Wilco rolled in Friday night to Asheville, NC, a town still reeling and recovering from the surreal devastation of Hurricane Helene and the subsequent flood that wrecked the tight-knit mountain community late last September. The show served as Wilco’s first at the newly rechristened Asheville Yards Amphitheater, one of the first bands to play there since the downtown, open-air venue (controversially) changed names and hands from Rabbit Rabbit at the beginning of the year. Jeff Tweedy and his Chicago-rooted posse seem to have an affinity for the little mountain town that has become a tourist destination of the Southeast and a semi-annual tour stop for Wilco.

The band has seemingly eschewed the much larger megapolis of Charlotte and Raleigh in its 30-year history, choosing Asheville as its North Carolina tour stop for a total of six shows in the past two decades and change (compared to four each for Charlotte and Raleigh, which have ten and five times the population, respectively, of Asheville’s relatively puny 95,000).

With Asheville’s tourism landscape still desolate, the crowd likely contained far fewer out-of-town travelers than the band’s previous visits, nourishing an even deeper connection to the Asheville locals. Much like Billy Strings‘ six-show run in February, the town needed the soul healing that so many seek through the live music experience—and the financial ripple that typically accompanies large-scale concerts. The show’s musical highlights were almost secondary to the community catharsis the show brought to downtown Asheville—almost.

Opener Waxahatchee brought a relaxed vibe, led by Katie Crutchfield and featuring Wilco kin Spencer Tweedy on drums. The band and audience were equally polite and receptive to each other, inevitably converting some of the old alt-country heads with one of the genre’s up-and-coming acts.

Wilco took the stage with a wave and smile to the crowd, settling into the Yards’ lovely downtown niche as comfortably as if the stage were their grandmother’s living room. After an opening one-two punch of “Company In My Back” and “Evicted”, Jeff Tweedy let the crowd know that “I don’t do the David Lee Roth thing where I ask people to sing along,” instead letting the crowd know that he would be inviting the crowd to sing along with a beckoning “come on”-styled hand gesture.

“Handshake Drugs” was up next, and the already communal vibe of the show officially became a sing-along party, with Tweedy using the gesture to summon the crowd of recently certified backup singers. Tweedy spent the rest of the show challenging the crowd’s lyrical awareness of the band’s catalog, at some point representing almost every album in the band’s three-decade catalog (with the ironic exception of 2009’s Wilco (The Album)).

Newer tunes “Meant To Be”, “Quiet Amplifier”, and “Bird Without A Tail/Base of My Skull” held their own comfortably on the setlist alongside longtime heavy hitters “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, “War on War”, “Hummingbird”, and “Via Chicago”, while poignant song choices “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” and “Whole Love” solidified the show’s agape theme.

Nels Cline had a solid section of guitar gawkers throughout the crowd, seemingly waiting for him to add his mélange of noise punk, avant-garde jazz, and country twang to the band’s extensive catalogue. He shined on “Impossible Germany” in particular, unleashing a guitar solo that seemed to triple the length of the actual song. The slow-burning start led to a fiery finish, with Tweedy and auxiliary player Pat Sansone joining in for the song’s melodic climax. Cline’s Herculean “Impossible Germany” solo is a staple of any Wilco concert, and the song served as the most “Oh shit, I gotta pull out my phone for this” moment of the show.

In much the same way that Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot served as an unintended parallel to the events of 9/11, the band’s top streaming track “Jesus, Etc.” served a similar purpose in describing the alternate universe of Asheville’s destruction and rebuilding. Tweedy’s setting sun stanzas comforted many as “tall buildings shake” while “voices escape singing sad sad songs,” turning an aching region’s orbit around. Out of the entire show, “Jesus, Etc.” benefited most from the newly appointed backing choir, with several thousand fans doing their best to tackle Tweedy’s surreal lyrics about love/God’s money.

After closing out the main set with a rollicking “I’m The Man Who Loves You”, the band returned to the stage for an encore that would prove to be the biggest and best sing-along of the evening. Tweedy graciously thanked Waxahatchee for joining them on tour and invited the entire band onstage for their final show as opener. The subsequent sendoff/jam on “California Stars” became a full-on hootenanny. The song’s simple three chords were fleshed out with a grand total of three pianists, one acoustic, two electric, and one pedal steel guitar, and Spencer Tweedy and Glenn Kotche trading off drums and tambourine mid-song, and some banjo thrown in for good measure.

“Falling Apart (Right Now)” gave Cline and Sansone a chance to trade detuned guitar solos that had the effect of a well-played rubber band. “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” served as one final celebration, with Tweedy cutting off Kotche from going into “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” for the sake of punctuality, ending the show a minute before the venue’s 10 p.m. curfew.

As the Asheville crowd emptied out of The Yards, Friday streets were just a bit quieter and emptier than a spring weekend prior to the storm. But it’s safe to assume that the band’s uplifting songs were still reverberating through a crowd that came for catharsis, particularly the fitting refrain of “Jesus, Etc.”: “Our love is all we have.”

Check out some photos from Wilco in Asheville courtesy of Stephan Pruitt/Fiasco Media. Up next, the band will hit the international circuit for festival plays and headlining shows throughout South America, Europe, and the U.K. before returning stateside in August to join Willie Nelson‘s traveling Outlaw Music Festival tour. Find tickets and a full list of tour dates here.

Wilco — “Annihilation” — 5/16/25

[Video: Daniel Johnson]

Wilco, Waxahatchee — “California Stars” (Woody Guthrie) — 5/16/25

[Video: Darkwavelady]

Waxahatchee, Jeff Tweedy — “Right Back To It” — 5/16/25

[Video: Daniel Johnson]

Setlist: Wilco | Asheville Yards Amphitheatre | Asheville, NC | 5/16/25

Set: Company In My Back, Evicted, Handshake Drugs, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, If I Ever Was A Child, Meant to Be, War On War, Quiet Amplifier, Hummingbird, Bird Without a Tail / Base of My Skull, Via Chicago, Love Is Everywhere (Beware), You Are My Face, Whole Love, Either Way, Impossible Germany, Jesus, Etc., Box Full of Letters, Annihilation, Heavy Metal Drummer, I’m the Man Who Loves You
Encore: California Stars [1], Falling Apart (Right Now), I Got You (At the End of the Century)

[1] w/ Waxahatchee