Best ROOTS ACT
Wilco
This mantle would have fit Wilco more easily during the band’s first seven years, when twang was “kang” and country and folk influences poked through all their songs. But that changed with the reinvention, or maybe resurrection, of Jeff Tweedy. He took a battle-axe to his personal demons during the making of 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch). And the conflict grew even more complex when he fired the group’s drummer and their record label, Warner Bros., entered the fray on the side of the demons. But Tweedy fought on, conquering his addiction to pills and finding paths to new sonic frontiers. He even discovered his own white knight in guitarist Nels Cline, who joined Wilco in 2004 to help Tweedy achieve the expansive pop vision he’d been pursuing. Wilco is still a roots band, but those roots twist into every corner of American musical history. Sure, they’re still following the footsteps of Woody Guthrie in some ways, but as they do so, the gnarled vibrations of the Velvet Underground rumble beneath their feet (2005’s Kicking Television: Live in Chicago). And when they indulge in the California dreamin’ of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, it’s without sacrificing their love of the Chicago school of arty noise (2007’s Sky Blue Sky). Today Wilco aren’t just a great roots band; they’re a great band — period.
— Ted Drozdowski
Runners-up
1. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant
2. Willie Nelson
3. Ryan Adams
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