It's All "Americana" Nowadays: The 6OGs on Jeff Tweedy, Wednesday, and Texas Headhunters

Embracing some sub-genres, while blending or running away from others.

OG Brian here, flying solo again. I’m about to be That Guy. Mainly because I am That Guy, at least in this case. Maybe in many cases. OK, several cases, not many. But definitely this one. I’m about to be the guy who says “I’ve been here before.” The guy who over the years has witnessed music and pop culture and the analysis and labeling thereof. The creation of genre mashups, both real and intended by the artist, and imagined and bestowed by the onlookers. Pop-punk. Rap-metal. Dance-punk. Electroclash. Chillwave. Whatever it was that The Polyphonic Spree were aiming for.

For me personally, one of the most influential genre mashups came about in the early ‘90s. No, not that one. Or that one either, although both were also huge for me. I’m talking about the emergence on the national scene of Uncle Tupelo, one of the early leaders of a genre that would be described as alt-country or cowpunk (both being descriptions that many bands combining punk, rock and country influences would shy away from).

While the idea of combining rock and country can be traced to ‘60s acts like The Byrds, The Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers and CCR (not to mention ‘70s Southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers), the modern concept of alt-country added in elements of punk gleaned from bands like Husker Du and The Minutemen. Uncle Tupelo became so synonymous with the genre that their first album – No Depression – became the name of a magazine devoted to what we now call “Americana” or “roots music” and a shorthand for the genre itself.

I’m bringing all this up because, well, as That Guy, I’m seeing history repeat itself (in many ways, even beyond the world of music – really, don’t get me started). 2025 has continued a resurgence in bands mixing various rock, folk and country sounds, and many of those artists (Fust, Florry, Ryan Davis, Friendship) we’ve already covered throughout the year, even if they would balk at being labeled alt-country.

Whether you approve of the name “alt-country” or consider it dated and embarrassing, we are focusing on that genre in this post. I’m discussing the latest solo project from Uncle Tupelo founder and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, a 30-song triple album (if you’ve been following the news, you can probably make a guess as to why I’ve got nothing but time to listen to that album – will it be worth mine?). Next I’m looking at the new album from Wednesday, a band that put shoegaze and country into a musical blender and produced some of the best music of the 21^st century. And just like Uncle Tupelo, Wednesday’s music has been saddled with a cringeworthy nickname for its mashup of genres – “countrygaze.” Ugh. At the end, in lieu of revisiting an old album, I switch up the format a bit by looking at a new collaboration by some Texas blues rock legends. It might not be alt-country, but it similarly fits into that nebulous “Americana” genre that gets thrown around.

Time to break out the power chords and the pedal steel, the fuzzbox and the fiddle, the guitar leaning on a Marshall stack. Enjoy!

New Album: Twilight Override by Jeff Tweedy. Has it really been that long? Has Jeff Tweedy really been in my life for 35 years?

Yup. Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, released in 1990. That’s 35 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making this weird or anything. We’re not buds or pals. Tweedy has no clue I exist and back in 1990 we didn’t even have the concept of parasocial relationships or stan armies for pop stars. But the idea that his music has been a constant presence in my life for 35 years? Wow.

OK, hold up. “Constant presence” might be overstating things. Words matter. Consistent presence might be more accurate. Because my connection to Tweedy’s music has gone through some peaks and valleys over a 35-year period. Of course the peaks must be high. The Uncle Tupelo albums, the first five Wilco albums – including personal faves Being There and Summerteeth and a stone classic in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (raise your hand if, like me, you remember the initial post-UT discourse being a slam dunk victory for Jay Farrar’s first Son Volt album, Trace), the Mermaid Avenue albums, the Loose Fur project, a print-the-legend movie in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and a ton of killer live shows.

From there, though, you can count me among those Wilco fans who started to back off a bit, at least where the albums are concerned (the live shows continued to be top notch). Sky Blue Sky is widely beloved but it fell a little flat for me, even if songs like “Impossible Germany” and “Hate it Here” play much better from the stage than from the living room speaker. The next several albums had their moments (songs like “Bull Black Nova,” “Art of Almost,” “Random Name Generator”) but were not fully captivating listens. The last two Wilco albums – Cruel Country and Cousin – were both very enjoyable listens and probably my favorites since A Ghost Is Born.

This is what I mean by a consistent presence. Aware of Wilco’s music – not to mention various Tweedy side projects, books, and sitcom guest appearances – even if not fully invested. It’s like that friend you haven’t seen for 10 years, but then you meet for a beer and dive right back in to where you were a decade ago. Same with Tweedy and Wilco. Unlike the ride-or-die fans, I might shift my attention for a bit, but then something pulls me back in.

That something is Tweedy’s latest solo album, Twilight Override. A 30-song triple album! It’s an album you really need to dive into, kind of an outlier in our current singles-focused streaming environment. But if any part of you is still Tweedy-curious (this is album is a gift to the Tweedy die-hards) you will find the experience rewarding.

Obviously a complete song-by-song breakdown would be daunting. Suffice to say, the album maintains a consistent quality throughout with some true gems that stand out. And there is enough variety that fans who prefer the different sides of Tweedy will have different favorite tracks.

Prefer the classic Wilco sound with some funky time signatures mixed in? Album opener “One Tiny Flower” is for you. Something on the more experimental side? “Stray Cats in Spain” is Wilco through a lo-fi filter, while “Parking Lot” is a spoken-word rumination on aging (a frequent theme with the album’s title and the fact that Tweedy is now 58-years-old) over acoustic guitar and droning effects. Mellow folk Tweedy? Songs like “Throwaway Lines,” “Feel Free” and “Ain’t it A Shame” are among his best in years. The latter, in particular, shows Tweedy grappling with some heavy thoughts for those of us on the other side of 50 (“Ain’t it a shame / When you wanna die on a beach in the sun? / Not a cloud in the sky / And that’s just not how dyin’s done”).

The tracks that stand out to me are also the ones that I can see slotting into a future Wilco setlist. “Forever Never Ends” is an ambling roots rocker in which Tweedy looks back at his youth (“Vomit in the frozen grass / Peppermint Schnapps / Well, here come the cops”). “Mirror” has a bass-heavy dream-pop sound, almost like an outtake from A Ghost is Born. “Out in the Dark” is a playful sing-a-long. The single “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” never mentions the eponymous lead Velvet, but this upbeat rocker about the joy and discomfort of experiencing live music (“I want you to blow smoke in my eyes / Smoke in my eyes / I wanna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake until my shoes untie / ‘Cause rock & roll ain’t ever gonna die”) evokes both Reed himself and his disciple Jonathan Richman, specifically The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner.” “Betrayed” is a jam worthy of Being There, and builds to a shambolic ending that makes it feel like a spiritual successor to “Dreamer in My Dreams.”

All of that is more than enough for a good LP. In fact, part of me is a little curious what the edited version of Twilight Override would have looked like. Would Tweedy have leaned heavily toward one musical style or another? This kind of a brain dump is tough to pull off – many double albums have come off as bloated and unnecessary, and artists that pull of the 30-or-more-track album (whether double or triple) are a scant few. Off the dome, I can only think of The Clash’s Sandinista! and The Beatles’ White Album as albums that hit that length with success.

I’m not ready to put Twilight Override in that rarefied air just yet. But this collection of songs and blend of styles works, and Tweedy clearly has a lot on his mind as he spends much of the album looking at his past and considering his future. Don’t be put off by the number of tracks. Tweedy still knows how to make a great album. And yes, he still loves rock & roll. (Brian)

Album from an upcoming/recent show: Bleeds by Wednesday. We here at 3A6OG HQ have been on the Wednesday train for a while now. It started with their 2021 album Twin Plagues, and then 2023’s Rat Saw God received near-universal acclaim (and was my favorite of that year) garnering the band comparisons to fellow Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers (possibly a lazy shortcut, possibly also prompted by the band name-checking DBT on “Bath County”).

These days, talking up Wednesday isn’t exactly the same as allowing someone a peek inside an exclusive club. It’s not a stretch to say that Wednesday are one of the defining indie rock bands of this decade. In fact, I can describe their rise in indie rock circles by laying out their progression in DC venues – I’ve seen them go from DC9, to the Black Cat, to the 9:30 Club, to now, this November, a two-night stand at the 9:30 with the first night sold out.

So the release of their latest album, Bleeds, naturally brought with it anticipation and questions. Will it match or even exceed the brilliance of Rat Saw God? Will the band’s dynamics change now that guitarist MJ Lenderman is still playing on the albums but not touring, due to the demands of his own growing solo career? And, uh, what about that other thing?

“Growth” is also a good word to describe Wednesday as a band. Bleeds is easily one of the best records of the year. Years down the road we can decide how it compares in quality to Twin Plagues or Rat Saw God. What Bleeds represents is progress, a band that knows who they are and what their core sound is – in this case, a blend of heavy shoegaze with country accents – but is molding it seemingly with an eye toward expanding their audience.

This was initially apparent on the album’s first single, “Elderberry Wine,” which leans more into the country elements of the North Carolina band’s music and seemed to present a softer, less abrasive side of the band, which was always present but not necessarily front and center. Wednesday even kicked off their album promotion cycle by performing “Elderberry Wine” on the yet-to-be-canceled Late Show with Stephen Colbert, introducing network TV audiences to the lyrics of lead singer Karly Hartzman (“As the tilt-a-whirl goes around / Roll one up, say it’s mostly CBD / Said I wanna have your baby / ‘Cause I freckle and you tan / I find comfort that angels don’t give a damn”).

As with their previous albums, Hartzman’s lyrics are full of detail as she tells stories about various characters while incorporating her own experiences growing up, and living, in North Carolina. And on several tracks, the subtext of Hartzman’s and Lenderman’s mutual breakup comes through.

“Townies” is a loud-quiet-loud story about going back home and confronting the kids who treated you badly (“Crawled into your life, begging on my knees / And I get it now / You were 16 and bored and drunk / And they’re just townies”). On the slightly funky and appropriately jammy “Phish Pepsi,” Hartzman sings that she “Came here for a party in middle school / Rode my bike home drunk off of a Four Loko.” But when she later adds, “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I had never seen” I just nod in agreement.

“Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),” a song about a high school athlete who died (“Scratch off ticket for the education lottery / Found him drowned in the creek, face was puffy / They hung his dirty jersey up in a trophy case”), leans into heavy shoegaze with extra details like “a pitbull puppy pissin’ off a balcony” and “mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail.” Same with “Pick Up That Knife,” which features some of the album’s fiercest guitar chords and lyrics that, while still great, veer dangerously close to Wednesday Mad-Libs (“Threw up in the pit at the Death Grips show / In a bottle spit dip and tell dirty jokes / You keep on feeding that Afrin addiction”). Or maybe that would be “Bitter Everyday,” which opens with punishing guitars and “Grocery store sushi / You’re chopping ketamine with a motel room key.”

The contemplative “The Way Love Goes” seems to focus on Hartzman’s relationship with Lenderman (“You have seen me angry / I know it’s not been easy / And I know it can’t always be, and that’s the way love goes”). The similarly quiet and bleak “Carolina Murder Suicide” tells the story of “a squirrel-killing boy who picked at splinters with a pocket knife” and wonders “if grief could break you in half.”

The volume gets turned up again on “Candy Breath” while “Wasp” is a 90-second freakout that, like the end of “Bull Believer,” finds Hartzman in a full-on shriek, which leads me to wonder how her voice will hold up on this tour.

Hartzman is a vivid lyricist and storyteller, and has a collection of musicians to help make these images come alive. As she sings about chopping ketamine, Death Grips pits, and pissin’ puppies, I see these images in my head. If Wednesday was only clever phrases, that might be enough. But the band has a knack for finding the right amount of distortion, the right amount of twang, and the right time to let all the noise fade away. Bleeds is an album that proves that Wednesday has grown from a group of regional musicians into one of the defining indie rock bands of the decade.

I could resort to a lazy rock critic shortcut and say that Rat Saw God and Bleeds are the heir apparent to Southern Rock Opera and Decoration Day, but when would rock critics ever resort to lazy shortcuts? (Brian)

Bonus album from an upcoming/recent show: Texas Headhunters (s/t). Think about Texas blues-rock and chances are the first band that pops into your head will be ZZ Top. They’re certainly not the first or the only band to be identified with that genre, but having songs like “Tush” or “Heard it on the X” or “El Diablo” played on ‘70s FM radio could provide any random suburbanite with the mental image of driving down a dusty West Texas highway. Updating their sound for the ‘80s and getting big on MTV definitely helped turn them into household names (as I’ve written previously, they are a personal favorite of my father-in-law). These days, you can often hear Billy Gibbons sing about “lookin’ for some tush” while shopping the aisles of CVS looking for some antacids. We all get older.

Despite Austin spending much of the early part of the 21^st century as one of the focal points of the music industry (or what used to be a music industry) Texas blues does not seem to have cultural relevance at the moment. Several bands brought mainstream attention to blues rock in the early-to-mid 2000s – most notably The White Stripes and The Black Keys, both of the Midwestern variety – but in the years since Jack White has diversified his sound with some very big hits and a couple of misses, while The Black Keys refashioned themselves into arena rockers, despite evidence to the contrary.

Into this blues-rock void step the Texas Headhunters, a trio of rock guitar vets – Ian Moore, Johnny Moeller, and Jesse Dayton. All three came up in the Austin music scene, and all three were mentored by Clifford Antone, founder of the legendary eponymous blues club and record label and champion of artists such as the Vaughn brothers (Stevie Ray and Jimmie) and Gary Clark, Jr. The three previously released their own solo work and have been in-demand session and touring guitarists for a wide variety of artists, including Lucinda Williams, The Supersuckers, Rob Zombie, Waylon Jennings, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Johnny Cash, and Danzig. But their self-titled debut marks the first time that Moore, Moeller and Dayton recorded and released original music together.

The ZZ Top comparisons are evident right from the jump, perhaps most notably on the track “Maggie Went Back to Mineola” (for my New York homies, the Mineola of the title is a small city in northeast Texas, not a town in Nassau County). The Gibbons-style guitars churn while telling a story about the aforementioned Maggie, who “was dancing her way through Dallas just trying to survive the scene” but ends up moving home after “all that hard living’s about to fold ya.” Similarly, “Independence Day” brings to mind Bad Company crossed with Texas blues, kind of like The Fabulous Thunderbirds doing “Rock & Roll Fantasy.”

“Seeing Around Corners” is a downbeat blues number that channels the spirit of Stevie Ray with lyrics to match (“Well I’ve had some premonitions darling / You’ve been stepping out on our sweet little family”). “Kathleen” covers similar lyrical terrain (“You swore to me that this would be the last time / You said I was your confidence man”) but is more of a straight rock ballad.

“Everybody Loves You (When You’re Down)” is full-on Texas blues boogie, a triple-guitar jam that appropriately name-checks a ’59 Les Paul and the moment when “you lost your guitar and you lost the band, went and gave your soul to that company man now.” Pure ‘70s rock subject matter. Speaking of which, “Gun Barrel Boogie” is a spiritual successor to ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” and a rocking addition to the canon of great road songs (“Doin’ that interstate boogie baby / Leavin’ Nacogdoches behind”). And then there’s the maybe tongue-in-cheek, maybe earnest “Pocket” which, similar to some of ZZ Top’s biggest hits, makes its intentions perfectly clear (“I got something in my pocket baby that still makes you rock and roll”).

This being a joint project of three guitar virtuosos, a couple of instrumentals were to be expected, if not required. The mostly instrumental “Headhunters Theme” and entirely instrumental “Burnin’ Daylight” show off the trio’s tremendous skills while not falling into the trap of being self-indulgent. They’re playing for everyone at the bar having a good time, not just the Guitar Center bros.

Sometimes an album will stand out because it’s inventive and creative and explores new territory, expanding on what we previously understood music could be. Other times, an album will be notable for standing in stark contrast to the trends of the day. A throwback. One that gets people over a certain age saying, “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” The self-titled debut from Texas Headhunters is a prime example of the latter.

The Texas Headhunters are bringing their sound to the Blues & Brews Festival in Lewes, Delaware on October 12. Can’t say I’ll be able to make it out there, even though as I alluded to above I kind of have the time right now (for those unfamiliar with mid-Atlantic geography, the trip from DC to the Eastern Shore is a minimum of 2.5 hours). That said, anyone planning to be in Lewes or Rehoboth or Bethany for the holiday weekend (I’ll leave out Dewey because I doubt many of our readers are college kids drunk on Natty Light) should check these guys out. Hearing some Texas blues outdoors near the Cape May-Lewes Ferry with craft beers is clearly better than hearing “Tush” in a CVS. (Brian)