STEWART COPELAND

Jay Bennett, former Wilco keyboardist, sometime lyricist, all around Renaissance type guy from '96 - '01 has passed. Versions being handed around include complications from surgery or some kind of overdose. He was 45 years old.

My Jay story: He played the Slow Bar in Nashville w. Paul Burch to promote their album [quote]Palace at 4 AM[/quote] on May 2, 2002. Mr. D and I had to miss the gig due to a conflict that night with a show by bass god Mike Watt, late of Minutemen and Iggy & Stooges...anyway, we stopped by Slow Bar after to see if we could catch the last few songs of JB's set.

Well, he was still there, hanging out at the bar, and when we told him we'd had to miss his show due to having gone to Mike Watt - whose music he told us he respected greatly - he took us backstage and played us a couple tunes. Wish to hell I'd had the tape recorder. What an awesome guy.

More discussion here:

http://forums.viachicago.org/index.php?showtopic=40162

Aw, nuts...he was a critical elements of some of their absolute best......I was still hoping he'd find his stride again, how very sad...

I first got into Wilco maybe 2, 3 years ago.

The Mermaid Ave CD's are some of my very favorite stuff. The production is nice n real, Jay Bennett was at the console. I really dug that guy and to be honest, Wilco has not had the same vibe for me. That conflict may have had a positive effect on the tunes. Watching that Doc, Break your Heart...was great. He liked to discuss the vibes of what they were doing, it was kinda annoying...I'm the same way. Anyway.

So sad.

I think he was cool.

I think he was kinda struggling with his music, the production side seemed to be going OK.

sigh, tired of saying goodbye to folks.

Cheers all.
BB.

Very sad news.
The obit was in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/arts/ ... obituaries

Very sad news. Too bad the last contact between Jay and Wilco was the lawsuit. Jay certainly added a lot to the band, but in watching the docmentary, it was clear that they could not continue with him. Jay's contributions aside, to me Wilco are still an amazing band and I for one feel the addition of Nels Cline on guitar has made them stronger. It goes without saying that Glenn Kotche is up there with Stewart.

I was at Wilco concert in Braga, Portugal, it was my first time with them and I at the same time I was expecting some reaction from Tweedy, but he didn't say nothing.
They only played a encore for 45 minutes more. so, probably that was is way to say something...