Nicki Minaj, Glen Campbell, Wilco among L.A.'s top summer concerts

Southern California’s summer pop music calendar includes Hard Summer, Make Music Pasadena and Rock the Bells festivals.

Nicki Minaj. Skrillex. Glen Campbell’s goodbye tour. Wilco. Some big names in pop are coming to Southern California this summer, promising a decent warm-weather season and the extension of a concert year that already has promoters singing.

Last month, promotion giant Live Nation, which also operates Ticketmaster, reported a 6% increase in ticket sales for the first quarter of 2012 compared with the same period last year -- no doubt due to a spring that has seen Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, the Beach Boys and Roger Waters touring; the Beverly Hills-based company also just promoted three sold-out Coldplay shows at the Hollywood Bowl. With artists such as Justin Bieber and Madonna not making it out West until the fall, the year’s blockbuster tours would seem to conveniently miss L.A.’s summer months.

But music fans still have a lot to celebrate this summer.

The annual downtown dance event known as Hard Summer has expanded from one day to two, and the yet-to-be-announced rock-centric festival known as FYF, also downtown and produced by the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival promoter Goldenvoice, has also stretched from one to two days over Labor Day. A festival spokeswoman says to expect the lineup to be revealed by the end of this month. What’s more, the Dave Matthews Band, one of the concert industry’s biggest stars, will swing through Southern California in September.

Gary Bongiovani, editor of concert-tracking publication Pollstar, also notes that tours are maximizing value: “We’re seeing good solid three-act shows these days. One way to stand out of the fog is to combine and offer fans real value. We see Enrique Iglesias, Jennifer Lopez, Wisin Y Yandel. That’s a great tri-bill. In previous years, we may not have seen that combination of talent.”

Here’s a look at just a few of the big-name acts and can’t-miss shows coming to the L.A. this summer.

'The Sun Came Out' video shows Neil Finn, Eddie Vedder and more

Fans of the creative minds behind Radiohead, Pearl Jam, the Smiths, Wilco, Crowded House and Split Enz can take a behind-the-scenes look at how they work in a new video coming April 10: "The Sun Came Out: The Making of the Album '7 Worlds Collide.'"

The project explores the creation of 2009's follow-up to the 2001 benefit album "7 Worlds Collide," which former Split Enz and Crowded House singer and songwriter Neil Finn assembled to raise money for Oxfam, the international charity whose mission is to alleviate poverty and injustice.

A little more than a decade ago, Finn invited Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Radiohead's Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien, Johnny Marr of the Smiths, singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Lisa Germano, as well as his brother and Split Enz/Crowded House band mate Tim Finn and others to New Zealand for a multi-artist concert and album.

In 2009, he brought most of that group back together, with extra help from Jeff Tweedy and other members of Wilco, KT Tunstall and other friends to record a second album and play three more shows from which proceeds were donated to Oxfam.

During their three weeks days together, 20 musicians produced 10 new songs collectively for "The Sun Came Out." Here's the trailer:

Popeye resurrected: Wilco gets animated for 'Dawned on Me'

When Wilco's ace guitarist Nels Cline told The Times recently that his band leader, Jeff Tweedy, was a "collage artist," one who would resurrect "treasured items," Cline was talking pop structures. Yet he apparently could have been discussing an appreciation for vintage cartoons. In what's a rare proper music video from Wilco, which is in the midst of a three-night stand in Los Angeles this week, the band's "Dawned on Me" has been re-fashioned as a tale of love and jealously centered on Popeye the Sailor Man and his familiar cast of characters. 

The cartoon, a collaboration between Wilco's label dBpm Records and Blow Me Down! King Features, was directed by designer-branding guru Darren Romanelli. Said to be the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon since 1987, the clip sees the popular spinach-eating sailor trying to distract the love of his life, Olive Oyl, from failling for Wilco's Tweedy. The girl, of course, chooses the musician (sigh).

"Dawned on Me" is one of the more lighthearted songs on Wilco's new album, "The Whole Love," although lyrically it has a slightly dark undercurrent in its midsection. Amid brightly colored guitar and keyboard textures, what at first appears to be a bouncy number about calling a loved one is revealed to be something a little more sinister when it's made clear that the couple are no longer together. 

But never mind all of that. There's a cartoon to watch:

Drum lesson: Wilco's Glenn Kotche on found sounds

Drum aficionados, this is a good month to be in Los Angeles. This Saturday, Guitar Center will stage its annual "Drum Off" finals at Club Nokia, with a host of session-aces and band members performing mini rhythmic flights of fancy.

Some heavy hitters will be on hand as judges, including Peter Criss from Kiss and the Mars Volta's Dave Elitch, while drummers including Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), Mike Portnoy (Avenged Sevenfold), Dennis Chambers (Santana), Brooks Wackerman (Bad Religion) and Jabo Starks (James Brown) are scheduled to play short sets with other musicians. 

But drum geeks have another reason to rejoice: Wilco's string of shows in Los Angeles. The Chicago band plays the Palladium Jan. 24, the Wiltern Jan 25 and the Los Angeles Theatre Jan. 27, which means their stellar drummer Glenn Kotche will be there too.  The former drum teacher -- himself once a classical percussion student at the University of Kentucky -- has a wide-open view of the instrument. "When I am playing solo, there’s a mission. I am out to prove that this can be music," he said.

With so much drum expertise on the horizon, Pop & Hiss thought it a fine time to dedicate a post to the craft-- or at least to Kotche and his wildly inventive approach to the instrument. It follows yesterday's talk with Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy.

In Kotche's solo atmospheric work with On Fillmore, the drum set becomes an orchestra, bits and pieces of which have been explored throughout Kotche's decade-plus with Wilco, be it the aggressive, double-timed rock of "Art of Almost," the spacious, redemptive groove of "i Am Trying to Break Your Heart," or the found sounds, shuffling toys and back massagers that permeate parts of new album "The Whole Love." 

Jeff Tweedy chats ahead of Wilco’s L.A. concerts

Quick chat: Wilco plays the Hollywood Palladium Jan. 24, the Wiltern Jan. 25 and the Los Angeles Theatre Jan. 27.

In advance of Wilco’s mini-L.A. residency, with dates at the Palladium (Jan. 24), the Wiltern (Jan 25) and the Los Angeles Theatre (Jan. 27), band leader Jeff Tweedy reflected on the band's last decade and a half, while sharing thoughts on the band’s new album, “The Whole Love.” 

On Wilco’s live philosophy: “I like the audience being on the same level — a figurative stage. We can put on a pretty good show as entertainers, about half of a show, usually, but then the seriousness has to go away. The ritual of it being a performance needs to be broken in order for it to feel like you achieved your goal. The goal is to join the audience, or make them feel comfortable joining you. I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be up there pretending to be worthy of being looked at.” 

Wilco's riveting 'Art of Almost,' an oral history

It began as a slow jam. Those who have heard the first track on Wilco's "The Whole Love" know it ended up as something far different. It's a 7½-minute melodic collage unlike anything else in the band's catalog, opening with a crush of digital thunder and ending in a torrent of guitars and rhythms. 

In between are mysteriously plaintive vocals ("I'll never know when I might ambulance"), the dirtiest, fuzziest bass in Wilco's catalog and a ping-pong of digital grooves. Occasionally, a restrained guitar makes its way to the front of the electronic soundscapes, as if completely oblivious to the carnage that's about to happen. 

"I had a pretty great title, I thought," Jeff Tweedy said recently during a visit to Wilco's two-story Chicago loft. "I had a song that went with that title, and a lot of the same lyrics and same melody. But it had a completely different feel. There was a guitar riff that doesn’t appear at all in this version."

What follows is an attempt to trace the evolution of a song, in this case Wilco's "Art of Almost," from as many different perspectives as possible. The interviews were conducted over a two-day span in Chicago.

The players: Vocalist Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche, guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist-programmer Mikael Jorgensen, guitarist-keyboardist-co-producer Pat Sansone and bassist John Stirratt. A clip of the band performing the song live for "The Late Show With David Letterman" is embedded below. 

Wilco's Nels Cline: 'L.A. gets no respect as far as culture'

Before Wilco's Jeff Tweedy plucked guitarist Nels Cline out of the L.A. underground to join his Chicago rock 'n' roll collective, Cline was already something of an avant-garde legend. There was only one problem: Cline was broke.

In the early 2000s Cline was playing in six bands, according to his estimate. Locals who were into solo, improvisational jazz-rock guitar could find Cline regularly performing at downtown club The Smell (there were usually about 11 of us), a venue for which Cline was one of the earliest, most vocal supporters. He had turned down numerous invites to join various rock bands, instead performing in experimental outfits such as Carla Bozulich's Scarnella or with Mike Watt in jazz/punk/noise outfit Banyan. 

As far as those band offers, Cline won't, he said, "enumerate," other than to say the bands weren't very interesting. How uninteresting? Penniless frustration was actually more appealing to Cline, who, at the time, was staring at the big 5-0.

"People think I was successful because I was making records and playing out all the time, but I was not making a living, not effectively," Cline said earlier this month. "Things became really strained in my life -- just the stress of trying to continue with this idea that it gets better tomorrow. When you’re about to turn 50 years old, that can feel like a delusion. I was going to go back to the workforce and get a day job. That’s when Jeff called me."

Story: Wilco is maturing, but it is not growing soft

Joining Wilco wasn't some slam-dunk, either. His then-partner Bozulich told him he would be insane not to, but while Cline had shared bills with the band, including 2002's All Tomorrow's Parties on the campus of UCLA, he wasn't all that familiar with the group. Yet Tweedy sent Cline an unmastered version of what would become the 2004 album "A Ghost is Born," which featured some of Wilco's fiercest guitar work, and Cline's ability to make a living as a musician was suddenly a late-blooming reality. Today, Cline lives in New York, is married to Cibo Mato's Yuka Honda and is in year eight of his Wilco tenure. The band on Tuesday will release "The Whole Love," which is Cline's third with the group. 

"I really liked 'A Ghost is Born,'" Cline said. "I could really get with that record. If I had just heard (Wilco's 1995 debut) 'AM,' I would have wondered what I could contribute. That’s nothing against ‘AM.’ It’s just that it has a classic kind of rock sound, and I don’t think I’m the guy for that job."

Album review: Wilco's 'The Whole Love'

Wilco in 2011 finds all six members reaching out into new directions, but the result is a strong and cohesive 12-song effort that recalls ‘Summerteeth' and ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.'

It feels a little funny starting a review of Wilco's new album “The Whole Love” with an ode to a drummer, but then Glenn Kotche is no ordinary drummer. Plus, his weird snare-and-bass-kick beat opens the Chicago band's eighth studio album and is the first indicator that Wilco is headed toward yet another heretofore unexplored realm.

The song, called “Art of Almost,” is more than seven minutes long and begins with Kotche introducing an urgent but oblong rhythm, one that takes a few go-rounds to click as a pattern. Once it does, the percussionist, who spent his early years working in Chicago's experimental underground community and whose underrated Nonesuch Records solo album “Mobile” connects many of the legendary label's various strands, drives the next 60 seconds as droplets of synthetic notes gradually introduce a kinda-sorta melody before the whole thing drifts into a fog of strings that sounds like that moment in “A Day in the Life,” except prettier.

It'd be easy to spend the rest of this review, in fact, writing about Kotche's work on “The Whole Love,” how later in that same song he strips away everything except a metronomic, nail-driving snare snap, which propels a wild Nels Cline guitar solo that extends for the final two minutes. 

Story: Wilco is maturing, but it is not growing soft

But then each of the five other men who constitute Wilco in 2011 pushes himself in new directions: Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen. Tweedy, the band's founder, singer and songwriter, solidified this lineup in 2007, and he sure knows how to pick 'em. The result on “The Whole Love” is a work by a group of exceptional musicians who, four years into their collaboration, have melded into one.

Over the band's 17-year career, Tweedy's Wilco has gradually moved from a roots-rock band to something a bit more nebulous, as though the bandleader were with each album further distancing himself from his whiskey bottle and Levis past. 

That process began long ago with the sophomore double album “Being There,” and was further cemented on the band's first great departure, “Summerteeth” from 1999, a guitar-pop gem with nary a hint of twang or blues. Wilco's 2002 album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” remains its most adventurous and acclaimed; more recent albums such as “Sky Blue Sky” — the first featuring the band's current lineup — and its last album, “Wilco (The Album),” saw the group step back a little into more traditional, sing-song structures.

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: 'I was falling into a cliche'

Wilco is happy. Get used to it. 

"We’re probably the only band where everyone is early for bus call," said drummer Glenn Kotche. "When we check out of a hotel room we’re not waiting 20 minutes for such-and-such to get whatever girl was there out of the room. Everyone is there and on the bus five minutes before we’re supposed to be there. Not to make this sound like a Boy Scout troop, but we have our act together."

That wasn't always the case. Leader Jeff Tweedy uses the word "dysfunction" quite regularly when discussing parts of the band's past, namely the period around the recording of 2001 album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."

Story: Wilco is maturing, but it is not growing soft

A quick recap: Tweedy's late songwriting partner Jay Bennett and founding drummer Ken Coomer were fired. The band was dropped from Warner Music Group's Reprise Records, and Tweedy's struggle with painkillers is believed to have led to the aggressive guitars and abstract lyrics of 2004's "A Ghost is Born."

When Wilco regrouped as a six-piece for 2007's "Sky Blue Sky," the sound was softer, more soulful. In some regards, it was a first album, as guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone were now full-time members, and keyboardist/programmer Mikael Jorgensen was taking on a more prominent role. It was recorded live, "a conscious effort to focus on what a new band focuses on: playing together, and trying to get real performances," Tweedy said. 

As the band was on the verge of releasing its eighth album on Aug. 27, "The Whole Love," which will be the subject of a Times feature later this week, Tweedy had little patience for the belief that a healthy, drama-less band led to a more complacent work. "The Whole Love," after all, is prime evidence that the idea that suffering fuels more animated art is nothing more than a myth. The album, the third straight Wilco album to be recorded with the same lineup, is arguably the band's most energetic, placing a greater emphasis on digital textures, psychedelic adornments and studio tinkering. 

"I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful," Tweedy said. "At the same time, when I started to get healthy I realized there’s no shortage of damage there from myself. My distaste for it probably prevented me from getting help sooner. I didn’t want to admit that I was falling into a cliché."

The secret production weapon on Wilco's 'The Whole Love'

Late in the recording process for 2009's "Wilco (The Album)," leader Jeff Tweedy placed a call that keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone was not expecting. Sansone was a five-year veteran of the Chicago-based act, having joined the band after its most volatile period had come to an end, and a decade worth of material already existed. It was Sansone whom Tweedy drafted to help him mix the album in Los Angeles.

"I needed somebody there and Pat seemed to speak up the most in that environment," Tweedy said while sitting in the band's loft-space kitchen on the Northwest side of Chicago. "If Pat is happy with the mix and I come in and do my thing, everything is going to be cool."

Sansone, however, admitted that he still felt like the "new guy" in Wilco, a feeling that has only gone away with the band's upcoming album, "The Whole Love," due in stores Sept. 27 (the album will be the subject of a Times feature to debut later this week). The band underwent a massive lineup overhaul between 2001's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and 2007's "Sky Blue Sky." With "The Whole Love," to be released on Wilco's own dBpm Records, in partnership with Silver Lake's Anti-, Wilco will have recorded three albums with the same lineup for the first time in its 17-year career. 

Story: Wilco is maturing, but it is not growing soft

"When I first joined, I don’t think I realized there would be some intense feelings from really die-hard fans about new people coming in," Sansone said. "I was greeted with a certain amount of suspicion by the populace. I tried not to get too involved in it. Once I became aware that was there, I didn’t want to get involved and have it color what I was doing or make me second-guess what I was doing."

For a band that doesn't sell millions of records, Wilco has been rather heavily scrutinized. A 2002 documentary, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," captured the split between Tweedy and his late songwriting partner Jay Bennett, as well as the band's rather public dismissal from Warner Music Group's Reprise Records. The current incarnation of Wilco made its debut with "Sky Blue Sky," an album that dialed down some of the band's guitar edginess and orchestral touches, instead focusing on soul-inspired songcraft. 

"The Whole Love," however, is one of the band's most diverse collections yet. There's a funked-up, digitally enhanced rager ("Art of Almost"), a bass-heavy vintage rocker ("I Might"), haunted folk ("Rising Red Lung") and tracks with mini psychedelic symphonies ("Sunloathe," "Capitol City"). The album was produced by Tweedy, Sansone and Tom Schick, and early on, Tweedy made it clear that he wanted Sansone to be his studio equal.