You've more than likely already heard the news of Jay Bennett's passing this past weekend, but I felt it worthy of mentioning here, as I was an admirer of much of his work.
Many around the world know Jay Bennett as the former Wilco multi-instrumentalist who helped shape the band's early work before being unceremoniously removed of his duties for the sessions for
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Strangely, Bennett and I have had many mutual friends, but I never actually got to know him as well as I would have liked. My first recollections of him were in 1987, when I was in Champaign-Urbana to record my first album. He was part of a band called Titanic Love Affair that was quite the big deal in Champaign-Urbana at the time.
Late one drunken night, my producer/friend Graham Elvis and I ended up at Bennett's house where Billy Bragg sat at the kitchen table, guitar in hand, regailing the rag-tag late night audience in an array of stories and songs. He'd performed at a club just hours earlier and had been invited back to Jay's place by Bennett, who, it turns out, was a HUGE fan of Bragg.
I must admit to spending much of Bragg's performance closing one eye or another to keep things in focus, but the one thing I do remember vividly was the ear-to-ear smile on Bennett's face the whole night.
That he would go on to not only play in an alt. country band such as Wilco, but also collaborate with Billy Bragg was something I never saw coming. It was no doubt a dream come true for Bennett.
And, while his life came to an end much too soon, Bennett got to see a great many of his dreams come true, I think. That's pretty damn cool, if you ask me.
Wilco-Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway(again)
DEMO
