Jeff Tweedy and Friends — 28 June 2026, North Adams, MA (Mass MoCA [Joe’s Field]) [Solid Sound Festival – Day 3 of 3]
Complete setlist, as played:
One Tiny Flower
Caught Up In The Past
KC Rain (No Wonder)
Forever Never Ends
This Is How It Ends
Low Key
World Away
Mirror
Don’t Forget
Love Is The King
Out In The Dark
Cry Baby Cry
Flowering
New Orleans
Diamond Light, Pt. 1
No One’s Moving On
Feel Free
Lou Reed Was My Babysitter
Family Ghost
Friendship [Pops Staples] (with Ella Feingold on electric guitar)
Hot Stuff [Donna Summer] (with Amelia Meath and Hannah Cohen on vocals, Nels Cline and Ella Feingold on electric guitar and Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone on percussion)
Enough
Take Me Home, Country Roads [John Denver] (with Nels Cline on lap steel, Ella Feingold on electric guitar, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone on percussion and Sam and Louise Sullivan on backing vocals)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere [Bob Dylan] (with ensemble, including John Stirratt, Casey Gomez Walker, Sam and Louise Sullivan, Hannah Cohen, Amelia Meath and Scott McCaughey on vocals, Ella Feingold on electric guitar, Nels Cline, Glenn Kotche, Pat Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen et al., on percussion)
Number of Twilight Override songs played (out of 30): 13.
“Special” song(s): In the usual spot in the Tweedy band set when Jeff and Co. play the unique song/songs that they say they’ll only play once, just for that show’s audience, they uncorked a doozy that Jeff dedicated to Susie. “We try and pick something by someone from the area or the state, or sometimes we just pick a song and pretend that it has something to do with where we are,” Jeff announced. “This song is actually by a woman that’s, uh, from this area.” With a visibly pregnant Sima joined at stage left by Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso and Hannah Cohen in a sashaying, striking trio of female vocalists, you had an idea it would probably involve some sort of upbeat number, and that was quickly confirmed by the slinky electric guitar line provided by Nels Cline that led into Hot Stuff by Boston native Donna Summer. Meath took the lead vocal on the first verse, while Macie took the second and Nels came back with a fun solo. Afterward, Jeff teased Susie — who was sitting in the photo pit between the barricade and the stage, “(How about) a little hot stuff tonight, honey? Some pizza, maybe…”
After Enough, however, which typically marks the end of the Tweedy band set, the group tacked on a couple more “special” songs to close out the festival. First up, John Denver’s classic Take Me Home, Country Roads, which Jeff said was a song his manager (and proud West Virginia native) Crystal Myers had been trying to convince the band to play. In a happy coincidence — since I believe Crystal is also a soccer fan — the song also became the unofficial anthem for the United States men’s national soccer team and its fans during this summer’s World Cup run. As Jeff alluded to, the song actually has roots in western Massachusetts. One of its co-writers, Bill Danoff, was from Springfield and apparently drew inspiration from the small roads near his hometown, not West Virginia. “I’d like to thank everybody that helps put this together,” Jeff said of Solid Sound. “I think there’s one (person) who probably puts in more hours, and more work, and more concentration and maybe stress, more than anybody. Her name’s Crystal. Not to single her out, but she’s kind of the big overseer of this whole thing and she does an amazing job. We want to thank her by playing this song.” With Liam, Sammy and Jeff each taking the lead vocal on a verse and then supported by just about everybody else on stage on the choruses, it was a perfect choice for a Sunday singalong.
Though Jeff teased Myers by declaring Country Roads to be “another one of those one-off songs that we’re never gonna play again, Crystal,” I don’t believe he actually said the same about the final number of the day — Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere. But then again, I don’t know if it would ever be as fun again without the assemblage of folks on stage that emerged for this last hurrah. You had verses sung by John Stirratt, Casey Gomez Walker of Case Oats and Sam and Louise Sullivan, with Scott McCaughey joining Sammy and eventually Spencer on backing vocals at stage right, and Meath and Cohen remaining at stage left. The other members of Wilco provided additional backing vocals and percussion, and all six took one final bow at center stage when the song was done. It all added up to a feel-good and fitting sendoff for Solid Sound IX.
Support report: No true support act, obviously, since this was a festival, but the British singer-songwriter Richard Dawson was the only other act to perform on Joe’s Field on the final day of this year’s festival. Dawson, who I guess prefers to be called just Rich (hence him being listed on the festival lineup as Rich(ard) Dawson, played his unique brand of folk music with Jeff visibly looking on — and occasionally singing along — from side stage. And this wasn’t just a cameo by Jeff, either. He stayed for Dawson’s entire set, clearly enjoying the Newcastle native’s eccentric songs (and/or his eye-catching T-shirt, which I was hoping would light up or something).
Venue vibes: Good old Joe’s Field, which seems to get a little smaller to me every time (or perhaps it’s just the gradual creeping in of the chair line). Not much else to say about it, I guess, other than that in addition to being where all the memorable Wilco/Tweedy Solid Sound performances have taken place over the years, it is also now the site of a (somewhat questionable?) world record for the most people yo-yoing at one time. That happened a day earlier, prior to The Breeders’ and Wilco’s sets on Day 2 of the festival, with Kim Deal and Jeff and many others on stage joining thousands of festival attendees in the field — most of whom were provided complimentary yo-yos — for the occasion. Some succeeded in “walking the dog,” “rocking the cradle” and such more than others. Deal, for one, had her struggles, which a regular reader of these recaps apparently poked a bit of fun at from the front row, not expecting that she would notice. Instead, his teasing drew an unexpectedly feisty response from the Breeders’ frontwoman — one of my personal Solid Sound highlights, for sure.
Bits of tid, including Banter Corner:
— Sammy’s struggles with his Korg keyboard were sort of a running joke/source of drama throughout at least the first half of the main set. When it went down just two songs in, causing his dad to exclaim, “Oh, shit!” Sammy informed him that it was actually the second Korg to fail already that day. They apparently went back to the first one for a while, until it went down again during Mirror. Afterward, Jeff declared half-jokingly, “We gotta get something for Sammy to play. There’s certainly enough fucking gear here to get something with keys on it.” Fortunately, they rounded up something by the time Out In The Dark rolled around a few songs later so that Sammy could contribute his, uh, key keyboard part on that one.
— Jeff related a funny little anecdote before Love Is The King about soundchecking the song earlier in the afternoon, apparently at the same time Joe’s Field opened for the day. “People were coming in as I sang the first line, and it was pretty amazing,” Jeff said pointing up demonstratively at the “Here I am…” opening, which drew a chuckle from the audience.
— As usual, there was a little oohing and aahing in the crowd before Flowering — the one song in the Tweedy band set on which Jeff uses his striking blue Kawai MoonSault crescent-shaped guitar. “What’re you looking at?” Jeff asked. “What, you’ve never seen a waxing gibbous before?” Someone within earshot, however, decided to try and correct Jeff by asserting that it was actually a waning gibbous. But Jeff sort of bristled at the attempted correction, shooting back, “No it’s not, (because) it’s dark.” Then he added, sarcastically: “Well, actually…Don’t ‘Well, actually’ me. I got a microphone.” #moonnerd
— Always a missed opportunity, IMHO, when you don’t play Let’s Go Rain (with the lyric “Or maybe it’s a fever that you haven’t caught yet/‘Cause you haven’t met Scott McCaughey”) with Scott McCaughey in attendance. Oh well. They did play it during the Tweedy and Friends set at Solid Sound VIII in 2024, along with five songs that would come out on Twilight Override more than a year later and one (the as-yet unreleased You’re Not Gonna Win) that hasn’t been released officially yet.
— Introducing Family Ghost in the encore, Jeff noted bluntly, “This is a song about how shitty America is. I wrote it a long time ago, though.” Whether he was just being a bit cheeky or not, I don’t remember him ever describing that song quite as explicitly before. Nor did I personally get that impression upon first hearing it live back in 2018, but clearly I wasn’t listening closely enough. (It officially came out on Warmer the following year).
— Despite Jeff’s busy schedule during the festival likely leading to little to no rehearsal time for the Tweedy sextet, which hadn’t played a show together in nearly two months, there weren’t really many noticeable flubs. One exception came at the start of Low Key when Jeff seemed to sense that something might go awry. “This is a little older one,” he said. “Be kind.” Almost immediately, he false started, possibly hitting the wrong pedal. “We haven’t played together for a few days, at least I haven’t,” Jeff admitted afterward.
👏🪀👏🪀👏🪀
Ta