The keyboardist for Wilco has spoken: our ticket giveaway for the band’s July 13 concert in Coney Island is “great.”
As BrooklynPaper.com readers know, we’re giving away a pair of tickets — and all you have to do is click our Wilco contest page and tell us your favorite Wilco song (and why). The best answer wins the pair.
“Sounds great,” said keyboardist (and Fort Greene resident) Mikael Jorgenson, reached via Skype from Spain, where the band is in the middle of a 10-day tour. “It’s a wonderfully subjective contest.”
Jorgenson said that if he had to vote, he’d “pick a song that has to do with some expression of love,” though he was not surprised that some contest entrants picked “Via Chicago,” with its famous opening line, “I dreamed about killing you again last night — and it felt all right with me.”
“To each his own, I guess,” he said, adding that “Spiders,” “You are my Face,” and “Company in my Back” are his favorites to play live.
The July 13 show at Keyspan Park is just part of a seemingly endless summer for Jorgenson and his Wilco bandmates. After returning from Spain next week, the band will begin a west coast swing, hit its native Chicago for a July 4 show, then do the east coast swing before heading back to Europe in August.
“It is great to be big in Europe,” Jorgenson said. “The fans really respond to the music here. It’s dumbfounding and awesome. It’s also funny when they start applauding. In the states, fans start clapping at the first few notes, when they recognize the song. [In Europe], they clap once [lead singer] Jeff [Tweedy] hits the signature lyric.”
The Brooklyn crowd is also responsive, as the band discovered during a packed show at Warsaw in Greenpoint in 2007.
“I remember that show: it was a small, sweaty, cramped, awesome place,” Jorgenson said.
The July 13 show at Keyspan Park will be just one block from Mermaid Avenue, the title of two volumes of covers of Woody Guthrie songs that Wilco put out in 1998 and 2000 with Billy Bragg. Jorgenson said the band would probably play “more Woody stuff,” in deference to the locale.
“You can pretty much bet on ‘California Stars’ and ‘Hesitating Beauty,’” he said.
When he’s not touring and recording with Wilco, Jorgenson is a band-leader himself. Earlier this year, he released “All is Golden” with his band, Pronto.
A second album is “in the works,” he said.
When? he couldn’t answer.
“It’s difficult doing both bands and having any other time to do anything else,” he said. “I like to see my wife. I like to have a social life, too.”
So until then, you could pick up Wilco’s new album, which came out last week. The Brooklyn Paper’s “Smash or Trash” team promptly declared it a monster hit.
Hurry up and enter our Wilco contest. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Stand clear of the closing doors. Post no bills. No pepper games.
