Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy talks band breakups, music, sports and Sleater-Kinney

The combination of Wilco, an alt-country act who morphed into an eclectic indie rock band, and fiery feminist punk rockers Sleater-Kinney might sound like an odd fit. However, two common denominators are that both bands push the sonic envelope and have influenced a number of recording artists.

Wilco’s singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy explains why the bands are on a tour, which commences Thursday at the First Interstate Center for the Arts. Tweedy also details how he writes from a dark place and how significant Wilco’s first show out of the pandemic will be for the band.

You don’t see many recording artists as different as Wilco and Sleater-Kinney sharing a bill these days. What inspired the tour?

We played together at Madison Square Garden for New Year’s Eve a long time ago (2004). (Sleater-Kinney vocalist-guitarist) Carrie (Brownstein) has emerged as one of my closest friends and confidantes in music. We talked about doing a tour together for a long time just so we could get a lot more hang time together. There isn’t a whole bunch of crossover between our fans. But both of our fan bases are up for being exposed to something they wouldn’t have chosen.

Kicking off a tour is a big deal for a band, but the first performance by Wilco and Sleater-Kinney coming out of a pandemic is significant. It’s also the first big show in Spokane since Tool performed March 9, 2020. How big of a night will it be?

It’s going to be huge. It’s going to be emotional playing that first show. It’ll be big since it will be the first live experience people will have had in a year-and-a-half. I did some shows at drive-in theaters, and with people separated, it mutes the natural response an audience has. The other day, I did a solo show, and performing live is better than I remember. It’s a beautiful thing. There’s nothing like seeing people being happy when I’m performing. I think there’s going to be a crazy amount of energy when we play our first song when we come in.

You recently said the world doesn’t need more Wilco songs. Does that mean you’re going to only release solo material and just play songs from the Wilco canon from here on?

Writing songs is the most of anything I do. When I said that, I was referring to when you’re in a band for a long time that you compete with your old material. Some people can’t compete with their old material since it becomes like a companion. I didn’t mean to make that sound as self-defeating as it sounds when you said it back to me. There will be new Wilco material.

Wilco, along with Radiohead, has been the most consistent band since the mid-1990s. Wilco’s stretch from 1996 with “Being There” to 2007’s “Sky Blue Sky” is most extraordinary. Do you realize what Wilco accomplished and how difficult is it to be that consistent?

Sometimes I think back and I’m just thrilled those early records are still in print. People are still discovering those albums. I don’t just mean Wilco but also Uncle Tupelo records. My biggest dream was to make records. I want to make the kind of records that people are still discovering 20 years after they were released. The fact that people are still inspired by them is awesome. As far as consistency goes, the goal is to make every record the best record possible and to not make the same record twice and to make a record like no one else has ever made.

When Uncle Tupelo broke up, the media focused on your former band mate Jay Farrar and what he would do with Son Volt, and not much was expected of Wilco. How did that make you feel?

I was aware of it. We were told explicitly by the record company (Sire) that we were a bonus band for the original contract for Uncle Tupelo. There was the dismissiveness early on. I didn’t feel great it was happening, but it took a lot of the pressure off. It allowed me to come to terms of leading my own band. It also lit a fire for me to try harder to get better. I felt I had to prove things to myself.

It’s just a way to grow as a person. I don’t feel anyone was wrong the way Uncle Tupelo was received at that point. I felt like I was making a lot of contributions to Uncle Tupelo that was not visible to the outside world. My voice was a lot of years away from being a comfortable singer. I don’t begrudge anyone making that assessment early on. I had more belief in myself somehow, but at the same time I was insecure (laughs). It was a weird combination.

Did you feel vindicated after Wilco broke and Son Volt sputtered commercially?

No. I never felt the need to dance on somebody’s grave as if I vanquished them. When I look back, I don’t begrudge anyone making whatever judgments.

What was your mindset when you wrote the tracks for “Ode to Joy” two years ago?

I wasn’t very optimistic. When I wrote those songs, I was trying to talk myself into some optimism. That’s the way my mind works. When I create things, I always start in a pretty dark place. I’m not a pessimist. I tend to reflect on dark things and spend a lot of time experiencing sad thoughts. But I always work toward the light. Every time you think things won’t get better, you experience some odd moment of joy. I experienced a lot of depression in my life, but I find great comfort in how life works. When you think things won’t get better, you find joy.

Not every song can be a happy one.

(Laughs) Science has proven that there is something cathartic about hearing sad songs. Those songs are really helpful. I’m extremely comforted and consoled by the saddest songs in my record collection. You can’t unpack happy all the time. Sometimes we’re sad and sometimes we experience self-pity, and that’s alright. You’ll eventually find the light.

Fellow baseball fan and Chicagoan Dennis DeYoung recently told me that Bruce Springsteen would have never picked up the guitar if he could have thrown a baseball 95 mph. That’s hard to believe about Springsteen or you.

I don’t think I would have gotten the same creative spark and joy throwing a fastball that I get when I write a song, but if you’re talking about if I could dunk a basketball, well, maybe that would be different!

“Being There” is the sonic equivalent of a home run. It’s been a quarter century since your breakthrough album was released. How do you explain the creative leap from “AM” to “Being There?”

We had more time with “Being There,” and I was in a different space, and I realized that I could write these different type of songs. But when I look back at “AM,” I’m very proud of that record. It holds up today. I still like a lot of the songs. It’s a weird pop-country album. I don’t know many records that sound like it. And that’s always been one of our goals. We want to make records that don’t sound like what anybody else is putting out. You know that will be our goal for the next Wilco album.