110: Wilco at the Shed

This past Friday my husband and I went to a Wilco concert, arguably the most dad-energy Chicago thing I've done since moving here. The show was at the Salt Shed, a venue I have minor beef with for being a little too bougie; it's a recently gentrified/renovated former warehouse on the near North Side with little guitar shops and food trucks attached to the main venue. Which is to say, the Salt Shed is a haven for Gen-X white dads who listen to 93.1 WXRT, and is therefore also a place where I can go and expect to like the music. I don't trust the shiny facade of the place, but that mistrust is rooted partly in the knowledge that I, like my actual dad counterparts from the suburbs, appreciate the comfort and convenience of being able to see a show in a festival setting without feeling like we're slumming it in a muddy field.

Friday evening was lovely; the show was at the Salt Shed's outdoor stage, which mimics a music festival fairground right on the edge of the Chicago River. Jeff Tweedy roasted a guy in the front row about an hour in (the guy deserved it). The show started early enough in the evening that we could grab a slice of pizza and a beer from one of the on-site vendors and watch the sun go down over the top of the warehouse. The rest of the crowd was subdued but appreciative; when the band took the stage someone nearby lit up a joint. This was my first Wilco show, and the thing that surprised me most was just how easy to dance to their music is. This shouldn't have been a surprise: my favorite song off their most recent album is a gentle piece with a waltzy 6/8 time signature that invites movement without demanding it.

I kept marking other people in the crowd who moved because they wanted to. A woman in a bright yellow dress on the balcony danced with abandon to every song. She was easy to mark because she was so animated, and because her dress was so much brighter than anyone else's clothing around her, but she certainly wasn't the only person who felt the need to move. One man in front of us kept trying to invite a woman in front of him to dance, shuffling backward and forward whenever the music moved him with the grace of someone who's spent a lifetime on the dance floor.

What I wrote about:

Last week for Seeing & Believing, I covered Ishana Night Shyamalan's debut The Watchers.

This week for Seeing & Believing, I reviewed Inside Out 2.

What I'm growing:

The roses in my backyard are going buck wild.