wilcoWilco

Jeff Tweedy was a founding member of the legendary alt-country act Uncle Tupelo. But his follow-up project, Wilco, has proven far more durable and successful than his formative band. Only singer-guitarist Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt have remained with Wilco since its formation in 1994, witnessing more than a dozen members come and go. The unifying factor that has kept the Chicago quintet centered through years of experimentation and internal turbulence is Tweedy's inimitable songwriting. The Grammy-winning act's strenuous creative process was infamously captured in Sam Jones' documentary titled "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart."

"It's a tie. There are two. The Sasquatch Festival in 2004 with this lineup of the band. We went on after Arcade Fire, which is kind of hard to do anyway. They had so many instruments that the monitor lines were crossed. We had a hopeless monitor situation. It was completely messed up on the monitor front. Not only did we have no monitors, we had really strange sampled sounds coming back at us at a huge volume. That was the most disconcerting show I've ever played. That was the most uncomfortable hour onstage ever. I saw it on YouTube. It actually sounded pretty good -- he had everything coming out front. But it's a very uncomfortable-looking band onstage. We also did a festival in Indiana in 1995. The first record had just come out and we hadn't toured much, and we had no concept how to get sound through a festival stage with monitors. There was a lightning storm. I remember it was the most ham-fisted live gig ever. We couldn't blame youth either. We weren't really that young. It's hard when there's nobody to pass the buck to."

— John Stirratt, Wilco