If you are
Jeff Tweedy, you get to make a recording at your own studio, The Loft in Chicago, you get to play your 1930's era Martin 0-18 on every track of the recording, you get to make
a really warm, beautiful, intimate solo album entitled, "Warm." You get to write all the songs, lyrics and music, you get to play almost all of the instruments on the album, with a few notable contributions, primarily from your son Spencer and Wilco's great Glen Kotche, both on drums. You get to reveal another side of your magnificent song-writing abilities, you get to reflect on a life well-lived. You get to face mortality in the lines of a song. And you get the great writer
George Saunders to write your liner notes. And it turns out that Saunders liner notes are their own little bit of masterpiece. Not a bad present to find under the Christmas tree yesterday morning.
We played the record over and over, all day yesterday, helped make Christmas day 2018 pretty damn special. Here's a bit of text from George Saunders' liner notes:
"Jeff is, to my mind, a warrior for kindness, who has made tenderness an acceptable rock-and-roll virtue. By “tenderness” I don’t mean that New Age thing, where someone drives a spike through your head and you place hands palm to palm and do a cheesy deep bow while thanking them for the new coat rack. No: Tweedy-tenderness is sophisticated and badass and funny. It proceeds from strength and good humor and does not preclude being angry or tough or peeved. It is based on the premise that you are as real as he is and as deserving of attention, and that the world is worthy of our full and fearless interest, just as it is."
