This year's Forecastle Festival was a success despite extreme weather. Due to heavy rains leading up to the festival, the rising Ohio River threatened the structure of stages close to the water. A windstorm on Friday shut down headliner Sam Smith's performance early and caused a two-hour delay on Saturday. Throughout the weekend, however, the extreme heat was the talk of most festivalgoers. Thankfully, the crew hosting the event was phenomenal.

So many years after the disbandment of Grateful Dead that in turn relocated tens of thousands of devoted tour followers to various other acts and bigger life purposes, folks still crave that familiar feeling that kept them on tour. It didn’t only come from the music that Garcia and the gang connected with so many people through, but the sense of community and thriving weirdness that expanded continuously over decades of different intersections.

Jeff Tweedy, best known as the founder of the pioneering Chicago rock band Wilco, will release a new album Sept. 16 through his own dBpm Records. The album, Sukierae (sue-key-ray), is not quite a solo effort.

When Wilco’s newest album, The Whole Love, came out last year, guitarist and lead singer Jeff Tweedy explained the rationale for making Art of Almost the first track.

“I can’t rock without a chandelier…that’s just where I am in life,” joked Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy, commenting on the décor (namely the purple glowing chandeliers) in the Fillmore Auditorium on Thursday night.

Throughout Wilco’s two decades on the scene, the vacillating brain chemistry of frontman Jeff Tweedy has unfailingly fueled the band’s highflying creative trajectory.  Backed by the always vicious electric guitar chops of studio legend Nels Cline, the Chicago band’s 8^th studio LP The Whole Love -self-released on Wilco’s nascent dBpm Records- presents Tweedy at a critical juncture. 

A semi-circle of six acoustic guitars with a microphone in the center shone down on by natural, uncolored stage lights faced the crowd. Show-goers enthusiastically bantered in anticipation and sipped their drinks.