Official Audio: Wilco Performs At 2017 Newport Folk Festival

Wilco headlined the second day of the 2017 Newport Folk Festival, capping their performance by reuniting with Billy Bragg to perform a song from their collaborative 1998 album Mermaid Avenue. NPR Music has posted official audio of the complete set Wilco played on July 29.

After opening with “Random Name Generator off last year’s Schmilco, frontman Jeff Tweedy shepherded the band through a career-spanning set beginning with “Via Chicago” off Summerteeth. The set included the showcase for guitarist Nel Cline, “Impossible Germany” off Sky Blue Sky, as well as “One By One” which also appeared on 1998’s Mermaid Avenue that Bragg and Wilco recorded using posthumously discovered Woody Guthrie lyrics.

The end of Wilco’s set saw the band work through “Christ For President,” another Mermaid Avenue track, before welcoming their once estranged cohort Bragg, who had just finished his own set, to sit-in. Bragg and Wilco treated the Newport crowd to one more Mermaid Avenue cut, “California Stars,” which NPR Music’s Bob Boilen posted on Instagram was an “impromptu unrehearsed” collaboration:

The fact that Billy Bragg was singing on another stage around the time Wilco was taking another stage at #newportfolkfestival didn’t go unnoticed. It had been too long. But Wilco and Billy Bragg sang Woody Guthrie’s lyrics to their composition and we were all treated to a wonderful impromptu unrehearsed version of ‘California Stars’. Wow.

Stream Wilco’s set at the 2017 Newport Folk Festival via NPR Music below: