Despite long hiatus, Wilco bassist never doubted that band would record again

Dave Gil de Rubio | Special to the Detroit Free Press

Wilco is back.

Though this may not be breaking news in the world of auto-tuned wonders littering the pop charts, it’s a pretty big deal for fans of a band that started out a quarter of a century ago in the alt-country corner of the room before evolving into an eclectic indie rock band more concerned with unique creative expression than fitting into a neat box.

Perpetual engine Jeff Tweedy seemed the busiest member of this sextet during the three-year gap that followed Wilco’s 2016 album, “Schmilco.” He released a pair of solo albums (2018’s “Warm” and this year’s “Warmer”) and the autobiography “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.).”

However, fellow founding member John Stirratt hasn't exactly been sipping hot toddies at home up in Maine over the last few years. Stirratt not only spent time touring as a duo with singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne but also delved into the world of hospitality via his work with the Austin, Texas-based Bunkhouse Group. (More on that later.) At this moment, Stirratt, singer-guitarist Tweedy and the other Wilco members are focused on “Ode to Joy,” the group’s newly released 11th album.

Despite the length of Wilco’s long hiatus, there was never a doubt on bassist Stirratt's part about whether the Chicago-based outfit would hit the studio again.

“I don’t think there was any feeling that we were going to stop or anything like that," he said. "There was an unusual rollout for those last two (Wilco) records. 'Star Wars' and 'Schmilco' came out a year apart. So it turned into this kind of three-year album stifle, and it seemed like a good time to go away, along with the fact that our drummer had gone to Finland for a year so his wife could do some work."

The seeds for “Ode to Joy” were planted by Tweedy and drummer Glenn Kotche, both of whom sought to make a more atmospheric record goosed along by the latter’s rhythms and the former’s wistful croon. Tweedy is comfortably ensconced in middle age now, and his lyrics are wrapped in a cloak of self-awareness. It’s particularly true with the melancholy “Everyone Hides,” where the song’s chorus caps off couplets like: “If you’re selling yourself on a vision/ A dream of who you are/ An idea of how it should be/ And a wish upon a star.”

Elsewhere on the disc, Tweedy’s experience of losing a loved one is at the heart of “White Wooden Cross,” while the lumbering cadence of “We Were Lucky” gives guitarist Nels Cline a chance to cut loose with a bit of six-string squall and howl. For Stirratt, who counts the Byrds-like “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” as a favorite song to play live, Tweedy’s and Kotche’s planned-out approach to the new album was a welcome departure from prior recording experiences.

“In this case, Glenn and Jeff got together to work on these drum sounds and drum performances, along with acoustic guitar and some bass," he said. "We sort of created these kinds of big, dry drum sounds. It kind of set the tone for the record. Everyone else convened and sort of just worked through the rest of the instrumentation after the fact, from that point. We never really recorded like that before. It’s a change in process. A lot of times, it paid off.”

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Stirratt knows what he speaks of, given that his relationship with Tweedy dates back to Uncle Tupelo, the storied Americana outfit Tweedy and Jay Farrar founded in Belleville, Illinois, in 1987. Stirratt met the band when a demo tape with a phone number landed at his college radio station at the University of Mississippi and the New Orleans native invited the band to play the local college club. The Hilltops, Stirratt’s then-band with his twin sister, Laurie, and brother-in-law Cary Hudson, opened for Uncle Tupelo, and Stirratt later wound up in the Uncle Tupelo lineup for its sole major label album, 1993’s “Anodyne.”

After Uncle Tupelo split into what became Tweedy’s Wilco and the Farrar-led Son Volt, Stirratt found himself with Tweedy and the rest of Wilco on a wild major-label ride that took them through stints with Warner Brothers and Nonesuch Records before the band released “The Whole Love,” its first album on its own dBpm imprint, in 2011.

“It’s nice to have control and know that we have an audience that’s still interested in physical product to some extent,” Stirratt said of having the dBpm imprint.

As for Stirratt getting involved in the hospitality business, the story begins when he became involved with the Redwood Motel, a motor lodge that opened in North Adams, Massachusetts, in July 2018. The motel had been bought and quickly renovated to house family and friends for the 2015 version of the Solid Sound Festival, which Wilco organizes.

"I was able to get a team together and do a project in North Adams, which I think is a great town,” Stirratt said. “I know it from Wilco doing the Solid Sound Festival. It’s got this amazing sort of economic investment there with Mass MOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). Mass MOCA had just done another expansion about two years ago. It’s quite an amazing region, and I was really lucky to find some really creative builders, developers and hospitality team out of Austin that brought that with them. So far it’s been really great. We have a super-amazing team — a convergence of people that made it something different. It’s been quite an experience.”

For now, Stirratt is working his full-time job as Wilco’s bass player and hoping to record more music in 2020 with the Autumn Defense, the side project he’s in with Wilco band mate Pat Sansone.

“I need to sort of get back into the head space of songwriting, when you’re not under the gun. So I’ve just been concentrating on that and really trying to get some really good, worthwhile songs together myself for the Autumn Defense,” he said. “In the meantime, Wilco is going to be touring through the rest of the year and heading out the beginning of 2020. We’re doing our first destination festival in Mexico, which should be interesting. Then there’ll be a pretty fair amount of touring in the spring.”

Wilco

With Deep Sea Diver

6:30 p.m. Tue.

Hill Auditorium,

825 N. University, Ann Arbor

734-764-2538

wilcoworld.net

$35-$55