Sacha and I have very different philosophies regarding the music we listen to when we take road trips. Sacha likes the familiar, the classics. Things that she knows, and that she can sing along to. I, on the other hand, like long hours in the car to finally listen, really listen, to that difficult 15-minute loop of guitar feedback tape-music that I downloaded off of Bandcamp a few weeks ago. As a result, we do a lot of talking on road trips.
This issue doesn’t necessarily extend to the music we listen to at the house, though. There, we seem to make it work, and the records we play in the living room have a lot more overlap. We both love Tom Waits, for example. And we both love 80s new wave pop. We love Califone and Helio Sequence, and we can listen to The National all day. She’s turned me on to Sun Kil Moon, Low, and even The Band, and I got her into Magnetic Fields and Mouse on Mars1.
This is Random Orbit, where usually I’m writing about drawing. Today, we’re listening to music, sort of. Please subscribe.
If I were to draw a venn diagram that showed this overlap, I think I’d have to put Wilco right in the center. Wilco isn’t my favorite band, nor hers. But either of us can put on any Wilco album, any time, and I don’t think the other will complain. Wilco hits all the notes: they have their country-rock jams, their funk, their ballads, and they have their wild ten minute tracks where Nels Cline just goes.
Sacha’s favorite Wilco album probably isn’t my favorite Wilco album, but we can agree that the Wilco album that is the most meaningful to each of us, in a nostalgic played-it-all-the-time soundtrack-to-1998, seven years before we even met, is their collaboration with Billy Bragg, playing songs written by Woody Guthrie, Mermaid Avenue.2 And when it was announced that Billy Bragg would be joining Wilco at their Solid Sound festival in North Adams, MA, and that they would be playing the album, Sacha told me, “I want to go to there.”
And here we are.
Neither Sacha nor I have ever been to a music festival. I’d never even thought about going to a music festival. But for Christmas this past year, Sacha got tickets, the full three-day jawn, to Solid Sound 2026. We found an AirBnb, loaded up the Subaru, and we drove to North Adams.
The concert was fine. We sang along, and we could see up front that people were even dancing. Where we were, way way back by the food trucks, people around us were on their phones. But let’s skip that and talk about the things that were excellent.
the Wilco shirts
Wilco knows how to merch. Posters, totebags, caps, socks, toys. The vast number of t-shirts. So many Wilco t-shirts. I started asking people if I could take a picture, and no one said no.
the not-Wilco shirts
But then I had an even better idea. I started taking pictures of people who came to the festival in non-Wilco shirts3. I mean think about it. You go to a Wilco music festival, and you wear your favorite Wilco shirt. Of course. But it’s something different to make a point to wear a different shirt, one that says something more about you and your affiliation with the enormous music overlap that Wilco represents. Punk. Post-punk. New wave. British invasion. Alt-country. Electronic. Straight-up rock. Folk. Experimental jazz. On Friday, day one of the festival, Sacha and I started a list. Saturday morning I started asking people if I could take their picture. And again, no one said no.4 By the time we left on Sunday, I had 45 photos of non-Wilco shirt-wearing fans. Here. Let’s take a look.
This is all of them. I just can’t bring myself to edit it down. Each time I try, I remember how everyone was so nice, and they smiled, and posed funny, and then they struck up conversations. My favorites, of course, are the one of the kid holding his coke in the AC/DC shirt, and the girl standing in front of a Sol Lewitt wall drawing wearing The Linda Lindas.5
I wish I had a good idea of what to do with these pictures. I posted a few as a story on Instagram that got a nice heart emoji from the Solid Sound account. I sent their content manager a collection of the JPGs, so maybe they’ll repost them. No idea. It would be a good poster, I think. It would be really fun to apply for a press-pass for the 2028 edition, allowing me to bring the proper camera rather than just the iphone, and do this project for real.
All the non-Wilco band t-shirts we saw would make a pretty great record collection
I’ve transcribed the entire list. There is no way this is every non-Wilco shirt we saw, just the ones we had the wherewithal to write down and/or photograph. I did set a couple of rules for this project:
The band can’t be related to Wilco. So, for example, no Jeff Tweedy or Golden Smog or Autumn Defense.
Also about relations: if I get The Smiths, that also encompasses Morrissey. Rage Against the Machine = Tom Morello.
Here they are, in no particular order:
Stereolab, Neil Young, Radiohead, De La Soul, Califone, Talking Heads, Calexico, Guided by Voices, Gang of 4, Kurt Vile, Teenage Fan Club, Courtney Barnett, The Grateful Dead, Les Claypool, New Kids on the Block(!), Luna, Jason Isbell, Geese, Goose, The Replacements, The Clash, Pearl Jam, Hüsker Du, Yo La Tengo, John Fahey, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Built to Spill, Deep Sea Diver, The Beths, John Prine, The Feelies, The Smiths, Flaming Lips, Gillian Welch, My Bloody Valentine, The Handsome Family, Nick Cave, Phish, Band of Horses, Modest Mouse, Bob Marley, The National, Johnny Cash, Devo, Big Star, Old Crow Medecine Show, Pavement, Drive By Truckers, Willie Nelson, Nine Inch Nails, Bad Brains, Butthole Surfers, The Linda Lindas, Television, Avett Brothers, Poi Dog Pondering, Pixies, Neko Case, Belle & Sebastian, Black Sabbath, Dyke and the Blazers, AC/DC, Cocteau Twins, Mavis Staples, Andrew Bird, Dinosaur Junior, Superchunk, Cake, Nirvana, R.E.M., The War on Drugs, Pink Floyd, Mekons, New Order, Metallica, Father John Misty, Amyl & the Sniffers, Rage Against the Machine, Lou Reed, Jimmy Hendrix, Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis, Iron Maiden.
Oh Superman
I’ve done something like this before. At the Baltimore Comic Con, in 2006, I was fascinated by attendees in their Superman shirts.
I’m an influencer
The Mermaid Avenue show on Friday night was sponsored by Blackwing Pencils. And if you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that I’m a Blackwing Pencil “Ambassador.” No, I didn’t get into Solid Sound for free. And I even had to buy the special Woody Guthrie edition of Blackwing Pencils and trucker cap with my own money. But they’ll be nice tax deductions, and on Saturday morning, before heading to the festival, I stepped out of our rental and performed my influencer duties.
If the “this pencil kills fascists” thing is lost on you, I’ll provide you with this photo of Woody Guthrie for reference.
Tony & Kate!
I lived in an apartment on Grove Street in San Francisco when Mermaid Avenue was released, in 1998. A few years earlier, from 1996-97, I shared this apartment with Tony. He moved out when he moved in with his girlfriend Kate. Since I left San Francisco in 1999, I’ve seen Kate and Tony once, about 18 years ago in Philadelphia. So, imagine my surprise when I’m just walking along with Sacha at Solid Sound, looking for some dinner, and there in front of me is Tony. Tony! Tony and Kate live in Rhode Island now, and were there with their three sons who are all in the 20s. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and coincidence and this was both. It was great.
Sacha’s Sol Lewitt
On Sunday, we escaped the heat and meandered around the galleries at Mass MoCA. As we observed the Sol Lewitt wall drawings, Sacha caught this terrific photo of another visitor to the galleries.
Starship Casual
If you’re interested, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco have a terrific Substack. News, covers, pictures of guitars. What else do you want?
Cat Content
Sacha and I never thought we’d be those people that have a cat camera in our house so we can “check on them” while we’re away. But here we are. We walked back to the AirBnb on Saturday night, after the best Wilco show I’ve ever seen, and thought we’d see what Maple and Basil were up to. We caught them playing handsies on the living room floor.
Thank you for reading.
This edition of Random Orbit is free, so please share it widely with anyone you like.
Mouse on Mars is a stretch, actually. We went to see them live once and it was possibly the worst concert I’ve ever been to. I love Mouse on Mars regardless, and I give her credit for even staying through to the end of that show.
Mermaid Avenue is, in fact, Sacha’s favorite Wilco album. Mine often bounces from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to Summerteeth to The Whole Love, then it circles around A Ghost is Born and comes back again.
I’m not really an extrovert, but I can play one for a day or two. Around 1:00pm Sunday Sacha and I both hit our wall. We were done with music, people, and conceptual art. We even skipped the final Jeff Tweedy and friends concert that evening and hung out at a bar. It was the right move.
One guy asked me to crop out his face. He was wearing a Replacements shirt, and he seemed perfectly nice, but I respectfully left him out of the montage. It would have been weird to actually crop his face.
I’d never heard of The Linda Lindas. Or The Beths. Part of this project began because I wanted to write down some of these bands I’d never heard of.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.