Day 1 of the Biennial Wilco-palooza at Mass MoCA in North Adams

The stony tower atop Mt. Greylock watched over three days of Solid Sound, the biennial, Wilco-driven, music madness on the campus of Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

A lineup curated by the alt country legends? With a Wilco or Wilco-adjacent headliner every night? It’s a dream come true for stalwart fans, of which the band has plenty, and a nice introduction to a quirky niche in a quirky subculture for any new arrivals.

You’re not required to know the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot track listing by heart to attend, but it can’t hurt.

Friday

No rain! Friday was beautiful weather: dry as a bone, blue skies for miles, and plenty to pick among the music and arts offerings for the eager beavers lining up at the gate early.

It’s a sort of tradition for the lawnchair and blanket crowd to stake out their spot on Joe’s Field for the big headliner at the end of the night.

How to get the best location? Line up at the gate before they open and make a kind of mad dash to the field.

Choose wisely…

The spot that has a little shade at eleven in the morning might be baking beneath full sun exposure by the afternoon. A good time to check out the other acts playing in the Courtyards, and the pop-up acts inside.

Mikael Jorgensen entertained the early birds in Club B10. The blackbox theatre is built not only for sound, but for all kinds of performance. The keyboardist for Wilco put on a kind of multimedia Ted Talk, orally narrating his origins in music and how he found his way to Wilco. A lot of oral narration, as the keyboard sat silently in the corner.

If there was any doubt this festival is for the true believers, a thirty-minute deepish dive dedicated to the raison d’etre of the keyboardist will put that doubt to rest. Extra points for opening with a home movie of a young and impossibly awkward Jorgenson trying, and failing, to play a custom-programmed proto-synth at a high school talent show. That’s how you get the girls.

The beauty of Solid Sound is the seamless connection between indoor and outdoor spaces. Mass MoCA, a 19th-century factory converted into a modern art museum, is a brick beehive of invention. Admission to the museum was free for festival goers all weekend, so each and every honeycomb was filled with music, art, or a little of both. The Solid Sound app kept everyone updated on the latest buzz, including surprise pop-up concerts sprinkled through the museum, featuring mashups of different artists performing at the fest (and more than a few Jeff Tweedy appearances).

Straight outta Chicago! It’s Horsegirl. The alt rock trio has been making waves in the post punk space for nearly a half decade now? It’s remarkable when you reflect on how young the musicians still are. But like reporting on Circus Trees, genuflecting on musical precocity is a real snooze. Is the music good or not? It’s good. Indie rock that pops without twee. The band mentioned they had been writing a lot of new material in the past year, and were giving it a spin at Solid Sound. Shout out to the drummer, who was running rampant while the guitarist and bassist took their time tuning.

Courtyard C was where it was at for the shade and refreshment freaks on Friday. A broad canopy covered most of the dais at the entrance. Beneath the canopy you could find a bar offering the only single digit dollar 16oz beer at the festival (shout out to Bright Ideas Brewing) along with plenty of tables and chairs for relaxing times. And the real clincher? The dais overlooked the stage, where you could catch all sorts of acts throughout the fest, including the dulcet country rhythms of Courtney Marie Andrews on the first afternoon.

The quiet, fragile beauty of Courtyard C was never meant to last. The bar ran out of the affordable tallboys on the first day of the fest (by design?) and the raised vantage point above the stage fast became a draw for entitled crowds with broad shoulders. But for about thirty minutes there… a place of wonder.

The main course of Friday’s musical repast was the one-two punch of Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and Wilco headlining out at Joe’s Field. Not entirely clear who ‘Joe’ is. Possibly Joseph C. Thompson, the founding director of Mass MoCA?

Wilco headlined Friday with a “deep cuts” set. When you’re headlining, or nearly headlining, three days in a row, you’ve got to dig deep. Even a band that has decades of hits in the tank can start to run on fumes after so many 2-hour sets. How deep can they go?

As deep as Wilco wanted, cheerleaded into the night by a Valkyrie chorus of lawnchairs and coozies and every imaginable make & model of Wilco merch in God’s creation. The stage banter let the crowd know what it was in for. Principally, songs that “never got much applause.” If there was ever a night for those types of songs, this was the night for it, and they got all the applause they’re ever going to get. Which was plenty.

Baltimore’s Horse Lords closed out the night (along with a Sylvan Esso DJ set in Courtyard C) with a set of experimental jazz pop serialism in Courtyard D. The closing slot was a sneaky good slot throughout the fest, capturing and holding the remnants of the Wilco crowd who were not quite yet ready to stop the party. Whether or not alt country heads were ready for the Terry Riley-esque level of sax honk repetition that the Horse Lords were serving up is another question.

Check out Saturday and Sunday’s coverage of Solid Sound 2024.

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