Jay Bennett is in the worst of shape physically and the best of shape musically these days. A horrible thing and a terrific thing rolled into one huge bear of a man who’s seen better days and is seeing better days. It’s an odd oxymoronic thing that the body’s throwing tantrums just at a point when this musical maestro (he helped bless the world with Wilco’s Being There, Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot thank you very much) he’s as nimble with everything else coming from his hands and his mouth, making the finest solo record of his career. He’s the less than middle-aged version of the saying that people roll out when an elderly person is saddled with a body that’s shot to hell – “At least their mind’s still sharp as a tack.” He’s no Mick Mars, but he’s not Iggy Pop either. Bennett got out of his car this day back in October of 2006 with Big Red in its guitar case and in his hand. He sauntered across the empty street to the door that leads up to our studio. It was a walk that could have been seen as the ramification of a tough night in Champaign with a lot of booze and the clock having struck just after the noon hour. It would have been a fair thing to assume that a body would be rough, taking movement hard if that were actually what had happened. It’s sad to know that it’s not. With Bennett’s back a complete wreck, delivering bulleted pain through all of his fibers every time it’s jostled and used, no matter how much is drunk, the dulling of the splitting soreness can never be diminished. He’s stoop-shouldered and the never-ending nicotine has chewed away at some of his teeth. Everything’s deliberate and slowly taken. His duffel bag is filled to the brim with pain medications for the short, couple week tour with Iowa City band Death Ships, which will fill in for him as his backing band on the tour and during these recordings. The point here is that Bennett is not spry and then…and then…he starts playing. It’s as if the heavy shades have been pulled all the way back to reveal a cloudless day. There’s power and virility and more life than a chatterbox in what Bennett throws into the microphone. He whips out the action as if he’s not just an empty vessel, but a live force that can veto all else to perform the way he’s always been meant to perform. When he finished recording – in a record time of 30 minutes from setup to finish – the pain was back, agitated like a den of boney badgers, its fangs flaring, and he made his way to the bottled water and his duffel bag of medicines. He sat around and chatted, gave Death Ships shit from the control room and struggled to get comfortable. You just rubbed your eyes that the man in pain did what he just did. – Sean Moeller

First song
Fifth Grade (Jay Bennett) [3.27MB] [1692 downloads]


– original version appears on The Magnificent Defeat
Possibly the only truly, straightforward, autobiographical pop song I’ve ever written – oddly enough, it’s about my first crush that I had on a girl in fifth grade. She moved away halfway through the year. I wanted it to sound like The Clash meets Motown, but I realized that The Clash’s “Hitsville UK” is a much better example of “The Clash doing Motown.”

Second song
Over Excusers (Jay Bennett) [3.49MB] [1570 downloads]


– original version appears on The Magnificent Defeat
Simply a series of word play directed at an ex-girlfriend. David Vandervelde told me that I stole a portion of the melody from a Leonard Cohen song, but neither one of us can figure out which song that might have been.

Third song
Replace You (Jay Bennett) [3.13MB] [1546 downloads]


– original version appears on The Magnificent Defeat
Resurrected from the aborted Courtesy Move project (composed of fellow Wilco members John Stirratt, Ken Coomer, and myself circa. late 90’s). Written with John.

Fourth song
Good as Gold (Jay Bennett) [2.72MB] [1561 downloads]


– original version appears on The Magnificent Defeat
On my album The Magnificent Defeat, this album closer is a spontaneous one-take, one-microphone demo written after the death of my grandmother. Hopefully this version matches the emotion of the original.