Ever think you’d hear an acoustic version of “Smoke On The Water” at Joseph-Beth Booksellers? Well, you’re still not going to when Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy comes to town with his new book, World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music.
For one thing, the November 9 appearance (this Thursday!) will feature Tweedy in conversation with Louisville guitarist and music archivist Nathan Salsburg in the Walnut Hills High School auditorium, not the store. For another, “I usually don’t do a whole lot of playing and singing at the book events,” says Tweedy.
But the Deep Purple anthem’s timeless riff was the first one a pre-adolescent Jeff Tweedy learned to play on the guitar, and therefore the first chapter in the book. “This, my friends, was the ‘Seven Nation Army’ of my day,” he writes. “Who cares if it took a riff so demeaning and dumb to instill a little belief in myself as a potential musician. We all start somewhere.”
World Within a Song is not a book of criticism, but rather a quasi-memoir told through 50 songs. Not necessarily Tweedy’s 50 favorite songs (as that first chapter already suggests), but 50 songs that mean something to him, by artists ranging from Otis Redding, The Knack, and Grandmaster Flash to Television, Rosalía, and the Staples Singers. “I just think it’s an endlessly entertaining topic, obviously, because we get so wrapped up in songs,” says Tweedy. “We’re so entwined in the music we listen to. It has a powerful effect on how we see ourselves and how we think about the world. Writing songs is my effort to participate in that type of feeling.”
Tweedy writes that if he could do it all over again, he’d probably have penned this book before his more traditional autobiography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), published in 2018. That was followed by How to Write One Song in 2020, which was more about his own creative process.
For Tweedy, other people’s songs are a box full of, no, not letters, but moments in a life. Where were you when you first heard a song? What were you doing? Who did you hear it with? How were you feeling at the time? As a musician, songwriter, and bandleader, Tweedy is an artist, entertainer, and perhaps even a rabbi, but above all he’s a bringer of joy and community. “Creating connection through music is my life’s work,” he writes.
The book’s song chapters are interspersed with what Tweedy calls “Rememories”— something he started doing on his Substack, Starship Casual, where you’ll also sometimes find him posting acoustic versions of other people’s songs. They’re anecdotal flashbacks, both musical and not, from both his childhood and his band days, including in his first group, Uncle Tupelo.
Really, though, the entire book is “Rememories.” A remembrance of childhood friendship connected to Michelle Shocked’s “Anchorage” is particularly heart-tugging. He also writes about his father’s love of Leo Sayer’s “Long Tall Glasses,” how he originally thought his guitar-playing cousin BeBo actually wrote Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business,” and his attempt to get his mom to understand his tortured teenage feelings by playing her “Balancing Act” by the Boston post-punk band Volcano Suns. Tweedy’s generational and musical peers—yes, I’m one of them—will be further delighted by the inclusion of such indie and college radio legends as The Minutemen, Slovenly, and The Replacements.
Reading the book feels more like listening to Tweedy talk than listening to a Tweedy song; he’s an extremely conversational prose writer who tends to read his own work aloud to himself. “That’s the only way I can tell if it’s sounding like me and if I’m getting the tone,” he says. “That it’s not dictatorial or didactic or overly opinionated.”
Like we’re all sitting around listening to records, because we’re all connected through our favorite bands and records. “Music is just the thing I most relate to the world through,” he says. “In a profound and real way, I’m connected to the world through other people’s songs.”
And who knows? Given that there’s a default “request song” form for the Cincinnati event on the tour dates portion of Wilco’s website, you still might get to hear a bit of music. Maybe something from the band’s new album, Cousin. “I don’t know,” says Tweedy. “I could probably play ‘Smoke on the Water’ on the acoustic guitar. There’s nothing stopping me.”
Jeff Tweedy is “in conversation” at 7 p.m. November 9 at Walnut Hills High School. Tickets include a copy of his new book. josephbeth.com
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