Wilco with the Smith Westerns at Cain's Ballroom, 5/8/11

Sunday was Mother's Day, so after our traditional family gathering, I headed over to Cain's with my parents (because they have great taste in music) to see Wilco.

The Smith Westerns opened. I had heard their name before, but didn't know who they were until halfway through their set. The sound wasn't mixed well, and the lead singer's vocals were half unintelligible, which was a whole lot better than this between-songs commentary, which was entirely unintelligible.

Nothing in their set stood out particularly. It was two guitars, a bass and a drum kit, playing reasonably predictable pop rock. I couldn't vouch for the vocals, since I'm not really sure what they were about. The singer/lead guitarist and the bassist seem to be brothers, with the same slouchy posture and the same curtain of hair hanging in front of their faces. There was a photographer walking around in the crowd trying to get a clear shot of them -- I guess his press pass was limited to the first few songs -- and complaining audibly about how their hair was in their faces. They looked really young. Like, high school garage band young, with a hipsters-reviving-the-early-90s-Grunge scene sensibility about them. I wonder how old they are.

Wilco seem to enjoy Cain's. They featured it in their film Ashes of American Flags (which I can highly recommend), along with a few other historic venues on main streets in smallish towns across America. I saw the concert where they recorded the footage a few years ago -- Jeff Tweedy in a white suit covered with red roses, green leaves, and too many sequins. The encore turned into a full-length second set, followed by a five song encore, and I couldn't have been more thrilled. I have a photograph hanging on the wall in my living room from that night, Tweedy wailing into the mic while Glenn Kotche wails on the drums in the background. Unforgettable. I was looking forward to an enthusiastic show and a warm crowd response, but what I got exceeded expectations.

They started with "Ashes of American Flags", which seems an unlikely choice, since it's pretty quiet at the beginning. It builds, though, and they segued in to "Bull Black Nova", my favorite cut from their most recent record, Wilco (The Album). I had wondered, then that album dropped, whether that one would work live. And it does -- frantic and jarring, with Nels Cline and Jeff Tweedy each playing repetitive, discordant notes, sometimes behind the bridge for that extra high-and-creepy tone. I was pleased.

Soon there were back to back songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to thunderous applause and cheering. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Kamera" were followed by "A Shot in the Arm" and "Via Chicago", one of my personal favorites. It features a really fantastic drum solo that mismatches completely with the rest of the song, and I'm always impressed by Tweedy's ability to keep his quiet vocals on the beat while Kotche goes nuts behind him. They played "Airline to Heaven", from Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, the second disc of their collaboration with Billy Bragg to put the lyrics of never-finished Woody Guthrie songs to music. That plays particularly well in Oklahoma, and at Cain's.

One of the surprising songs of the night was "I'll Fight", also off the most recent record. The song had never appealed to me recorded, but it might have been one of the highlights of the show for me. In a few days when the wonder fades, I'll listen again and see if I think any differently about it.

"Jesus, Etc." was sung by the crowd at Tweedy's urging. He expressed confidence that, because we were in Tulsa and at Cain's, we would be better than any of the other crowds on their short tour. At the end, he ranked it in the top 5 of all time, so maybe it was. I don't know. I was kind of disappointed not to hear it actually sung, but I think when songs are massive crowd favorites, you either let them sing it or you resign yourself to a) never deviating from the album version they all know and love or b) being ignored and drowned out when they sing the album-version over you.

They closed with "I'm the Man Who Loves You", dedicating it to the moms in the crowd ("Where would we be without our moms? Nowhere. No, literally, nowhere at all.") with Tweedy goading Kotche into some theatrics. "Guys, if Glenn doesn't stand on his drums and do the big intro for this song, he doesn't love his mom." Well, apparently Kotche does love his mother, because after a little indignant groaning, he put one foot on the snare and one on the floor tom, thrust his arms in the air and (according to my reading his lips) shouted "I love my mom!" I remember similar goading of Glenn the last time I saw them, which happened to be my birthday in 2009. (Please excuse my awful, low-light, scratched-lens camera-phone photos. There were no cameras allowed at Cain's for this show, so I really ought not to have taken any. I can't help myself. It's a sickness.)

Applause during the break for the encore was truly awesome. I've been to so many concerts lately where everyone half-assedly applauds, awaiting an encore they see as inevitable, an tradition turned fundamental right. This crowd was empassioned, and it was really cool to see.

What was better than that was that, when the band came back on that stage, there was none of that weary "Do we have to?" look on their faces. They seemed sincerely pleased, and as it was the last night of a short tour they planned "to pay the rent...you know, just some spring fun" I guess they weren't embittered by months of shamelessly promoting some new recording and were still having fun.

They played "Passenger Side" from A.M., Tweedy remarking that he was wearing the same green-and-white pinstriped jacket as he had been when they wrote that song, followed by "Misunderstood" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". I was particularly glad to hear that last song, partially because everything from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is pure gold, and partially because I am secretly in love with Glenn Kotche. Okay, cat's out of the bag.

"Red-eyed and Blue" and "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" led into "Hoodoo Voodoo", another Guthrie-penned song. One of the techs danced out on stage with a cowbell, and his interactions with John Stirratt were particularly great. Nels Cline and Pat Sansone had an epic guitar duel while Tweedy played rhythm between them, looking like a mediator, and looked amused.

We couldn't have asked for a better ending track, and I wandered over to the merch booth looking for a t-shirt and found, to my surprise, Adult Head, a collection of poems written by Jeff Tweedy. I haven't started reading yet because, frankly, anything that's not my French thesis (including this blog post) really should wait for later. However, I simply can't help myself.