The boy and I saw Wilco last Friday the 13th at the Sunset Station Pavilion. It may just have been the best concert I've ever seen.The Sunset Station Pavilion is a refurbished train station that still sees passengers every couple of days. It has a couple of bars, restaurants and an outdoor pavilion with a stage.
We showed up at 7ish and waited inside the pavilion but the performance area was still closed off. After 10 minutes or so the gates opened and we went in. On the way to the stage I stopped after seeing an ex-coworker running camera for the show. We chatted for a couple and and caught up on times, he was still working as a Genius side gigs like the show.
After that the boy and I flowed up to the stage and settled about 15 feet from the front.
45 minutes later the opening act started playing and time slowed. The Altered Statesmen are an odd bunch, part oldtimers and part young slackers. The songs were good I guess but the band was boring. They seemed disinterested at best. The bass player was checking out his nails between songs. 8 songs or so later they left the stage.
We made conversations with people around us for a while and made pals with Chad Wadsworth who took some great photos of the Wilco show.
Some strange music started playing then Wilco took the stage without a word and went into Hell Is Chrome; a great song but not the kind of asskicking-first-song-of-the-night you expect to hear, but it was... perfect.
Instead of giving a blow by blow of the show I'm gonna just pass on some moments.
The crowd sang every song. Sometimes drowning out the band.
The intro for the song Sunken Treasure sounded strange. Jeff Tweedy starts the song alone but ass others started to play it became more dischordant. Nels Cline looked worried and pointed to Tweedy and changed his guitar to a spare. Then the second funniest thing of the night happened. Jeff Tweedy sang the first chorus of the song:
I am so
Out of tune
With you...
With that he stopped and song and said he figures out the problem. He took the capo off his guitar and threw it backstage. "Have any of the other songs been in tune?" Everyone laughed and he started the song again
Later Jeff asked for the house lights to be turned on. He pointed into the crowd and asked some guy towards the front of the stage why he had spent the night with his back to the band. "Did you think I wouldn't see you? You paid good money to see the rock show happening up here. Are you protesting something?"
Evidently the guy was pissed that he had gotten to the show early and was pissed that he didn't get to the front of the stage and was a couple of "rows" back. Jeff just kind of laughed and said "So you decided to throw a hissy fit? Well, I could have you come up on stage but that would be rewarding your bad behavior"
Everyone laughed including the guy and they started playing again.
They did a couple of encores and the music was great.
But the thing I want to remember the most is how great it all felt. During the song Hummingbird I turned around and looked at everybody. Everyone had smiles on, just singing. It was great.
I think the boy and I were really lucky and saw something special.
Listen to Wilco live from Washington DC at 9:30 on Thursday, October 19 via NPR.org and via Wilcoworld.net.
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