Wilco and their Solid Sound Festival:
Trailblazing at MASS MoCA
Published in Berkshire Eagle, 8/13/10
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
NORTH ADAMS—It was a great show, but it didn’t trigger any major public disorder.
“I think Tanglewood was very happy it didn't turn into a debauched rock and roll riot,” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy says of his band’s well-received 2008 concert at the venue—arguably the first honest-to-goodness rock and roll concert in years at a place where, when it comes to pop music, cutting edge means “Sweet Baby James.”
Now these Grammy-winning, trailblazing musicians return to the Berkshires for their only East Coast show of the summer, again in an unlikely place—North Adams’ MASS MoCA. And they’re not alone. The Solid Sound Festival, featuring Wilco, a host of other bands, and the potential for artistic cross-pollination and adventures of all sorts, begins tonight and lasts through Tweedy’s solo set (likely with guests in tow) on Sunday evening.
Maybe it makes perfect sense that Wilco would curate a multi-disciplinary festival at a contemporary art museum; the band has been growing its way outside the restraints of the mainstream music business for years. For starters, it’s refused to be contained by the cut-and-dried genre divisions upon which the business operates—the band is as comfortable nodding to underground 1970’s Krautrock as it is evoking the peaceful easy feeling of FM radio hits of roughly the same era. This summer Wilco broke from its longtime record label to create its own. And it’s made concerted efforts to step outside the one-size-fits-all circuit of concert venues controlled by promoter/ticketing monoliths like LiveNation. In fact, the success at Tanglewood, baseball stadiums and other “non-traditional rock venues” encouraged the brainstorming behind Solid Sound, Tweedy says in a phone interview from his Chicago home.
In addition to the bands—sets by Wilco on Saturday and by its members’ side projects, plus other groups, throughout the weekend—the festival features such fare as site-specific, music-based interactive art installations created by Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche, a display of Wilco concert posters, famed Vermont performance troupe Bread and Puppet, multiple sets by Chicago DJ collective Numero Uno (with projections on what is being called the largest movie screen in the state), a mini-film festival, and even a “comedy cabaret” featuring live stand-up.
“I think basically the idea is that Wilco and its extended family members and wives and crew members is a pretty big family of people that like making stuff,” Tweedy says. “There's room for all of that to happen [at Solid Sound]. I guess it's all a window into a group of people that like making stuff together. There's lots of things that go on around Wilco that aren't musical but are creative.”
NORTH ADAMS—It was a great show, but it didn’t trigger any major public disorder.
“I think Tanglewood was very happy it didn't turn into a debauched rock and roll riot,” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy says of his band’s well-received 2008 concert at the venue—arguably the first honest-to-goodness rock and roll concert in years at a place where, when it comes to pop music, cutting edge means “Sweet Baby James.”
Now these Grammy-winning, trailblazing musicians return to the Berkshires for their only East Coast show of the summer, again in an unlikely place—North Adams’ MASS MoCA. And they’re not alone. The Solid Sound Festival, featuring Wilco, a host of other bands, and the potential for artistic cross-pollination and adventures of all sorts, begins tonight and lasts through Tweedy’s solo set (likely with guests in tow) on Sunday evening.
Maybe it makes perfect sense that Wilco would curate a multi-disciplinary festival at a contemporary art museum; the band has been growing its way outside the restraints of the mainstream music business for years. For starters, it’s refused to be contained by the cut-and-dried genre divisions upon which the business operates—the band is as comfortable nodding to underground 1970’s Krautrock as it is evoking the peaceful easy feeling of FM radio hits of roughly the same era. This summer Wilco broke from its longtime record label to create its own. And it’s made concerted efforts to step outside the one-size-fits-all circuit of concert venues controlled by promoter/ticketing monoliths like LiveNation. In fact, the success at Tanglewood, baseball stadiums and other “non-traditional rock venues” encouraged the brainstorming behind Solid Sound, Tweedy says in a phone interview from his Chicago home.
In addition to the bands—sets by Wilco on Saturday and by its members’ side projects, plus other groups, throughout the weekend—the festival features such fare as site-specific, music-based interactive art installations created by Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche, a display of Wilco concert posters, famed Vermont performance troupe Bread and Puppet, multiple sets by Chicago DJ collective Numero Uno (with projections on what is being called the largest movie screen in the state), a mini-film festival, and even a “comedy cabaret” featuring live stand-up.
“I think basically the idea is that Wilco and its extended family members and wives and crew members is a pretty big family of people that like making stuff,” Tweedy says. “There's room for all of that to happen [at Solid Sound]. I guess it's all a window into a group of people that like making stuff together. There's lots of things that go on around Wilco that aren't musical but are creative.”
Solid Sound - Promo Clip from Smartley-Dunn on Vimeo.
A riff on the iconic lettering up on the MASS MoCA roof
From Mass MoCa’s point of view, the event is an “institution-stretcher,” according to director Joseph C. Thompson. He means it in a good way. Speaking into a mobile phone amid the audible excitement (and possibly chaos) swirling in one of the Museum’s courtyards a few days before the opening of Solid Sound—a large accessibility ramp is being built while a crane hoists equipment and staffers hang lights—Thompson describes how the event stretched the organization in terms of the physical plant, its programming, and its staff’s experience. (For starters, to house the main stage, the staff whipped into commission a back field previously used only for company softball games and storage of long-forgotten construction materials.) It’s also stretched the museum’s audience—Thompson says less than 10% of advance ticket buyers purchased their tickets through the museum’s box office; the rest ordered online through Wilco’s ticketing system.
Festival tickets grant admission to MoCa’s galleries as well, and Thompson says the mixing and matching of artists and artistic forms is in line with the museum’s ethos.
“It opens up people’s imaginations to a whole new field of work. We’ve always loved having performing arts happening in close proximity to the visual arts. We’re convinced that the audiences for both enjoy that juxtaposition. To put this into the context of our galleries even for a short time is terrific.”
There aren’t many bands at Wilco’s level of artistic and commercial success who could curate a festival at a contemporary art museum and not come off as overly precious. (Actually, never mind the venue—using the word “curate” itself would be enough.) But rather than a forced-intellectual overreach, the event simply seems like the kind of unexpected and creative move apt to be concocted by the mild-mannered rule-breakers of Wilco.
The Chicago-based sextet pulls the nifty trick of keeping a (well-deserved) profile as a Serious Rock Band, while maintaining a sense of humor and some irreverent verve. The vibe around the band is not the achingly ambitious sort wafting around, for instance, The Arcade Fire or Radiohead, peers on the short list of artists who must be considered in any conversation about the best—and yes, most “important”— bands working today.
Festival tickets grant admission to MoCa’s galleries as well, and Thompson says the mixing and matching of artists and artistic forms is in line with the museum’s ethos.
“It opens up people’s imaginations to a whole new field of work. We’ve always loved having performing arts happening in close proximity to the visual arts. We’re convinced that the audiences for both enjoy that juxtaposition. To put this into the context of our galleries even for a short time is terrific.”
There aren’t many bands at Wilco’s level of artistic and commercial success who could curate a festival at a contemporary art museum and not come off as overly precious. (Actually, never mind the venue—using the word “curate” itself would be enough.) But rather than a forced-intellectual overreach, the event simply seems like the kind of unexpected and creative move apt to be concocted by the mild-mannered rule-breakers of Wilco.
The Chicago-based sextet pulls the nifty trick of keeping a (well-deserved) profile as a Serious Rock Band, while maintaining a sense of humor and some irreverent verve. The vibe around the band is not the achingly ambitious sort wafting around, for instance, The Arcade Fire or Radiohead, peers on the short list of artists who must be considered in any conversation about the best—and yes, most “important”— bands working today.
It’s nothing new for a major rock band to stage a festival around itself. So what makes this different? For one thing, there’s the location: “The venue itself is a place worth visiting in its own right, it's not like some field you would never go to,” Tweedy points out.
But also, the Solid Sound Festival was clearly not conceived to cater to the market; the band’s fingerprints are all over it, from the esoteric band lineup (Tweedy says he’s particularly looking forward to seeing virtuosic cult-guitarist Sir Richard Bishop live for the first time) to the non-sequitur film series, including entries directed by Werner Herzog and Phillip Kaufman. The second-billed act is gospel/soul/rock vocalist Mavis Staples, a legendary presence but not a particularly powerful commercial force; Friday’s headliner is quirky, North Adams-based geektronic duo The Books, who created some of their latest album while in residence at MASS MoCA.
It’s essentially a party thrown by Wilco, celebrating the artistic endeavors, across different media, by the band collectively and its members individually. Plus other stuff they like. It doesn’t all necessarily seem to make sense, but it doesn’t have to.
“There really wasn’t anything about it that was handed to us by somebody else. We curated a festival based on our friends and side project bands and bands that we wanted to see and wanted to hang out with,” Tweedy sums up succinctly.
He makes no promises, however, about that debauched rock and roll riot.
But also, the Solid Sound Festival was clearly not conceived to cater to the market; the band’s fingerprints are all over it, from the esoteric band lineup (Tweedy says he’s particularly looking forward to seeing virtuosic cult-guitarist Sir Richard Bishop live for the first time) to the non-sequitur film series, including entries directed by Werner Herzog and Phillip Kaufman. The second-billed act is gospel/soul/rock vocalist Mavis Staples, a legendary presence but not a particularly powerful commercial force; Friday’s headliner is quirky, North Adams-based geektronic duo The Books, who created some of their latest album while in residence at MASS MoCA.
It’s essentially a party thrown by Wilco, celebrating the artistic endeavors, across different media, by the band collectively and its members individually. Plus other stuff they like. It doesn’t all necessarily seem to make sense, but it doesn’t have to.
“There really wasn’t anything about it that was handed to us by somebody else. We curated a festival based on our friends and side project bands and bands that we wanted to see and wanted to hang out with,” Tweedy sums up succinctly.
He makes no promises, however, about that debauched rock and roll riot.
