Jeff Tweedy performed three tracks from his just-released new solo album and talked about his efforts to stop royalty theft during the Wilco singer’s virtual visit to CBS This Morning.
Performing from Chicago’s the Hideout venue for CBS This Morning’s weekly “Saturday Sessions,” Tweedy played three songs — “Bad Day Lately,” “Opaline” and “A Robin or a Wren” — from his latest LP Love Is the King, which he recorded during the Covid-19 quarantine.
Tweedy also sat down with CBS This Morning for an interview where Tweedy discussed his calls for reparations for black artists taken advantage of by the music industry; Tweedy previously announced that he will commit five percent of all future revenue he earns as a songwriter to a variety of organizations committed to racial justice, including Black Women’s Blueprint and Movement for Black Lives.
“Everybody in my profession—I truly believe—if they have any kind of connection to rock ‘n’ roll, any kind of connection to popular music in the last 100 years, you owe a debt to somebody that wasn’t paid, primarily people that were of African-American descent,” Tweedy said. “It’s still an uneven playing field, and I don’t think a lot of people want to believe that, maybe, but it is.”
Speaking to Rolling Stone in July after he first announced plans to donate a portion of his “writers’ share” to organizations supporting the black community, Tweedy also called on his fellow artists to take part.
“The thing that white artists really need to address is the same thing everybody needs to address in our society: greed,” Tweedy said. “Greed is at the heart of a lot of these fucking issues. It’s about allowing yourself to have somewhat of a revolution of your mind regarding what that actually does for you. To claim ownership of things like art and spirit and ideas and have that be tied to financial reward is at the root of the problem. It’s part of the reason that I wanted it to be a part of my statement that I have to address that, too.
