Why I’m ready for Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”

At around sixteen I sensed I was asking the right person.

Dana was married and had kids, but wore a trendy, dark shirt. He’d taken the time to wire speakers in his house for optimal sound. I’d seen him swapping CDs and discussing music with my dad.

Besides this, he was approachable and told jokes l appreciated.

Over dinner he asked someone to pass him a cu-knife, purposely mispronouncing the word and pretending it was correct. I couldn’t contain my delight at these jokes, and my smile curled when we were in the same room, because I knew an awesome joke was imminent.

We connected.

When our family moved to Nashville, the house we rented didn’t allow dogs. We left our dog to Dana, his wife and kids, and when we came back to visit the small town in Northern Indiana, we often stayed here.

I asked if he knew of any bands I should get into. At the time I was still stuck in a genre.

There’s some real art in mainstream Christian music, Jars of Clay and countless others, but when you restrict yourself to buying music from LifeWay, you’re walking into an art museum and staying on the first floor.

As best as I remember, he handed me two CDs:

• Spoon’s “Kill the Moonlight”
  
  
  
  
  
• Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
  
  

I was skeptical. They looked different than albums I was used to so. They lacked color and faces.

Also, I wasn’t sold on asking an old person for artistic advice. I had it all figured out of course, and the fact that I knew more youthful jargon than him put me on the inside somehow.

I wasn’t sure if he was giving me permission to burn them, but I imported them into iTunes.

This seemed wrong. I hadn’t bought this music, but I wanted to listen to it without the CDs being in my computer.

And yes, I had a laptop. When it was rare for kids my age to have laptops, my family had about a 2:1 mac to human ratio. That was awesome.

I listened to the albums a number of times. My brother recommended “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” on a separate occasion. He was the main musical influencer in my life.

But they became albums I knew I had, but never got excited about. There was also this attached feeling of guilt when I listened, because of the first guilt I felt when I imported them.

If my memory serves me correctly, I deleted “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” from iTunes on moral grounds.

The thread of this story is not about music privacy though. This is a story about how music can only meet you when you’re ready to accept it.

Today a happy thing happened.

For all the ways I’ve mastered technology, I haven’t mastered what various buttons to press to turn on cable. Apparent I changed the channel on the TV, so the cable didn’t work. Whatever.

So, I thought I’d put in a DVD since cable was rebelling. My roommate was watching the extra content from a documentary about Wilco earlier today.

I thought I’d try it out. I put in “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco” by Sam Jones.

This was about the making of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”

I saw the tension between the members that led to Jay Bennett’s exit. I heard what Jeff Tweedy sounded like with just a guitar. I saw a son recite his dad’s favorite song and mimic the drum beat. I saw the amount of energy and life it takes to bond with others musically and what it takes to create something new and bold, even when others don’t understand.

Tonight I bought the CD and it sounds different. It sounds alive.

I like to think the difference is now I’m ready.