jeff tweedy Boulder Theater, Jan. 7 and 8.
Jeff Tweedy kicked off the Boulder Theater’s 75th anniversary year with two nights of solo acoustic performances to capacity crowds. Tweedy, the front man for the venerable rock act Wilco, offered an array of rarities, covers and fan favorites from his band’s extensive catalog.
Friday started with a shaky version of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” plagued with sound issues. The audience showed no aversion to voicing its displeasure and a surly Tweedy unplugged his guitar and stepped in front of the microphone to perform “Someone Else’s Song.” It was a quick fix — a quirky, surprising moment for what would unfold as a particularly quirky show — complete with diatribes on the meaninglessness of Facebook (“I’m not a 14-year-old girl . . .”), to one audience member asking about his personal trip to Mexico (“That’s a little creepy . . .”).
Songs like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” and “Cars Can’t Escape” were highlights of the first evening, both numbers reminiscent of their prized versions in the 2002 documentary chronicling the height of the band’s turmoil. The Friday crowd, made up mostly of KBCO’s prime demographic (early 40s, upper middle class, Subaru-driving white folk), showed its best response to newer songs, including “One Wing,” “Country Disappeared” and “Walken,” nonetheless making the atmosphere somewhat of a disappointment for die-hard fans.
Any sense of dissatisfaction, however, was remedied the next night with one of the most creative Wilco(ish) set lists in recent memory. The now- classic fingerpicking, harmonica-laced version of “Sunken Treasure” started the night off right — a Tweedy solo staple that was curiously absent from Friday’s show. From there flowed a rushing current of fanboy dreams highlighted by deep cuts like “She’s a Jar,” “Summer Teeth,” “Forget the Flowers” and “ELT.” Tweedy joked about Boulder’s pot culture and the abundance of dogs he’d seen while hiking Mount Sanitas that afternoon. Other nuggets — like the Woody Guthrie cover “Someday, Some Morning, Sometime,” as well as “Laminated Cat (Not For The Season”) from his Loose Fur side project and Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” made it a night to remember.
Tweedy finished his two-day Boulder stand with a long encore that began with a chilling “Red Eyed and Blue” morphing into “I Got You (At the End Of The Century),” making us all feel like we were sitting in one of those early “Being There” sessions some 15 years ago.
John Hendrickson, The Denver Post
