Yesterday, the sad news came down that talented multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/producer Jay Bennett passed away in his sleep at the age of 45.

Bennett’s greatest legacy will be as key figure in Wilco from 1994 – 2001 as cowriter and creative foil to Jeff Tweedy as the band blazed a path from roots rock undercard fillers to groundbreakers at the forefront of American rock. A wizard behind the keys and perhaps even more adept, scorching guitar player Bennett’s gifted instrumental skills were matched by an onstage presence to light up the stage with an unasuming grace.

His tenure with the band ended abrubtly upon completion of YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT – arguably the band’s greatest album – when Tweedy forced him out of Wilco as documented in the film I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART.

Bennett carried on, initially with singer/songwriter Edward Burch and the exceptional record THE PALACE AT 4AM (Undertow) made up of songs left off of YANKEE and clutch of other late night, weary-eyed beauties. Bennett continued to record until the last year when he was sidelined with hip problems.Earlier this month, it was announced that Tweedy was being sued by Bennett for royalties due.

An autopsy is being performed to determined Bennett’s cause of death. With his documented battle with substance abuse, there’s been plenty of specualtion that drugs might have played a part. Whatever the case – and it’s still undetermined – this is a truly tragic loss or music fans.

I  was lucky enough to interview Jay – one of his first expansive post-Wilco pieces and prior to the film I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART – and stayed on the phone with him for an hour and a half. He was totally gracious, open and forth-coming.

When he and Ed came to town to play the next week he was equally cool and let me hang out backstage (when Mohawk Place actually had a “backstage”) where he entertained my annoying Wilco-related inquisition.

That original 2002 interview is included at the end of this post

My band Semi-Tough also got to play with Jay and Edward a couple times – which I am really grateful for – and they were memorable experiences.

That first time with Will Johnson and Scott Danbom from Centro-matic/South San Gabriel backing he and Ed up. It was my first time experiencing those guys (I was almost immediately a diehard fan of Centro-matic from then on…) and proved a truly a stellar show all around. The Who’s John Entwistle  had died and we all dedicated the show to him that night.

The next time it was just Jay and Ed solo again.

Jay was really a mess – crippled by his just fresh breakup and substance problems – but he played this one song where he was singing the lyircs from a sheet. I will never forget it. It was sprawling and Dylanesque. Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. As much as he was a letdown that night that, it was one of those times I remember thinking what a great artist he was and how he had channeled this pain into something powerful.

That first post-Wilco record with Edward Burch THE PALACE AT 4AM – to me – remains an incredible album and the Jay-centric “Engineer Demos” of YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT are in many ways as good as the final version as Tweedy and O’Rourke shaped it.

As much as I love where Jeff Tweedy has taken Wilco in the years after Jay Bennett, those three record run of BEING THERE – SUMMERTEETH – YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT was unmatched. He was also the central figure in cementing the band’s partnership with Brit singer/songwriter Billy Bragg to tackle the words of Woody Guthrie for the acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated MERMAID AVENUE records.

There were probably 6 or 7 times I saw that era of Wilco and it could veer from sweet and serene folk ballads to unbridled, raucous rock brilliance. This was when they became my favorite band. This was when I loved them fiercest, travelled long distances to go see them and pored over every nuance in the music. With Jay, they seemed to shine brightest.

—–

January 2002 ARTVOICE article/interview with Jay Bennett:
JAY BENNETT- WON’T COMPLY, JAMMING WITH EDWARD

The Ex-Wilco wunderkind comes clean on leaving the greatest band in America,
YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, his new project and the secret cult of tour bus drivers

By Donny Kutzbach
music features editor

Jay Bennett is a road warrior. He s spent his whole life traveling: treking
through the lower 48 states as a kid with his parents, crossing the country
again on tour with his massively under-appreciated band Titanic Love Affair
and then all over the world about five times with the renown Chicago group
Wilco.

Jets. Trains. Buses. Vans. He s spent plenty of time in all of them. None of
them really do it for him. When pulls into Buffalo to play the Mohawk Place on
Friday, he will doing it in his favorite manner.

“I love the idea of hopping into the Toyota Corolla and touring with Ed
(Burch). If I had to land on one extreme of touring, either the planes and
buses or just a couple of us in a car, I would pick the latter. Ideally it
would be a bit of both. It seems more human to do what Ed and I are doing.
Wilco started to feel like some big machine. When the crew outnumbers the
band, you start to question what s going on,” Bennett says.

Towards the end with Wilco, it was like the bigger and more comfortable it
got the less I enjoyed it. When Ed and I tour, it s going to be a road trip:
stopping at truck stops, buying stupid trinkets. It s gonna be a blast,

As we talk about his thirtysomething collection of vintage keyed organs,
including the best Hammonds, Lowrys, Wurlitzers, he is tinkering with an old
church pipe organ. It is a majestic relic that operates with electromagnets
pushing air through it and he just got it to work. The organ chimes in the
background as the man who brought it back to life beams about his latest
musical project with collaborator Burch, titled THE PALACE AT 4AM.

He further reveals his knack for taking broken things apart and making them
work again as something he learned as a kid through his father, continued
through his mentoring at an electronics repair shop and to this day is one of
his vast areas of his expertise.

It s hard not to lend the fix-it analogy over Bennett s seven years Wilco, a
band that made some of the greatest records in the last ten years and arguably
stand as the most important rock group in reshaping popular music in America.

Not that Wilco was a broken radio when Bennett joined the fold in 1996.

Jeff Tweedy started Wilco following the disintegration of the groundbreaking
Uncle Tupelo which he had formed in Belleville, IL in the late 80s with high
school chum Jay Farrar. After four records, the band broke up amidst inner
tensions and the divergent musical paths of Farrar and Tweedy. To this day,
Uncle Tupelo remains the holy grail of country meets punk. The No Depression
scene reveres them. Ryan Adams probably owes a career to them

Wilco released a wonderful collection of jangly, twang-rock with 1995 s AM. As
good as Wilco and the record was they were outshined critically and
commercially by Jay Farrar s Son Volt and their record TRACE. After finally
escaping it s cast over Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy was once again trapped in
Farrar s shadow.

The tide quickly shifted in 1996 and the release of Wilco s double LP
masterpiece BEING THERE. A poetic tale of emotional death and rebirth, hinged
largely in the grand scope of rock and roll s lore and told primarily from a
fan s point view. Critics championed the band and the record sold. It was a
record that could have only been realized with the addition of Jay Bennett.

It was Bennett s bold sense of arrangements, abilities as
multi-instrumentalist and his own gifts as a craftsman of chord structures and
melodies. He was able to take Tweedy s songs and stretch them on a bigger
canvas, take them from TV to widescreen. It was Bennett fix-it abilities that
took them from being a good indie band to a great rock band.

1999 s SUMMERTEETH radically shifted the band s sound to sweet pop melodies
arched by lyrics troubled and distraught.  Loaded with keyboards, it broke the
band away from being an alt.country act and managed to best BEING THERE in
critical kudos and in it s cohesive quality.  Wilco, along with Mercury Rev
and Radiohead, had become almost a brand name for pioneering, challenging
sounds in modern popular music. Gone were the good time bar rockers, here was
a band seemed to be taking on a deeper, darker persona.

Rock and roll rule #79: the myths will always be broken.

Bennett begins debunking:

“I don t think Wilco was a cynical band but it was led by person who had a
cynical bent. Jeff has a cynical switch, says Bennett When that switch was
flipped, I didn t always like it. It really influenced the public image of the
band. He s really only like that 10% of the time, but publicly he was like
that 70% of the time. He loves taking on character and that s what rock and
roll really. It s part of the game and we all do it. But it gave the band the
image like we thought about things more than we really did. So many stories
got projected on us. I was always trying to cut through the crap.”

And the pioneering sounds of SUMMERTEETH?

“Why did the SUMMERTEETH sound the way it did? I ll be honest with you, it was
because all the toys we bought that year. We came off of tour after a year and
every town we were in I bought a fucking keyboard. On a four day overdub
session where it was just Jeff and me in the studio, we set them all up and
went around playing them all over every track,” tells Bennett.

Wilco s sprawl of epic-like records would not end. Enter YANKEE HOTEL
FOXTROT.

2001 was off to a rocky start signaled by the dismissal of original drummer
Ken Coomer, the band tumultuously entered studio in January to begin the
sessions for the next record. With new drummer, Glenn Kotche the continued on,
experimenting more and boldly forging new sonic territory. Noted Chicago
post-rocker Jim O Rourke came in afterward to mix the affair  The forthcoming
film, I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART chronicles the struggle to bring the
album to life. (check out clips at www.wilcofilm.com)

As Jay tinkles the keys of his restored pipe organ, it calls to mind the eerie
beauty of a radio snippet that appears on Poor Places . It s a clip of a
mysterious female voice repeating the phrase Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and this
is where the record s title comes from. It was discovered on a 4-CD set, THE
CONET PROJECT, of cryptic shortwave radio broadcasts believed to be
clandestine spy stations from all over the world.

Though the shortwave transmissions became an obsession for Tweedy, it was
oddly Bennett who put it in the context of the record. In addition to
providing the title YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, it s these recordings that serve as
almost a thematic basis for the record: the notion of strange, lonely coded
signals bouncing around the world meshes with the somber, questioning lyrics
and spacious, richly atmospheric music.

“I publicly mocked Jeff for buying that record. He played that four-CD set on
a car trip with me once and I started losing my mind. I wanted to throw it out
the window. Then, when we needed noises for the song Poor Places I was like
Where s the morse code CD? Inadvertently, I got it on there in the song and
ended up naming the album.”

Every song on YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT exudes a magic. Ashes of American Flags
laments a the fragility of human dreams, while Heavy Metal Drummer revels in
teen nostalgia with a mechanized Velvet Underground pulse. In a career of
groundbreaking records it is their best.

Now suppose Paul McCartney jumped ship following SGT. PEPPER. Better yet,
imagine Keith Richards splitting out on Jagger after EXILE ON MAIN STREET.
Still better, what if Johnny Greenwood quit Radiohead after OK COMPUTER?

In August 2001, Jay Bennett left Wilco. Bennett would likely shrug off the
above comparisons, as he is quick to point out. While he wrote half the music
between BEING THERE and YHF, as ASCAP/BMI publishing records prove, it was
never really his band.

“I left the band when Jeff said, ‘A circle can only have center’ and I
surmised from that it wasn t going to be me. My thinking was if the band is an
ellipsis and I can stay or it can be circle and I m out. So I left, Bennett
declares, making public for the first time what was said behind the scenes.”

“I still really like the record. I m passionate about it. My heart, soul,
fingers, toes are all over that record. It s the first Wilco record that I got
to engineer and that was fun. But now I don t have to worry about the identity
and how what I say might go against the storyline, he admits, as the weight
of the legend of Wilco is lifted from him.”

“We re being cool. I think that s what our relationship is right now. It s our
way of letting each other know we re cool with one another right now. We
haven t talked much, but I mean, we were really close and now we re giving
each other room. There s no bad vibes at all. That the smart thing to do in a
divorce . Don t saying anything stupid in the days immediately following.
Give each other room. I d like us to go down in history as the best rock and
roll divorce in history.”

Through the period preceding Bennett s departure, the band had the finished
mix for YHF rejected by their longstanding home at the Warner boutique
imprint Reprise. Shifting personnel at the label and what was deemed as a
record with no commercial potential . The refused to make changes and managed
to buy the record back for a relatively cheap sum of $50,000. The buzz created
started a bidding war of over 30 labels vying to release the record.

The band was missing a guitar player and were set to tour for a record that
wasn t goint to be out. Tweedy kept the tour on pace following Bennett s
recent departure and the even greater tragedy of the attacks on September 11.
He pointed out that the band, who enjoy a decidedly dedicated fanbase, and
their music have become a key in its listener s lives, or he said part of the
fabric.

I saw two of these shows. Wilco was still stunning. The YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT
songs were staggering in their stripped down beauty. Still, I d seen and heard
the band many times before and impressively as the four-piece s performance
was, there was a great gap in it all. The sound and chemistry was clearly
challenged by the lack of Bennett. It wasn t the same and clearly never could
be. A giant square of the Wilco fabric was sorely torn away and so was so
much of the power and warmth.

Bennett knows the band will soldier on for the best.

“They ll figure out a way to make it work and use the change to their
advantage, if they haven t already. Wilco has never kept the same lineup for
more than two years anyway. Let s face it (founding member, bassist) John
Stiratt quit tomorrow, as much as John is an immense talent, it would still be
Wilco. It s bigger than that.  As long as there s Jeff s unique voice, there
will be Wilco.”

There is a strange scenario that seems to be playing itself out.

Jeff Tweedy was stuck beneath the long shadow of his previous band and
collaborator and he wasn t able to escape until Jay Bennett added his skill
and vision to Wilco. Now Bennett himself has ended up in the exact position
that he helped Tweedy out of.  As Wilco promotes and tours in support of
YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (due at the end of April on Nonesuch Records), a record
he was a central part of it, he is on his own and as if he has to prove
himself.

Don t worry about him, though.

“There s six songs I wrote all the music for on YHF, so we re working out a
fair trade. For Venus Stopped The Train I got the lyrics from a poem that
Jeff wrote. I wanted that to be on YHF. I have no problem singing Jeff s
lyrics, he s a great lyricist. Likewise, he doesn t seem to be embarrassed out
there playing the music I wrote. In the end I guess I m lucky this song didn t
make YHF. Now I can have it for my record!”

In addition to the aforementioned Venus Stopped The Train , which is haunting
and comparable to Wilco tracks like Misunderstood and Via Chicago ,  I ve
been listening to songs like the achingly pretty Puzzle Heart ,  and the
backwoods chuckler Junior . These are among the 17 tracks being called the
rough mixes of Bennett and Burch s THE PALACE AT FOUR AM, it sounds anything
but rough. Here is more than an album s worth of tracks which hall sound
fully-formed and ready to go. To these ears, this record could be released as
is.

“I m glad to hear you say that. People have been saying it and it feels good.
Bennett then laughs a bit to admit, These arrangements weren t that thought
out at all. They were just the throw shit at the wall approach.”

Another gem is, No Church Tonight which the newly revived pipe organ will
chime over. This was a track that came out of the much-lauded Billy
Bragg/Wilco MERMAID AVENUE sessions where new music was put to lyrics from the
archives of legendary American troubadour Woody Guthrie. It resulted in a pair
of ever-modern records stoked in the spark of classic American folk and
protest song. The two records garnered a pair of Grammy nominations. It was a
collaboration that Bennett now reveals only happened at his insistence.

“That only happened because my love of Billy. Tony (Wilco manager, Tony
Magherita) and Jeff didn t want to do that record. I broke down in tears when
Billy asked us to do it. I mean Woody, Billy. I had to convince them on it,”
Bennett insists.

He begins the strum and sing the achingly beautiful Bragg track The Saturday
Boy then he starts into a dead-on, I mean dead on, cockney Billy Bragg
impression.

Bennett s had some interesting projects and collaborators. Before Wilco, he
garnered indie adulation with Titanic Love Affair. He has also lent his skills
to back Roger McGuinn, Tommy Keene, Tim Easton and Allison Moorer.

His latest partner in music, Edward Burch is no slouch either. Having spent
time as half of the Kennett Brothers and as a part The Viper and His Famous
Orchestra, he s left a mark for his songwriting and versatile voice. He plays
and adds harmonies to most tracks on THE PALACE AT FOUR AM, sings lead on the
beautiful, Gram Parsons-reminiscent ballad The Wait and the redemptive
Forgiven .

The productive pair also plan to take THE PALACE tracks and record them
completely acoustic and make a disc available at shows and via the web. Their
eyes are already on the next record as well.

“We decided on the fifteen tracks for THE PALACE last night. What happened in
picking those fifteen, it kind of made me cringe to have to have to leave some
off, Bennett confesses. I wrote them down and thought the ones we re leaving
off kind of fit together, too. So the next record started to take took shape,
which is cool.”

The plan is to have THE PALACE out in April and then do a full tour.

“This time around it ll be and Edward with acoustic guitars and maybe a little
tiny Hammond for a few songs. By the summer, though, we ll hopefully have a
band together to tour. It s hard to get people to go out and tour for free,”
he says.

In speaking of the crazy extremes of touring, we stumble into the strange
world of tour bus drivers: among the strangest folks on the planet.

“Those guys are unpredictable motherfuckers,” he laughs. “They are their own
breed. There s a gene or something. The thing is, you learn this after your
fifth tour. They re all going to freak out by the end. You ll think you ve got
the cool guy, the polite guy, the nice guy or whatever but by the last week of
the tour he WILL go nuts.”

Jay continues, “They love to get into these stories like,  ‘I was tagteaming
this chick…’ Now the word: tagteaming. You or I might use that word once a
year. These guys use that word minimum three times a day! They are strange.”

“A lot of these drivers are talented musicians, too. We had Charlie Louvin s
son as our bus driver once. This guy we had, Big John, had been Johnny
Paycheck s guitar player. He had these fat, sausage fingers and rotted out
teeth from mixing blow with Skoal. One day he picks up my acoustic and was
blown away. I was like, Why don t you play guitar and I ll drive the bus.”

Jay and I agree that the Clash s LONDON CALLING is one of the best records
ever.

“It s amazing, it s peak, emotional. It makes you jump and down and rock, but
it s Lover s Rock , too. It pulls at your heartstrings. There is a sense of
joy underlining the political and emotional angst and it s a pure joy.
Strummer must ve just said You know, it would be cool to get some horns in
here, Bennett says, displaying his genuine love of rock and roll.”

I have to point to him the parallel between the Clash at this point and Wilco
for the last three records both having that kind of balance. Invoking the same
passion and intensity, both bands being, as the Clash were famously dubbed,
the only band that matters .

“I always wanted to make Wilco posters and t-shirts that said The Other Band
That Matters but nobody else in the band would go for it,” Bennett laughs.

Hmmm, musical differences?

Maybe your next band.