Jeff Tweedy Covers ‘Louie Louie,’ Welcomes Scott McCaughey & Honors Michael Hurley In Portland

Over the past two nights, Jeff Tweedy settled in at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon for the latest stop of his Twilight Overdrive Tour. In keeping with tradition, each encore featured a special segment curated especially for the local audience.

On Tuesday (March 31), the Wilco frontman reunited with Portland fixture and longtime collaborator Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5 towards the end of the show. McCaughey led Tweedy and his solo band through “Dear Employer (The Reason I Quit).” The Minus Five originally released the song on Down With Wilco, a 2003 album produced by McCaughey and Tweedy that was recorded in collaboration with Wilco.

Jeff Tweedy then advised the crowd Scott would help them with “the quintessential Pacific Northwest tune of all-time” and noted “we won’t play this one again either” before lighting into “Louie Louie.” The legendary song was popularized by The Kingsmen, a rock band from Portland, who put out a version of “Louie Louie” in 1963 that reached the No. 2 spot on the Billboard charts.

Watch footage of Scott McCaughey fronting the Jeff Tweedy Band on “Louie Louie” below shared by Relix and YouTuber etorges:

Tweedy brought his solo band back to Revolution Hall last night for an April Fool’s Day concert, where he paid tribute to late Portland singer-songwriter Michael Hurley one year after the “Godfather of freak folk’s” death. After a purported cover of “Ffunny Ffrends,” a song by Portland-based ensemble Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tweedy and his group played a pair of Michael Hurley tunes: “The Portland Water” and “Are You Here For The Festival.”

Wednesday night wasn’t the first time Jeff Tweedy covered Michael Hurley on the Twilight Overdrive Tour, as he fit a performance of “Slurf Song” into the encore of his show in Burlington, Vermont on October 13, 2025.

Acclaimed filmmaker Lance Bangs was on hand at Revolution Hall. Watch his footage of Tweedy performing “The Portland Water” below: