Tune Tag #62 with Peter C. Baker of "Tracks on Tracks": Bob Dylan, Mavis Staples, Jethro Tull, Tweedy, Smog, Alan Parsons, Jeremy Jordan
🚀Houston, we have a Tune Tag! An honest-to-goodness published author joins us to Tag Tunes across the decades and genres! I think it's safe to say that this Tune Tag has the write stuff!✏
I’m a writer of fiction, journalism, essays. Over the last decade-and-a-half, I’ve published pieces on music and all kinds of other topics, mostly with The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The Guardian.
My first novel, Planes, came out in 2022, and is now available in paperback from Vintage Books. I run Tracks on Tracks, a newsletter that primarily publishes pieces where writers – often me, often guests – dig into their relationship to individual songs. It’s been a blast, and I’m looking forward to making more connections in the world of music and music-adjacent writing here!
About Planes:
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An urgent, fiercely intelligent debut novel about “two couples, an ocean apart—one wounded by a war crime, the other just starting to reckon with being implicated in it…. An insightful book about the slow, zigzag work of healing that nonetheless moves at the speed of a thriller” (Caleb Crain, author of Necessary Errors).
Song #1 sent by Peter to Brad: Sammy, Jeff, and Spencer Tweedy, The Replacements’ “Androgynous,” 2020
Roger, Wilco: (l-r) Spencer, Sammy, and Jeff. Four years ago, the tuneful trio created and performed the music for the Alex Winter HBO documentary, Showbiz Kids, acandid look at the highs and lows of children in show business. The Tweedys were nominated for a Critics’ Choice Documentary Award (Best Score) for their work.
Peter’s rationale: This video comes from “The Tweedy Show” (Ep. 31, via Susie Tweedy), a recurring Instagram live broadcast that
Jeff’s little shaver, Spencer. I’m told he’s got a girlfriend. While he doesn’t care much for her tie, he seems to be genuinely fond of hirsute.
This Replacements song (written by Paul Westerberg), “Androgynous,” is already about celebrating the passage of time, the way some things now and then really do improve. Seeing it performed by a dad with his sons adds to the effect. I think Sammy Tweedy is a really great singer, not because he hits every note or has a crazy range or anything like that, but because he always sounds exactly like himself. That’s kind of fuzzy sounding, but I’m guessing most music fans know exactly what I mean. Jeff and Spencer are in the group, Tweedy.
Brad’s song #1 sent to Peter: Mavis Staples, “One True Vine,” 2013
Studio Staples: Pops (l), with Mavis, foreground
Peter’s response: I see the connection here: Jeff Tweedy wrote, produced, and played guitar and bass on “One True Vine” for Mavis (now 85), and his son Spencer is drumming. It’s a fun Chicago thing, the connection between them. I’m guessing this has become somewhat more well-known lately, thanks to Jeff and Mavis’s performance together on the Colbert show in August, on the song written by Roebuck “Pops” Staples:
The Staple Singers’ Freedom Highway album was released on Epic/CBS Records in 1965, and produced by Epic A&R exec/in-house producer, Billy Sherrill, who soon made his career as the go-to Nashville-based producer of top country performers.
From an appearance in 2016, Colbert interviews Mavis about starting her career with her family—Pop Staples and The Staple Singers:
Peter’s song #2: Bob Dylan, “Santa Fe,” (Originally recorded 1967 & released in 1991)
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