The place to be on Sunday night was The Majestic Ventura Theater, where two-time Grammy Award winner Jeff Tweedy (Wilco/Uncle Tupelo) performed to a sold-out crowd of 1200 adoring fans. He’d just played two consecutive nights in Los Angeles at two different downtown venues, and Ventura was just a short seventy-mile jaunt up the scenic coastline.
Jeff’s music is undefinable, part alternative, part country rock, part indie rock. The prolific songwriter shifts his style from record to record and refuses to be pinned down. The current tour is in support of 2025’s Twilight Override, a massive 30-track triple album, and this night, the ever-evolving setlist featured fifteen of those songs. Part of the reason for the profuse output of this album seems to stem from his perception of the current state of the world – this partial quote is taken from the press release for Twilight Override – “When you choose to do creative things, you align yourself with something that other people call God. And when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation. And that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy. Creativity eats darkness.”
The new record is, on one hand, easy to digest and doesn’t require multiple listens to get it…until you start paying attention to the lyrics, which are as deep as you’re willing to let them take you. For me, these songs are the perfect road trip companion – hit play, shift into drive, press down on the accelerator, and let both the car and music take you away from the weight of everyday life.
Both the record and tour are family affairs, with sons Sammy Tweedy and Spencer Tweedy taking part – Sammy on keyboards and vocals and Spencer on drums. This wasn’t a case of nepotism; both brothers not only stood their ground with the other impressive musicians on stage, but excelled, with Sammy singing lead vocals on Neil Young’s classic “After the Gold Rush” during the encore.
The Majestic Ventura Theater is a cool 1920s venue, and every time I’ve been there, it’s been set up as a standing room only concert hall. I was very surprised after I received my photo pass at will call and walked past the foyer into the main room, to see that folding chairs had been placed in rows from back to front. Part of this, I suppose, is due to the mellow nature of the current record, but part of it may be due to the age of the audience, which seemed to lean more towards the fifty-plus crowd than teenagers.
Selfishly, my first thought upon seeing the room was where the hell is the photo/security pit, because from the entrance at the back of the hall, the chairs seemed to go all the way up to the stage. My brain was doing gymnastics trying to figure out where to photograph from without getting in the seated patron’s way. As I moved forward towards the stage, the pit slowly revealed itself – the barricade for concerts had been pushed all the way up to the stage, leaving the smallest of spaces between the barricade and the stage. I asked the security guard what he thought, and he suggested I try it. I squeezed myself in and sat on the step on the backside of the barricade to organize my cameras and lenses – as I sat, the stage was a mere twelve inches from my chest.
It was at this moment that a fellow photographer buddy showed up, with the same look in his eye that I’d just had. Usually, photographers move around in the pit, taking a shot in a prime position, then moving on to get out of the way of the next shooter and find a different angle. That wouldn’t be possible as there wasn’t enough room to pass one another to shoot different angles and properly cover the band. Between the two of us, we devised a plan for both of us to shoot from stage right for one song, move towards the middle for the second song, then shift to stage left for the third and final song before we had to leave the pit.
The opener was singer/songwriter Liam Kazar who is also in Jeff’s band. Interestingly, Jeff rotates the opening act each night from members of his band. The other two that share opening duties on the tour are Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart. I’m sure it’s cool for the band to have a shot in the spotlight while at the same time keeping things fresh over the course of a long tour.
The show was amazing, and the fans were giddy with excitement. What the show lacked in crowd surfers and mosh pits, it made up for in smiles, swaying heads, and tapping feet. While fifteen of the twenty-five songs were from the new album, the audience was genuinely happy to hear Jeff and the five other musicians on stage play anything. The new songs went over just as well as old favorites, and Jeff could do no wrong. Despite his microphone being placed about ten feet back from the front of the stage, and him standing behind it most of the night, his voice and music carried forward, seemingly bringing him closer to the audience than he actually was.
This concert was magical – the perfect performance at a beautiful old theater, with a crowd most appreciative to be there. This wasn’t a typical Los Angeles show, where people are talking to one another above the music about inane subjects during your favorite song…hushed silence fell throughout the crowd as people were on the edge of their seats waiting to hear the next poignant lyric and note from Jeff’s guitar.
Musicians
- Jeff Tweedy – vocals and guitar
- Sammy Tweedy – vocals and keyboards
- Spencer Tweedy – drums
- Sima Cunningham – bass and vocals
- Liam Kazar – guitar and vocals
- Macie Stewart – violin and vocals
Setlist:
1) One Tiny Flower
2) Caught Up in the Past
3) Love is for Love
4) Forever Never Ends
5) This Is How It Ends
6) Low Key
7) World Away
8) Mirror
9) KC Rain (No Wonder)
10 Don’t Forget
11) Stray Cats in Spain
12) Gwendolyn
13) Love Is the King
14) Out in the Dark
15) Cry Baby Cry
16) Flowering
17) New Orleans
18) Diamond Light, Pt. 1
19) No One's Moving On
20) Feel Free
21) Lou Reed Was My Babysitter
Encore:
22) Family Ghost
23) After the Gold Rush (Neil Young cover)
24) The Long Cut
25) Enough
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