Jeff Tweedy, _Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc._

 JEFF TWEEDY'S 2018 memoir is a likable read.  The voice is down-to-earth and conversational, with plenty of self-deprecating humor. Tweedy is a son of the Midwest, so there you are. His accounts of growing up in Belleville, a small  town in southern Illinois, and of his life with his wife and two sons are tender and affecting; his account of recovering from addiction to opioids is candid and straightforward.

I found myself wanting a little more, though about the "two different guys named Jay covered in this book," as Tweedy puts it in his introduction, two people who were especially crucial in his artistic development as a musician and songwriter.  Jay Farrar and Tweedy founded the band Uncle Tupelo when they were teenagers, and it was with Farrar that Tweedy first stepped on stage to perform, began working on his craft, and began building a reputation. Jay Bennett joined Wilco, Tweedy's second band, after their first album and served as the fuel that enabled Wilco to achieve the escape velocity that took them out of the roots/Americana orbit (where Son Volt, Farrar's post-Tupelo band, largely remained) and brought them to stardom.

The relationships with both Jays ended in strife. but what exactly happened? Did Farrar dislike that Tweedy wanted equal time as a songwriter on the albums? Why did the last iteration of Uncle Tupelo (bassist John Stirratt, drummer Ken Coomer, and multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston)  follow Tweedy into Wilco rather than Farrar into Son Volt? Did  they volunteer? Were they recruited? How did that go down?

And Jay Bennett. What happened there? What made their collaboration so fruitful for a few years, then unsustainable? How did the Wilco of A.M. turn into the Wilco of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Why did Bennett eventually get fired from the band?

Tweedy does write about how Farrar was uncommunicative, even a bit sullen, and about  how Bennett could be manipulative and unreliable. but one feels there is a whole lot more to the story. 

If you are interested in Tweedy's growing up and his family life, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) is your book, but if you are mainly curious about Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, I would recommend Greg Kot's Wilco: Learning How to Die.