Why Wilco?

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on August 12, 2010 - 9:54am

With Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival just hours from launching, the excitement surrounding the festival – expected to draw upwards of five-thousand to MASS MoCA and downtown North Adams, Mass., for the first time perhaps ever – is also tempered by a low-level backlash. Some are dismissing Wilco as an overrated, “white boys band” and the festival itself as beneficiaries of hype.

While it’s not for me to decide or defend either charge (and if there’s a backlash, that must mean that people are really taking this whole thing pretty seriously, which is good – oh, and by the way, the festival includes gospel legend Mavis Staples, the Deep Blue Organ Trio from Chicago, and the all-female trio Mountain Man, among many others), a few friends have asked me sincerely why they should care about Wilco.

I’ve written about the band’s music elsewhere, but to reiterate, here’s why I think Wilco matters:

Wilco is bringing the Deep Blue Organ Trio from its hometown, Chicago, to Solid Sound at MASS MoCA

They are indeed the greatest American rock band, and the inheritors of the mantle of The Band, which I consider the greatest American rock band of all time. Like that group, Wilco has found a way to encompass the breadth of American roots music -- country, soul, rock, pop, jazz, folk, and experimentation -- in an organic and visionary manner, that speaks from the deeply personal passions of Jeff Tweedy while celebrating the joy of making music in a collective and creating a community of listeners.

Nothing more, and nothing less.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning cultural critic and the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet.

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