Dear Jeffy (Ask Susie Next Time): Musty Bus Odor

Answering questions about life on the road

Thank you for all the questions you submitted earlier this month. As per yooj, you folks had a lot of thoughtful inquiries. And a few that made me worry about’cha a tiny little bit. Here’s a round-up of my answers to some questions about life on the road just in time for the Wilco tour to crank up again this week.

By the way: only four days until Cousin!

It’s nice to know you have options.

Alan D: Ahoy! I’m curious, what music does the band listen to on the tour bus? What are you all digging lately?

The band doesn’t listen to a whole lot of music on the tour bus. We’re usually kind of letting our ears rest when we’re traveling, to be honest. But we all listen to a lot of music and dig a ton of music in general. I’m really into the new Lankum record, False Lankum. I love Horse Lords. I went down a little bit of a Lana Del Rey rabbit hole recently. I dunno, gosh, there’s so much music being released all the time. I got back into Beastie Boys lately, for some reason. Wilco has a Spotify playlist where each of us recommends all sorts of stuff we’re listening to.

Joanne Hackett: I have a stupid question, but I’ve always wondered about it! How does the laundry get done on the road? And do you have several of the same outfit ala Steve Jobs?

There are no stupid questions, Joanne. There are towns where we’re generally confident that laundry can be reliably done and returned by show time, so we’ll send it out. But that’s a scarier prospect in many other places. In Europe, a lot of times you get laundry back and it’s damp because they don’t like to spend the energy drying things, which is good for the planet but not good for the musty odor on the bus. I will say that I do have multiples of a fair number of items that I wear on stage and I’m comfortable in, which is generally a pretty small group of clothes at any given time. On the recent tour in Europe, I really only had one jacket that I was comfortable in and it smelled very, very bad by the end of the tour. I don’t really trust sending that jacket out to laundry service, so I just had to wear it every day. But I’d try to put it on as close to show time and take it off as close to the end of the show as possible, and just hope that the band’s far enough apart on stage and that the audience is a little bit upwind.

Brian: Hello Jeff- When you perform “Misunderstood,” how do you decide how many “nothings” to add? Is it a band decision?

It’s completely improvised every night. Everybody in the band just kind of feels the energy of it and when it starts to be a little hard to keep going, I usually think in my mind, I’m gonna wrap this up. And there’s a little bit of a vocal pause that allows everybody else in the band to understand that it’s the last one somehow. I don’t really know… Gosh, now we’re gonna mess it up. I will say that I keep going, usually, until the audience reacts to the repetition in some way, either negatively or positively.

Luther: Hi Jeff. Fantastic show in Edinburgh, and what a stunning city it is in the sun. The Cruel Country songs sounded great, hearing them live for the first time. Are there any songs in particular from Cousin that you’re looking forward to adding to the live repertoire?

I look forward to playing all the songs on Cousin live. It’s really hard to predict which songs from any new batch are gonna translate well live. It can surprise you sometimes. A soft song like “If I Ever Was a Child” has become much more prominent in the catalog than I would have expected. And then a song like “Random Name Generator” just feels like so much fun to play every night, or as many nights as we feel like playing it. So I really can’t predict which ones are gonna carve a place in the repertoire out for themselves. But I’m looking forward to trying all of them and getting to know them on stage.

Jason Beal: Jeffy—you are on the road a lot, seemingly non-stop post-COVID. Is it more “just part of the job” and you semi-robotically go from town to town, or do you enjoy discovering something new about the towns you visit—and perhaps yourself as a result—that you might not get when in the comforts of your own home? Do you think travel/touring can make you a better songwriter/performer?

Jason, that’s a long question. There’s a lot of moving parts to that question. Touring is my job. I love my job. And like any job, I do it because it keeps the lights on. Wilco isn’t a band that could just live off of our reputation and record sales and publishing and all that. We have to work. We like working. I feel very fortunate that we still get to work. Going from town to town is one of the wonderful things about it. You get to see a lot of different places, learn a lot about different cities, and experience a lot.

I think any living that you naturally do probably helps your songwriting more than any living you do specifically because you think it’s going to help your songwriting. Just having experiences, any kind of experiences, helps with your songwriting. I think a lot of young songwriters believe they have to have specific types of experiences and that they have to foster an environment where they struggle or suffer or make things harder than they need to be as some grist for the mill of creativity. And I’m here to tell you: bullshit. Live, love, and pray! I’m kidding about that motto but I’m not kidding about the sentiment.

Andrew: Good to have you on the homestretch, Captain, and nearing a return. One question related to touring that I've asked before, but am still curious about. When you're on tour, do you have the time and energy to explore and enjoy all the amazing places where your tour takes you? Or does it take all your energy to simply survive the grind of constant travel?

Usually while touring I’m able to spend a lot of time exploring, hiking near the venue if we can get to a trail in nature. Walking around a nice city, mapping out kind of a course to spend the day visiting different parks and things, is a wonderful way to spend the day. Unfortunately, I’ve had to conserve the time I spend on my feet and save it for shows lately. And that’s because of some fixable health issues with osteoarthritis in my hip. Too much information, I’m sorry.

Stephen Olver: Dear Jeffy, Great to see you and the band back in Belfast yesterday. I finally saw you play “Misunderstood” at my 6th show! I remember the last time you were here you told us you went up Cave Hill to take in a view of the city. Have you ever gone back on holiday somewhere that you discovered on tour?!

I’ve never really taken the family back to vacation somewhere I’ve discovered on tour. But I have taken the family on tour when we go back to certain places because I want them to see the cities and places. And in the last ten years or so, we did a lot of touring as the Tweedy band, and basically the whole family goes when we do that, and that touring was mostly based on places that I wanted to visit again with all of them.

This Week In Wilco, Etc.

2014 / September 26: The official video for the Tweedy song “Low Key” is released, starring Jeff and Spencer and directed by Nick Offerman. The song appears on the only Tweedy album to date, Sukierae (dBpm Records; 2014).

2011 / September 27: The Wilco album The Whole Love is released on dBpm Records. The album is issued as both a standard album and a deluxe edition, which includes an extra 4-song CD and 52-page book.

2023 / September 29: Wilco’s 13^th studio album, Cousin, is released on dBpm Records!