Wilco — 1 July 2026, Tulsa, OK (Cain’s Ballroom)

I don’t know how many folks at Cain’s Ballroom tonight also attended this year’s Solid Sound Festival — though I did see at least one person sporting a Solid Sound-related T-shirt in line before the show — but surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that Wilco’s first show after the festival, where the band performed a full set of songs from the Mermaid Avenue project with Billy Bragg for the first time, took place just a short walk from the Woody Guthrie Center.

Surely there would be an added emphasis on Mermaid material here of all places, where Guthrie’s legacy is so preserved and celebrated. Right? Right? Well, yes and no…

With Jeff and Co. returning to the two-set “Evening With…” format for a few more weeks of touring post-Solid Sound, they also largely returned to the setlist they had been playing for the several weeks of shows leading up to their festival. In fact, Set 1 was nearly identical to the one they played in nearby Oklahoma City less than two months earlier — in the same order, even — with a couple of minor differences. For example, there was one additional song in Set 1 in OKC (the opener, Wishful Thinking), while You And I wasn’t played in Tulsa and California Stars and Falling Apart (Right Now) were flip-flopped to close out the set.

Instead of You And I, we got a pretty rousing Christ For President near the end of the first set at Cain’s. Jeff briefly mentioned the Mermaid set at Solid Sound beforehand, but that would be the only nod to Guthrie during the show other than the subsequent California Stars, which is almost always played anyway during these “Evening With…” performances.

Fortunately, Set 2 (and the encore) featured a few more surprises. Perhaps the biggest was Sonny Feeling, which Jeff introduced as usual as “kind of a deep cut.” I guess the band must have enjoyed playing it at Solid Sound enough to keep it in the set for at least one more show. A bit later came two songs that aren’t nearly as rare, Whole Love and Hate It Here, but still don’t get played every night. And then in the encore — coincidentally, the same thing happened at the Oklahoma City show in May — Jeff seemed to take someone’s request for Candyfloss (saying “this is for you, wherever you are…”) and swapped that Summerteeth rarity in for The Late Greats. I’m pretty sure I saw the crew initially bring out guitars for The Late Greats, only to have to scramble slightly at Jeff’s audible. Subsequently I Got You (At The End Of The Century) and Outtasite (Outta Mind) sent a majority of folks in the sold-out crowd of 1,800 home from the old dance hall with the requisite hops in their steps.

This was, by my count, Wilco’s eighth show at Cain’s since their first appearance in 2005, in addition to a solo gig by Jeff and two other performances by different iterations of the Tweedy band. So clearly Jeff doesn’t “hate it here,” as he remarked before the song of the same name. But having been to the venue so many times, I’m not sure how he keeps the shows from blurring together. Tonight he referenced someone constantly yelling something “the last time we were here,” which would have been the second night of a two-night stand in December 2024 at the start of this “Evening With…” format. I had to go look up my own recap of that show and, indeed, there was a bit of an incident with some guy repeatedly yelling a song request and eventually being removed by security for a time. You gotta hand it to Jeff, or more accurately Jeff’s memory, if that’s what he was referring to.

Elsewhere on Banter Corner, Jeff once again joked about Glenn’s ever-lengthening drum roll at the end of Forget The Flowers, telling the audience, “You know, he adds a roll for every year we’ve been a band.” Right after that, he spotted a young fan who must have been holding a sign or something indicating it was his first show. “Well, fantastic,” Jeff quipped. “We’ll try hard.” Near the end of the first set, Jeff complimented someone wearing a T-shirt from the legendary St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl. He said he once worked at “the lesser of the two” Vintage Vinyl locations in Granite City, IL, and when the T-shirt wearer said they thought Jeff had actually worked at Euclid Records, he confirmed that he had also worked there.

Perhaps Jeff’s longest interaction with the crowd, though, came during Kingpin. First he changed the lyric to “livin’ in…Norman” and pronounced it “close enough” — except that drew some derision, so he relented to the decidedly less rhythmic “livin’ in…Tulsa” — and also urged people to do the handclaps during the second verse. At the song’s denouement, the “How can I give my love to you/When I don’t know what to do?” line, Jeff continued to refine the message he has been trying to deliver at recent shows. “You don’t have to know everything,” he said in part. “If I’ve learned something from my 58 years on this planet, it’s that I don’t know shit. … But I do know that you’re supposed to give your love away. That’s why we’re here.”

That sentiment should be the takeaway from this latest outing at Cain’s by Jeff and Co. Sure, we might not have gotten to hear some of the songs we hoped or expected to hear — like more from Mermaid Avenue, much less either of the new tunes the band premiered at Solid Sound — but we all came together and had a mutual exchange of love, positive energy, spirituality…whatever you want to call it. And ultimately that should count for something, shouldn’t it?

Here was the complete setlist, as played (didn’t get a look at a printed list for either set, so can’t say definitively if there were any changes/omissions — though, as mentioned, it seemed likely that Candyfloss replaced The Late Greats in the encore):

Set 1

1. Handshake Drugs

2. If I Ever Was A Child

3. Cruel Country

4. Forget The Flowers

5. Evicted

6. Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull

7. I’m Always In Love (acoustic arrangement)

8. Everyone Hides

9. Hummingbird

10. It’s Just That Simple

11. War On War

12. Via Chicago

13. Falling Apart (Right Now)

14. Christ For President

15. California Stars

Set 2

16. Box Full Of Letters

17. Annihilation

18. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart>

19. Kamera

20. Sonny Feeling

21. Either Way

22. Impossible Germany

23. Jesus, etc.

24. Whole Love

25. Hate It Here

26. Walken

27. Kingpin

28. Heavy Metal Drummer>

29. I’m The Man Who Loves You

---

Encore:

30. Candyfloss

31. I Got You (At The End Of The Century)>

32. Outtasite (Outta Mind)