Chit-Chat Check-In #75 Transcript

Hello, this is your Captain speaking, from Guadalajara, Mexico. I wrote Guadalajara down today and I was shocked at how many A’s there are.

But that’s neither here nor there. I just wanted to check in. There’s a show tonight and a show on Sunday night in Mexico City, and then we’re officially done with Wilco shows for the year. It’s been a busy year, pretty exciting.

I just wanted to check in and share a version of “Pittsburgh,” off of Cousin. This is, I think, the third version for some of you if you’re paying attention and care about that kind of thing. I think one of the first things I ever shared on here, on the Substack, was an early incarnation of “Pittsburgh.” The basic track of it ended up on Cousin, but some of the other instruments were replaced and changed around.

This is just an acoustic version, so you can hear kind of what the bones of the songs really are. Which I think get kind of obscured by all of the arrangement, by the other elements.

I was asked about the song “Cousin” being the title track the other day, and it made me think that if you were really thinking of “Cousin” as a title track in that it would represent the rest of the record, an ambassador to the whole album, that probably wouldn’t have been the track I would have picked. I would have probably picked “Pittsburgh,” thematically and musically, even. Or maybe “Sunlight Ends.” I think I’ve shared that one before. Maybe I’ve shared that one a couple of times, too. I don’t remember. It’s been a lot of songs over these last few years that I’ve been sharing.

I really appreciate you listening to them. I don’t take it for granted. It’s really nice for me to have a place to talk about songs in a little bit more of a …. I don’t know … an intimate and direct way with an audience that I’m actually kind of communicating back and forth with, which is really modern and unique. 

Thank you for participating, and I hope you enjoy. Carry on.