Portrait Of A Drummer: A Conversation With Glenn Kotche Of Wilco

The grey skies blanketed Chicago on a Wednesday morning, the New Year just a little over a week old. For Glenn Kotche, it's merely another day filled with various errands barking at his brain and a cup of coffee to provide a kick start. "You’re going to edit this down, right?" asks the Wilco drummer with a laugh. "I can be a little long winded after I get some coffee." It's a considerate warning minutes into the conversation.

Kotche is relaxed on a couch inside a neighborhood cafe on the north side of the city. Occasionally a customer will enter for a drink to go and the train track guards will sound off every so often with the arrival of a CTA Brown Line train. Other than the young woman working behind the counter in the cafe, Kotche and I viturally have the whole place to ourselves. The day marks three years since he and I sat down for an interview, hours before Jeff Tweedy took the stage for the first of three nights at the Vic Theatre; it also marks Kotche's sixth year with Wilco.

No one, from the band to its fans, could have imagined how the past six years would have turned out. The band that was once given the cold shoulder by their record label became a Grammy award-winning band behind their 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. The album that almost didn't see the light of day in 2001, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was released in 2002 and went on to become Wilco's first gold album of their career. But the road towards the rewards was, at best, rocky. Original members Ken Coomer and Jay Bennett were voted out of the band. At the start of 2004, Leroy Bach departed on good terms with Wilco to pursue other interests. Although disappointed with Bach's decision, Kotche maintains he has nothing but respect for his former band mate. "I still think the world of him. It was great playing music with him. He just felt he was done; he needed to try some new things," says Kotche. "There was no animosity, no weirdness. It’s better he did that instead of staying around for a paycheck and be a disgruntled band member. I think he’s a tremendous musician, and I really respect him, personally. I love his personality and the way he goes about things. I miss that."

Three months after Bach's exit, Tweedy entered a Chicago rehab center to seek treatment for a condition known as dual diagnosis, brought on by years of self-medicating for migraines and panic attacks. Having stepped into Wilco at a tumultuous time in their career, Kotche can sympathize how newest members Pat Sansone, Stirratt's partner in Autumn Defense, and Nels Cline must have felt. "For Pat and Nels, it must have been a little unnerving for them to come to Chicago to rehearse and then Jeff went in," says Kotche. "But they were both lifetime musicians who have seen it and done it all; they played big gigs, they’ve done the horrible van tours. Most musicians with their experience can be pretty resilient. So, I think they just took it in stride. They were just happy to be a part of it and hoped for the best. Right when Jeff went in we still rehearsed without him. It was great. Every one of those guys came to the table completely prepared. We had great rehearsals without Jeff, and I think it also sent a good message to Jeff not to worry."

With Bach gone, Kotche and John Stirratt were the seasoned and now senior members of the band. The thought to try and hold the band together in Tweedy's absence was the last thing on their list of concerns. "I don’t think it was tense at all," recalls Kotche. "For John and myself, it was more of a relief to not even think, 'What if Jeff comes out of this (rehab) and doesn’t want to come back?' That’s besides the fact. Who cares? He’s getting better. That’s what we cared about at that point, as his friends. Bands are bands in the big scheme of things. You can always start a new band, but you can’t get a life back."

Life since then as been calm for Wilco. Tweedy is in better health and the band concluded their second session of work in December for a new album. Kicking Television - Live In Chicago, a double album of performances at the Vic Theatre last May, was released in November and as been hailed as "the 21st century's first truly great live rock album" (Austin American Statesman). Kotche takes it all one day at a time.

He's a soft-spoken man and will apologize often if his train of thought isn't coming out the way he would like. A native of Roselle, Illinois, Kotche is an accomplished musician, schooled at the University of Kentucky, who is as much a thinker as he is a rocker behind the drums. He remains humble about the success amassed since joining Wilco, but underneath that meek casualness is a little voice saying, "Cool!" I remember talking to Kotche after the band's final night at the Auditorium Theatre in 2003 about Wilco joining R.E.M. the previous week at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. Wilco served as an opening act during the fall leg of R.E.M.'s tour. The grand finale was both bands performing "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". I asked what it was like to play with R.E.M. He gave this sly smile and said, "R.E.M. played with us!"

Kotche doesn't try to hide the excitement behind a similar story. This time the story involves The Rolling Stones. At the close of the 2004-2005 tour behind A Ghost Is Born, Wilco was chosen to open for the Stones in Atlanta. "We were in the audience watching the show, and they played two of the songs that my high school band would perform," proudly says Kotche. "During my freshmen of high school we knew fives songs at that point, two of them by The Rolling Stones (“Honky Tonk Women” and “Get Off My Cloud”). They played both of those songs back to back. I was just looking at my wife, Miiri, and was on the verge of tears saying, 'This is so great!'" But Kotche remains level-headed. "To be perfectly honest, I try not to let myself gloat about that stuff," admits Kotche. "It is pretty cool, and it’s stuff that I always had hoped would happen even though I never expected it."

"I’m the same dude I was five years ago," says Kotche.

Wilco plan to use much of the year to work on the follow-up to A Ghost Is Born. Sorry, Wilco fans, keep your fingers crossed for a new album in 2007. Already, the first sessions have produced some interesting new labels such as "swamp rockers" and "butt rockers", which is humorous coming from a band that has had its share of labels. It's only rock and roll, or, as Kotche puts it, "good, old funky rock tunes." After a holiday break, the band and its various members will begin to hit the road again. Beginning this weekend, Jeff Tweedy and Kotche will tour together along the West Coast with appearances by Nels Cline; John Stirratt and Pat Sansone will take Autumn Defense out for a drive; a spring tour for Wilco is currently unfolding. "The audience can tell immediately if we’re going through the motions," says Kotche about Wilco in concert. "Sometimes it gets a little challenging as far as how to keep presenting the material in a fresh way, not go through the motions, not try and rely on stuff we’ve done. I don’t think that sits well with any of us." The stage is where Wilco has made its name as a fantastic live act, and on the stage is where Wilco has been documented the most. It's no surprise that Wilco is a highly bootlegged band, which it encourages. Somewhere on the internet you will find a community of fans that serve as archivist of the band's life in concert. Kicking Television - Live In Chicago captures Wilco during a four night run at the Vic Theatre.

The live album project was in conjunction with filming for a concert DVD, directed by Sam Jones, the same director of the Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (2002). Unfortunately for all parties involved, the concert DVD fell through the cracks and was rejected by the band. "I’m sure there’s Wilco fans that would have appreciated it," says Kotche, "and I’m sure it will come out at some point in some form for people to see. I think none of us wanted to watch this, so, why should we put it out just to put it out? We’d rather take the hit and lose the money than put something out that we don’t want to watch or listen to." It appears the only shining light to the failed project was filming at Tweedy's cabin, along the Michigan/Indiana border, which Kotche describes as the "best performances" of a selection of songs. "I hope that comes out," says Kotche. "I think it should come out on our site at some point because I really liked those performances."

There are also mixed feelings within the band regarding the double live album. Positive reviews have showered the album, saying it presents the band in its finest form. The idea to record a live album has often floated around in the band." According to John Stirratt, the lone member who has been with Jeff Tweedy since Uncle Tupelo, "We had talked about it over the years quite a bit. This was the first time we were satisfied with a lineup, from top to bottom, that we wouldn’t mind documenting in a major way." But then there's another side to things.

"Out of a whole three-month period of touring, they were a down point for us," confesses Kotche. "We were really riding high; things were going great. Because of the cameras, it was a different thing than we were used to; I was really sick that whole time. They weren’t our best shows. I would have taken anything in the previous two months or the month after that over those nights." Kotche had the task of picking the best of those four nights. Technical issues hampered the first night and completely plauged the fourth night, forcing Tweedy to improvise the show with acoustic performances and a stage dive. The songs that did make the final cut were compiled from the second and third nights.

Stirratt would have to agree with Kotche's assessment of the band's performance and have a laugh over the fact that Wilco got away with one. "It’s hilarious. I’m glad it’s been received really well, but that is a C grade show," says Stirratt. "It was interesting to be kind of snakebitten because the two years of touring were so effortless."

Performance aside, Kotche stands by the album as an honest representation of Wilco and boldly defends its audio quality against some of the great live albums of rock music's past. "I’m very happy with it. It’s probably one of the only live records, period, where there’s not one overdub," says Kotche. "The Last Waltz [by The Band] is notorious for all the overdubs."

In March, Kotche will release his third solo album, Mobile. The album takes a more compositional approach than its experimental predecessors, Introducing Glenn Kotche (2002) and Next (2002). "It was basically written in hotel rooms, on the road, in the tour bus with Wilco, written down on paper and then flushed out in the studio," says Kotche about the development of Mobile. By no means is this an everyday rock drummer making a drum album drenched in thirty-five minute drum solos. What attracted Tweedy to Kotche's skills as a musician can be heard on any of Kotche's solo work, be it solo or with his side group, a duo called On Fillmore. Kotche seeks to go past the concept of a drummer as just someone who holds down the beat. His imagination and thrist for sounds allows him to paint pictures much in the same way Tweedy's lyrics open new worlds.

One piece in particular, "The Monkey Chant," gathers its inspiration from the ketjak, a Balinese form of performance art, also known as the Ramayana, which tells the tale of good versus evil. Kotche came across this music through David Lewiston's Nonesuch Explorer Series. The series, issused between 1967 and 1984, would be considered by today's standards as a collection of "world" music. It was even chosen by NASA to be included in a 1977 Voyager mission, preserving the album for an expected billion years. Kotche researched as much material he could get his hands on about the Ramayana. "The rhythms are fascinating even though it’s all vocal," says Kotche. "I was immediately thinking in my head that I had to try it on my drum set and see if something comes up."Kotche goes on to chart out the evolution of his interpretation. "I had this prepared snare drum and I assigned specific sounds on the snare drum to represent the main characters. There’s four or five main characters, and each one is represented by a sound on that snare. I’m playing the parts and telling the story through the interactions of the different sounds on the drum set. Instead of making up a cool groove, I like having something to work off of that gives it a deeper meaning for me."

The album put Kotche to the test but the final result is something he is proud of. The album may not be something the average Wilco fan will clamor to get a hold of, but that doesn't bother Kotche one bit. "It’s still pretty eclectic, stylistically, but not conceptually," says Kotche. "It’s still rooted in rhythmic explorations, which, as a drummer, is what I use composition for, and that’s what I use solo records for, to explore rhythm outside of what I’m able to do on a drum set. At the end of the day, it has to be something I'll be happy to put on in ten years."

Never looking back and always looking forward Glenn Kotche keeps his eyes toward what lies over each horizon. If meeting The Rolling Stones before walking onto their very stage hasn't led this former high school drum teacher and self-proclaimed drum dork into believing he's been given the license to act out the part of a stereotypical rock star, then Kotche isn't doing a bad job of keeping the picture in focus. It's all just one day and one beat at a time.

Live Photo By: Chris Castaneda (Taken At Otto's, 4/21/2003)