In 2010, deep into the greatest Wilco set I’ve ever seen, Jeff Tweedy let it be known that they would be hosting an event in the Berkshires in a few months and that we all should come and check it out. Nine Solid Sound festivals later, they managed to hit a high water mark that looks to be the 1,000 year flood, never to be exceeded. And it’s not like the previous efforts by the band to make this weekend and their sets special fell anywhere close to flat, but recruiting Billy Bragg to join in the first ever performance of Mermaid Avenue was a close to a pinnacle as I or several thousand fans witnessed. The (California) stars aligned since his yearly conflict managing the Left Field Stage at Glastonbury was suddenly open when the festival took a fallow year to help the grounds recover and he was free to travel to the bucolic surroundings of the upper Northwest corner of Massachusetts.
For those who don’t know, Mermaid Avenue came about in the late ’90s, when Nora Guthrie contacted Bragg after he played a Guthrie tribute concert in New York City, asking if he could write music to accompany the giant pile of lyrics Guthrie left behind that were not matched to any songs. Bragg quickly deduced that it would be helpful to have an American perspective involved in creating this project, and so Wilco was invited. They produced three LPs of material and while each party would play certain songs occasionally in concert and very infrequently, together. In 2017 I was lucky to be at Newport Folk Festival when both played different stages, and Bragg came out to sing “California Stars” with the band.
Tonight would be something different, with all but “Eisler On The Go” played from the first record, and nine others from the next two. This music, bridging different eras of artists, is timeless and still resonates most saliently (hello “All You Fascists”) today. As a band then and now, Wilco was a much different beast, with only Tweedy and bass player John Stirratt left from these sessions, aside from one song that the rest of the current Wilco lineup contributed to. As such, the normal roles that Cline, Jorgensen, and Sansone play in Wilco were modified to suit this stripped down, more acoustically-driven material. One key guest of these sessions was Natalie Merchant and her rumored appearance came to life on “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key,” bringing the crowd to a roar as she sauntered over the mic.
As the evening drew to close, with stage full of Guthries and musicians from the fest, Tweedy took to the mic to give tribute to an equally crucial participant, the late Jay Bennett, saying he was critically invested in the project and made a ton of contributions, and that if Bennett were still around that he would have been on stage as well and that Tweedy wished that could have happened. It was quite a touching homage to his former band member. Of course the obvious closer was a cover of Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” with various people taking lead vocal turns including grand daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie taking the first verse. Not a dry eye or still heart for miles.
Wait, there’s more to this weekend? I am not going to attempt to catalog all of the performances and exhibitions I caught, but will try to give you a sense of my personal highlights. While we are on the Wilco and Billy Bragg train, Bragg kicked off the fest officially with a stirring, ten song set on the larger Courtyard D stage. Classics like “Greetings To The New Brunette” and “Sexuality” nestled comfortably with newer songs like “King Tide and the Sunny Day Flood” and “Freedom Doesn’t Come For Free.”
He reached back into his early catalog with “A Lover Sings,” but prefaced it holding a copy of his debut LP, issued in the US by CD Presents back in 1984. Why did he have an original copy? He told the story of being alerted that someone found a few boxes stashed in a hidden corner of some warehouse in the US, and he scooped them up while on this tour. A problem arose with the Canadian dates; he didn’t want to have to amend the carnet form so they stashed the boxes behind some dumpster and tossed black bean bag chairs over them. A few days later they were back in hand and right as rain, ready to land into the hands of fans at Solid Sound. All copies were long gone by the time I checked out the pop-up record shop, just an hour or so later.
For their second act, Wilco did not disappoint. I am not a Grateful Dead fan but that community’s pursuit and reverence for certain live performances is well-known. Even a casual observer knows that Cornell ’77 has a special place in the tape traders’ hearts. To start, the show unfolded in a unique manner. Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen has been busy creating a documentary on legendary jazz pianist Bob James, whose mainstream contributions include many uses of hip-hop sampling of “Nautilus” but also the theme song of Taxi “Angela,” which James and Jorgensen played as a duet to start the show.
As a band’s discography grows, a common constraint is figuring out what material to showcase and what to ignore, and newer material tends to get short shrift once that touring cycle concludes. Wilco mostly solved this problem by playing songs from all thirteen of their records and to boot, tossed in a couple of yet to be released songs. If there was a common thread to tonight, it would be the band’s reworking of certain songs and the improvisation taken on the solos, served up in a heavy guitar-forward presentation. “I’m Always In Love” took on a plangent, gentle country tone, and the relatively newer “Bird Without A Tail/Base of My Skull” hit new heights with Cline and Sansone playing call and response in a frenzied finish. The power of Stirratt and Kotche were on full display during “Art Of Almost,” Jurgensen’s electronic burbling giving way to a sonic hurricane as the song winds up to full Category 5 power.
Three other examples made tonight’s intent clear: “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” was likely the seed of the Teutonic rhythms shared with “Art Of Almost” and Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn lent some woozy electronics once his patch cable issue got sorted. Cline’s long, spidery fingers have the ability to play notes that people who can’t palm a medicine ball cannot, and he unleashed an unusually inventive barrage of free noise and jagged scales during “Impossible Germany” before Tweedy and Sansone locked in and brought it home. I’ve seen the band render those in complete incendiary fashion, but it was “Kingpin” that took me by surprise, starting out almost in a Southern Rock mode like The Outlaws three guitar attack. Funny moment – after the 1-2 punch of “Impossible Germany” and “Art Of Almost” Tweedy prefaced “Jesus Etc” by saying “Here’s a song you can sing along to. Nels, have a seat.” I can’t be the only one feverishly refreshing the band’s paid download site, can I?
Two bands that met in art school and share a punk heritage would later branch out into different forms of expression. Gang Of Four had previously announced an end of touring, but that didn’t stop them from stringing together a couple of shows around Solid Sound, with original members the indefatigable Jon King and powerhouse drummer Hugo Burnham joined by Gail Greenwood (who took over bass duties from Sara Lee after she retired) and Ted Leo who replaced David Pajo from the previous lineup. Their danceable art-punk flame still burns brightly, and they invited host Tweedy to come out and join in on “Anthrax” and “What We All Want,” echoing the feedback-laden and serrated guitar attack that Andy Gill made famous.
The other half of this art school comradery is Mekons, or in this case, Mini-Mekons as it was just Jon Langford and Sally Timms joined by players from side projects Waco Brothers and Skull Orchard. Langford’s easy going wit (the song “Millionaire” has recently changed from “Billionaire” to “Trillionaire”) and story telling abilities punctuated the song breaks between their raw country-steeped material. As longtime Chicago residents it made a lot of sense that they finally made it to play at Solid Sound, and not surprisingly got a great reception.
The Sharp Pins are a quartet of young upstarts unafraid to mash the garage era Kinks and Beatles into the jangly bits of the Byrds, topped with a few ladleful’s of Guided By Voices.
Prewn, Izzy Hagerup’s project yielded vulnerable vocals and prickly guitar passages; if you like Sharon Van Etten, Squirrel Flower or Emma Ruth Rundle, you will be rewarded during your initial listen.
The simultaneous intersection of music and art has been a key part of this festival from the start, and it’s obvious as to why the Mass MoCA site is chosen as a setting, with world class installations to browse inside the inspiring and sprawling buildings when one frees up a little downtime. Photos of the punk rock explosion in NYC, a dynamic Laurie Anderson exhibit and many more await the intrepid explorer. When those art forms take on direct collision, like 2019’s Stained Radiance performance with Norton Wisdom painting along to Nels Cline’s guitar blasts, it’s not a surprise to have that tradition continue. This year’s Inploration was a more muted affair, with musicians at the back wall to give dancer Jesse Dae Crist room to explore the possibilities provided by Lawrence Azerrad and the ensemble. Later on in a different wing, Cline’s partner Yuka Honda provided a compelling performance under the name Respira
Since Tweedy was involved with some of the earliest stirrings of the alt.country roots, it’s no surprise that their audience would respond favorably to SG Goodman and Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band. Both put on spirited performances on the D stage, with Goodman closing her set via a wobbly, loose-legged version of Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper” while Davis and band bared their teeth and went in for the kill under a lyrical barrage that might have made the late David Berman take notice. Souled American shook off the dust from a couple of decades of inactivity to give their loose and meandering take on Americana served up on a hot iron skillet, a perfect way to calibrate your settings on Saturday.
On the folkier side, Elizabeth Moen and her band sounded bright and punchy, and bringing up Spencer Tweedy to help out on backing vocals will always elicit a positive crowd reaction. Ex-Western MA native Hannah Cohen has an easy going, gauzy ’70s approach; parallels to US Girls or Weyes Blood wouldn’t be too far out of place, but she’s got her own thing going on.
One of the best and worst things about the festival is that while it’s pretty compact as these things go, there’s always plenty to see and more to miss. I lamented a few years ago that the pop up shows which occur in random corners of the sprawling Mass MoCA complex went from last minute tweets or app alerts to being part of the published schedule that gave the heads up and let people plan. The end result is that those spaces were jammed before the first note hit the air. But there were a couple of surprises up the festival’s sleeve, with Natalie Merchant doing a performance in the long hallway parallel with the Courtyard D stage, and Finom playing a short set inside the Turrell C.A.V.U. silo – I missed it but a friend said it was among the best things he saw all weekend.
One thing that was highly publicized was the chance to set the record for the world’s largest simultaneous Yo-Yo, and 5,000-plus spinning plastic discs on strings later, success! Organizer John Higby had wit and humor to match his skills, and one of the best parts saw both Wilco and The Breeders on stage to help pad the numbers.
Twins Kelley and Kim Deal have the most infectious smiles going, and The Breeders’ performance before the second Wilco show was certainly a joyous affair. Definitely not as prickly to the average Wilco fan as compared to what Gang of Four doled out, they nevertheless are not purveyors of sunny pop songs, though that strain is certainly buried into the songs’ DNA. “Iris” and “Doe” and their excellent Beatles’ cover from the debut are more stripped down and direct, certainly nudged in that direction by the record’s engineer, Steve Albini. Their sophomore effort is where they broke out and eclipsed Deal’s other band Pixies; I swear you couldn’t avoid “Cannonball” or “Divine Hammer” or “Saints” in the early 90s, but why would you want to?
Once the main stage wraps up after 11PM, a lot of people wrap up their night as well but the night owls were rewarded with some great options to keep their night going. L’Rain played a jazzy, soulful, somewhat minimal style, as leader Taja Cheek alternated between guitar and bass, her band softly and deftly moving the songs to their appointed place. Over at Courtyard C, Yo La Tengo principals Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley brought a few boxes of old US and UK soul seven inch singles to keep people moving, though they would have benefited from a bit more power in the PA.
The second night offered even more; Courtyard C was again the dance party, this time hosted by Amelia and Nick from Sylvan Esso. Meanwhile, Courtyard D had arguably one of the finest rhythm sections ever in Brendan Canty and Joe Lally providing the massive push for The Messthetics set. I highly encourage seeking out this documentary as it’s incredible. They’d been playing with guitarist Anthony Pirog for close to a decade now, but recently took on saxophonist James Brandon Lewis to shove their muse into an entirely new direction. Meanwhile, a completely different brew of sonic alchemy was happening in the Hunter Center, with NC-based trio Setting playing a somewhat inscrutable mix of percussion, banjo, analog synth and general audio exploration. Not surprising they have a track called “What Kind of Fish is a Turtle.” Rewarding listening for the people who made it.
The Hunter Center was also home to the comedy stage curated by John Hodgman who is no stranger to Solid Sound. I wasn’t able to see a lot, but the panel emceed by Jordan Klepper was tasked to listen to thirty seconds of a contemporary Christian charting songs and determining whether it was real or AI. Merchant was pretty adept at spotting the differences.
Sunday was decidedly much more chill; I’d never seen the grounds of Mass MoCA so jammed on Friday, with every nook and cranny of space for both courtyard stages and the main field occupied by someone. Perhaps this was a function of demand for the incredibly unique Mermaid Avenue performance, or maybe the festival’s official capacity has ratcheted up once again. I guess we will see what 2028 brings. This is the second event where outside food is not allowed, and while the food choices I had were generally good to excellent, one really had to be judicious about picking the time to queue up; reports of waiting in line for 45 minutes were not uncommon. In addition to perhaps providing more food vendors, another water station would be a good addition. It always rains at least a little at Solid Sound, but there were plenty of stretches of hot June sun to deal with, and not a ton of shade to accommodate everyone. Lastly, the beer selection was puzzling, going from Tree House this year to Oxbow. Now, I don’t mind Oxbow beer but only offering a pils or a saison was a questionable decision. One last bit about possible improvements… the non-overlapping music sets was heralded as a plus, when in reality the amount of people that needed to move through limited bottlenecks to other stages really didn’t work out that great.
In some ways, Solid Sound mirrors Big Ears, a festival whose lineups blur genres and challenges ear drums. So, it was not surprising that both Richard Dawson and Nels Cline’s Consentrik Quartet played both festivals this year. Alone on a giant stage and making clear he wasn’t the “Come on down!” Richard Dawson who liked to kiss women on the lips, Dawson delivered an impassioned, fearless performance. Starting with an a Capela song and then later delving deep into storytelling with his Newcastle accent, he would occasionally deliver histrionic flights of guitar noise, his fingers indiscriminately meandering around the fret boards in honor of Derek Bailey’s style, Tweedy watching side stage in appreciation.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see all of the side projects and efforts that the members of Wilco also showcase during this weekend, but I did manage to catch the breezy, sun-drenched sound of The Autumn Defense, who chased away the rain clouds and brought bright conditions back. Sansone and Stirratt have worked together on this band that predates Pat’s involvement with Wilco, and live shows can be sporadic so this is another win for Solid Sound attendees.
The festival always ends with Jeff on stage with his friends, and in this case it was his two sons and three neighborhood friends who have known each other since they were young. Sima Cunningham (pregnant to the point Tweedy said she was rocking for two), her younger brother Liam Kazar and Macie Stewart have been intertwined with Tweedy and the Solid Sound and Sky Blue Sky festivals for some time, and they offer a myriad of musical skills. A lot of the material they played was from last year’s sprawling, three record Twilight Override, a record I never spent much time with because it was a daunting body of work. I guess my fears were overblown; this is a strong record, with “No One Is Moving On” and especially the Velvets-heavy “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” being standout moments.
The set ran over about 30 minutes of its scheduled duration, in time for more people get on stage and play some fun covers. And while Tweedy said that band manager Crystal Myers really wanted to hear “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” it was the other never-to-be-played-again choice of Boston’s own Donna Summer that hit the high point, Cline’s insane guitar solo akin to the sonic sorcery Eddie Van Halen lent to “Beat It.” During the festival’s waning moments, Tweedy implored us that we need to continue to be good at making community and showing up for friends and family. He and the band and the organization have done a great job at doing this with Solid Sound, with many people being repeat attendees. Hope to see you all again in a couple of years.
