Mermaid Avenue, Billy Bragg, More

What makes Solid Sound such a perfect weekend for Wilco fans? Every other summer, the band’s signature event brings thousands of people to the rolling hills of western Massachusetts to enjoy three days of music, togetherness, and eclectic creativity on the grounds of Mass MoCA, a factory site turned contemporary art museum. Other festivals have bigger stars and buzzier scenes, but there’s simply no comparison if you love this band. Each Solid Sound since the first one in 2010 has been packed with unique performances you won’t see anywhere else, rare crossover moments that make you feel lucky to be there, and deep lore callbacks for the faithful. Few acts could or would do something like this — a music festival that feels less like a tour stop or a business venture and more like a generous gift to the fans. And this year’s Solid Sound might have been the best one to date, as Jeff Tweedy observed from the stage during one of the three extraordinarily joyous headline performances he fronted on June 26, 27, and 28.

The format for Solid Sound has stayed the same for years now, a reliable framework that Tweedy and his bandmates, friends, and family fill out with endless variety. Night one is dedicated to a Wilco concert with a special theme. In past years, that’s included full album performances (once featuring the debut of a complete new album), an all-covers set, and an all-deep-cuts set, among other treats. This time, they took the opportunity to revisit Mermaid Avenue, the project they embarked on in the mid-Nineties with the great U.K. singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, writing and performing new songs using lyrics by the late Woody Guthrie. That collaboration yielded nearly 50 tunes, including a handful that have remained highlights of the band’s sets to this day. But Wilco had never performed a full Mermaid Avenue concert, much less with Bragg joining them onstage as a second frontman, until now.

From the opening chorus of “Airline to Heaven” — “Them’s got ears, let ’em hear/Them’s got eyes, let ’em see” — the night felt somewhere between a spiritual revival and a hootenanny. Mermaid Avenue isn’t as famous as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it has a special place in Wilco’s catalog as their most sustained reflection on the folk tradition that has always been part of their DNA, and it was satisfying to see them tap into that wellspring of American music 28 years after the original album’s release. “All right! Waited a long time for this,” Tweedy said after that first song. “Me too,” Bragg added with a grin. They went on to honor Guthrie’s radical promise with the classic “All You Fascists” and “She Came Along to Me,” both of whose agitprop slogans landed right where they needed to in this moment. They celebrated Guthrie’s less-known loverman side with gorgeous performances of “When the Roses Bloom Again” and “Hesitating Beauty,” and brought out guest Natalie Merchant for radiant duets with Bragg on “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” and “Birds and Ships.” It all felt like magic in a Coney Island soda bottle.

Toward the end of the main set, as Wilco and Bragg performed the rollicking “Hoodoo Voodoo,” another guest dashed out onstage. Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie, who has spent many years shepherding her father’s musical legacy, was rocking a cowbell and getting into the spirit. She was the one who made the original Mermaid Avenue sessions happen back then, as Tweedy noted: “None of this would be possible without Nora.” A few minutes later, when the band returned for the encore, Tweedy took a moment to remember multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, who was a key contributor to Wilco’s musical growth in the Nineties before leaving the band on difficult terms in 2001. “A lot of these songs wouldn’t be here without Jay,” Tweedy said. “He was a big champion of this project at the time… I kind of feel like, if he was still around, he’d be here, and I wish that could have happened.” Then he sang the Mermaid Avenue mourning song “Another Man’s Done Gone,” giving a genuinely emotional solo vocal performance. It was a moving nod to his former bandmate, who died in 2009, and like the whole night’s show, a reminder of how someone can live on in a way if you keep singing their songs.

They closed the night one encore with a warm-hearted group singalong to “California Stars,” a song that has capped off so many Wilco shows over the years that it’s easy to forget its Mermaid Avenue origins, and “This Land Is Your Land,” a non-Mermaid song they just couldn’t skip on a night like this. Everyone was onstage by now — Tweedy’s sons, Guthrie’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and assorted other family members and friends, all joining their voices together with the thousands in the crowd to sing Woody’s words about cooperation and kindness. “This has really been a moment I’ve been waiting for a long, long time, to see my boys all together here again,” Nora said, gesturing at Tweedy and Bragg. She thanked us all for being there, and like her father would have done, she urged us to get to work making a better world.

And that was just the first night. Night two of Solid Sound, as always, was headlined by a second Wilco concert — no particular theme, just a spectacular night with America’s greatest live rock & roll band. This year’s Saturday night special began with smooth jazzman Bob James and Wilco’s Mikael Jorgensen doing a soulful keyboard duet on the theme song from the Seventies sitcom Taxi, which James composed. (This song might seem to have little to do with Wilco, but just go with it.) Wilco played sun-bright power-pop on “Candyfloss” and “Annihilation,” dueted with rising singer-songwriter Elizabeth Moen on “Forget the Flowers” and a returning Natalie Merchant on “You and I,” and broke out a sweet pedal-steel arrangement of “I’m Always in Love” that completely transformed the song. Nels Cline gave one of his most mind-blowing “Impossible Germany” solos, building from elegant deconstruction to violent noise; at one point, he managed to re-tune his guitar while playing it, integrating the torqued notes and empty spaces into the solo. 

There were many, many other highlights on night two, too many to name here. The biggest were arguably the two brand-new Wilco songs that they debuted in the middle of the set. The first one, a work in progress called “Flawed Men,” was a Dylanesque gem, full of philosophical questions and gnomic wisdom. “I get this feeling every June,” Tweedy sang to big cheers. “Is it ever really the truth, what you put on the stage?” The second new song, “Losing Traction,” featured a pointed chorus with state-of-the-union overtones: “The sky’s still blue, whatever they say/Lately the truth is losing traction/I don’t think we should ever get used to living this way.” It also featured the instant-classic Tweedy one-liner “I was only depressed when I still gave a fuck.” They might still be working out the arrangements for these songs (he noted that they need to come up with an ending for “Flawed Men”), but their lyrical strength was remarkable, and they left everyone on that field eager to see what Wilco have coming up next.

Throughout the weekend, someone wandering around Mass MoCA’s campus might have caught excellent mainstage opening acts like Gang of Four (featuring Ted Leo on guitar) or the Breeders, representing two strains of Eighties and Nineties alt/punk rock. Sharp Pins soaked a museum courtyard in Beatles-y melody on one afternoon; Hannah Cohen sang lovely slow-burn ballads in a light-filled gallery on another. Wilco side projects like the Autumn Defense (featuring bassist John Stirratt and guitarist Pat Sansone playing sunny folk-pop) and Nels Cline’s instrumental Consentrik Quartet were around every corner. It’s a stacked lineup, full of little and big surprises, and the more time you spend at Solid Sound, the more you’ll find to enjoy. 

The festival closed, as always, with a Jeff Tweedy set to send everyone on their way after three days of music. In past years, that’s often been a gentle acoustic farewell of sorts, but this year Tweedy came to rock. He performed with the tight combo heard on last year’s magisterial solo album Twilight Override, featuring his sons Spencer and Sammy Tweedy, plus their lifelong pals Macie Stewart, Liam Kazar, and Sima Cunningham (visibly pregnant and looking cool as hell as she tore it up on bass guitar). “I’ve known all of these people since they were little children,” Tweedy said. All of them, he noted, grew up within walking distance of one another in Chicago. If this festival represents anything, he said, it’s the power of “making some shit with your friends.” They showed what that means with a set full of uninhibited, uplifting energy, big smiles and bigger guitar solos, and covers that ranged from Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” (dedicated to Tweedy’s wife, Susie) to Pops Staples’ “Friendship” to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” to, finally, Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” Everyone was onstage by now, once again — several members of Wilco, Case Oats‘ Casey Gomez Walker, singer-guitarist Ella Feingold, and more. Together they formed a many-branched musical family that felt like it had room for all of us stretched out across the grass in the summer sun, too. 

“Taking care of each other is all we can do,” Tweedy said at another point, summing up the inclusive ethos that defines Solid Sound. He urged us to love one another, as he’d done several times throughout the weekend. Then he kept on playing.