A Country Mile From the Past

“I hope I don’t sound like Gomer Pyle. Ya know, totally inarticulate,� says Jeff Tweedy. “I’m just trying to resist the urge to sound like I know what I’m talking about. That’s the worst thing you can do, pretend like there’s some master plan to it all.�

The comment seems incongruous coming from one of the most acclaimed pop-rock songwriters and lyricists of the ‘90s. With his current band Wilco and former group Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy has become one of alternative music’s major forces.

With partner Jay Farrar in Uncle Tupelo, he spawned an entire genre--the alternative country music scene whose name, No Depression, is taken from the title of Tupelo’s 1990 debut album.

In the process, he’s exposed a new generation to country music. Wilco combines sleepy pedal steel guitar and the twang of 1940s Nashville with the raw delivery of indie rock, tapping both styles’ root sentiments of sorrow, rebellion and alienation.

The results? Consistent critical accolades, an ultra-loyal fan base, a recording home at Reprise Records, and even a Grammy nomination (though no victory) this year--for contemporary folk album for “Mermaid Avenue,� a collaboration with English singer Billy Bragg on a collection of unearthed Woody Guthrie lyrics.

But with Wilco’s fourth album, “Summer Teeth� (due in stores Tuesday), the quartet has almost entirely dropped the country trimmings for more esoteric pop territory. The result is a record that could propel Wilco from cult status to a higher profile in pop.

Much as “Nirvana Unplugged� documented that Kurt Cobain’s songs stood up even when stripped away from their powerful grunge foundation, “Summer Teeth� proves what hard-core Wilco fans have known all along: There’s a songwriting excellence to the band that is far more important to the group’s records than the sentimental sounds of old-style country.

In the album, guitarists Tweedy and Jay Bennett, bassist John Stirratt and drummer Ken Coomer infuse their folk-style songwriting with pop elements and little effects--bells ringing, an organ piping, sampled choral voices--that recall the experimental side of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The lyrics, meanwhile, still teeter between unabashed sentimentality and pained abstraction.

It’s a brave step because it risks alienating much of the band’s adoring, hard-core following.

But Tweedy has no second thoughts.

“We were using all the country instruments left over from Uncle Tupelo on the early records, ‘A.M.’ and a few songs on ‘Being There,’ � explains Tweedy, sitting in the Burbank offices of Reprise Records.

“I’d grown accustomed to working with them. It is more of an aesthetic change than upholding some sort of agenda--like we have a rural obligation to fill. That’s what we get a lot with Wilco--like, ‘You should be honored to be heading the No Depression movement. Why don’t you wanna be the spokesperson?’

“I admire the craft, the voices and instrumental ability of so many of these bands, but it’s like Method acting. I don’t feel a lot of it is written out of anything more than a nostalgic feeling for some imagined past. There’s no real trust or faith that speaks to me of being brave or real. You’re just making good music, and that’s great, but it’s just not as interesting because it lacks the risk of failure.�

*

Chicago-based Tweedy, 31, has taken plenty of risks--playing country when country wasn’t cool--and has had enough success to temper any failures.

Tweedy grew up in Belleville, Ill., just east of St. Louis, where he started his first band, an outfit that did versions of ‘60s garage-pop songs, before hooking up with classmate Farrar and starting a punk band, the Primitives.

But he was listening to a myriad of music from different eras.

“I had punk records and ‘60s garage music, then started getting into country and folk music. It was like ‘Wow, if this record came out today, people would love it.’ I had no context and would just imagine them to be current records. Folk and country was more poetic than punk, but it had the same spirit. It was saying the same thing.�

Tweedy’s and Farrar’s radically different personalities and songwriting styles--Tweedy sweet and whimsical, Farrar melancholy and pained--made for an explosive creativity, but not the best relationship. Though they did release four albums (the last, “Anodyne,� marking their move to the major label Reprise), the band finally imploded.

Though Farrar, who went on to form the band Son Volt, was initially considered the soul behind Uncle Tupelo, Wilco’s 1995 debut, “A.M.,� was met with huge critical and fan acclaim, prefiguring the even bigger success of 1996’s “Being There.� The latter sold about 200,000 copies, more than doubling the total of “A.M.�

Now the band, whose members reside in different Midwestern and Southern cities, plays about 180 shows a year, while also engaging in side projects such as Golden Smog, a collective of alternative folk and country artists.

But for most of his career, Tweedy has been at odds with his peers in the alternative country scene. As in indie rock, many of the bands in the movement took an anti-corporate stance, regarding their music as too challenging for the mainstream.

Getting up to smoke a cigarette outside the confines of the conference room, Tweedy says, “It’s so superficial--whether or not to sign with a major label.� He’s dressed in brown suede desert boots and a blue utility jacket and pants, with his short brown hair slightly disheveled.

“I mean, James Joyce wanted people to read his books, Hank Williams carried Cash Box magazine around in his pocket and Bob Dylan knew where his albums were on the charts. They wanted to be heard. Here you have this opportunity to be heard, and you’re hesitating? I don’t know of anybody that makes music sincerely that feels it should only belong to a certain segment of people. It’s so much more fun to be audacious--’Look what we can do!’ �

“Summer Teeth� hardly does sonic back-flips for attention, but instead subtly pits the beautiful with the ugly. For instance, the sound of sweeping piano is cut with the high-pitched buzz of guitar feedback, and easy melodies are roughed up by raw production technique.

“Aside from caring if sonic levels or songwriting levels hold up, it’s important to me to create something that looks like life, sounds like the way my experiences feel,� Tweedy says.

But many alternative country bands influenced by Wilco and Tweedy’s peers in the indie rock scene use irony to detach themselves from any true emotion that may leave them vulnerable. It’s also easier to make fun of a complex subject than to actually try to capture it lyrically.

“I don’t like the way irony is used now,� Tweedy says. “But it’s an unavoidable part of creating modern art. Irony without substance is really unappealing--it’s really nasty, superior and mean. It’s all these things except for thought-provoking, which is the only real reason for irony.

“Irony today is typified by someone doing an ABBA cover with a smirk--’We’re so superior to this.’ Well, ABBA records don’t sound like anything else in the world. They did it with complete joy and passion, and you’re an idiot.�

Tweedy laughs at his venomous defense of the Swedish pop icons and reaches for another cigarette, which he leaves unlit in the smoke-free zone.

“I’m saddened by what people like a lot of times,� he says. “I wish they demanded more, asked for something more honest, not as calculated. But honesty is hard to listen to. It pulls out things in you that you may not wanna look at. I don’t even like it sometimes. When I listen to our records, there are things that are really honest there that make me feel uncomfortable, so why should I expect anybody else to listen to it?

“So why do I do it? Well, it just doesn’t feel right any other way.�