A Reprise Yankee in Wilco's Court
“Normal waking consciousness feels perfectly transparent, and yet it is less a window on reality than the product of our imaginations-a kind of controlled hallucination.”―Michael Pollan
In either late in 2000 or early 2001, dark days during my tenure at Warner/Reprise. David Kahne walked into my office at the Ski Lodge (Warner Bros. Records) to ask me if I would take over the A&R duties for Wilco. The Reprise and Warner Bros. A&R staffs had recently split into two distinctive bodies. Joe McEwen, who had signed Uncle Tupelo, the band whose break-up had spawned Son Volt and Wilco, kept A&R oversight of Son Volt given he was officially on the Warner Bros. A&R team and had to find a Reprise A&R person for Wilco. I will never know whether he suggested me for the job (the better story), or Kahne, who had heard that the band was difficult to work with, thought his least favorite person on his team should be saddled with the hardship. But nevertheless, the job was mine, and I knew that the band was going places artistically and commercially (even though their previous release, Summerteeth, was not a chart burner in any sense). I had even briefly met the band’s leader Jeff Tweedy before…at the Troubadour…when Uncle Tupelo pulled Doug Sahm onstage to play the Sir Douglas Quintet classic Give Back The Key To My Heart.
The next day I called Tony Margherita, then Wilco’s manager, for an introductory chat. Knowing the band was weary of major label shenanigans, I started right off saying that as far as I was concerned, the band probably knew what kind of a record they wanted to make and the producer they wanted to make it with. My job was to make sure they could realize their vision. They were experimenting with their sound and wanted to push boundaries in the recording studio? Great! That is what true artistry is all about. If it turned out that there was a song that was close to being anything that could be on the radio, we should talk about it, given that the label was interested in spending tens of thousands of dollars to promote the song, the record, and the band. All good things. First contact with the Wilco team went well.
A few days later, I received a DAT (Digital Audio Tape, the then future hope for the record industry) with the demos Jeff Tweedy and company were working on. They were totally solid: the type of songs a Wilco fan would love to hear the band writing, with some sweet melodies. For the next weekly A&R staff meeting, I came with the demos and an update: I had spoken to management. He sent these songs. I think the band will be easy to work with and that they will deliver the record that the label will be happy with.
David Kahne called me the following week from his office twenty feet away from mine. He was taking the band away from me. His new hire Mio Vukovic was being given the project. Why, I said? There was mumbling, mumbling on the other end of the line…something about Mio having time to take it on…mumbling…more of a non-answer from a boss who was talking to the only team member he did not hire OR see eye-to-eye on about anything. Maybe he realized that with the band being easier to deal with than he initially thought…why would he want me to have the goodness of working with a potentially successful release? I called Tony and thanked him for the great three weeks we had spent working together (ha!)…that was that (years after I sent the DAT of demos to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame’s library, where I assume they are still stored).
About six months later the news rocketed through the industry that Wilco had been unceremoniously dropped by David Kahne. Wilco delivered their record, Kahne and Vukovic (who I had heard had not been getting on with the band) did not like what they had heard. Without even calling the Warner/Reprise lawyers to look at the band’s contract, Kahne just dumped them.
The record Wilco was working on this whole time would become Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which Nonsuch Records ended up releasing in 2002. With its iconic cover designed by Lawrence Azerrad, and production that pushed the barriers of the alternative Americana sound Wilco had helped establish, it became the band’s best-selling record (still is), reaching the 13th position in Billboard’s Top 100 (during a time when it was hard for a band like Wilco to get there). Critics loved it, their ever-expanding fanbase embraced it, and it set Wilco up for a whole new chapter of growth and success. Three months after the record’s release, a documentary film came out called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco which told the story of the band’s final, horrid days at Reprise Records and their phoenixing brilliantly from the rubble.
My truly insignificant part of the story is not discussed (which makes total sense…I had no impact on the resultant record), but I wonder what would have happened if I had been able to stay the A&R champion for the band1…
Yesterday, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot won the Grammy for Best Historical Release (co-produced by my friend Cheryl Pawelski, with this being her third Grammy). The legend of the record continues to grow as time trots on! There are some records that will not be denied, no matter what obstacles. True art rises.
Happy Monday! Happy Bob Marley Day!
World Radio History (RABBIT HOLE WARNING)
How about a website that has digitized decades and decades of radio and other media magazines? Read crazy articles about artists you have barely heard about from the 40s….combined with incredible (at times) designers from the period (check out the RCA magazines from the 40s, Eric Heiman)…the stuff is amazing. See below for some pieces I snagged written by actors Joel McCrea & Burt Lancaster about songs they love (Lancaster starts by writing, “Wherever I go my platters and player go along” and then writes a love letter about record collecting)…plus further down for a bunch of designs from one of the magazines…
This super-comprehensive, epic exhibit looks sensational: “Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the conceptual, cultural, and aesthetic attributes that have made hip hop a global phenomenon and established it as the artistic canon of our time…The Culture explores this pivotal and fertile era through a wide range of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, and installations organized in six themes—Language, Brand, Adornment, Tribute, Ascension, and Pose.”
After father's death, daughter of famous collector tasked with determining fate of 15,000 records
What is going to happened to Joe Bussard’s record collection? That is the question…
The Last Mustard Maker in Dijon
So, all this Dijon mustard I have been throwing on a sandwich…is fake Dijon mustard? After I pulled myself off of the floor with that revelation, I realized that a life’s mission must be to try the real thing…
Mark E. Smith’s Family Says The Fall Members’ New Project Is “Extremely Offensive”
Makes sense that an extremely offensive guy like Smith has a family that will call a Fall band reunion extremely offensive! While there is no way this new project will ever be as fab as The Fall…and that Mark E. is very very missed and this project will probably make him more missed (hey family…that will probably bring more record sales)…why sling mud at a bunch of guys, who were probably treated like crap during their initial tenure, from making a buck?
VisitHATTIESBURG establishes Utility Box Trail
“We started out with 5 during the pandemic and they were very popular, but we also found during that time that our artists were heavily impacted by the pandemic and needed some support, so we decided to expand on those five,” said Kristen Brock. The city now has 44 painted boxes.
A Voice Among the Stars: Poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón Will Ride to Europa on NASA Spacecraft
With a backdrop of engineers building the new Spacecraft, NASA and the US Poet Laureate Ada Limón announced this incredible partnership. The poem has yet to be written, but will probably become one of the most talked about poems in decades…
Today is Tom Brokaw’s 83rd birthday and this article from a few months back is an interesting look into where in life he is (somewhat) currently.
Rings of Fire
By: Craig Santos Perez
Honolulu, Hawaii
We host our daughter’s first birthday party
during the hottest April in history.
Outside, my dad grills meat over charcoal;
inside, my mom steams rice and roasts
vegetables. They’ve traveled from California,
where drought carves trees into tinder—‘Paradise
is burning.’ When our daughter’s first fever spiked,
the doctor said, ‘It’s a sign she’s fighting infection.’
Bloodshed surges with global temperatures,
which know no borders. ‘If her fever doesn’t break,’
the doctor continued, ‘take her to the Emergency
Room.’ Airstrikes detonate hospitals
in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan . . .
‘When she crowned,’ my wife said, ‘it felt like rings
of fire.’ Volcanoes erupt along Pacific fault lines;
sweltering heatwaves scorch Australia;
forests in Indonesia are razed for palm oil plantations—
their ashes flock, like ghost birds, to our distant
rib cages. Still, I crave an unfiltered cigarette,
even though I quit years ago, and my breath
no longer smells like my grandpa’s overflowing ashtray—
his parched cough still punctures the black lungs
of cancer and denial. ‘If she struggles to breathe,’
the doctor advised, ‘give her an asthma inhaler.’
But tonight we sing, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and blow
out the candles together. Smoke trembles
as if we all exhaled
the same flammable wish.
HAPPY 60TH BIRTHDAY TO DJ Bon Ton Roulet HIMSELF: Charles Gaiennie!!!
There is one last part of the story that is an interesting period to the sentence…that I will tell sometime…..
Love your Wilco story (though a bummer). Happy Marley day!!!
FWIW, I preordered the House of All record from their Bandcamp, and the first song they're released sounds pretty strong!