-Our next guest is a Grammy-winning musician
and front man of the band Wilco.
His book, "How to Write One Song,"
and his latest solo album, "Love Is the King,"
are both available now.
Please welcome back to the show our friend Jeff Tweedy.
How are you, Jeff?
-I'm good. How are you? Good to see you.
-I'm doing very well. We've talked in the past.
As you know, I'm a longtime fan of yours and of Wilco,
and I had this great honor.
You asked a bunch of friends of yours to be
in the video for your new song, "Gwendolyn,"
and I was lucky enough to be one of those people.
How did you come up with this idea?
Here I am.
It's basically the bottom half of my face,
the top half of yours.
And how did you come up with the idea?
-I saw a post on social media from Steve Martin,
where he was joking that nobody recog--
Something was weird about going out in public,
so he had made a sign to wear over his head that said,
"This is Steve Martin."
And it made me think that I have a lot of friends that
are sort of celebrities, and they don't get to use
that part of their face very much anymore.
So I thought maybe I could take advantage of that
and get everybody to donate their face to my video.
Plus, just masks just work really well as a green screen,
so I just thought I'd take advantage of our moment
in that way.
-Well, I really appreciate being part of that moment.
You recorded this album with your family,
and I imagine, at this point, Wilco must feel like family
when you record songs, but it must also still be
so different to do with your actual family.
What's that like?
-It's -- Playing music with your family
is just the most amazing gift I can ever imagine being given.
It's -- You know, music relies upon trust and, you know,
just faith that you're going to be there in a supportive role
for each other, and musicians work long -- I don't know.
They work for a long time, usually.
A band has to be together for years
to develop all of those types of trusts.
And a family just kind of has it as a --
starting point, a base, you know, level of trust that is --
I don't know.
It just feels like you just have so much more room
to get intimate from there.
So it's the best thing I can think of to do.
-Hey, congrats on the book.
This is basically -- You're trying to give people advice on
how to write one song.
And one of the things that you sort of stress is
how important it is to let inspiration in,
to invite it in.
Can you explain that a little bit?
-Well, everybody, I think, imagines that artistic processes
require, like, a bolt of lightning, like, an inspiration.
And my argument is that nobody that --
Nobody's just walking down the street and has no intention
to write a song is going to get hit by a bolt of lightning
and decide to write a song.
You basically have to put yourself in the path
of that kind of inspiration, and I think you do that
by just working at it when you're not inspired,
working at it as a daily --
you know, just a practice that you have,
a habit that you have to remind yourself
to just kind of be open to things.
And then it happens all the time.
It tends to happen almost every day for me
that I get a little bit inspired,
and, sometimes, I get a lot inspired,
but it wouldn't happen at all if I didn't pick up the pencil
or pick up a guitar.
And that's what I just think everybody should do.
-You mentioned that, you know, it's important to, you know,
build it as a skill and make it work and sit down and do it.
With that said, are there still times
when you think of a lyric and you just know right away,
"Oh, that's really good"?
-Sometimes, yeah.
I was driving out on the tollway the other day,
and there was a hearse stuck at a toll plaza.
Like, the guy driving the hearse didn't have any change
and they didn't have an E-ZPass or anything like that.
And I just felt like I was hit over the head
with the world's greatest metaphor.
And I sang it into my phone
before I even pulled over, you know?
-Well, the classic case of someone else's loss
is your gain.
-Like, what a way to go, man.
-Hey, one of the things that's always fascinating to me
about the Grammys more than any other awards show
is just the breadth of the kind of artists you have
at a Grammys versus, you know, just different
kind of actors or, you know, a comic and a dramatic actor.
Your first Grammys is a perfect example of this,
some of the people you bumped into.
-Yeah. I think my most notable encounter was --
I was with a big group of people,
all the Wilco guys and wives and girlfriends.
And, somehow, I ended up outside one of the bathrooms
at the Staples Center holding everyone's program
for the Grammys.
I just had a stack of Grammy programs,
and P. Diddy walked up to me,
and he thought I was an usher handing out programs.
And he tapped the programs that I was holding with a cane.
He's like, "Give me one of those."
And I'm like, "No. They're mine."
And it didn't become -- It didn't escalate, thank goodness.
But I was also mista-- Every time I've ever
gone to the Grammys, I've been mistaken for a seat filler.
And they're like, "Go! Get out!"
-What I'd like to think is that P. Diddy both thought you were
handing out programs and also recognized you
and then said, "Do you know that lead singer of Wilco
is also an usher?"
-Yeah, that would have been just as plausible.
-Hey, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for sticking around to do some music for us.
And congratulations on the book.
-My pleasure. Great to see you again.
-Great to see you, too.
"How to Write One Song" and "Love Is the King"
are both out now.