The stars of music and politics once again aligned in Madison during a presidential election year, as three members of Wilco joined Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Tammy Baldwin on stage at the Wisconsin Union Theater to support Barack Obama and perform a "Concert for Change" on Saturday. Now in a final push of its performed at a campaign concert in their shared hometown of Chicago last December, an appearance that followed another fundraiser for Obama well over a year ago. This band made one last effort in support of the Democratic candidate over the weekend, as Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Pat Sansone played before a rapturous audience on the UW campus.
The concert certainly got fans talking. "The mini, mainly acoustic version of Wilco turned in a riveting performance under a large 'Obama-Biden' banner, wowing the capacity, mostly student audience of about 1,300," notes Jeff Bentoff in his review of the show. The trio played nine songs in a politically-oriented set drawn from the band's sprawling catalogue, starting with "What Light," and continuing with "Christ for President," "Passenger Side," "Jesus, Etc.," "The Late Greats," "California Stars," Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," "Wilco the Song," and closing with "I'm the Man Who Loves You."
UW mathematics grad student Diego Galindo praised the concert in his review, noting the overwhelming support for Obama in the crowd, as well as the selection of songs performed by the trio. "Beforehand I had been joking around that the one thing they shouldn't do is play 'Christ for President' from the Mermaid Avenue album," noted Galindo. "Critics already think Obama has a Christ complex. Anyway, they did play that song for some reason. The rest of the set was amazing though."
Other concertgoers concurred. "I'd never seen this particular incarnation of Wilco perform, and I was impressed at what they could do with acoustic guitars, bass, and keyboards," wrote another fan of the band in her review of the show. "Jeff did a nice job of tying the set together with a thread (sometimes tenuous) of political and voting references." She also published a news and arts hits in The Badger Herald, another On Monday afternoon, the Obama campaign released an official video from the concert, featuring the trio's performance of "What Light" from Sky Blue Sky along with comments from Feingold and Baldwin. An audience member also shot a pair of videos during the show. The first clip features trio's performance of "California Stars," the dulcet ditty set to Woody Guthrie lyrics from the first Mermaid Avenue collaboration between Wilco and Billy Bragg. A second clip finds Tweedy, Stirratt, and Sansone performing "Wilco the Song," a new tune debuted by the band last week on The Colbert Report as a nod to the ubiquity of "Joe the Plumber" and other such declarations of background in the waning weeks of the election season. This being Wisconsin, though, Tweedy replaced the band's name in the chorus with the one and only Russ, affirming that "Feingold will love you baby!" If you have a video about Madison or by Madisonians, please consider adding it to the Isthmus YouTube group or send a message.
