Interview: Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline Discuss the Guitars and Gear Behind Wilco's Latest Album, 'The Whole Love'

Posted 03/07/2012 at 12:27pm | by Richard Bienstock

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline discuss the guitars and gear used on The Whole Love.

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Nels, you're known for being a big pedal guy. What were some of the main ones this time around?

CLINE: I had a lot of my usual Wilco pedals, which are the [DigiTech] Whammy, the Fulltone '69, the Klon Centaur, the [Crowther Audio] Hotcake, the Z.Vex Fuzz Factory and Box of Metal, the Jam Pedals Rattler, the original Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delay and the Deluxe Memory Man, the Korg KP2 KAOSS Pad, and an old Boss VB-2 Vibrato and a DD-3 Digital Delay. A few others that I really liked and that I know I used this time were some of the DeviEver pedals, like the Hyperion and the Soda Meiser, which are great.

What guitars and amps did each of you use on The Whole Love?

CLINE: My go-to guitar is my '59 Jazzmaster; it's my number one, and it looks like it's been through a war. I guess it has been through my own personal war. That's the guitar on the "Almost" solo. I joke with Jeff that I'm not really sure why I own any guitars other than Jazzmasters, because I'm never really unhappy playing one; I can pretty much get any sound I want out of it.

But I also used a bunch of other things: a Hopf Telstar, which is also on "Almost," as well as "Capital City" and "Dawned On Me"; a Jerry Jones Shorthorn three-pickup, which is on "Sunday Morning"; and a Jerry Jones Neptune 12-string, which you can hear on "Sunloathe." I also had my faded Gibson double-cutaway Les Paul with P-90s that Jeff gave me when I first joined the band -- I think I used that for "I Might." Then there's also a National Lap Steel, a Jerry Jones doubleneck baritone and some others.

For amps, most of my parts were tracked with either my 15-watt Magnatone or my custom Schroeder, which is a variation on their DB7, but with more wattage, and was built for me by Tim Schroeder. I also used a small Kalamazoo amp that belongs to John [Stirratt] that was something like five watts. It has this extremely thin, serrated tone that I liked to use for overdubs.

TWEEDY: I have a 1965 SG, which is pretty much my main guitar. I also used an Epiphone Wilshire, the mini-humbucker model, a little bit. Those were my two main electrics, but I have so many guitars. I've been buying them forever. I did a few overdubs here and there with a Rickenbacker 330, and also some with a Tele. But for the most part, almost everything is on the SG.

For the acoustic parts I primarily played a Fifties Gibson J -200. I actually have two of them that are almost identical -- both have double pickguards and a name on the top pickguard. One says "Bob" and one says "Buck." And I bought them years apart, so it's kind of strange! And then for amps, I almost always use tiny little Supros or Valcos in the studio. I keep them fairly clean but right on the edge, where they're about to break up. I've been on a Valco kick for a while now. I have a bunch of them, but I don't know the model numbers of any of them. I'm kind of a gear whore, but I'm not a very attention-to-detail gear whore. [laughs]

Jeff, earlier on in Wilco, particularly on A Ghost Is Born, you played significantly more lead guitar. Has your role as a guitarist changed over the last few albums?

TWEEDY: Well, for one thing I don't have to worry about it nearly as much. I can focus much more on the songwriting and the singing and the lyrics and all of that stuff. Because when you have not just one but two guitar players who are way better than you are, I think you should probably let them play more in your band. But there was a time where it was really necessary and even exciting for me to explore that for myself -- on Ghost in particular, and even before that. A lot of the solos on the earlier Wilco records are me. But I think I took it as far as I could go, though Nels is always prodding me to play more guitar and step out more, because he claims to really like my sort of skronky, primitive style. [laughs]

And I'm sure that it will come back around. In my experience, things are cyclical, and at some point I'm really gonna get turned on by the guitar again and want to make a record that's a full-on skronk-fest, with me, Nels and Pat doing the triple-guitar attack. But I don't worry about it that much.

Nels, as someone who is continually taking part in diverse projects with a wide range of musicians, what does being a member of Wilco offer you as a player?

CLINE: For starters, certainly it's a challenge for me to fit into some of the songs and be part of the so-called orchestra. But I find that satisfyil}g, because I enjoy playing what I might term "potentially classic" songs. Periodically, I step back and say, Wow, I'm participating in something that I think really holds up in the annals of songwriting and rock and roll. And that's a great thing.
Another thing the band offers is what I call being in the "deluxe clubhouse," which is that we get to travel with a lot of beautiful guitars, and I'm able to choose guitars onstage based on my tonal needs, rather than trying to get every possible sound out of one guitar. I'm not usually able to travel at that level playing my own music, because what I normally do is so far from what you might call "popular music."

And another thing- and I'm not trying to be irreverent by saying this-is that I enjoy the whole pageantry involved in being part of a big rock show. And I don't necessarily mean playing to big crowds, but rather that I like all the production aspects of what we do-I like the lighting and all that shtff. I'm not averse to it. In fact, I kind of dig it. [laughs]

But overall, what's really fun about Wilco is its versatility. Jeff's a really good player. Pat's a really good player. So there's a lot of possibilities just on the guitar end, which is only part of it. There's a real "music for music's sake" atmosphere in this band. We want to transport people. Because it's a beautiful thing to be able to have music take you somewhere. That's what I live for, and that's what we live for.

Photo: Justin Borucki

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