The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jeff Tweedy

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Prolific musician and writer Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo) joins Andy Richter to discuss their shared love for naps, the simple genius of “Smoke on the Water,” the bigotry of the “disco sucks” movement, obssessing over books and music, faking it until you make it, and his latest book, “World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music.”Do you want to talk to Andy live on SiriusXM’s Conan O’Brien Radio? Leave a voicemail at 855-266-2604 or fill out our Google Form at BIT.LY/CALLANDYRICHTER 

Hello again, everybody. Welcome back to The Three Questions. I am the host of The Three Questions, Andy Richter, and this week I am talking to the musical genius, Jeff Tweedy. Jeff is a prolific musician and writer. He's released 20 studio albums, including four with Uncle Tupelo, 12 with Wilco, one with his son Spencer, and four solo albums. Jeff is also an accomplished author and I was thrilled to talk with him about his latest book, World Within a Song. I spoke to Jeff in person at our Team Coco studio. And now enjoy my conversation with the great Jeff Tweedy. It's great. It's really nice.

Yeah. It's like a boutique hotel. To just stay here? I do come here. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I do, I do, I am here most days of the week. My wife works out of the house and I just have to get out of the house. Because if I stayed home, she would eventually catch me napping and I don't need her to do that.

I don't understand the anti-nap people. Yeah, I know. It's a natural thing. I'm a nap enthusiast. Yeah. When you think of other large omnivorous mammals, they take quite a few naps during the day. I feel like I've earned a nap every now and then. Right, exactly. So how are you?

I know you're playing because I saw you were playing at Largo. I got a text from Flanagan asking if asking, you know, if you were coming over. And I said, yeah. So. Yeah, yeah. Mark Flanagan runs the club Largo for all of you out there. Yeah, it was just, I mean, every, almost every year I come do four or five shows or however many shows I can fit in at Largo just because I love playing that room,

solo acoustic especially. And it's just like the perfect size and it's a self-selecting audience that kind of, I don't know, wants to be quiet and be entertained. And you know, it's just like the best audience in the best room. Yeah, that's the thing about that place and always has been from when it was a previous place. And there are people, like I didn't even, it was just a place that I went starting in the 90s from when my comedy circle started to expand

when I left Chicago, there were like LA people that I was meeting from being in New York, but then when I'd come to LA when I left Chicago. There were like LA people that I was meeting, but from being in New York, but then when I come to LA, I would see them, and it would be there and it just became this place. But it's really pretty magical, the overlap of music and comedy that happens there. No, it's great.

And it's just like human scaled.aled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like it's, yeah, there's like a community. There's a feeling of like everybody kind of knowing each other. And very supportive. Like it's always a great time. And we have fam, you know, my wife's brother lives out here. So we have family to visit. Lots of excuses to come out, yeah.

Yeah, I listened to Howard Stern and when his guys started making fun of each other for, ooh, going to Largo. That's when I knew, like, wow, that place has really cracked the public consciousness. Oh, I didn't know that. I never heard that. Yeah, they were doing, they even did like phony phone calls with like... Where like somebody that's supposed to be like a ridiculous showbiz gad about is like, I'm hanging at Lago. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. Well...

It's really funny. It kind of fits. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't know if you know this podcast, but this is... We kind of... You know, we talk about where you come from and why you are the way you are. I'll do my best. Well, I mean, you've already written a couple of books that are on that topic, with the second one being more about creative process kind of stuff. Right.

But your new one, World Within a Song, is basically this podcast, but just specifically song related. Right, through the lens of other people's songs. Yeah, yeah. Which is such a great... When you came up with the idea for this, were you like, oh, fuck, yeah. What an idea for a book.

Gosh, I wish I had the foresight to figure out beforehand that it was going to be a good premise. But I wasn't that, I mean, I just was trying to come up with something to write about. Yeah, yeah. And I've always, I mean, I've always wanted to, I think I've always wanted to be a rock critic to some degree. Oh really? And I couldn't do it. Really?

So I started playing guitar. Why couldn't you do it? What do you mean? When you were too... That's always... Are you joking? I think that's always the truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, actually, when I was a kid, I wrote for fanzines around St. Louis, and I usually did it to get free records and to get to go to shows for free. And I didn't really meet very many deadlines. I'd only handed in a few things. Well, they were fanzines. Yeah, yeah. But the Xerox copier is waiting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it wasn't a very, I wasn't good at it.

I wasn't disciplined. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing I think about the most is other people's songs. And it's actually, I mean, that's the thing I think about the most is other people's songs. And it's actually, I guess the part that I didn't understand is that I'm not that unique. And that everybody really kind of has this relationship with songs that becomes autobiographical. Absolutely. Yeah, I actually, that's what I was going to say is like, I think everybody that cares even a little bit about music could write something like this. You could go through and I did want to ask about the process of it because I would,

for a work thing just recently, I had to talk about my musical preferences in history. It was just so, this questionnaire was just like, oh my God, it's like, explain love. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. On a, what? You know, like asking, what songs are meaningful to you?

It's like, oh, Jesus Christ, you know, you better come over to my house for a month because it's gonna take a while. And how did you go through? Did you go through your albums? Did you just kind of just let it percolate and write things down as they came to you? I really just got the ball rolling by thinking about a song that I wanted to write about that I knew that I had some personal connection to that I could tell a story about, you know, like how it

came into my life or whatever. And when I would be writing, like, about a song, what ended up happening is I would think of another one, you know, and that's really how the book – the book is almost written, like, without a whole – Sequentially. Yeah, sequentially. Like, I would just kind of think of one while I'm writing one and then that would be, I would write about a song every day. That's basically what I did. And then I ended up with a bunch more than are in the book.

I can imagine, yeah. But yeah, they're short chapters, so it was easy to kind of complete a whole idea each day. Yeah, because they're not chronological, which I kind of was half expecting that because there is, you know, because usually in autobiographical kind of things, you know, you just, I was born and then I went to school, you know. This is the first song I remember hearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, well, I mean, and it does start out like, with smoke on the water, which,

I love too that you're like embarrassed about that because you and I, I'm a little bit older than you, but you and I, and also I grew up in Yorkville, Illinois, which is not too dissimilar from Belleville in terms of you were in Illinois, mid-ern, close to a bigish city, which is St. Louis, and we were sort of the same. With Chicago. With Chicago, but I think Belleville's a little bigger than Yorkville is. Belleville's kind of a medium-sized midwestern city.

Right. Well, it's like 50,000, 40,000 when I was growing up. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, oddly isolated. Yeah. You know, it felt really distant from the conversation. Absolutely. No, Yorkville was the same way. It's like, yeah, we were only, you know, less than an hour from Chicago, but I'm not going to Chicago. No, my everybody in my, you know, in Belleville is, well, you're going to St. Louis? You're going over the river? Are you insane?

Yep, yep. Yeah. Why would you go there? Right, right. Because they have their stuff? Because of stuff, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, it always felt like we were, I mean, I grew up in the 70s, 80s,

late 60s, 70s, 80s, was my childhood. But when I look back and I tell people about my childhood, it feels like I'm telling them about growing up in the 50s or something. We had like soda fountains. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you write about AM pop radio and how, I mean, it's almost corny, but like my brother and I sitting next to a radio with a little cassette player recording songs

and being annoyed that the DJ was talking over the beginning of it. And my brother being like, don't they know people are recording these? And of course, in retrospect, why would they be expecting anything, except a child? They would go buy the music. But yeah, but also that, I mean, because I miss that sort of, I miss that like you had to, you had, if you were out in the world, you had to listen to the music that was given to you. There's no iPod, there's no Walkman, there's the radio. And I think I even today,

I need someone else to be playing the music for me. Like I love satellite radio. And I even like the streaming services that have the players they make for you. I found so much cool music through those. Yeah. I mean, something that I don't think exists much today is somebody listening for hours waiting to hear a certain song. I used to do that when you're a kid.

Man, if I keep listening, maybe they'll play Train in Vain again. waiting to hear a certain song. Right. You know, I used to do that when you were a kid. Man, if I keep listening, maybe they'll play Train in Vain again. Yeah, yeah. Or if on the FM station, if it was sandwiched in like three songs and you miss them saying who it was, you're like, oh man, what was that? Yeah. I mean, I'm very hesitant to be like a doom and gloom kind of guy with changing technology and, you know, I don't want to sound like an old nostalgic guy. I just say I miss it. I'm not saying, you know, I mean, the world is what it is.

Right. I don't know if it was better, but it was, it definitely was. There were qualities that like not just with the radio, but the way, uh, we purchased music and you had to like really, you really had like, you had skin in the game automatic automatically. You, you couldn't listen to it unless you bought it. And then once you bought it, you were like, God, I hate it, but I should give it another, I should, but I should listen again. Right. Right.

Eventually, it's like your favorite record. Yeah. It takes a long time for some things to percolate. Because you don't know it. I don't know. If it's not what you expected, then you can get over that hump. Now, I think immediately if it's not what you expect or it's not hitting you at the right fraction of a second of listening to something.

Yeah, yeah. You just dismiss it and just go, oh, I have an opinion on that now. I can move on. Yeah. And also, you know, your life, you've got a grown up life that's full of all kinds of other shit that you don't have all the time that you used to to just pursue love and music. And also too, I mean, there's something that's so particular about the fact that you're basically a child and then into a teen while you're doing all this.

And that's why when I brought up Smoke on the Water and you said like that you were kind of embarrassed to say that that's, you know, that was one of the, you know, a foundational sort of moment for you is hearing that song. But you know, it's because you're a kid and you're so like worried because I had the same, I like growing up, I was, I was in a small town, like I had no way, there's WXRT in Chicago and I could hear the music that they played which was kind of like they

play some Clash but it was like things like John Hyatt you know like like kind of more album rock, critic rock you know. So a lot of stuff I just would have to read about and then go find at the mall and buy and it's like you said you didn't know so I was't know. So I was into New Wave, you know, I was into New Wave. So there's things like ACDC that all my friends were listening to, totally looked down my nose at ACDC. And now it's like only one of my like favorite things to do is listen to ACDC, you know.

Was there a young snobbery on your part? No, I think I was so, I think the smoke on the water thing, it was so young. So young that I had no idea that it was, I mean I probably only knew the riff. Sure, of course. Didn't know who it was by or anything like that. It's just been, it's so monolithic and indelible that even like a six-year-old kid could hear it and I think that's about how old I was, six or seven. Yeah, I remember hearing it blaring out of the music room in

sixth grade after school. Yeah. So ultimately, I just wanted to tip my hat to a riff being that, a, gigantic and memorable, but also that accessible to almost anybody with hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I could play that. Exactly. I can't play guitar, but I can play that. Or at least a facsimile of it where somebody would go, oh wow, you can play the guitar. Yeah, and that's like that's great permission. That's like giving people permission. I think Seven Nation Army, you know, White Stripes Seven Nation Army

is kind of like the smoke on the water of today. It has given thousands of kids, maybe millions of kids the idea that you can make music. And I think that that's just an incredible gift. Yeah, and all over the world, soccer games. And it's so weird because it is like, it's a good riff, but it's like, from hearing all the music of the last 30 years, to be like, oh, that's the one that they're going to play in, like,

Slovenian soccer stadiums. It's the one you can get, like, of 80,000 people to wrap their heads around at the same time. Yeah, absolutely. You had older siblings, so you had sort of a way into music. And in some ways that, like you were, there's a great chapter about Abba's dancing queen and how, and I completely relate to this. Because at the time, one of the sort of cultural movements of my youth was Disco Sucks. Especially in Chicago because there was Steve Dahl was a very popular DJ who had a big rally. Right. Steve Dahl was a very popular DJ who had a big rally

in between two White Sox games, bring a disco record, we're gonna blow them up. Which, you know. It's horrendous. It's so awful. And then they ended up canceling the second game because people, they literally blew up a pile of LPs which then started being flung around this, you

know, Comiskey Park. There's also, I think it also made like a giant hole in the ground in the outfield. Yeah, yeah. It was just such a bad idea all around. And I mean, I remember, you know, riding in the car, hearing about it in the aftermath with my stepfather. And you bring, you say in the book, and I did not, at the time, you know, I did,

you mentioned that it's kind of the notion was like, well, disco music is gay. In that, you know, like sixth, seventh grader kind of thing where you're not even really. No, you're not even sure what- You're not even conceptualizing what that means. It just means that for a kid in that time, it just meant bad.

Yeah. I mean, it meant, and that was like horrible, but it was like, you know, it just, you just knew that it made the adults around you very uncomfortable. Yes, yes. And the kids absorbed that in a way that like, well, that's almost the worst thing you can be.

Yeah, yeah. That's why's why I can call you that. That's gonna really hurt. And if it sticks to you, boy, you're really in trouble. And it was just kinda, yeah, it wasn't even specifically about homosexuality. It was just like less than manly. And you couldn't be less than manly. Right, you know.

Well in a small town, there's so much conformity that gets enforced. Yeah. And the other thing in retrospect too that I feel, I mean, I was never deeply in the disco sucks camp, but I certainly was a rocker. But just the fact how anti-gay and anti-black it was, which I do not remember that being so aware of it, but looking back

on it, it is like, oh, of course, of course, there's tremendous amount of bigotry involved in this, you know? Yeah, it was just brutal gatekeeping. Yeah. You know, like what was the threat? The threat was that this is going to be legitimized in the public consciousness that you can be gay. Yeah.

And that you can have, you know, it's like black artists being played on white radio stations. I mean, that was literally a thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, it was still a thing when we were growing up. Still a fucking thing? Now, now. Beyonce's country album.

Oh, yeah. It's a fuss over Beyonce making it. Jesus Christ. Right. Yeah. It's the same with artists performing. For some festivals, there are certain days that are like for black artists. Yeah. You know, like I've noticed that over the years. It's still a thing that's pretty problematic, obviously. Yeah. But yeah, country music wouldn't exist without black genius.

And that's the craziest part of it. Absolutely. Part of it. I mean, AP Carter, who's like thought of as like the father of a lot of country music and the owner of copyrights of lots and lots of country songs that we all know. He did not know how to read or write music and he hired a black man to travel through the hills of Appalachia with him and he would get people to play them their songs and then they'd get back in the car and that guy would

write them down. Transcribe. Transcribe for like a nickel or a piece or something. Yeah, like something. I don't know how much he got paid. But yeah, that right there, even just that contribution is unacknowledged mostly. Yeah. Or the banjo is an African instrument.

The banjo. Right. Yeah, You know, like the banjo. Right. Yeah, no, it is. It's ridiculous. And I've always loved, because old country music and old soul music are my favorites, and there's so much overlap. Right. It's just working class southern people, you know.

Which is what, I mean, the other thing I wanted to point out is like all that also is so galling about that that controversy is that when you listen to pop country music today it has absorbed and taken and appropriated so much from hip-hop. Yes. From like just like all kinds of music that is you know maybe just it's only allowed to go to one way, I suppose. Right, right. No, that's the, that's the thing that's really appalling and to people who are like, you know, well, I mean, they know it's not true when they

say like, well, racism has been fixed. We had a black president. It's like, yeah, but it's still, it's white people can take black music all they want, but one mega popular black woman makes something that kind of sounds, has a little twang to it and people lose their shit. Yeah. Is there no safe space for white people? Oh, it's really rough.

Although I do think we've had a good run. We whites. Us, right. Yeah. But I do love we've had a good run. We whites. Yeah, us whites. We've done all right, yeah. But I do love that when you point out, like, Dancing Queen and ABBA just in general, because there is, even among, even when you get beyond kind of juvenile kind of, you know, like, I'm, you know, like, that's queer, that's gay.

When you get beyond that, there's still, like, I remember Tony Bourdain doing a show in Sweden and being very disappointed that everybody he asked, like, will you hate Abba, right? And they're like, no, no, I actually quite like Abba. And it's like, well, yeah, because Abba's fucking awesome, you know? And he couldn't, he still had this, like, because I was fucking awesome. Right. You know, and he couldn't, he still had this like very adolescent.

Oh yeah, like edge lord. Yeah, edge lord, you know, punk is the only good thing kind of stuff. That's, that is like, that's even beyond like the racial and the homophobic component of that. You know, that's like this sort of intellectualism that thinks because something is very, very popular that it's plastic and it has no artistic value. I was so relieved when the light bulb went off that for me, which I write about in the book, is that nobody can make this music but these people. Yeah.

And I mean, try and make an ABBA record. Yeah, and do it again and again. There's still nobody that can make an ABBA record. Just song after song after song. And yeah, just because it becomes this sort of mass presence in a consumer culture, I mean, that was something I thought that that's gotta be bad. You know, that has to be bad. Anything that's like that, it has to be bad. Yeah.

And I don't, you know, I could, I just, as I got older, I just don't think that I could defend that position any longer. There's no, it's like really incoherent to find a philosophy that eliminates that kind of joy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and how you can listen to Dancing Queen, Fernando, SOS, and go like, you know, reject. Yeah. What is, like just, it's like rejecting, like making out. Yeah, or like, or snowfall or something. Yeah, yeah, like making out. Yeah, or like our snowfall or something.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like a beautiful sunset, like ick. Yeah, it's ugly. Everyone loves that shit. It's ugly. Look at that stupid rainbow. Well, when you were young, was it pretty much music? Like were your touchstones like this?

Were you into, was there anything like movies or was it, or was it just pretty much music for you when you were? I think it was in a, my mother always says, or always said when I was young, I would stand and cry and point at the stereo until she would put something on. Oh wow. So I don't remember there being a time where records and, you know, songs and recorded

music and sounds even were kind of an obsession. I think I dabbled in being normal. You know, like, you know, I played little league baseball. You know, I, you know, the only other thing that's given comes close is books. You know, I think I always have been a big reader or enthusiastic reader and enthusiastic learner, but a terrible student. Yeah. I just could not get my mind to focus on something that wasn't interesting to me.

Yeah. Well, you've done all right. I don't know, man. I was just like one, like, just, you know, glorious mentor type teacher away from just being in academia the rest of my life. Yeah, but I think you, you know. Thank God that guy never found me. Right, right, right, exactly. What kind of stuff did you, what kind of stuff were you hearing growing up? Like what was, what were your parents playing? My parents had a weird record collection that seemed like most of it came with the Hi-Fi

when they bought it. You know, it was like, um. Ray Coniff? Yeah, a hundred, a thousand and one strings and stuff like that. My dad did own some records that were, he worked on the railroad his whole life, so he owned recordings of steam engines, of locomotives. And so, I mean, if you look at my whole career. If you look at my career, it all fits.

You know, like these, we had a Marty Robbins record and stuff like that. But it was mostly my sister and my aunt and my brother's records that changed my life. You know, like just being brought into a world where all of that music just exists and was given to me. Yeah. You know, and I didn't have to go looking for it. My brother's collection in particular. My sister and my aunt had big

boxes of seven-inch records of 45s, you know, so it was Motown, Beatles, Herman's Hermits, Monkeys, all of that. They were 15 years older than me, you know, and so they lived through this really rich pop music period. Yeah. The era of the singles. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Then my brother was pseudo-intellectual and really, I don't know, intrigued by wild music.

He was at college age when like craft work and all these. Yeah. He had one of the more adventurous record collections I think you could have at that time. In Belleville, Illinois. In Belleville. Well, he went away to college and he came back with these crates of records that were like.

How much older? He's like 12 years older than me. Oh, wow. I'm the youngest by 10 years. My youngest brother who's no longer with us, he was 10 years older than me. So yeah, it was an afterthought. Yeah, yeah.

But I grew up in a house almost like an only child because they were all out. Yeah, all out. And yeah, my brother caught me filling out a Columbia House Records club thing one time. You can get 12 records for a penny or something like that. And he saw me like checking Kansas and REO Speedwagon and things like that. He's like, no, I can't let you do that. And he said, you can have my records.

And he gave me his crates of records. Wow. Mostly, just the wildest stuff. I mean, and I think the combination of those two things, these like classic, you know, popped records, and no way of distinguishing in my mind at that age that these are different things. Yeah. You know, because they're really not. Right. most people, I think especially at that age and that time and that part of the world,

would not throw on a Tangerine Dream record next to a Herman's Hermits record. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but that's like, that's the record collection I had and I listened to it. I like poured through everything because I just was so intrigued by, I don't know, records are magical to be, you know, like just, you know, it's sort of like an airplane. We all get on them and we don't like sort of, every once in a while it hits you. This is insane.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That this works. Right, right. You know, and it's the same when you put a needle down on a record. Yeah. Sometimes I just like, I can't believe all of this is here.

Just in a one long scratch. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I was always, I was just fascinated by that. Was there an age when you kind of really felt like, okay, and this is what I'm going to do myself? I think that my ambition was pretty muted. It was more like, I know I want to be around this stuff. Yeah. And so it was like maybe I'll get to work in a record store.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. Or a critic, like you said. Right. But I think I saw myself as wanting to be a musician. And I think one of the things that was exciting to me about listening to records in my room was picturing myself being on stage. Yeah. You know, so you know I always thought that that would be like the most intense revenge on all the people that I that were making fun of me and stuff. Yeah. And it turns out it's not. It's not at all. They don't care. They don't give a shit. They've never paid attention to you. And they don't even know you exist, you know.

So yeah, it was a very ineffective revenge strategy. Right, right, right. But yeah, I think that, I mean, so I hung around in record stores until they did eventually give me jobs in record stores. Yeah. And I thought I'd made it. Like I've way outlived my dreams. Wow.

At what age do you start writing songs? And what makes you think like, hey, I think I'm going to, you know. I think 14, 15 years old, high school age. Yeah. It's kind of like a lot of things in my life. I think 14, 15 years old, high school age. Yeah. It's kind of like a lot of things in my life. There's also this component where, you know, the whole idea of fake it until you make it kind of thing. And I was like, I think if you can't visualize something, you can't really attain it.

You know, like you can't manifest it. But, you know, I told people I could write songs way before I had ever tried to write a song. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm a songwriter, you know. Right. Oh yeah, I told people I could play the guitar way before I could play the guitar. Yeah.

You know, and it's like this sort of- No wonder they were putting you down. Yeah, yeah. You were a liar. I was a liar, yeah, total liar. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, you know, just, but eventually, you know, I knew that there were bills coming due at some point.

Right, right. But- Time to put up. One of the first songs I wrote, there was a band in Belleville called Joe Camel and the Caucasians. And we, in our high school band, which became Uncle

Tupelo, but we would play shows as the primitives with Joe Camel and, you know, got to know these older guys that were playing kind of R&B stuff. And they didn't really write their own songs. And so, you know, I was like, I write songs. And Joe Camel, this older guy, he's like, oh, I write songs. And Joe Camel, this older guy, he's like, oh, you write songs? Come on over to the house someday and show me some of your songs

because we're getting ready to make a record. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so I did. And one of the first songs I ever wrote is on a single that they recorded and put out. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's called Your Little World. Wow. Yeah. And's called Your Little World. Wow.

Yeah. Do you remember like, what the first verse do you remember? Yeah, Your Little World is much too small. I've got no room to fly at all. Oh, wow. It's really, really horrible. I know, but I mean, for what?

How old? You're 17? 16? 16 maybe. Yeah. Yeah, but it was funny that I pulled it off and he was like, oh, that's great. We're going to go record. Oh, wow. Yeah. And do you get, does he give you a cut, you a check?

I know, I don't think so. I was just happy that I didn't know how anything worked, you know. Right, of course. Why would you? Yeah, he how anything worked, you know. Right, of course. Why would you? Yeah, he gave me credit, you know. And yeah, I have a whole bunch of those still. They were hand screens, covers, and you know, they were just meant, you just wanted to have something to sell at their weekly bar gigs.

Right, right. Yeah, some merch. Your dad, you know, you talk about him throughout your different stories, and he was a tough nut. How is he with your burgeoning musical life and career? He was a tough nut in a lot of ways. Alcohol was really important to him. Yeah. And the railroad was really important.

And there was a certain amount of, like, you know, I was my mom's friend, not necessarily my dad's friend, you know, growing up. You know, like the... I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, over as, you know, when my dad passed away, by the time he passed away, I had come to terms with him quite a bit more than I did had when I was a kid. So, I had gotten pretty close to him. And I was never really scared of him because my mom wasn't scared of him.

Right. You know, go to bed, Bob. Shut up. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In hindsight, you know, he would come out and yell at us because we'd be up watching movies. I never had a bedtime, so I'd be watching movies loud, which is TV right next to the room he would be sleeping in. He has to get up at five in the morning.

He had a reasonable complaint. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. My mom would just like, shut up, go to bed. I'm like, oh, that's how you handle him. Okay, yeah. But yeah, you're furious. As far as music, by the time we were playing

in Uncle Tupelo and sold out shows in St. Louis and like things. I think he really enjoyed being in the audience and being some semi-celebrity just by extension. Oh really? Yeah. No, he was pretty gregarious, especially if you got him out of his comfort zone and you put a pitcher of beer in front of him. Yeah. Then he would buy pitchers of beer for everybody in the crowd. He got to be a little bit of a celebrity

at some of the shows. But did that translate in better treatment of you? I mean, did you feel like that he was proud of his son or did he just kind of take advantage of the atmosphere that his son created? There was a selfishness to it, definitely. But I didn't feel like he wasn't proud of me. I just think that he had a difficult time being

demonstrative of like his true feelings for most of our relationship. Right, right. You know, like I said, by the time he passed away, there was like a deeper understanding, at least on my part, of what his actual situation was. Yeah. You know, I think that he had a lot of undiagnosed mental health issues,

or like not necessarily mental, you know, like mood disorders. Yeah, yeah, depression. Not like, you know, like, well, anxiety, you know, like all of these things that I have that I recognize in him and realize that he somehow successfully, awkwardly self-medicated his whole life, you know? And it's like it's not just like one thing, you know, he managed to keep a job for 40 years or, you know, like he was high functioning.

Yeah. And I always think that people that are like that probably just figured out like the least healthy way of keeping their head above water. Yeah. And what they had access to. Yeah. So, you know, it's like he made his world very, very small. Yeah.

You know, only had a handful of places that he would go. Yeah. Things, you know, it was like he made his world very, very small. Yeah. You know, only had a handful of places that he would go, you know, things like that. All that makes sense now, you know, and it made sense to me as I got older. But as a kid, you're just like, why isn't dad here at my game? My, you know, I always tell this story. This is the saddest story if you're ready to cry. All right, sure. Lay it on me. I get migraines and I used to get them way more frequently, but when I was a kid I would get migraines and sometimes I'd have to go home from school because I'd be so bad I would

start vomiting. Oh my God. At what age did this start? Six. Oh my God. Wow. So I'm in high school. I'm a sophomore in high school and my mom is working and the only person I can get a hold of is my dad to come pick me up. This is about noon or something.

And so I get discharged from the school, from high school. They said, oh yeah, you need to go home. So I'm sitting outside, sitting outside, sitting outside, school gets out. Everybody's going home, I'm still sitting on the bench out in front of the high school. And my dad pulls up, furious, and he had been sitting at my grade school

waiting for me to come out. He didn't know I was in high school. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah. So I feel better now. I think I should go. Well, that probably made it so that like,

you feel like the best dad in the world, you know, in relative terms. Oh yeah, I know what ages my children are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bar is pretty low. Because I mean there have been times when I don't, you know, my kids will talk about, they'll name a teacher and I'm like, I don't know who that is. And I feel terrible and I feel like, you know, some selfish old, you know, careerist crank,

but now, good lord, at least I know what grade they're in. Right. Right. Wow. Yeah, so it's just, I'm just here to make you feel better about your parenting. Well, thank you. Yeah, like, that's not an exception. He had gone into my grade school and eventually the principal looked me up and said, oh no, he graduated.

Wow. You know, he's over at Belleville West, must be over at Belleville West, you know. Wow. So, yeah. Was your dad mad at you? He was mad at me, somehow. I don't know why.

I guess because he was embarrassed, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It couldn't really be his fault, you know. Wow, that's, yeah, been through that. Like so much of looking back on how you were parented, like just take it all for granted. And then it's like when that first kid comes out and before they've even dried him off, all these realizations of like, oh my God, that was really fucked up. Right.

Like just, they hit you as like, I can't imagine doing that to this kid. Right. And one of the things I think that I've learned in my life is that everybody's kind of doing their best at all times. And it's just like, but people's best a lot of times is not very good. Right. It's like, Terry, I don't, like I said, I think it was important for me to figure out why my dad could be that negligent. Not to exonerate him or anything, but just to understand it a little bit more as not being about me.

Yeah. You know, not being, A, not being my fault, but also just that, you know that those things hurt you in a way that feels like you've been wronged intentionally. Yeah. So getting away from those thoughts and kind of being able to sort out what's yours and what's other people's responsibility. Yeah. That's good. I wouldn't have learned a lot without my wife.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's good. I wouldn't have learned a lot without my wife. You know. Oh, absolutely. Without my wife. Absolutely. We're going to sit and have meals together. Yeah. I'm like, what? Yeah, yeah.

Why would you do that? I mean, if you don't know any better, like, this doesn't make any sense. But we never ate together, hardly at all. Wow. Not even on Thanksgiving when I was a kid. Wow. Yeah, it would be like, oh, make yourself a plate. Wow.

You go sit in the corner while the football game's on. But it was really, really rare for us all to sit down and have a meal together. And then my wife is like, that's insane. And it really is one of the key components of a good relationship with your kids, I think, is the more meals you can have together. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, just there are these gestures that, again, almost seem corny. Yeah. It's like the dumbest, sort of most baseline advice. It's like, oh no, it really actually matters. It takes a certain sort of stillness and quiet, like of just getting comfortable with people eating and like 45 minutes into a meal, one of your kids goes,

what do you guys know about the sex? And that wouldn't have happened if you were not sitting there. You know, it's like, well, what do you know about the sex? Well, I've had the sex. Really? Wow. Wow. That's a good one.

With who? That's a good one. Oh, man. You're, one of the things that you mention in your book is that you sort of make reference to one of the other books and say that you devote a certain amount of time and every day to your imagination. And I'm wondering how that, because that's such a, again, that's like sitting down for a meal with yourself.

That's like a nice, hard and fast rule. And when did that, I mean, were you just because you spent so much time kind of on your own that you started to recognize the importance of that? Well, yeah, I think that there's certain things about being, you know, last in the birth order by a lot, and sort of an only child. Definitely comfortable with solitude, you know, or being alone. In fact, this is so I can talk about my father's, maybe, unsavory, now what's the word I'm looking for, less than ideal parenting skills for my father.

My mother's was the opposite, you know, it's like when I say I'm looking for. Less than ideal parenting skills for my father. My mother's was the opposite. You know, it's like when I say I'm lonely, my mother wouldn't go, oh, let's call up Joey and go hang out or play in the yard or something. My mom would go, here, here's a deck of cards. Let me show you how to play solitaire. Oh, wow. Wow. You know, because she wanted me nearby.

Yeah. So like these, it's weird. I mean, I think everybody probably has these, they sound pretty extreme in my case, but I think everybody probably has these weird parental quirks when you look back on it, like you're saying where you go, oh my God, that's horrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, again, I think that was the best she could do. She didn't, she just wanted me nearby, you know.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's a natural thing that I had to, I think I just absorbed as a lesson that I think I benefited from. It's like being able to occupy my imagination or occupy myself being alone, being able to tolerate solitude, being able to, you know, keep my mind active and not get bored, you know? Which I think is something that if you want to be creative, you probably, I think that's the best way to be creative is to try not to try so hard, you know? But just get in the habit of spending time with yourself in a quiet kind of way where you're not like, oh, I've got to write something and I've got to like make something great,

you know? That kind of intention and focused energy doesn't really result in, I don't think, really creative works. Right. You know, it's like maybe finishing a task and some people can get good at that. But it's like the white-knuckling approach to it is like I think it's really, I don't know if, I don't know how it works for people. For me, like, when I'm thinking about songwriting, which I don't do,

and I don't do enough writing of my own anyway, I mean, that's my, my mother didn't teach me how to play solitaire. I can show you. I figured it out, but I mean, she, you know, she probably, I mean, it would be her or my grandmother, and people are like, well, come here, let me teach you how to make stew, okay?

Yeah, yeah. But I'm always, and when I think about songwriting, I think about kind of a push-pull, and it exists in other things too, especially once you're a professional, and once this is your life, and you've got albums to your life and you've got albums to make and you've got, you know, deadlines to meet because there's people who, you know, are spending money on you, you know,

the push pull between writing is some kind of catharsis, you know, like there's something I need to get out and then just kind of time to make the donuts, you know, where it's like I gotta write something and I'm wondering like where you are now and does that transition over time as a songwriter? Well I think it's like having it be a practice like a daily practice allows you to have a lot more anxiety that gets dissipated by this just being like a normal thing that you

do every day. Yeah. I look at it like I put myself in the path of these moments where I actually do feel like I've been struck by lightning. Yeah. You know, where I have like a great, like, I don't know, just, you know, some inspiration, but it didn't happen without me sitting there every day. Yeah.

Kind of like being in the path of it. Right. You know? I guess I did maybe go through a period in my life where it was like, oh crap, we need a record. You know? Mm-hmm. Like those were all the best songs I've ever written. What am I going to do now?

Yeah. But I think that I don't even remember when that was because I feel like even early on, I thought the best thing would be to have a lot of songs always, all the time. Just have too many songs. Yeah. And so I've kind of like taught myself and organized my life around the idea that I feel better

without any of the pressure of having commerce involved or deadlines or anything like that, I just feel better having a new song to sing. I feel better knowing that I made something. And I feel relaxed knowing that I have a lot of songs that nobody's heard. I mean, that's actually kind of like my favorite songs are the ones that nobody's heard. You know, like, um, there's, I mean, that's actually kind of like my favorite songs are the ones that nobody's heard, because they're just mine, you know?

Like, nobody else has weighed in on them and said, ah, yeah, it's okay. Yeah. And that's what the spirit of it should be to me, is like, you know, I don't know if there's like, I don't need to judge them. I don't, you know. I was going to say, as they come out,

do you judge them? Are you like, oh, that one's a really good one, and eh, that one's okay, you know? You know, after the fact, you know. I was gonna say, as they come out, do you judge them? Are you like, oh, that one's a really good one, and eh, that one's okay, you know? You know, after the fact, you know, when I get in an op- you know, I have an opportunity to go to the studio. I go to the studio every day, you know, like... Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I was gonna say, when you're doing all this devoting your time

to your imagination, how do you keep your kids away from you? You know? Well, it's easier now that they're older. Yeah, yeah, right. But, but, yeah, um... I don that they're older. Yeah, yeah, right. But yeah, I don't know, I always felt like even, you know, there's always a little bit of time. That's the crazy thing also is that if you kind of make it a habit, it takes very little

time on any given day to kind of accumulate a lot of ideas and work that you can sort through when you do have a focused moment, you know. But yeah, I just think once, after the fact, once I get an opportunity to play it for somebody or I start working on it in the studio, then sometimes I'm like, oh, wow, I really like this one. But it's only because I've kind of divorced myself from ownership of it. You know? A lot of songs I work on, I have to relearn them because I forgot writing them. And I think that's the ideal state. And then I'm coming to it as a listener and I can go, oh man, I would buy this record. I would really want to hear what this goes.

And then it's also just trying to maintain some sense of discovery, you know, as opposed to, oh, I know I have to put this piece together with this piece and build a chair. You know, I think it's more like, oh, I would love to, let's see what this tree looks like. You know, or like Or something's more surprising. Yeah. Allow yourself to be surprised. Do those surprises include surprises that you find about yourself? No, I've learned everything about myself.

I mean, it's a valid answer. No. I mean, you get to be a certain age and it is like. No, that's the opposite I mean It's the opposite. I think yeah, they get like, oh, yeah, I don't think That's always the that's part of the discovery is like what am I trying to say? Yeah, I think it's really really weird to Commission like a piece of art from yourself. Yeah, like I need to write a song about the opioid Yeah That's like let's blow the lid off of Like, oh, I need to write a song about the opioid epidemic or something. Let's blow the lid off of this and give the world something that's going to make them

want to do opioids so they can not hear this song anymore. Right, right, right. Or even, you know, I need to write a seven nation army so that my riff is being played at the stadiums. Oh yeah, you could really make that happen. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like you're going around to every stadium in the world and going, well, I have a new song to

pitch for you. It goes, don, don, don, don, don. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that, yeah, the whole point is like, that's what I get really excited about when I think that's where the inspiration kind of comes. I'm like, oh, what is this?

You know, why am I saying this? And what is actually, where did this come from? Yeah. You know? And a lot of times you don't really know, but so you, whenever you hear like artists talk about, like I'm just a conduit, you know, like the universe is just like writing music through me. I don't buy that, but I do buy that their subconscious is kind of feeding them stuff. And that's why it feels weird to take ownership of it. But I think

it's, it's, it's pretty much you. I think the universe probably doesn't really have a conscious. I know. Yeah. And I also think that that a lot of times. Maybe it does, but I don't. Yeah, I mean, but yeah, but I'm agnostic about that. It's like until I can understand it, I'll just sort of think, no, no, it's just probably coming from you. I think the universe has got something better to do than contribute track four of side two.

Right, exactly. Exactly. And I think also too, there's like a false humility to it. You know, it's like one of those that, and usually false, like I find humility so often to just be... Off-putting. Well, just like grandiosity dressed up

in like humble clothing, because it's like, check me out. I'm so, you know, like, I'm so over myself. I'm not really into myself. It's like, check me out. I'm so, you know, like, I'm so over myself. I'm not really into myself. It's like, wow, okay. That's the humor in it to me. It's like, oh, I mean, I really can't take credit for it. It's just that I've been chosen by the universe to receive these masterpieces. Right, exactly. If you could see it, there's a direct line of light beaming down from the sky onto me at all times. But yeah, I don't have much to do with it. I mean, I'm not even there when it happens.

You know, I have personal stake, but I mean, what do you think that living in Chicago for all these years has done for you? Artistically or personally or whatever, you know, I mean, you know, you could have lived wherever you wanted pretty much Well, I mean there's a pragmatism and practicality to it that that you can't I can't underestimate. Yeah, our overestimate whichever one it is becauseally located? Well, because I've been able to have like two floors of a warehouse building for 20-something years and I would never have been able to afford. And you know, this is a workspace of alone, you know,

just having being able to leave all my gear set up all the time and go use it. That's something a lot of people, I mean, it's always blows my mind, but there's a lot of musicians and bands that don't have that. They have to go rent a rehearsal space or things like that. So I always think of that first when I think about what the benefit of living in the Midwest and Chicago has, you know, what that has provided is literal space. Yeah. literal space, you know? And, you know, a community that's not a media center, really.

I mean, it's a big city. It's a big American city, but it's not like L.A. or New York, where, I don't know, like they're, I don't know, you have time. I always think that even in St. Louis, growing up and playing there first, you know, gave you time to suck. Gave a lot of bands you're coming out. It's like there's a make it or break it situation. I also like too when you're in a place,

like I felt it in New York versus here. Like in New York, yeah, we are in show business and we did a TV show. But, you know, when you go out and there'd be other, you know, fancy people at fancy parties, one of them could be like the window king, you know what I mean? Like there's so many other industries that out, whereas here you go to a fancy party with fancy people and it's like, well, what kind of show business do you do, you know? And it's just, I don't know of show business do you do? You know?

And it's just, I don't know, there's like a dreariness to it, you know? Yeah, I mean, I don't go to parties, so that doesn't affect me. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about either. I don't even know what even, I don't even know how to react to that. I don't, no, no, I mean.

First of all, if I did go to a party, I wouldn't end up knowing what anybody did. No, I don't. I mean, I'm talking more past tense too. I mean, I, you know, I'm in bed by 10 30. So there's, that's all the fabulous people I think are still, they're just getting round up. They're out there being, you know, dreary.

Dreary on their own. Yeah. Where do you want to go from here? Like, what's, how did you see your future? Well, I mean, this is the thing I think that has also sustained me for so long is that I was serious when I said that I outlived my dreams a long time ago.

Yeah. It wasn't just being in a record store, I'm a record store employee, but it was getting in a van and driving from city to city and playing shows and having music coming out on records and like that scale, the scale of the bands that were heroes to me were like Minutemen and Black Flag, Mean Puppets, all these great 80s punk rock bands and indie rock bands. I mean, that was the height of my ambition.

And every step past that has been like a challenge that I've welcomed, I think. I learned to welcome, like, oh, we're playing on this stage? This is a big stage. Yeah. Let's, we should figure out how to do this because this is a fun opportunity. And kind of being surprised by those opportunities as they kept coming. But the same, I feel like the same vision of the future for me now is the same one that I had once that all started to happen.

And it's like, and that is exactly this. How do I keep doing this? Yeah. You know, how do I get, what moves do I make, what, you know, maneuvering my life so that I get to keep doing this as long as possible. To sustain what you've got. Because I love it. I love getting to do what I do. I love everything about it. You know, like it's crazy. I love getting to work with all the people I get to work with. Wilco's built like a little, you know,

small business that is almost only us and our friends. Yeah. We have our own record label, we have our own studio, we're really self-sufficient. It's just gotten better and better. Not necessarily success-wise, by other people's measurements. Right. But you're making a living,

and you don't have to go to parties. Right. You know? Yeah, that's the best thing about the pandemic. Once like no galas. Yeah. Nobody's inviting you to a gala. Yeah, yeah.

Finally could put the tuxedo in the zippered bag for once. Right. What do you think, I mean, you're one of those people that now New York Times bestselling author can be attached to your name and the new book World Within a Song, which is really a fun read and a deep read, you know? I mean, it's a heavy little book, but not in like a, I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that in like there's a profundity to it that's really kind of great. Thank you. Yeah, it ended up being more intimate than my memoir. Yeah, yeah. under writing with the, I don't know, under the format of just talking about other people's songs, it allowed a lot more intimate memories to kind of come back to me.

Or like, I don't know what I'm trying to say. Basically, the same thing that happens when you're a kid, and you don't know how to explain to somebody how you feel, but you find a song that does that. Right. This book is like an extension of that. Yeah. You know, there's things, writing about somebody else's song allowed me to tell somebody something about myself that I could not have done without that song.

Yeah. And it's weird that music works like that. I don't know any other art form that works like that. You want to know how I really feel? Look at this painting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But most people, it's a pretty universal experience where somebody goes, I can't say it any better than this. This is how I feel. And they play a song for somebody. Mixtapes, you know?

Yeah. There's a, I mean, I think of it in terms of you're gonna be yourself a lot better when you're not thinking about yourself. And I think that like when you're writing your memoir, then it's like, oh, I gotta think about me. I was born. Yeah. But then you're thinking so much about you that it's you is not just kind of seeping out. Whereas this, you're focused on something else and something that's meaningful. And there's also all kinds of just great little one-off memories throughout the book that such that really are fun to read and very illustrative as a group. You really get to know you here. Now that you are this best-selling author,

la-di-da, what do you think is one of the best lessons that you've learned just about being alive? Boy. It's an easy question. Yeah. I think it is an extension of what I was saying earlier that, you know, everybody's kind of doing their best and it's not always great. Yeah.

You know? And how that contributes to hopefully a more a Consciousness or a presence that allows you to be kinder than yes, you would be otherwise right when you're thinking that everybody's Being an asshole on purpose You know or out to get you or so well And also if you're thinking that way and you think about yourself that way that you're doing your best You need you might think, well, you know, to be honest with myself, I don't think that's good enough. And then you try and do a little better, you know. And you know, if everybody would do that, you know, it's just that goddamn golden rule.

Right. Be kind, yeah. I mean, I was going to say that, and it's like, it's almost, it sounds too simple, but it really is, like, pretty, pretty important. Yeah. You know, I think that the other key thing that I always try and, you know, talk to my kids about, I think that is really important for people to have like a sustained sort of not necessarily happiness but tolerance of the world. Yeah, yeah.

Is to learn how to deal with not knowing. Yeah. You know, I think people really, really get themselves, you know, break their brains because they think that they have to know. Right. And the world is kind of built on this idea that a lot of people are taking advantage of that natural impulse that does, we can't tolerate ambiguity. Yeah.

And so you can sell people a lot of bullshit with the authority that you've figured it out. Yeah. And you can get somebody else to not have to worry about knowing anymore. Yeah. And you can get people to empty their pockets and, you know, I'm talking about all kinds of things. Sure. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. And in general, even just on like a smaller scale than how it affects the world, I think just for your own sanity, being able to relax and tolerate not knowing leads to a much, much more pleasant

experience on the planet. Yeah, yeah. Well, the book is World Within a Song, Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music. Jeff Tweedy, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Coming over here and talking to me. The book's out now. Go buy it, everybody. Buy multiple copies.

It's great to see you again. It's great to see you too. And thank you all for listening and I'll be back next week with more of The Three Questions. Thanks for listening and don't forget to check out the Andy Richter Call-In Show airing every Wednesday on SiriusXM's Conan O'Brien Radio. Episodes will be available on demand in the SiriusXM app. Just search Andy Richter or you can find them a week later in this same three questions podcast feed.

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