Wilco fans will have a chance to meet their beloved artist live at this year’s upcoming Solid Sound Festival this June. Indie rock band Wilco is hosting a contest were fans can earn a chance to perform karaoke with Wilco as their backing band.
“Ever wish karaoke bars had more Wilco? Do they have any? I don’t really know. But I do know that they don’t have enough songs about existential dread and self-loathing,” Jeff Tweedy stated in a press release. “Sound fun? Please join us onstage so we can get Solid Sound 2019 started with some outsourced belters from the Wilco songbook. Let’s do this!”
Fans need to share a video of themselves performing the song they’d like to sing at Solid Sound on Instagram or YouTube with the hashtag #WilcoKaraoke to enter the contest. Winners will be announced on June 10th, where they will be greeted with two 3-day passes to Solid Sound, a one-song performance onstage with Wilco as their backing band, a meet-and-greet and rehearsal with the band, and an official Solid Sound artist gift bag.
These performances will take place on the first day of the music festival on June 28 at the Mass Moca, in North Adams MA. Wilco will perform at the festival alongside Courtney Barnett and Tortoise from June 28 to June 30.
Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy is also a prolific solo artist, which explained his various hiatuses from the band in recent years. He also explained that the band’s drummer Glenn Kotche also needed extended time of from the band creating this hiatus.
“[Wilco] was kind of on an extended break, for one. Glenn’s wife got a Fulbright scholarship, and he took a good chunk of the next couple of years to live in Finland,” Tweedy elaborated in an interview with Consequence of Sound regarding his solo music career. “When I’m off the road, or when Wilco’s not as active, I generally come to the studio every day. When I come to the studio every day, I tend to accumulate a lot more material that I don’t know what to do with.”
Photo Credit: Alyssa Fried