Sad news: Jay Bennett, who played with Jeff Tweedy in the band known as Wilco, died over the weekend.
Although Wilco became a big rock band sometime between Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, for many fans their high watermark remains the epochal Mermaid Avenue project.
For this record, Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora asked Wilco and Billy Bragg to put music to some of the countless countless songs left behind by her late great father.
The best of these songs? By consensus, (as even Tweedy admitted, on film in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart)….California Stars.
The man who wrote the music? Jay Bennett.
The lyrics are great, by the way, Woody at his most romantic…here's the last few lines:
just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of California stars
And here's a performance of the same, featuring Bennett behind Tweedy, on electric lead guitar:
Kit Stolz 