing that I don't I feel like we should allow ourselves to lose. It's really not the travail as much as the fact that, even with the travail, this is what I want. I want more of it. I want this life. I want to be here."
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