Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy is the Belleville, Illinois-born musician whose voice and guitar have anchored Wilco, though his output stretches well beyond that band. He is also an author and record producer, and his career reads as a long negotiation between American roots music and restless experiment. He first took up the guitar at six, but began playing it seriously at twelve, and in 1981 he befriended Jay Farrar at Belleville Township High School West, a meeting that would shape everything after.

Their band The Plebes won a battle of the bands before changing its name, and it eventually became Uncle Tupelo, the group whose 1990 debut, No Depression, drew its title from a Carter Family song. That title later lent its name to an influential alternative country periodical. After Uncle Tupelo split in 1994, Tweedy formed Wilco, which won critical and commercial success with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, the latter taking a Grammy for Best Alternative Album in 2005. Across his career he has released 20 studio albums, including twelve with Wilco and Mermaid Avenue, his collaboration with Billy Bragg.