music Halfway through their sleek, glacial opening set, Tin Cup Prophette’s Bjork-channeling lead singer offered her thanks to Jeff Tweedy, frontman for the rock group Wilco. “It’s great when super-successful artists can bring ‘risks’ on tour,” she said before introducing another tune mired in the looped plucks of a violin. But what makes a risk?
The answer according to AOL Time Warner’s Reprise record imprint is Jeff Tweedy, whose 2002 album with Wilco (the immaculate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) was identified prerelease as a commercial flop, then repurchased by a second Warner imprint (Nonesuch) and released to near-universal acclaim. But during his set at the Paramount, the songwriter showed the same unwavering confidence that led his oft-debated band through label disputes.
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Tweedy stepped into minimal lighting and around the monitors at his feet, opening his 23-song set by singing “Someone Else’s Song” without microphones before retreating to his mic stand for a stripped version of “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” to the pleasure of this reviewer who correctly guessed the opening numbers. Pay up, gamblers—I run the game of chance.
The pristine acoustics of the auditorium helped to open the artist-audience dialogue early and, where the expansive band-versions of songs from “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” and “Shot in the Arm” were beautifully concise, Tweedy’s banter sprawled. Breaks upwards of five minutes separated small groups of songs as Tweedy debated taking a Diet Coke from a fan that came with a requested setlist (his response: “Played it…played it…not gonna play it”) and joked about his future career in faux-metal outfit “Jeff Leppard.”
Save a few incessant requesters, the crowd seemed eager to hear from the singer, who praised the room as unfailingly polite before asking that the enraptured listeners break their silence for a set-closing “Jesus, Etc.”—the ensuing singlaong was carried off with a uniformly hushed respect.
Tweedy’s choices of instrument and song—rapidly strumming a 12-string acoustic guitar during the radio-ready “Heavy Metal Drummer,” playing closer to the bridge of his six-string to elicit piercing echoes during “In a Future Age”—suggested a man acutely tuned to his writing abilities and limits. Safe to say that if Jeff Tweedy were ever to become a “risk,” the first person to know it would be Jeff Tweedy.
