While creating the music for Shabang, Scott McMicken started tuning his guitars down a step and a half. The sonic territory brought new inspiration, but so did the feel of the slack strings.
“The guitar has been a revolving relationship in my life that, as of very recently, has taken really interesting turns, and on this record, I didn’t play any guitar,” McMicken says in his endearing, stream-of-consciousness way of speaking, which demonstrates a propensity for run-on sentences. “There’s always been this connection between playing guitar and singing for me where I started to notice that if I am playing guitar and singing while I am recording a song, then that sort of limits what I am able to do on guitar. Over the years, I noticed that I always enjoyed playing guitar on [bass player and co-founder] Toby [Leaman]’s songs in Dr. Dog more because I didn’t have to think about singing. But then, when I do have to think about singing, I tend to lean into basic rhythm guitar, which isn’t necessarily compelling to me—I don’t necessarily want to hear a guitar strumming some chords from the guy who’s singing—so I decided to not play guitar and just stand there singing, and it made the process so cool.”
To be clear, McMicken hasn’t abandoned the instrument. Despite his earlier declaration, he admits he may have snuck a few licks onto Shabang as well. “I’ve had this long and weird relationship with guitar,” he says. “It’s my guy. It’s my best friend. It’s by my side. But it’s had a multifaceted position in my life as a musician within the grand scheme of things, and more recently it's revealed itself, and I see something that I hadn’t been able to see for many years and it's exciting.”
As co-founder and co-frontman of Dr. Dog, Scott McMicken’s guitar hasn’t seemed to leave his hands. But with his new solo project, he’s taken a step back from his trusty 6-strings.
Photo by Wyndham Garnett
Part of that revelation came in the way he composes songs, some of which were written on an acoustic he got from Reuben Cox at Old Style Guitar Shop in Los Angeles. Cox’s creations are usually beat, low-budget Kays, Harmonys, and other similar models of yesteryear that, according to McMicken, are subjected to a thorough retrofit. The old machines receive better pickups, modern electronics, and a rubber bridge, then they’re given a professional setup and made playable with flatwound strings. You can see them everywhere—the first one was made for Blake Mills, and now Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, and many others use them as well—and they provide just enough of a wrinkle to help you reimagine the instrument and encourage some creativity.
Scott McMicken and THE EVER-EXPANDING - "Diamonds In The Snow" [Official Video]
“It’s a game changer,” McMicken says of the old-made-new instruments. “Another person who is big on these guitars is Jeff Tweedy. When I found that out I texted him, and he said something like, ‘Songs just fall right out of those things,’ and he’s so right. There’s something so unique about the way they sound that when you do something basic, like strum a C chord, there’s something about it that engages your mind in a different way. They are really inspiring tools for writing because they give you just that little twist on that familiar terrain that right away, it feels more exotic and engages your imagination more.”
“I’ve had this long and weird relationship with guitar. It’s my guy. It’s my best friend. It’s by my side. But it’s had a multifaceted position in my life as a musician within the grand scheme of things.”
That warped, lo-fi, rubber-bridge-inspired feel is all over Shabang. The album opener, “What About Now,” could be a campy, slowed-down outtake from Bob Dylan’s Bringing It Back Home, complete with the scratches that came from playing your vinyl copy a million times. The eerie and psychedelic “Mountain Lion” has all sorts of dime-store bells and whistles that seem to emanate from someone’s fretboard, although it’s unclear, despite McMicken’s assertions to the contrary, if those came from him or the album’s primary guitarist, Paul Castelluzzo. Many of the album’s grooves have a reggae-style chink on the two and four, plus an effortless yet danceable looseness that gives the impression of a party happening somewhere nearby. The rubber bridge itself—or something like it—is particularly noticeable on the bouncy title track, as well as the record’s trippy jam “Ever Expanding.”
But that rubber bridge is just the tip of McMicken’s revelatory iceberg. For years, he was a champion of underdog gear (check out his 2020 Rig Rundown where he sings the praises of his ancient, handwired solid-state Peavey Vulcan), but when he plugged into a vintage Fender Princeton, “it just revealed to me the sound of guitar in a way that I had never experienced before. It was so pure and so nice in that vintage way that seems perfect, but also kind of flawed. Plugging into a 1965 Princeton, you’re not thinking, ‘What ketchup am I going to put on this?’ You're thinking, ‘Listen to this.’ You’re more directly engaged in a pure way.”
McMicken at far left, with the Ever Expanding’s core ensemble.
That Princeton led to the acquisition of a 1967 Fender Champ, which, at least for now, is McMicken’s desert-island amp. “I have a feeling that it will never leave my side,” he says. “It has reintroduced me to the way it feels to play a guitar and has left me more inspired than ever before. There’s something about a solidbody Fender guitar into an old, little Fender amp where I feel like you’re hearing the platonic form of electric guitar. You’re hearing story number one, and whatever that super-sweet vintage thing is, it’s not perfect. The reason why it rules for me—and the reason why it’s beautiful—is not because it’s embodying some form of perfection. It actually just sounds busted in some kind of cool way. It took me a long time to realize and to open up to that. But slowly, one piece after another, I’ve been able to appreciate that more.”
McMicken’s approach to pedals is also ever-evolving, and he’s recently stopped using delay. “I realized what a disservice I was doing having all these delays,” he says about his experience mixing recordings of live Dr. Dog shows. “There’s so much other stuff going on, and I was smearing it all with all this echo. I need to be much more conservative.”
But McMicken is an experimenter at heart. Thinking about his vocal range and the keys he’s most comfortable singing in prompted him to tune his guitars down a step and a half to C# standard. Detuning gives the strings extra slack, which makes the instrument feel different. That affects the way McMicken plays and stimulates his creative muse.
Scott McMicken's Gear
McMicken’s producer hand-picked all of the musicians who played on Shabang. McMicken met them for the first time in the studio, and instantly felt an “organic, laidback vibe.”
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Guitars
- Reuben Cox-modded Sears acoustic with rubber bridge (baritone)
- Oahu acoustic
- Partscaster Tele assembled from a Squier body, anonymous neck, and higher-end electronics
- 1980s Fender Stratocaster
- B&D 1920s tenor banjo
Amps
- 1965 Fender Princeton
- 1967 Fender Champ
Pedals
- ZVEX Super Duper 2-In-1
- Strymon Deco
- Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth
Strings & Picks
- Heavy picks, any brand
- .013 gauge strings, any brandFlatwound strings on the baritone that came with the instrument
“That slack vibe has been blowing my mind on guitar,” he says. “It’s like a whole new effect that I just never got into.” Initially, tuning down was a way for McMicken to sing in lower keys without changing chord shapes. But then he discovered “that the tones of the guitar are so nice with that slack. You have to be more delicate—you can’t wail away on it—but if you exist in a certain parameter of articulation and velocity with your right hand, you can be very dynamic. Of course, it can also fart out and die if you hit it too hard. But even that feels like an asset to me, because as a guitarist, I am evolving my style and working towards playing more mindfully.”
“I texted Jeff Tweedy, and he said something like, ‘Songs just fall right out of those things,’ and he’s so right. There's something so unique about the way they sound when you do something basic, like strum a C chord.”
That feel contributes much to his newfound guitar aesthetic, which is a sloppier, noisier take on the instrument—whether he’s actually playing it on Shabang, or is simply drawn to those sounds as a bandleader. But the style isn’t irreverent. “I never identified with the heroic nature of the electric guitar, and I was always drawn to the people who were much more sloppy about it,” he says. “That’s the ethos I’ve been living in for so many years now. But in the last few years it’s shifted, and I’ve woken up to the fact that the electric guitar is beautifully dynamic and expressive, and I can see that when I try to connect to it on a personal level—not just view it as this utilitarian device to execute rock in, but actually feel it and put myself into it.”
There’s a freewheeling sensibility all over Shabang that seems to stem from the songwriter’s approach. The band was assembled by the album’s producer, Nick Kinsey, and McMicken only met everyone when it was time to record. (In addition to the songwriter and producer, there are another 13 musicians on Shabang.) “There were no rehearsals,” says McMicken. “It was, ‘Hello, what’s your name? My name is Scott,’ moments before turning the mics on.” This laidback, organic vibe, with an emphasis on spontaneous group improvisation—and a dedication to keeping the recordings as live as possible—brought out an expressive dynamism McMicken has been searching for in his music.
Even though, for the most part, he isn’t playing the guitar parts, the vibe is obvious. “I am in hot pursuit of developing more of an immediate relationship with the process of recording music,” he says. “Being more in the moment, and getting as close as you can to recording a ‘live’ finished product with minimal overdubbing. Nick chose the musicians based on different experiences he’s had with them, and I trust him deeply so it was easy for me to say, ‘You pick the players, and I am sure it is going to rule.’ And it did. I met so many wonderful people.”
YouTube It
Scott McMicken leads his Ever-Expanding collective with his Reuben Cox-modded acoustic. The band's live take on "Reconcile" could fit neatly alongside any track from The Basement Tapes.
Wilco announce their new album, Cousin, available worldwide September 29th on dBpm Records, and present its lead single, “Evicted.” Cousin will be available on vinyl, CD and digitally, and is available for pre-order now. This will be the first release under dBpm Records’ new distribution arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment. The band will tour Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico and the United States surrounding the album’s release (tickets on sale here).
“I’m cousin to the world,” frontman Jeff Tweedy confesses. “I don’t feel like I’m a blood relation, but maybe I’m a cousin by marriage.” Produced by the singular Welsh artist Cate Le Bon, Cousin marks the first time Wilco have handed the reins over to a producer outside their immediate circle of collaborators since Sky Blue Sky. Le Bon’s influences — among them the inclusion of saxophone, cheap Japanese guitars, and a cinematic, New Wave-style drum machine — drive the album into the future. The result is Wilco’s most pointed and evocative album, one related but not tied to our present moment, truly new ground for a band that has tested musical boundaries throughout its lengthy career.
Longtime admirers of each other’s work, Wilco and Le Bon first met at the band’s Solid Sound Festival in 2019, where they formed an immediate connection, inspiring Tweedy to invite Le Bon to the band’s famed Chicago studio, The Loft, in 2022 to work on Cousin. Le Bon pushed the band to take risks, repurposing Wilco’s established strengths and challenging them to oppose habits — all the while maintaining what has, for the last thirty years, defined Wilco as a band, their fearlessness, made possible by musical virtuosity and the secret language only a family shares. “The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” Le Bon says. “They're so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”
Wilco - Evicted (Official Lyric Video)
Le Bon arrived in Chicago to rebuild: to create a scaffold with Glenn Kotche’s architectural drumming and John Stirratt’s contrapuntal bass lines; a scene with Mikael Jorgensen’s cold, lonesome synths, Pat Sansone’s plaintive piano work, and guest instrumentalist Euan Hinshelwood’s mangled saxophones; and a topographic pattern out of Tweedy’s electric guitar bends and Nels Cline’s textural explosions, which Le Bon describes as “the weather,” to carve a path for Tweedy’s yearning lyrics.
“Cate is very suspicious of sentiment,” Tweedy says, “but she’s not suspicious of human connection.” With Le Bon’s direction, Cousin evolved into something icier and more nighttime-ish than anything Wilco have created before, while retaining the earnest quality of Tweedy’s lyrics and voice. Tweedy delivers his feelings, now, from an environment that reflects the one we live in and the one inspiring the songs in the first place. The album’s statement on human connection is writ small, revealed in vignettes of the lowest social unit: a pair. “Evicted,” the album’s first single, sees a narrator grappling with his responsibility for losing love counterpointed by Marc Bolan-inspired guitars. “I guess I was trying to write from the point of view of someone struggling to make an argument for themself in the face of overwhelming evidence that they deserve to be locked out of someone’s heart,” comments Tweedy. “Self-inflicted wounds still hurt and in my experience they’re almost impossible to fully recover from.”
Cousin Tracklist:
1. Infinite Surprise
2. Ten Dead
3. Levee
4. Evicted
5. Sunlight Ends
6. A Bowl And A Pudding
7. Cousin
8. Pittsburgh
9. Soldier Child
10. Meant To Be
Photo by Peter Crosby
In their corner, from left to right: Wilco’s Pat Sansone (guitars, keys, and more), drummer Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Nels Cline, and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen.
“It’s definitely weird having people know you that you don’t know,” he replied. “There’s a level of intimacy that some people feel they’ve had with you because you’ve reached them in intimate moments—your voice has, at least.” But rather than off-putting, he sees beauty in it: “I try to be really respectful of that, ’cause it’s ultimately really sweet. It’s flattering to be a companion to somebody that you don’t know. It’s one of the more beautiful things about doing what I do, in that it has the potential to be difference-making for somebody in a dark moment.”
With the release of Wilco’s 12th studio album, Cruel Country, Tweedy and the band are offering 21 new songs to connect with. And as its title suggests, Wilco sinks into a country vibe more than ever before. Tweedy speculates that fans have always assumed that Wilco is in some way a country band, and although he’s not sure he agrees, he decided to lean into that on Cruel Country.
I Am My Mother
Cruel Country has a concept behind it but isn’t necessarily a concept recording. Tweedy sees it as an “American music album about America.” The songwriter says he’s struggled with what American identity means for decades. “Going back as far as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, that’s sort of a running theme through a lot of things I’ve written. I would call it an affection or a connection where I can’t really choose. Just like the soft spot you have for your family or the people that you wish knew better but just can’t help themselves, that you have been shown kindness from in other ways. I think that you can be critical of something, believe that its flaws are intolerable, and actually have love for the same person or the same thing. In this case, your country.” Of course, with its twangy riffs, bent-note solos, and other classic sonic signatures, the album can easily be heard as a loving homage to country music. Regardless, this new entry in Wilco’s catalog seems the next right step in the band’s career.
“It all becomes a part of the thing that you can’t fake—ensemble-based playing.”—Jeff Tweedy
The album blends Wilco’s classic sound with that twang and small doses of unconventional arrangements. It refamiliarizes us with Tweedy’s unassuming, mutedly sad, and at times droll lyrics. “Once, just by chance / I made a friend in an ambulance / I was half man, half broken glass,” he sings on “Ambulance.” In the single “Falling Apart (Right Now),” he reflects on the pervasive stress of modern life with the couplet, “Now don’t you lose your mind / While I’m looking for mine.” And in keeping with Wilco’s wilder moments, the band explores abstract effects on the nearly eight-minute “Many Worlds” and ventures into an extended jam for the second half of “Bird Without a Tail/ Base of My Skull.”
Cruel Country started back in 2020, when, after having to cancel a tour with Sleater-Kinney, Tweedy started sending the band songs to work on remotely. They got back on the road in 2021, and during those two years, Tweedy met occasionally with individual members at their Chicago recording and practice space, the Loft, to hash out material. But it wasn’t until January 2022 that all the members were able to meet at the space for the first time since before the pandemic.
Jeff Tweedy’s Gear
Jeff Tweedy used three acoustic guitars on Wilco’s latest, including his faithful Martin D-28. He praises Bob Dylan and Buck Owens as models for his own country-flavored acoustic rhythm playing.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Guitars
- 1944 Martin D-28 named “Hank”
- 1933 Martin OM-18
- 1931 Martin OM-28
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario Phosphor Bronze EJ16 (.012–.053)
- D’Addario Phosphor Bronze EJ17 (.013–.056)
- Herco Flex 50
- Herco Flex 75
- Snarling Dogs Brain Picks, green, .53 mm
In the days leading up to that, Tweedy was writing more prolifically and continued to forward his rough demos to his bandmates. “The songs started coming very easily and felt very urgent, and it felt good to have a new song to sing each day,” he says.
Guitarist Nels Cline, Wilco’s sonic not-so-secret weapon, notes, “At one point last year, Jeff decided he wanted to send us a song a day that he would record on his smartphone, playing guitar and singing. As I recall, he wrote 51 songs in 52 days. And unlike a lot of his songwriting that we’ve experienced, a lot of these songs had finished lyrics and choruses and everything. Some were so absolutely classic in the style that I would loosely call country songs or folk songs that I didn’t know that they were Wilco songs.”
Multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone adds, “But when we looked at the material that we had in the works, we saw that we had a lot that was in this style, and decided, ‘Why don’t we lean into these songs to make a body of work?’ I think it’s natural for us to do something like this. It’s always been a part of our vocabulary.”
“I’ve always loved that [B-Bender] sound and I certainly admire the great players. Clarence White was a genius and one of my favorite guitarists. And I’m a big fan of Marty Stuart’s guitar playing.”—Pat Sansone
When Wilco was able to meet, putting together the arrangements for Tweedy’s already fleshed-out ideas came easily. “We actually made the first disc of this record in January in two weeks,” Tweedy says. “And then we got together for two weeks in February and thought initially that we’d just be seeing if we could make anything that would beat the things that are on the first record. We ended up starting to feel like, well, this is kind of making itself a double record. The songs kind of inform each other.” Except for a few overdubs, the album was recorded live—just the six members playing in the studio together. Essentially, the two discs were recorded and released in five months.
When asked what they might have learned about themselves or the band in the making of Cruel Country, all three guitarists say—in some variation—that they discovered Sansone’s skills on the B-Bender Telecaster. “I’ve never seen that before [from him]; it was pretty mind-blowing,” Tweedy laughs.
Cline continues, “A lot of the really twangy, cool-sounding country-style guitar that you hear on this record is Pat. I don’t think he even deigned to add the B-Bender to the record until Jeff asked him at one point, ‘Do you have a B-Bender Telecaster?’ And it was so successful. He’s such a natural at it that Jeff asked him for it again and again on song after song.”
Nels Cline’s Gear
Nels Cline wiggles the vibrato arm on his main guitar, a 1960 Fender Jazzmaster that he’s dubbed “the Watt.”
Photo by Jim Bennett
Guitars
1930s National square-neck resonator
Duesenberg lap steel (with B- and G-Bender levers)
1940s National resonator with Bakelite neck
Early ’50s Epiphone Electar
Mule Resonators “The Mavis” electric resonator
1960 Jazzmaster aka “The Watt”
Neptune 12-string
Fano SP6 by Dennis Fano, with custom-designed Duneland Labs hum-canceling pickups
Amp
- Milkman Creamer with 50W Jupiter 12" speaker
Effects
- Moyo Volume pedal
- Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer
- Walrus Audio Voyager overdrive
- Vintage MXR Phase 45
- EarthQuaker Devices Disaster Transport delay
- EarthQuaker Devices Aqueduct vibrato
- Big Foot FX Magnavibe
Strings, Picks & Cables
- GHS Boomers (.012 sets; “The Mavis” has flatwounds)
- Dunlop Ultex 1.14 mm
- Bluebird picks borrowed from Pat
- Divine Noise cables
“I’ve always loved that sound,” says Sansone, “and I certainly admire the great players. Clarence White was a genius and one of my favorite guitarists. And I’m a big fan of Marty Stuart’s guitar playing. It’s something that I learned that I really like to play, and it’s something that I definitely want to get better at.”
Of all the songs on the record, Sansone names “Mystery Binds,” a dreamy folk-rock ballad with plenty of texture, as one of his favorites. “That’s the song that Jeff had sent to us in the dark days of the pandemic when we were still working remotely. I immediately took to that song. I thought it had a really unique and beautiful mood and was something a bit different than anything I’d heard Jeff send us. ‘Many Worlds’ is another favorite. That was Nels and I playing together and kind of playing off each other, and that’s always a thrill—to be able to do that with him.”
Cline and Sansone say that “Many Worlds,” despite how kaleidoscopic its sonic architecture might seem given the abundance of effects and instrumentation, was recorded live like the rest of the album. Sansone actually got up in the middle of the song to switch from piano to guitar. “[We wanted to] see if we could play it live,” Tweedy shares. “We tried it, and you can hear us moving around on the track. But it all becomes a part of the thing that you can’t fake—ensemble-based playing.”
“One friend of my wife’s and mine who’s French once compared my lead guitar playing to the voice of Edith Piaf.”—Nels Cline
The three guitarists in the band have found their own ways to complement each other. Cline is often thought of as the lead guitarist, with Sansone typically alternating between back-up guitar and keys. Tweedy sets the tone at the front, either with rhythm strumming or fingerpicking. On Cruel Country, however, Cline comments that Sansone took the role of lead guitar on many songs with his B-Bender, and Tweedy says that his primary goal was to be a solid country strummer.
“One person I think is really good at that, oddly enough, is Bob Dylan. I like the drive that he has on his records when he’s playing acoustic guitar,” Tweedy opines. “I like Buck Owens and country recordings where it’s not even a specific player—it’s just a style of playing where the guitar becomes part of the rhythm section, almost like a tambourine or something.” The guitars Tweedy used on the album were all Martins, including his 1944 D-28, 1933 OM-18, and 1931 OM-28.
The axes Cline played on the album include a 1930s National square-neck resonator, a Duesenberg lap steel, a Neptune electric 12-string, and his main guitar, the 1960 Jazzmaster known as “the Watt.” Cline, whose background includes experimental and avant-garde jazz, names Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Meditations by John Coltrane, and Solstice by Ralph Towner as three of his top albums. He also mentions that since age 10 he’s been fascinated and inspired by Indian classical music, and that among his many, many influences on the guitar is Peter Frampton—one he says journalists tend to leave out.
Pat Sansone’s Gear
Pat Sansone’s B-Bender-equipped Telecaster became an essential part of the new Wilco record, helping to put the steel-guitar sound of country into the new Cruel Country.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Guitars
Tokai Telecaster with B-Bender
1963 Epiphone Casino
1988 Rickenbacker Roger McGuinn 370/12 12-string
Amp
- Vintage Fender Deluxe
Effects
- ’70s Ibanez Phase Tone II
Strings, Picks & Cables
- Assorted D’Addario sets
- Bluebird picks (made from 1930s Argentinian poker chips by Pat’s brother-in-law)
- Divine Noise cables
Cline describes himself as versatile and isn’t sure his jazz roots influence what he records with Wilco. “I try to change what I play based on what I think the song is asking for, or quite often what Jeff specifically asked for. I don’t know that I have any voice that I could zero in on. I’m many voices.One friend of my wife’s and mine who’s French once compared my lead guitar playing to the voice of Edith Piaf. I think it’s because of what I call the wiggle—my fast vibrato which is inspired by John Cipollina from Quicksilver Messenger Service and Tom Verlaine from Television.”
Sansone—whose favorite albums include Revolver, Odessey and Oracleby the Zombies, and Third/Sister Lovers by Big Star—describes his approach: “I have a tendency to go toward melodic figures, finding places where counter-melodies can support the arrangement, or melodic bits on the guitar that help connect different parts of the song. That’s probably where my style and my sensibilities are maybe most unique in the group.” The B-Bender-equipped instrument he used on the album was a Tokai Telecaster. He also played a 1963 Epiphone Casino and a 1988 reissue Roger McGuinn 12-string Rickenbacker. In the studio, he prefers using a Swart Atomic Space Tone amp. “It’s just a small amp, low voltage, one 10" speaker, but it has a beautiful tone. It takes pedals very well, so it’s easy to get a range of tones at low volume.”
Wilco’s songs have always begun with Tweedy. He has some methods of writing that help him along the path of fine-tuning his work, including sharing his ideas with the band. “When I play my songs for the rest of the band, I start to hear them with other people’s ears. It kind of provides at least a little moment of objectivity, ’cause I can hear ’em and forget that I made them up,” he shares. His songwriting is defined by the simple notion that he can’t not be himself while composing. “And at some point, you try to be yourself on purpose,” he elaborates. “I can’t really extract myself from it anymore. It’s just a thing that I do, and it results in a thing that has some ‘me-ness’ to it. Like some ‘Jeff-ness.’
“When I play my songs for the rest of the band, I start to hear them with other people’s ears.”—Jeff Tweedy
“I like reading a lot, I like listening to records, and I generally do both until I can’t take it anymore and I feel like I need to do something of my own,” he continues. “I need to answer that call to add my own voice to the [mix]. It’s just inspiring when you spend time with other people’s consciousnesses.”
In the nearly 40 years he’s been performing as a professional recording artist, Tweedy’s ambitions haven’t really changed. “All the decisions I feel have been mostly centered around, ‘What path do we take that will allow us to do this tomorrow?’ I mean, first, if you can’t picture it, it can’t happen. Even ‘I want to be a songwriter,’ to me, is a little bit more intangible than ‘I want to write a song.’ That’s a manageable goal, and all your big dreams are built on those manageable goals. Because if you don’t do those, other things don’t happen.”
YouTube It
Pat Sansone lays down some heavy twang with his Fender Telecaster in this three-guitar-frontline performance of “Falling Apart (Right Now),” from Wilco’s new Cruel Country, at the band’s Solid Sound festival 2022 in North Adams, Massachusetts.