Wilco — 13 June 2026, Rochester Hills, MI (Meadow Brook Amphitheatre)

Philadelphia might be the place where people complain the most about Wilco not playing shows, as Jeff has said on at least one occasion, but I suspect that the denizens of Detroit might have at least equal reason for beef with Team Tweedy — at least over the past decade or so. The Tweedy band skipped the Detroit area entirely on the Twilight Override tour and, if I’m not mistaken, tonight’s show was the first by Wilco in the metro area proper in nearly a decade (though the band did play in Ann Arbor in 2019 and Jeff solo in Royal Oak in 2018).

In fact, I ran into some old friends before Wilco took the stage tonight at the venerable Meadow Brook Amphitheatre and they informed me that I had actually been at the venue the last time Jeff and Co. played it in 2017. I don’t know what that says about me — well, I suppose you can guess — but I have literally no memory of it.

I probably should remember because the venue, which is located on the campus of Oakland University, is a pretty big one by Wilco standards with a capacity of nearly 8,000 divided between a covered pavilion with reserved seating and a fairly large general-admission lawn that both slope down toward the stage. It wasn’t nearly sold out — one report I read estimated the crowd at about 4,000 — but it felt fairly full at least in the pavilion, especially when people stood up, which a good many fortunately did.

With that size of audience, especially at a summer venue like Meadow Brook, you’re bound to get all kinds of people coming to the show and, indeed, it felt like I observed everyone from longtime regular fans to people who maybe were really into the band 15-20 years ago but hadn’t kept up with recent albums to folks just joining friends for a fun night out — and everything in between. And obviously the setlist that the band is presenting is going to reflect that sort of wide-ranging perspective, even with the current two-set “Evening With…” format.

So unfortunately for those of us on the end of the spectrum perhaps wanting to hear songs like Quiet Amplifier or the electric version of The Universe that Jeff and his bandmates were playing not all that long ago, those deeper cuts seem to have dropped out of the rotation as the audiences have gotten bigger, the weather warmer and the venues, er, more outdoor. If you’re going to multiple shows on runs like this, you have to accept that the setlist probably isn’t going to vary all that much. There just isn’t much room beyond the “standards,” though I appreciate them changing it up at least a little each night. Tonight, for example, we got Kamera, You Are My Face and Hate It Here in Set 2, which were the only differences between the previous night’s setlist in Grand Rapids (in addition to the swap-outs of Everyone Hides in Set 1 and Outtasite (Outta Mind) in the encore the night before and not tonight).

Of course Banter Corner also becomes a source of amusement from night to night, and at least Jeff doesn’t do that thing some artists do when they carve out specific moments during a show when they will interact with the crowd and say some version of the same thing. Instead we still get moments like the one after Forget The Flowers when Glenn does a drum roll leading out of Nels’ guitar flourish to bring the song to its conclusion. “That roll gets longer every tour,” Jeff teased. “Pretty soon we’re only gonna have time for that.” When Glenn protested, saying that he had to wait for Nels to play his part, Jeff remained unconvinced, replying, “I know it’s the two of you together in cahoots. It’s shine time.”

Another funny bit came just before the set break during which Jeff suggested “let’s see if we can do something about this pollen. I feel like I’ve been snorting pollen like Stevie Nicks — she’s backstage doing lines of pollen. Our (on-stage) rug is covered. I don’t know if it’s ever happened to me before, but it’s making my armpits itch. OK, good talk.” Jeff also briefly got into it during the first set with a hapless guy in the front row who apparently questioned Jeff’s comment about Shouldn’t Be Ashamed being on the band’s first record. “Just be quiet,” Jeff said dismissively, albeit in a joking sort of tone. “You’ve got a good seat. Don’t blow it.”

By the time the second set rolled around, darkness had finally descended upon the venue and Jeff and Co. got down to the business of rocking out with crowd-pleasing jams like Kingpin (on which there was no hesitation tonight about changing the line to “livin’ in…Michigan”) and Spiders (Kidsmoke) (which, of course, must be played in the Mitten State.) It is kind of funny, I wanted to note, with the fun “new” arrangement of Kingpin, that Jeff seemingly hasn’t quite figured out what to do with the “How can I?” part of the song. It feels like he isn’t fully into doing the crowd scream-and-response bit that used to happen during that part, but he also doesn’t quite know how to get through it, so it just ends up being a kind of awkward moment where he professes to pose “a serious question” and then basically spits out the closing line, “How can I give my love to you when I don’t know what to do?”

So yeah, I guess between that, Spiders and the encore — which went right up until the tight 11 p.m. curfew, one that even forced Wilco’s front-of-house engineer Jared to turn off the post-show music prematurely — Motor City fans can feel like they got their Wilco fix for a while (though they should still squawk at Team Tweedy because I like coming to Detroit). Hopefully for the fans who live in the area, it won’t be close to another decade before the band comes back through town. Here’s hoping that I’ll be fortunate enough to be there the next time as well. And when that next time comes, maybe I’ll even remember having been here this time, though I can’t make any promises.

Here was the complete setlist, as played (didn’t get a look at a printed list for either set, so can’t say if there were any changes/omissions):

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. Hummingbird

9. It’s Just That Simple

10. You And I

11. Shouldn’t Be Ashamed

12. War On War

13. Via Chicago>

14. California Stars

15. Falling Apart (Right Now)

Set 2

16. Box Full Of Letters

17. Annihilation

18. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart>

19. Kamera

20. Either Way

21. Impossible Germany

22. Jesus, etc.

23. You Are My Face

24. Hate It Here

25. Walken

26. Kingpin

27. Heavy Metal Drummer>

28. I’m The Man Who Loves You

29. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (electric arrangement)

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Encore

29. The Late Greats

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