My next guest tonight is a Grammy Award winning rock star and best selling author who is the lead singer of Wilco.

Please welcome back to late Show your friend Jeff Tweedy.

Hello?

Jeff Tweedy.

Hello.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Glad to be here.

You look like you're ready to mix an album right now.

That's right.

I'm where I'm in my natural habitat.

I guess.

Actually, a sound studio is actually fairly safe from co vid cause you got the sealed doors and everything.

It's kind of like an airlock.

We're Yeah.

We're prepared for quarantine.

A total times at all times.

Yeah.

Now, in March, while quarantine, your family started something called the Tweety Show.

Um uh, A couple of things.

I'll get the first question in just a moment.

But first this This was my first show in quarantine.

Right there.

There's me in a bathtub.

Here's your first show in quarantine in a bathtub.

First of all, great minds think alike.

E didn't know you could wear a suit.

I would I would have.

I would have worn it only once.

You can only wear a suit once then you have to give it away.

I love that you're actually you're selling some tickets with sex right here.

Yeah, that's good.

And actually, it Ah, yeah, Leave them.

Wanting less is my motto.

Well, what is the Tweety show for the uninitiated you've done, you've done How, Maney?

Now 110 110.

Okay, Yeah.

Somebody wants to tune in.

What are they going to get?

Well, it's on my wife's instagram stuff in our house.

Okay, it's ah, And Wilco was on tour.

When everything got locked down and the tour got canceled, we came home.

Uh, Susie has a really good relationship with the fans online and stuff.

And she was telling me how how, how, how much people are already missing that connection and so sad about this shows that they were going to go to and s.

So she came over this idea of, like, maybe we could just, you know, a lot of them follow her on her instagram.

So maybe we could just reach, reach out to them a little bit and have a little live instagram show.

And I said, Okay, well, we can try it, and then she got so depressed one day that she wouldn't get out of bed, you know, and And we were supposed to start this show, and and I just said, You know what?

I'm going to take a bath If you want to do this show, that's where I'll be on it.

Got her, cheered her up a little bit, which made me feel good.

And she got out of bed and started filming me in the tub.

And before you knew it, there were a couple 100 people there already, and and it felt it felt really, uh um so that it was felt miraculous to be able to have that connection with that many people so immediately, it felt it felt right really fast that it was, You know, it's a nice thing to do to have some routine and normalcy and to just, you know, maintain this connection.

That was really obvious.

I think early on, even that it wasn't wasn't gonna be something that we have in our lives for a long time.

Well, you said 201 110 shows you've done so far.

But you you also recently performed at a drive in concert on September 18th.

How did it feel to play somewhere other than your couch or your tub for the first time since March?

Oh, man.

Well, we were really, really looking forward to it.

It was, You know, I knew it was gonna be weird.

I'm I'm really prepared for weird.

Uh, but then Ruth Bader Ginsburg died that night about an hour when we were supposed to go on stage.

And, you know, it was a beautiful night.

It was a little cold, but, uh, you know, it was like a It just felt almost wrong to go.

They'll play, And, uh, we were looking forward to it so much.

I was so happy.

And then it was like all of a sudden, everybody's crying and it was It was a It was a hard moment.

And, uh, my kids were gonna you know, it was like playing the show with my kids also.

So I was a dad in this moment of crisis and a person about to play music for people, and, um uh, I just I don't know, I'm really happy that I've had a lot of time in front of audiences and a lot of experiences in my life where I didn't feel like getting up and playing music cause I felt terrible for whatever reason, because I was able to tell the kids that, um, if you get up, you can get through the first couple of songs.

Uh, music will heal you.

You know, this is really, really sad.

It's really tragic.

It's not gonna make that go away.

But it's going to make you realize that you can transcend this.

And, um, you know, we talked about how brave Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in her life and how she had faced so much.

Uh, I don't know, in terms of her health, in terms of being the you know what the A.

Nikon of, ah, political ideology that was at odds with a large portion of our culture or whatever.

Whatever you know, she had gone through.

I felt like we should be able to summon enough courage to go place, Um, some folk songs and it did, and I'll never forget it, because it was it was really amazing how it did work.

It did.

Music is, uh it is just so so healing and and it was being reminded of that all over again.

That recently has been been incredibly healing for me, too, because you have so many opportunities to, like be entertained in so many different ways today.

And especially if you get obsessed with the news like Ideo.

Sometimes I forget what music has has waiting for you if you just give it the time and that it's and it's and it's, um, it's in define a ble, but on the other side of it, you're better, right?

Well, I mean, I have an anxiety disorder, and and in my life, I've dealt with a lot of, um, moments pre going on stage where I didn't feel like I was.

You know, I belong there.

I I don't know.

I'm not gonna be able to do this.

How can I possibly do this?

So I had that repeatedly, uh, confirmed reconfirmed over and over again to me in my life that I could get up If I could get myself to this stage, it's gonna be pretty amazing, uh, to me within a few minutes, within songs that I'm gonna feel like myself again and it's all it always works it z pretty pretty, Uh, miraculously, I think it's the only word I can come up with it for.

Well, you've managed to produce another album in covert quarantine.

It's called Love Is the King.

It's your third solo album.

How did you start working on it?

In quarantine?

What was your inspiration?

Um, well, I think my normal way of coping is to write music and write and be, you know, try and do something creative.

But I think when you know the weight of this was all hitting me at the beginning of the pandemic, I really wanted to write country songs.

I wanted to write country, uh, country songs because it's like comfort, comfort food.

To me, folk music country music is, I guess, at the core of how I think about music.

And it just felt, uh, I don't know, very, very comforting to me.

And then I started sharing them with my friends Nick Offerman and George Saunders.

And so initially group of guys, Well, we have a We have a group text that I was just, uh we had we had talked about how King Lear was written when Shakespeare was in quarantine.

That's that's what I heard.

I don't know if it's true.

And so I told them I was gonna write a country album called King Lear, and I started writing a song a day and sharing it with them.

And, um, then when everything kind of settled down enough for us to figure out whether or not we could go to the studio safely or not, my kids and I started coming and recording the songs.

I had been writing one a day and but it was really just kind of, you know, just trying to entertain George and and Nick initially, I really, you know, was entertaining myself, but also just wanted to sharing one of wanting to share it with someone.

I understand that George Saunders is featured on one song, A Robin and Ren.

What?

What did George contribute?

Hey, contributed.

Sometimes I would send a song before I had all the lyrics finished.

And so I sent him that song.

He asked what the lyrics were, and I had a couple of lines that I didn't have.

So I always put question marks and then he would send it back with those lines filled in, and and, uh, I'm gonna try that.

I'm gonna send him some.

I'm gonna send him some setups with no punch lines and see what I could get.

See, I Yeah, Well, yeah.

You'll be surprised.

Let's do that.

George could write any of my monologue.

You also have the new Yeah.

No, he wrote back.

Yeah.

Hey, would send me songs, too, And I wrote some, wrote some of his songs.

So when his record comes out, uh, there'll be some copyright issues.

Is it true that you met Georgia at the last show of the Colbert Report?

Yeah, I was in a room with you.

It's like there were a million people there, as you remember, And they put me in a room with, uh, Christian Amanpour and a bunch of really cool people.

It was a weird cluster.

It would be like Henry Kissinger and Big Bird and Sam Jackson or somebody.

Katie Couric came in and was getting all intense with everybody making us learn this song that we were going to sing together, and I kind of I kind of snuck out toe to see if I could meet George Saunders because he was I knew he was in the room.

Next doors and he was sneaking out to meet me, which was really, really sweet.

It's what I think that's what was happening.

And he actually said to me, Okay, well, then we're gonna have to be pals.

Oh, that's great.

You also have, Ah, new book here.

A lot of product putting out a lot, pumping out a lot of product from Tweety Inc How to write one song.

Congratulations.

It's the New York Times bestseller.

But you've written, released over 300 songs.

Why just one song?

What's the What's the Secret?

Why just one, uh, mhm.

Well, my, my my go to joke is that I want everybody to by the by the book each time they want to write a song.

But e, I think that, I think because I've written so many songs, um, I wanted a way to organize my thoughts about it, and I came up with that title, a za way to kind of remind myself what it is that I actually dio.

I don't write songs.

I write, I write a song and then I write another song, and, um, I thought that would be really helpful to people to kind of be reminded that that Z that's what's really happening.

You're never writing songs.

You, uh you You take it as it comes and you forget how to do it.

And then you have to teach yourself again in the book.

You say that you get inspiration for your lyrics in your song, writing from anything?

Yeah, e mean almost anything.

Yeah, even even, like, even like one of your monologues.

I heard this.

I heard that there was something I said in the monologue that inspired you to write a song or even part of a song.

I think we have the clip of the opening of that monologue.

Jim, I am your host, Stephen Colbert, and we are live.

Where is the thing is it's a live anywhere live following the final presidential debate of 2020 tonight was like getting our last wisdom tooth taking out.

Yes, it hurt.

And yes, we can still taste the blood in our mouths.

This is also the last chance for Trump to be seen by millions of eyeballs for free.

And that's important because he's hurting for cash.

And so and then that inspired you to write a song.

Yeah, I just I thought it would be good to illustrate one of the exercises in the book.

And so this is just from a little little section of your your monologue.

Okay, I'm your host.

Taste the blood.

Tonight's tooth was the last.

It's for the best.

Hope is free, But to me it seems to be not as free when you heard in full cash hurting full cash when you're full cash e don't know something like that.

It was e didn't get very far.

I smell a hit.

E smell ahead it Zettel!

All right.

Um Well, Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

The book, as I said, is how to write one song.

Theobald, um is love is the king and the man is Jeff Tweedy.

Thanks, Jeff.