Working With Wilco :: Russ Long
Here’s a little gold nugget about the making of Wilco’s famed album, Summerteeth.
I worked with John, the bass player from Wilco, on some of that swag stuff too. And I worked with Jay Bennett, who's since passed away, who was the guitar player or multi instrumentalist for Wilco and got to know all of them fairly well. Then Wilco was out with Sheryl Crow opening up for her and they decided that they were going to make their next record. Instead of blocking out six weeks, they were gonna make their next record while on the road with her and anytime they had a couple of days off, they were gonna rent a local studio or whatever and record.
And they had a few days off in Nashville and Ken suggested to the band, “hey my friend Russ has a recording studio, the White House, that would be a great place for us to record.” A couple of guys already knew me and were like, “oh yeah that'd be great.” So anyway it happened and that was it, they had a few days off, we recorded at the White House, and I was a fan of the band already. I mean I knew Ken but I was a fan of Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, all those... I mean that's my favorite kind of music.
So I was really excited about him being there, and I remember, we had strict no smoking policy in the studio... and I remember, somehow, there's all of a sudden four guys smoking inside this studio. And I remember calling up Steve, because Steve was like “if anybody smokes in here you'll smell it for six months. We cannot let anybody smoke!” and I remember calling up Steve and going, “I'm gonna break the smoking rule for today just so you know. I got Wilco here.” And we did several songs, but they did 30 songs or something over the period of the tour. So I'm just like, “oh gee please one of these songs or some of these songs or whatever make it.” Parts of a couple of them and one full song is what ended up being on there but I was just pretty dang excited that something made the record.