海角大神

The state of the world isn鈥檛 exactly making Grammy Award-winning musician Jeff Tweedy feel light these days. As he has since he first learned to play guitar growing up in Belleville, Illinois, the frontman of the alt-rock band Wilco has turned to music 鈥� and his family 鈥� to meet the moment.

The result is a new solo album, 鈥淭wilight Override,鈥� which he recorded with his adult sons, Sammy and Spencer, and close friends. Furiously written over two years, the 30 songs of this triple album, debuting Sept. 26, represent his attempt to 鈥渦p the wattage鈥� of his own light.

The musician and bestselling author, whose books include one about crafting songs, wants others to feel lighter, too 鈥� by creating. 鈥淢ake a record with your friends,鈥� he croons in 鈥淔eel Free.鈥� 鈥淪ing a song that never ends.鈥�

The singer-songwriter spoke with the Monitor recently via Zoom about his 鈥渂ig-hearted outpouring鈥� of music-making. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You made a statement about the release of 鈥淭wilight Override鈥�: 鈥淲hen you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You鈥檙e on the side of creation and that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy.鈥� For those of us who are not musicians, can you tell us about that feeling of creating a new song in the studio and what it does for your sense of well-being?

I feel very fortunate to have a habit, a practice, a discipline of writing every day and spending time with myself intentionally in my imagination and creating. I think it鈥檚 really a tough place to be afraid. I think you feel very, very powerful. Maybe the most powerful I ever feel is in those moments where I鈥檓 reminded on a daily basis that I can make something out of nothing, and I have the power to reject the world I disagree with, and in a small way, I can make my own world.

This is something I started noticing a little while ago, maybe in the beginning of this season of whatever it is that we鈥檙e experiencing in this country. I think it鈥檚 really, really bad to wake up every day thinking about someone you hate. And I think it鈥檚 really bad to willingly put yourself in a cage, psychologically, where all you鈥檙e thinking about is people you hate, the person you hate. You treat social media like that. You seem to willingly go there to be outraged, to be angry, and to be scared, and be worked up. And what are you losing when you do that? Well, to me, you鈥檙e losing the one freedom that is probably gonna be the hardest to take away if you鈥檙e willing to preserve it. And that鈥檇 be the freedom to think how you want to think, to imagine a better world, maintain some sense of right and wrong.

How has playing with your family changed you as both a songwriter and a musician?

My kids have told me this, and I don鈥檛 know how this came about, but I don鈥檛 think I ever get in a musical environment where I think that the person I鈥檓 playing with is beneath me. And that includes them when they were little kids. Cause there is something super fun about reacting to someone just learning ... not making mistakes, but doing things you wouldn鈥檛 do. And having their own idea of what music making feels like coming through to you. So there鈥檚 a constant learning process, and they鈥檙e both really inspiring musicians to me, and I feel somewhat proud of that, that I fostered an environment where they could grow into that. But I don鈥檛 know that I have that much to do with it. ... Their mother is very musical. She would tell you she鈥檚 not, but she also ran a rock club. And so they spent a lot of time there. Their whole lives have really been immersed in a culture of belief that this is just a thing you can do, that it鈥檚 not something weird that somebody on stage does. It鈥檚 something that the guy sitting on the floor with you does.

I have to ask a book question because our readers love books. You wrote in 鈥淗ow to Write One Song鈥� that books are your companions and that you sometimes read them with a highlighter to mark phrases. What authors would you say have had the biggest impact on your songwriting?

The one I鈥檝e always talked about is William H. Gass, because I think he鈥檚 a very difficult author. I can鈥檛 say that I鈥檝e read very much of his fiction writing with total understanding. I鈥檝e read a lot of his nonfiction writing, his literary criticism ... and seeing other people鈥檚 art through his eyes has taught me a whole lot. The one thing I think I鈥檝e gotten from William H. Gass, or tried to get from him, is he is kind of like the king of sentence structure and metaphor, and he was really, really efficient, at least to me, at making something appear that he did not write down on the page. It鈥檚 like a haiku. What you鈥檙e writing about appears in-between the lines. It appears in your imagination. ...

Like there was a red-brick warm when the sun has died. So I can say that, and you can see the red brick, but what I feel like I see is my hand on a red brick. And that sense like, if you鈥檝e ever leaned against a brick building in the middle of the summer and even in the evening, it鈥檚 still kind of radiating some heat. That鈥檚 all the stuff you see, but you didn鈥檛 write all that stuff down. And, I think that something鈥檚 really working, language-wise and poetry-wise and lyric-wise to me, when those types of things get conjured. It鈥檚 like kind of a magic trick, if you can make a very little bit, a little amount of words, contain a lot of imagery, not even necessarily say a lot, but make you see a lot.

To go back to the idea of bringing light into the world right now, do you also see this album as resistance, as protest?

I do believe that art is inherently political. Even the most cynical art communicates, 鈥淚 bothered. I took the time. Some part of me must be hopeful because I made this thing and I鈥檓 sharing it.鈥� And that all ... communicates something that I think is missing most from our discourse, and that is a willingness to listen and a willingness to value connection over division, to value empathy over indifference, and to value creation over destruction. ... I believe in rock music and rock 鈥榥鈥� roll as being for the people and for beauty, for something sacred. ... Part of that belief is, I think, the world would be better if more people intentionally spent time with themselves in a self-discovering act such as creating. I think you learn things about yourself. You make a soul out of nothing.