There are solo acoustic gigs where audience members are so reverent that the awestruck silence can be unnerving. Then there are ones where emboldened souls see an intimate setting as the perfect time to strike up a convo with their hero. As it turns out, a Jeff Tweedy solo show in an elegant converted church is mostly rather self-policing. At one point, a bellowed song request is shut down by another, even louder voice from the balcony: “Oh, do shut up!”
Tweedy – a three-decade gigging veteran with alt-country band Uncle Tupelo then indie-rock royalty Wilco – just grins and continues to tune his guitar. “See? I don’t have to do anything,” he says. At 50 he still looks boyish, even with scraggly beard, thick-rimmed glasses and silvery hair tumbling from a Stetson, but is seasoned enough to know how to charm a Scottish crowd. While a little fuzzy on the last time he actually played Edinburgh (“1993, at the Venue!” shouts a superfan, instantly) he wisely plays up the Tweedy clan’s Caledonian genealogy, gives a deferential shoutout to Teenage Fanclub and ruefully recalls a Wilco gig in Glasgow where the quietest song was interrupted by a fight.
His most recent album, Together at Last, was an earthy acoustic reassessment of songs from throughout a storied songwriting career, spelunking into Wilco’s sprawling back catalogue and shining a light on songs from some of Tweedy’s various spin-offs and side-hustles such as righteous power-pop trio Loose Fur and low-key indie supergroup Golden Smog. Live, Tweedy goes on an even broader magpie hop, revisiting his Uncle Tupelo years with the swaying New Madrid – key line: “all my daydreams are disasters” – and even having a creditable solo stab at You and I, formerly a duet with Feist.
Over more than 20 songs spread over 90 minutes, the freewheeling structure throws up some interesting juxtapositions. A decade on, Bull Black Nova remains an indelible, anxious vignette even when played acoustically, a revved-up murder ballad about a bloody getaway drive with a leaking body in the boot. Tweedy follows it with Passenger Side from Wilco’s 1994 debut album, an altogether breezier car-related song about bumming lifts while glugging open beers.
In a droll flourish, Tweedy tries to stage-manage a chorus singalong to a brand new song, Noah’s Flood, and for the most part is successful. But he does seem aware that Wilco’s shapeshifting charm and sonic eclecticism in the studio has contributed to their longevity. Paring back beloved favourites could be a risk; “I know a lot of these songs sound quite naked,” he admits. I’m the Man Who Loves You, a cherished song that perhaps embodies the dazed optimism and frazzled melodicism of Wilco, loses its Cannonball-esque distorted guitar squall but, as finessed by Tweedy and his battered acoustic, loses none of its bigheartedness. It receives a rapturous response, compelling Tweedy to doff his Stetson.
At the very end, the spell is temporarily broken by what sounds like a genuine fistfight – another one! – at the back of the church hall. As grace notes to hushed acoustic entertainment go, it is a loud and rather ugly one, but Tweedy remains unruffled. “The evening now feels complete,” he says, before launching into a raw-throated Shot in the Arm, a bruised singalong that feels like the perfect cap.
- Jeff Tweedy will play Albert Hall, Manchester on 1 February. Box office: 0161-817 3490; then Barbican, London, on 3 February. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
