Wilco — 27 June 2026, North Adams, MA (Mass MoCA [Joe's Field]) [Solid Sound Festival - Day 2 of 3]

A scant 24 hours after turning in a historic performance with Billy Bragg et al., of material from the Mermaid Avenue project, with both the in-person attendees of the Solid Sound Festival and the greater indie rock and Americana music scenes still buzzing, Jeff and Co. found themselves back on the Joe’s Field stage at Mass MoCA with the challenge of outdoing — or at least equaling — themselves.

I’m happy to report that they did it, or came pretty close anyway. While the lone instance of purely Wilco music at this year’s festival wasn’t an extended two-set “Evening With…” show that the band has been playing of late, it did feature a truly unique opening, some surprising setlist tweaks, a number of guest appearances and even some new songs.

Let’s start at the beginning. When Mikael Jorgensen and legendary jazz pianist Bob James — the former is making a documentary about the latter, and a couple of sessions featuring clips from that project and a Q&A were among the highlights of the festival’s programming this year — took the stage by themselves and sat down at Mikael’s keyboard station, you knew this wasn’t going to be just an ordinary Wilco set. James started to play his famed composition Angela, otherwise known as the theme from the late 1970s/early 1980s sitcom Taxi, and Mikael joined him as the two ran through a couple of minutes of the classic tune as a duet. Right as they finished, comedian John Hodgman adopted the role of TV announcer and promptly declared, “Solid Sound is filmed in front of a live festival audience in beautiful downtown North Adams, Massachusetts. Please stay tuned for your local news.” The effect was probably better for those listening at home via live stream, but it was nevertheless a pretty memorable way to get things going.

Finally at about 9:20 p.m., the rest of Mikael’s bandmates emerged and Wilco got going with another surprise. For the first time in more than 25 years, the opening song of a Wilco show was Summerteeth fan favorite Candyfloss. Of course I didn’t realize this at the time, but after some research, I’m as certain as I can be that the band hadn’t opened a show with Candyfloss since 6 May 2000 at Carleton College in Minnesota (which was, as I recall, a pretty popular bootleg that made the rounds back in the live-show trading days). It was, I think, just the fourth Candyfloss opener ever, and certainly provided a jolt of energy to the proceedings. Two songs later came Star Wars deep cut You Satellite, which some of us heard back in January at the Sky Blue Sky festival in Mexico but which before that had only been played a handful of times since Star Wars was performed its entirety in the year or so after its surprise release in 2015.

Not long after that, the guest appearances commenced as Chicago singer-songwriter Elizabeth Moen came out and added her distinct voice to Forget The Flowers. There seemed to be maybe a little bit of confusion between she and Jeff when it came time for the closing “You know I will,” and/or “I know you will” lines — or maybe that’s just how the duet is actually supposed to go. “Little-known fact, that song was written as a duet,” Jeff said afterward. “Finally got to do it as a duet.” Then he joked: “Yeah, it was written with me and (Plasmatics frontwoman) Wendy O. Williams in mind. That’s the first person that came to my mind.” Midway through the set, a duet that was actually recorded as a duet happened with Natalie Merchant stepping into Feist’s role on You And I — and of course, the traditional Solid Sound train rumbled by mid-song. Merchant would depart with a quick wave before the song was even over, but she would hardly be the last special guest of the night.

Before that, however, came perhaps the most noteworthy aspects of this set — namely, the debut of two new songs. The first, which Jeff introduced as a “work in progress” called Flawed Men, featured a kind of speak-sing vocal with cryptic lyrics about “how heavy memories can live in a song” and possibly someone Jeff knew once (or perhaps it’s just different aspects of himself?) that he still loves “because I know we’re both flawed men.” In either case, the lyrics were supported by an easygoing riff that featured Jeff, Nels and Pat all on electric guitars. “We’ll figure out an ending for it,” Jeff said as the song sort of came to a tentative conclusion. “That’s the in-progress part.” It’s the first time I can remember Wilco as a band playing a “work in progress” live since debuting One Wing at Lollapalooza way back in 2008 — memorably calling it “a WIP” at that show — though obviously Jeff shared many new songs on The Tweedy Show during the pandemic.

At any rate, the band doubled down on fresh material and played another WIP right after Flawed Men. Jeff didn’t announce a title for this other new song, but it was listed as Losing Traction on the printed setlist. This one also had a speak-sing element to it, with Nels providing twangy touches on lap steel, but featured seemingly more direct lyrics about the state of the world. “I avoid you, I don’t have a choice/The sky’s still gray, no matter what they say,” Jeff intoned. “But lately what’s true is losing traction/And I don’t think we should ever get used to living this way.” It also features the memorable couplet, “Bad luck saved me from worse luck/And I was only depressed when I still gave a fuck.” And it concludes with a mantra of sorts: “Get over it/get under it/get on with it.”

The second half of the set, meanwhile, featured several noteworthy moments, starting with Wilco (The Album) rarity Sonny Feeling, which Jeff dedicated to one enthusiastic onlooker who he dubbed a “collector of the Japanese B-sides, I see.” Then, hilariously, the band messed up the start and came to a halt. Jeff quipped, “That’s it. You guys don’t remember that one? It’s pretty rare, it’s pretty obscure.” Pat then chimed in, “That’s the false start version. Very collectible, very collectible.” Afterward, Jeff said, “We play that about three times a year. We’ve never played that first (version).” A few songs later on Impossible Germany, Nels had a weird moment just before the coda when all the guitar parts come back together when he had to hold out a hand to momentarily stop the rest of the band from proceeding because something happened that threw his guitar out of tune — a friend thought he might have gotten his whammy bar caught on a string — and he had to re-tune on the fly. “That’s never happened before,” Nels said to Jeff with a bit of an exasperated look on his face.

Frequently Jesus, etc. follows Impossible Germany on the setlist, in part to give Nels a bit of a breather, but tonight a thunderous rendition of Art Of Almost came out of nowhere and almost stole the show. Wilco has occasionally done an acoustic arrangement of AOA the past couple of years, during the “Evening With…” era of shows, but this was the full-on electric version and it was, well, electric. I can’t recall the last time I’d heard the regular arrangement, and it was very welcome. Afterward, the requisite Jesus, etc., did indeed come, but we got a treat when Macie Stewart came out to join the band on violin, which always adds a lovely dimension.

As the show barreled toward its invitable conclusion, Jeff and Co. still had a couple of surprises up their sleeve (though time constraints apparently forced some on-the-fly adjustments). According to the printed setlist, Kingpin — which featured the requisite lyric change to “livin’ in North Adams” — was to be followed by the expected trio of Heavy Metal Drummer, I’m The Man Who Loves You and Spiders (Kidsmoke). But while Jeff was philosophizing about giving his love away after the guitar duel in Kingpin, he also admitted, “We are absolutely running out of time, though. I’m only gonna ask this five more times: How can I give my love to you? How can I give my love to you? OK, I’m only gonna ask this three more times…” And ultimately, that proved to be the end of the main set, with the HMD>Man two-fer a victim of the aforementioned time crunch.

More adjustments came in the encore when some members of the crew initially hauled a clunky analog synthesizer unit on stage and started to set it up, only to have to then lug it back off stage while none other than former Wilco member LeRoy Bach quietly appeared in the back corner of the stage at Mikael’s keyboard station. “OK, everything’s chaotic right now,” Jeff said, as he introduced Bach (who had been at the festival to perform with the Chicago band Official Claire). “Check out the moon, it’ll calm you down a bit.” Then the seven-piece Wilco — with Mikael on shaker behind Glenn — launched into Handshake Drugs.

But instead of proceeding to the planned conclusion of I Got You (At The End Of The Century) and Outtasite (Outta Mind), the analog synth quickly returned to the stage accompanied by Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso and a different seven-piece Wilco lineup immediately went into Spiders (Kidsmoke) — which had been on the printed setlist as the final song of the main set — to close out the proceedings. It felt a bit rushed and there was no time for the usual crowd participation, but the synth added a cool element.

And after all that, the 2-hour, 7-minute set came to a somewhat sudden end. It begged the question of whether you can run out of time at your own festival — apparently you can, though you definitely get a little leeway — but Jeff and his bandmates and guests had already given more than we could have expected. And even as he was walking off stage at 11:27 p.m., Jeff said to the audience, in part, “We owe you big time,” so, really, how could we have had any hard feelings?

Here was Wilco’s complete setlist, as played (as mentioned, Heavy Metal Drummer and I’m The Man Who Loves You were cut from the planned end of the main set and I Got You (At The End Of The Century) and Outtasite (Outta Mind) in the encore, while Spiders (Kidsmoke) was moved from the end of the main set to the encore):

1. Candyfloss

2. Annihilation

3. You Satellite

4. If I Ever Was A Child

5. Forget The Flowers (with Elizabeth Moen on co-vocals)

6. Evicted

7. Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull

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

9. new song-Flawed Men

10. new song-Losing Traction

11. It’s Just That Simple

12. You And I (with Natalie Merchant on co-vocals)

13. Everyone Hides

14. Sonny Feeling

15. Either Way

16. Impossible Germany

17. Art Of Almost

18. Jesus, etc. (with Macie Stewart on violin)

19. Hate It Here

20. Walken

21. Kingpin

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Encore:

22. Handshake Drugs (with LeRoy Bach on keyboard)

23. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (electric arrangement) (with Nick Sanborn on analog synthesizer)