As Jeff and his bandmates walked off the stage following the second of two nights at the OLT Rivierenhof for the second consecutive year, he sort of casually shrugged and said, “See you next year.” Will Wilco really play two shows in a park in Belgium every summer for the duration of its existence? I guess it remains to be seen, but there certainly are much worse places in the world to perform.
Of course I’m underselling the lovely and intimate 1,200-capacity amphitheater nestled in Antwerp’s largest park, the Rivierenhof (technically the Provinciaal Groendomein Rivierenhof, but that’s a mouthful). Someone asked me recently what my favorite venues to see Wilco are and I’d be hard pressed to come up with a better outdoor choice than this place, which has just about everything you want — both good standing and seated options, a perfect stage height, excellent sound and a beer garden-type area with above-average food and drink options. I mean, I’m sure I could nitpick something or other (bathrooms, maybe?) but it’s just a really good spot to be an audience member.
Happy crowd makes band play loud? Well, I don’t know if we can say that across the board but Jeff and Co. certainly bookended Night 2 this year with a differently noisy set of tunes than the more expected ones from Night 1. Opening with the electric version of Art Of Almost — in contrast with the acoustic version they did during one of last year’s “Evening With” sets here — set a tone right away (and Nels apparently played so hard out of the gate that he broke a string almost instantly; fortunately, he switches out guitars midway through the electric AOA anyway).
Then with the closing salvo of Monday and Outtasite (Outta Mind), the band sent the Flemish — and German, American, Italian, Dutch, British and French-speaking Belgian, etc. — fans flocking furiously homeward. It was especially fun to hear Monday for the first time in a little while (and just the third time this year full band). I’m not sure if Jeff just forgot to do the whistle or skipped it intentionally, but he did mouth — albeit, off-mike — “sonofabitch” to lead into Outtasite, which made me smile.
In all, there were nine different songs played on Night 2 than Night 1 (and it would have been 10 if Via Chicago hadn’t been swapped in for You And I). So a respectable amount of changes for a 22- or 23-song set. Sadly we still didn’t get the guitar duel version of Kingpin, perhaps on account of the reluctance to “boogie dabble” overseas, but swap-ins like Kamera and Hate It Here were nice. Perhaps we’ll get Kingpin during one of the upcoming “Evening With…” sets in Italy or Croatia since tonight was the final night with the duo version of Hovvdy as support (Jeff cleverly thanked them during I Am Trying To Break Your Heart when he modified the lyric, “What was I thinking when we said hello” to “…when we said howdy.”)
Perhaps Jeff was just feeling a little more uninhibited than usual because of the friendly crowd. Despite his early declaration that “we have quite a few things we’d like to achieve tonight, so I’m not gonna talk as much as I did last night,” he didn’t really adhere to that too strictly. Almost immediately after, possibly caught off guard when a small portion of the audience started to sing “Happy birthday” to him for the second night in a row, Jeff mentioned the previous night’s medical incident when there was an extended delay after somebody passed out and quipped — much to Glenn’s horror — that “we had to wait for them to be buried before we could go with the show, so drink up. Drink some water.” A couple of songs later, perhaps rethinking his sarcasm a bit, Jeff clarified that he had been kidding about the burial comment, but didn’t think the person who had passed out was at tonight’s show anyway.
Fortunately, slightly more tactful visits to Banter Corner ensued. Such as when Jeff shared after Annihilation that the band’s most recent release, the Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP, was “named after a sushi restaurant called Hot Woks Cool Sushi in Chicago…some of (my bandmates) didn’t even know that.” Then Jeff recounted, somewhat apropos of nothing, how someone had yelled out for him to introduce the band the previous night. After thinking about it for a second, Jeff pointed to the giant Wilco backdrop behind them and said, with mock incredulity, “We’re fucking Wilco. It’s right there!”
Another audience comment — a request for Via Chicago — prompted Jeff to seemingly shoot down the suggestion because he and his bandmates had played it on Night 1. “We didn’t put it on the setlist tonight,” he said. “Maybe that was a fucking mistake. We might have to correct it.” A few songs later, they made good on that with Jeff commenting, “We don’t do this often, but we’re gonna honor a request.” Afterward he added, “We honor requests all the time, just not ones that are shouted at us. But there seemed to be more than one person that wanted to hear that one. Ah, I don’t have to explain myself…”
By this point, after four shows in two years, it seems like there is at least a certain comfort level between Jeff and Co. and the audience that turns up at the OLT Rivierenhof (and Jeff even started the encore by saying “we need to come back here every year.”) But maybe there isn’t complete simpatico quite yet. For instance, after Jeff’s comment, that same small group of people started to sing “Happy birthday” to him yet again and another guy shouted out, “Play something by Jeff Tweedy!” (by which I think he meant something from Jeff’s solo catalog…after all, the Tweedy band had just been in Antwerp in February on the Twilight Override tour). Jeff responded to all of this with another bit of mock incredulity, observing in part, “You guys have lost control of yourselves. What is happening? Are we at a TGI Friday’s or something?”
Dear reader, I regret to inform you that there are currently no TGI Friday’s in Belgium (though apparently there once were plans to open a series of them). But maybe let’s just keep that stereotypically American vibe away from future Wilco shows over in Europe, shall we? Because I personally think the one at the OLT Rivierenhof is quite lovely as it is.
Here was the complete setlist, as played, for Night 2 (as mentioned, You And I was on the printed setlist in the main set after It’s Just That Simple, but wasn’t played when the band decided to play Via Chicago instead):
Art Of Almost
Handshake Drugs
If I Ever Was A Child
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart>
Kamera
Evicted
Forget The Flowers
Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull
I’m Always In Love (acoustic arrangement)
Box Full Of Letters
Annihilation
War On War
Hummingbird
It’s Just That Simple
Via Chicago
Impossible Germany
Jesus, etc.
Hate It Here
Heavy Metal Drummer>
I’m The Man Who Loves You
Encore
The Late Greats
Monday>
Outtasite (Outta Mind)
Magazine or Dawned On Me could do with more love. Ta, and say hello to the newly discovered prince of Belgium.
That does look like an amazing venue!!!