by Jon Turner
March 24th Jeff Tweedy performed to a packed Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. The historic theatre was glowing with the warmth of its iconic neon marquee, a brief early arrival of summer heat, and a stage full of vintage guitar amps, tubes radiating.
Jeff Tweedy’s band is these days composed of “the family band” made up of Tweedy’s two sons, Spencer and Sammy, and their childhood-turned-Chicago-music-scene-mainstays, brother and sister Liam Kazar and Sima Cunningham (who opened the show with a solo performance), as well as Macie Stewart. The set covered a large and relatively quickly constructed repertoire of solo material from the original TWEEDY record Sukierae, as well as his five solo albums — including a double and, most recently, a triple.
Aside from what Tweedy implied was an obligatory performance of Wilco’s “California Stars,” requests for Wilco tunes were politely ignored.
The band sounded, as you might expect, like there was deep familiarity and trust. Dynamic, pulsing, and unified, the group handled the difficult task of translating Jeff Tweedy’s unique approach to layering his immediately recognizable guitar sounds and vocals over Spencer Tweedy’s loping, swinging, and at this point just as recognizable dry and close drum sound.
Watch the band’s full performance of “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” on the Late Show here.
