Amazing how liberating unnecessary creative situations can be for artists. Listening to the eponymous release, I realized the tremendous mutual influence of O’Rourke, Tweedy, AND Kotche around the turn of the millennium.

Per your question about Coomer, I think it was more of an issue of style. Ken has a distinct influence over the projects he works with. I have met him, read about his role in wilco, and it is clear that he played a very unifying personal role in the band. He has a very positive and inspiring personality.

His departure was likely a purely professional matter. He comes from a grassroots rock n’ roll background. He is more of an ‘expressive” player. His drum parts tend to morph, emphasize accents and stand out. He also has a tendency to play “around” the beat, meaning that he will land the snare hit slightly before or after where a metronome would dictate to give the song tension or “feel.” He likely didn’t want to be told to just play like a drum machine.

Kotche on the other hand comes from an academic background. He spent years studying percussion and theory at university. His playing style tends range from perfect “metronomic’ almost drum machine-like parts (Kamera, Jesus, etc) that exist almost transparently in the overall song, to vastly complex parts involving a variety of percussion instruments ( see Loose Fur).

Enjoying the blog!

On a sidenote I’ve watched I am trying to break your heart and yea its a great movie, although I do wish I had the soundtrack, or all the songs sam jones has ever filming that movie. I was reading a pitchfork interview with him (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/31424-interview-sam-jones-wilco-documentarian) and at one point he mentions all of the songs that he has that they didn’t put on the album and how he has around 3 versions of each song, I guess thats what happens when you follow wilco around for a year with cameras.

Well if I keep typing I’m not sure how much I’m gonna write so I’ll stop now and say this christmas list:
Item 1:Loose fur