10/26 @ Bearsville Theatre, Woodstock

“A stunning experience to see one person with the entire room wrapped around their finger, simply by playing a guitar, singing, and being themself — a feat not many can accomplish.”

An intimate setting with one of the great songwriters of our time to round out my birthday weekend wasn’t something I could miss. From the time I watched Jeff Tweedy’s Sunken Treasure solo acoustic concert to hearing his Together At Last, a series of solo arrangements of songs from different bands he’d been in over the years and would go on to spur his solo career in a way, I’ve been waiting for my chance to see him in that element, and it was finally here.

Opening the show was Case Oats, consisting of Casey Walker and Spencer Tweedy — Jeff’s daughter-in-law and son. The first thing that struck me was seeing Spencer in person for the first time. I remember seeing him as a kid in the acclaimed Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, in a charming moment where he plays drums with his dad and brother, or on The Tweedy Show, a nightly series at the Tweedy home during COVID lockdown. It was an interesting moment of feeling like the lines between public and private lives were even more blurred — something that came up for me later.

Spencer mostly played an old Gibson parlor guitar — no doubt in my mind one of his dad‘s old guitars, who is a known collector. With Casey on vocals, they jumped right into a song that was introduced as a brand-new song, and perhaps not the easiest one to open with.

While it was raw and very vulnerable-sounding in arrangement, it was a well-received opener. As they made their way through a dozen tunes, there was another brand-new tune that saw Spencer pick up a Telecaster. It was perhaps my favorite song of the night by them.

Let’s Go (so We Can Get Back) is the name of Tweedy’s first book, and it felt like a theme of night one. As Jeff played his tunes at a quicker pace than normal in an effort to play more songs, he left nothing off the table — playing songs from his solo repertoire, Wilco, Loose Fur, and Uncle Tupelo — and treated the audience to his signature wit and charm along the way.

From start to finish, it felt like a cycle from captive audience to reactive audience to interactive audience. A stunning experience to see one person with the entire room wrapped around their finger, simply by playing a guitar, singing, and being themself — a feat not many can accomplish.

Whether it was a blistering “I’m The Man Who Loves You,” a serene “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Dad),” or a classic sing-along of the Wilco repertoire “Jesus, etc.,” Tweedy continues to cement his legacy as one of the great American songwriters of our time.

Tweedy is clearly at a different point in his career than when he started, having earned respect as a solo artist and songwriter and moving out of the shadows of his own projects past and present. This allows him to play some new material that felt like it was being workshopped.

Something that really stands out is his fearlessness as a songwriter, where one minute he can be saying the most profound thing you’ve ever heard, and in the next, it feels like a throwaway line, but he’s earned the respect that it sticks with you.

It makes you really think about what he’s saying and means, such as when he played a new song called “Lifelong Prayer,” with the line “keep filling my cup with beef and lemonade.” To see him in such an intimate setting and be able to wrestle with his lyrics and the ideas shared with every single note he’s playing on a guitar and the dynamics of his voice complementing those notes. It’s truly a breathtaking experience, especially if you’re already a fan of Wilco.

There was then his stage banter, which is completely on brand for his connection with audiences. He speaks to audiences like they’re old friends, a blurring of lines that has spanned his entire career. Between his music, books, and warm personality he shares from the stage, sometimes it's hard to forget that he is, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. This was something that came up when someone shouted, “Yeah, Jeff!”

Tweedy jokingly said that the show has gone on too long and the parasocial boundaries are beginning to erode and that there is a little too much familiarity happening now. He then continued that one night he would like there to be no applause after every song, but rather after the show he would go up to everyone individually and ask them what they thought of it. He jokingly acted it out with a few positives, then pretended to kick out the hypothetical negative person, and the crowd erupted with laughter.

Tweedy's solo show might be the best version of himself, or at least it felt like it that night in Woodstock.