Most kids grow up with dreams of being an astronaut, a superhero, or maybe – if their parents are lucky – something slightly more sensible, such as a doctor. For Spencer Tweedy, it was a toss-up between “a fireman, a race car driver or a musician”, although, with his family history, it comes as no surprise that he has found himself in the third category.
That said, getting to defer your college place to tour the world in a rock band would sound glamorous to any 19-year-old, even if your dad is the frontman. Of course, when your dad is also the frontman of one of the most acclaimed US indie bands of the past 20 years, it shifts the goalposts . Tweedy and his father, Jeff – the same Jeff Tweedy who fronts Wilco – found themselves making music together after Jeff had produced gospel singer Mavis Staples and enlisted his son on drums for her 2013 album, One True Vine.
“My mom owned a bar called Lounge Ax from the late 1980s to the year 2000, and I spent virtually every single day of my life there till I was four years old,” says Spencer, speaking on the phone from Chicago. It was almost inevitable that he would end up as a drummer, given that “there was a drum set in the basement that people would sit me down on when they were babysitting, and I would bang away as well as a tiny kid could. Drummers would see me running around during soundcheck, and let me play on their drums. I’ve been playing since I was about two.”
This times it’s serious
Later that day, Jeff confirms the story that led to their creative partnership, under the banner of Tweedy, and their 20-track debut album, Sukierae, recorded at the Loft, Wilco's Chicago studio. He had dabbled in making music with Spencer and his other son, Sam (14), as The Racoonists in the past, but this time it seemed more serious. (Sam, incidentally, is invited to join Tweedy "on a daily basis", but is "into more solitary pursuits", according to Jeff.)
"We discovered that we had this really easy rapport with each other in the studio as musicians," Jeff says. "And, y'know, Wilco was a bit tired. We'd toured all summer long with Bob Dylan, and everybody had been putting off all of their projects, so it felt like the right time."
Tweedy the elder had never planned a solo album. “It’s never really been a deep desire of mine to make a solo record, primarily because my creative outlet in Wilco is very satisfying. But Spencer and I were having a good time in the studio, so I thought, well, I have a lot of songs, so I’ll just start working on ’em. Initially, I thought some of the songs would end up being demos for when Wilco got back together, but after Spencer and I had been recording for a few weeks, we already had 10 or 12 songs that sounded like they belonged together, so it became pretty obvious that we were making a record.
“I also thought that if I was ever going to make a solo record, one way that it would be very different from Wilco would be for me to play everything – and I pretty much stuck to that, except for the fact that I had to grow a drummer,” he says, chuckling.
Although Tweedy tour with a full band, it was never an option, or a necessity, to bring other musicians into the fold. "I think someone asked Todd Rundgren one time why he recorded all the instruments on his record, and he said, 'Because it's so much less work,' " says Jeff, laughing. "I have different degrees of proficiency on instruments, so some things took me longer than others, but for the most part, even the things I wasn't very good at playing, there was a thrill of discovery at forcing myself to figure out how to do it."
The sound is buoyed in parts by the backing vocals of Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius, on songs such as Low Key and High as Hello. "I thought the addition of female voices really added a dimension to these songs that I really enjoyed," says Jeff, who shares a manager with the Brooklyn band.
The record is a personal one for the family. The song Nobody Dies Anymore was written after the death of Jeff's brother at the age of 56 in 2013, while the subject of the album's title, Sukierae – a nickname for Jeff's wife and Spencer's mother, Sue Miller – loomed large over the album-making process for another poignant reason.
“The songs really weren’t meant to come at any specifics regarding my relationship with her head-on; nothing was meant to be head-on,” says Jeff. “We named the record after Spencer’s mother and my wife because of the nature of the time in our family right now. There wasn’t a moment in the studio where we weren’t thinking about her. She’s been battling cancer, and she’s doing a great job, and everything looks very favourable in terms of prognosis, but there was a guiding presence there for us. As a family, music being made is a normal process. I think it was a great consolation, not just for Spencer and I, but for Suzie and Sammy as well.”
Tweedy will remain an ongoing concern for this year as they continue to tour Sukierae, although Spencer is adamant that he won't be tempted down the path of rock'n'roll excess and will eventually return to college to study literature, or at least something "non-music-related".
“I’m in a fortunate position right now, getting a music education from playing in the real world, so to speak,” he says. “So I’m gonna look for other stuff in school.”
Wilco’s plans for 2015
With Jeff playing a solo acoustic set of Wilco songs at each Tweedy gig, his full-time job is never far from his mind, and he will eventually turn his full attention to Wilco again this year. “I’ve already recorded a lot of ideas for the next Wilco record, some with Glenn [Kotche, drummer], doing demos, and some improvised stuff with Mikael [Jorgensen, keyboards] and Nels [Cline, guitar],” he says. “I think the idea is to have a new Wilco record out by the end of 2015.”
Time to fess up, now: has this whole project just been an elaborate ruse to spend more time with your boy before he makes his own way in the big, bad world?
“Well, oddly enough, Spencer and I have already recorded more stuff,” Jeff says, smiling. “We did some soundtrack stuff, and there have been some new songs. Because he’s not in school for the first time in his life, he’s been hanging out at the studio. There will definitely be another Tweedy album at some point, but it might not be feasible until he graduates college, so it might be another four years.”
Tweedy play Vicar Street on January 28th. Sukierae is out now
