WHEN I WAS growing up, my dad would always say, “Let’s go, so we can get back,” whenever his presence was required somewhere other than his comfort zone. Sometimes it would be an appropriate response to common and relatable hassles, like a company picnic or the funeral services of a distant relative. But a lot of times he’d say it as we would be leaving to go somewhere or do something that surely even he was looking forward to, like a fishing trip or going to grab an ice-cream cone.
He meant it as a joke, obviously, but it really wasn’t. There were times when his “comfort zone” would become so specific and narrowly defined as to be no more than a single chair in our unfinished basement. Even then, his level of ease would additionally require proximity to cold cans, not bottles, of whatever niche, subvarietal shitty American beer he was fiercely loyal to that month. Say, Pabst Blue Ribbon Light Select Extra Dry for example. Or maybe Michelob Silver Ultra-Light. None of us understood what could possibly prompt the dismissal of one brand and the sudden loyalty to another. Sometimes, seemingly overnight, an animus toward one beer manufacturer would appear that had the weight and feel of some real betrayal. And we’d all have to pay attention and stay current so that when our refrigerator would suddenly fill up with a new and unfamiliar can, and we were called upon to fetch we could avoid riling him up with a spurned holdover from the transition.
As we all got older, the phrase started to become less of a joke and more of a succinct and accurate description of the anxiety that permeates my family. I think everyone has their comfort zone that they would prefer not to leave. But not everyone allows that feeling of inconvenience to become a coddled and catered-to dysfunction. Codependence is what they call it, I guess. In our case, there surely was a team effort to keep things nice and bad so as not to make anything worse.
For me personally, I became so adept at “let’s go, so we can get back” that I eventually graduated straight to “let’s not leave.” As you can imagine that’s not a tenable situation for someone in a traveling rock band, and it was certainly an unworkable solution to the problems I was facing. I never wanted to leave the comfort of opioids or whatever maladaptive behavior was providing me some safe harbor, and for a while, I had plenty of enablers and facilitators to seal off any challenges to that status quo.
And then I got help. That’s maybe the only thing about me that I think is truly unique. It’s statistically unlikely for an addict to be successful in their struggle to recover. Beyond that, I saw plenty of substance abuse growing up but I never saw anyone get better, so I had no idea what that transformation looked like. Addiction is a cunning disease, so the odds are always stacked against any addict, but I did it. And I’m doing it.
I’m not trying to pat myself on the back. I’m sincerely appreciative of the fact that a ton of luck was involved in me getting the help I needed. I think that’s part of why I wrote this book. I wanted to write about, and understand, and share the part of me that has always been able to be vulnerable. This allowed me get to the place where I was able to ask for help and accept it. Then, eventually, I found the part of me that has been able to stay committed to understanding myself better and to keep working through the things I’ve struggled with. The changes and the work and the support that have allowed me to have some sense of comfort wherever I am and wherever I go, and the relative ease with which I’ve been able to live within my own skin these last fourteen years or so—it all seems like something worth sharing. Or at least worth sorting through publicly. In recovery they tell you that sobriety isn’t something you keep by keeping it to yourself. Sounds right to me.
That was the one story I knew for certain I had to tell. Beyond that, I wasn’t so sure. I’m not naturally nostalgic or prone to reflection. I have terrible biographical memory. At least once every tour, I’ll say to someone in Wilco, “Wow, what a beautiful old theater. I wonder if they just renovated it,” and they’ll say something like “This is the theater where two guys started fighting in the balcony during the quiet part of ‘Via Chicago,’ and the last time we were here they turned up the lights in the middle of the show so some EMTs could give CPR to this dude, out cold, right in the middle aisle. Remember? We had just played ‘Heavy Metal Drummer.’ Ended up he was super wasted. I think this is about the eighth time we’ve played here. Two times ago, Nels’s amp blew up but it sounded incredible right before it started smoking. . . . Oh! And then there was the show . . .”
Point is, I can’t remember shit and it’s never really bothered me that much. But I started writing and I was surprised by all of the vivid, detailed memories this book conjured. Like the fake-stone interior and potted rubber trees in the waiting room at the doctor’s office where I used to get my allergy shots twice a week when I was in the fifth grade. Or . . . I’d almost forgotten how my mom would call me “Shicky-poo” when she was in a good mood, and that my dad almost always called me simply “Boy.”
The red Naugahyde booths at the lunch counter where my aunt Gail worked came back to me. Along with the rest of the soda fountain fixtures where I’d get a grilled cheese sandwich and a scoop of tapioca almost every day on my way home from grade school. And Bunn’s Groceries, the corner store I’d walk to to get penny candy on the street I grew up on. The store part was the ground floor of one side of a duplex. The Bunns lived above their store, and my dad’s mother lived in the other side of the duplex with a man who wasn’t my grandfather who I called Grampa Oscar. I remember how no one could understand Grampa Oscar because he only had half a tongue or his tongue was paralyzed or some shit . . . and how he seemed to always be watching professional wrestling on a tiny black-and-white TV, hollering at the wrestlers in their pre-spandex unitards. And now I’m remembering his loud, utterly terrifying, brutal, consonant-less emanations. As I write this, I’m realizing that growing up in an old midwestern industrial town in the seventies and eighties has made my memories sound like they were filmed on the set of some fifties sitcom. Soda fountains?! Penny candy?!? Tapioca!!??? Man, oh man. I promise I didn’t make any of this up or fill in the gaps in my drug-dimmed memory by watching reruns of Andy Griffith.
I’ve had more recent recollections, too, like the sweeter memories of being in a band with Jay Farrar, and what a thrill it was discovering so much music together and through each other, and how it changed our lives. I recalled how Joe McEwen, the guy that signed Uncle Tupelo to Sire, had the most perfectly inscrutable A&R-man dance ever devised. Eyes closed as if in reverie, slightly swaying in time with the music, and simultaneously shaking his head side to side, like his body was saying, “Everyone at the label can’t wait to work with you,” while his head respectfully informs your band that “Warner Bros. is not interested in your demo submission at this time.” Writing also brought back all of the long hours in the studio with Jay Bennett, pushing crazy ideas on each other. Like the time he tried to convince me that the expensive recording studio we were renting wouldn’t mind if we dropped a twenty-pound weight on their $50,000 piano as long as we covered the lid with a packing blanket, and how that is, in fact, the last sound you hear on Being There.
Writing has even helped me take a closer look at some memories that are almost too unbearably bittersweet and poignant to spend much time with under normal circumstances. Like the specific expression of gratitude and relief in Susie’s eyes when she finally got to come home from the hospital after cancer surgery and all four of us plopped down on the couch to watch a movie together. And how seeing her smiling with tears in her eyes gave us the first sense that anything was ever going to feel all right in the world again.
I’ve been doing this—writing and reminiscing and talking with my family and comparing notes—for a couple of years now. Most of their suggestions have made it into this book. With a few notable exceptions: Spencer and Sammy wanted me to tell you about the most punk-rock thing I’ve ever seen, which is the time Ween opened for Wilco at Lounge Ax, and Gene Ween, their lead singer, smashed his acoustic guitar. During soundcheck! The cherry on top of that particular anecdote was the casual way he walked offstage after stomping his guitar into splinters and asked me if he could borrow mine.
During this same period of time that I’ve spent writing this book and discovering that my walks down memory lane aren’t so colorless and nondescript after all, I’ve kept busy working on a lot of music as well. Wilco made Schmilco while I was just getting up the nerve to start writing and beginning to get an idea of the kinds of stories I might have to tell. There are a few songs on that record that are evidence of some mental overlap between the two projects. In particular, the song called “Quarters” wouldn’t have the lyrics it does without this book dredging up some of the semi-traumatic memories I have of my maternal grandfather’s attempts at the rare combination of barkeeping and babysitting (baby-keeping?). Good times.
Most recently, in the summer of 2018, I finished a solo record, my first of all new material. Writing this book has made those songs some of the most direct, personal, and autobiographical that I’ve ever written. For a while now, the primary way I’ve kept my songwriting feeling honest to me is to imagine I’m singing only to myself, pretending no one else is listening.
But the songs that have grown out of the writing of this book are different because I’ve been thinking about what exactly I would like to say directly to someone. What I would like to say to you. I’ve imagined you sitting across from me, interested in what I might have to say.
Now I have a whole batch of songs like that, too. Maybe the first songs I’ve ever written with the intention of telling someone something I want them to know about myself. Things I want you to hear. If you finish reading this book and you listen to the album I just made, which is called WARM, it should be fairly easy to recognize what I’m describing.
I think I’ve finally stopped worrying about getting back from somewhere less comfortable—some place where I’m sure I’m going to be miserable. I believe I’m starting to be “okay” wherever I am. I think I’m ready to just say, “Let’s go.”