The Vig

Well if you haven’t guessed by now, I was in Bend this weekend to check out Wilco at the Les Schwab Amphitheater.  I hadn’t been to Bend since a high school football game in 1987 or so.  They tell me a lot’s changed.  Like I would know the difference.  All I know is there’s an Abby’s Pizza there, so it must be alright.

The amphitheater itself is located right along the Deschutes River, walking distance to the shops and restaurants of the Mill District.  Think Bridgeport, only with bricks.  And, it turns out, it’s walking distance from the Ameritel.  Good to know for future trips.  I ended up at the Motel 6 in Redmond, which is actually a pretty nice property as well.

The gates opened just after 5.  I parked myself about 50-feet from the stage and took a little nap.  Quite nice.  I need to do some better planning when attending these shows though.  I need to find one of those low-rise chairs.  Two hours of sitting on the ground is not fun.  A kid next to me was having a blast, though, grabbing handfuls of grass and stacking them on his dozing mom.  She awoke to find herself covered.  Quite humorous.

The Fleet Foxes opened the show.  I’d neither neard nor heard of them prior to arriving.  According to their Wikipedia page, they call their style “baroque harmonic pop jams”.  In other words, something straight up Pete in Parkrose’s alley.  In fact he probably has the CD on hold from some library out of South Dakota.  Be that as it may, it was a tight set, I thought.  Some great tunes.  Definitely worth checking out again.  Looks like they’ll be at the Crystal in a couple of weeks.

Wilco came out a little before 7:30.  The thing about Wilco is they don’t come out and announce their stage presence with authority.  They’ll come out and rather than start out with a grand sing-along, they force their audience to shut up and listen.  And if you don’t get the message the first time, they’ll give you another soft one.  And another.  Now I’m sure the band had the set list in mind prior to coming out on stage, it’s still kind of funny to me.  After all these years, people still don’t get the message.  As Tweedy himself said in Portland in 2006, you paid a lot of money to come here and hear the band play…why not shut-up and let them play?

The crowd, particularly down front, was rather raucous.  Tweedy at one point used the word “blasted.”  And they were.  Which was fine.  Let the kids down front do their thing.  What annoys me though is the groups who wander through the crowd, stop right in front of where I happen to be standing, then proceed to block my view and talk.  Johnny Trustfund and his girl finally got the message after a couple of minutes and moved on, but sheesh.  I spent $200 on tickets, hotel, and gas to come see this show, not to hear your dissertation on airplane contrails.

Meanwhile the band played on.  The first highlight of the night was I am Trying to Break Your Heart.  It’s another quiet one, but one with tons of nuance and stuff going on.  If you’ve heard the studio track, you know of what I speak.  Glenn Kotche’s drumming is my favorite part of the tune.  Again, so many things going on.  And as the song progresses, the noise increases until at the end, you’ve got six guys on stage doing six different things, but the product is something wonderful, both sonically and visually.  This was best exemplified by multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone throwing tambourines, maracas, shakers, and anything else he could get his hands on, over his shoulder while with the other hand, playing the keyboards.  It’s a mix of whimsy and noise.  Fantastic stuff.

When I saw the band last year out in Troutdale, I made sure to text Betty with Sunglasses the set list as it was happening.  She’s about as big a Wilco geek as I am, yet has never seen them live.  A shame.  Anyway, I performed the same duties last night, and even called her a few times just to let her listen in.  We’re gonna have to get her out to a show next year.

As the show progressed, the quiet stuff faded away and Wilco’s rock side came out.  Summer Teeth and Shot in the Arm are two of my all-time favorites and were fantastic.  The cascading wall of noise during Via Chicago and the straight-out rock of Monday and Outtamind (Outta Site) were fitting encores.  The crowd definitely got its money’s worth.  There are some great shots here.

This current incarnation of the band has been together for a few years now.  What makes them interesting is they nearly all have full musical lives outside of Wilco.  Yet they keep coming back to help fill out Tweedy’s vision.  Hopefully they can keep it together for a while longer.

Tweedy mentioned at one point the show would be their final full-set of 2008.  It’s all festivals and “opening for legends” from here out.  If indeed this was true, it was a worthy effort.

Update: If you’re still looking for the setlist, look no further.