![]() Tweedy I’ve been writing songs since I was 14 years old, and I really like feeling in control of it. If I get stuck on a song I’ve written in standard tuning, sometimes I’ll do an overdub in a weird tuning that I’ve put together so that it would be in the same key.Ĭan you explain how disorienting yourself helps the process? A lot of times just disorienting yourself by not being able to grab rote chords, or not knowing what’s going to happen when you move your fingers, can be very inspiring. Tweedy I use weird tunings as a catalyst for songwriting a lot. How do alternate tunings impact your songwriting? I don’t have a real sustaining voice so I tend to like guitars that aren’t showing me up. They’re terrible old ’40s stencil cowboy guitars or cheapo beginner guitars, but you put a rubberized bridge on them and they have this crazy quality that just leaves so much more room for my voice. I used them on the record, and they sound sort of like a ukulele and classical guitar. There are some old beater guitars that I leave laying around the house that I always end up writing on, and recently I’ve been getting these guitars built that have a rubber bridge. I have a lot of different instruments and a lot of acoustic guitars, and the ones I end up writing on are generally the ones that have almost no sustain and have really dead strings. ![]() Jeff Tweedy I write almost all my songs on acoustic guitar. Jeff, how do instruments inspire your songwriting? Nels Cline (left) with his ’60s Harmony Sovereign and Jeff Tweedy with his ’30s Kel Kroydon, in the Loft, August 31, 2019. It’s something I like doing, though, because I like flexing. It’s one of the joys and challenges of playing with Wilco or collaborating with anybody that has different tastes or a different vibration level than me. So I don’t always select things based on my comfort zone. I’ve played that song virtually every night for almost 15 years now, and it’s still hard for me to relax with that tone and play a decent solo, because I’m wanting to switch to the neck pickup. But I chose that tone because I thought the song benefitted from it, and it just spoke in a way that seemed commensurate with the mood or something. ![]() I feel the most relaxed when I get a tone that I like, and it’s almost always going to be dark. It’s my Jazzmaster with the bridge pickup and my Klon Centaur overdrive, and I wouldn’t normally choose the bridge pickup because I’m a total neck-pickup kind of guy. It’s very much of my era, meaning the ’60s and ’70s, and the tone on that solo I chose for the song, not because I thought it was an attractive tone. But I prefer to work very quicklyĭo you intentionally use tones that suit that song but aren’t necessarily what you might think of as ideal lead guitar tones?Ĭline Yes, and a good example of that is the song “Impossible Germany”, which has become this weirdly iconic guitar-solo song at a time when such things really don’t exist in the lexicon. There’s really no limit to how many ideas I’m allowed to try. And if I hear something I don’t have, I go find it and add it to my setup and work from there. I just find some things that I have or Jeff has – and there are tons of pedals and amps at the Loft to choose from – and I kind of take it from there. I just use a couple of amplifiers and don’t even set up my whole pedalboard that I use live. There was a time when I was first in Wilco where I thought this was a possibility and an exciting idea, but it’s just too laborious and indulgent, so I don’t do that. But I prefer to work very quickly, so I’m not going to sit there and pull out a million different amplifiers and weird guitars thinking I’ll come up with something. On, Jeff was wanting me to mostly play my Jazzmaster that I’ve been playing since ’95 – the one I bought from Mike Watt – but that didn’t necessarily fly with me on every track. For example, if I’m hearing something super thin and needle-y in my head, I’ll use my old green Hofner 12-string or an EKO, or pull out my Silvertone or Jerry Jones Danelectro-type guitars. In my case, it’s less about the feel of the instrument than the sound, so I’ll generally choose something based on its tonal qualities. The following interview extract appeared in the December 2019 issue of Guitar Playerĭo you find that the instrument itself influences what you play?
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