The Plebes and The Primitives Jay Farrar, along with his brothers Wade and Dade, played in an early 1980s garage band named The Plebes. Hailing from
Belleville, Illinois, The Plebes sought to enter a battle-of-the-bands competition but needed another high school student as a member to perform. They invited
Jeff Tweedy, a high school friend of Jay Farrar, to join the band and play with them for the show. Despite a lack of skill with his instrument, Tweedy played an important role in the band by booking early gigs. While The Plebes had been playing music in a
rockabilly style, Tweedy wanted to play
punk rock like the music that he originally heard the group perform. This caused tensions between Tweedy and Dade Farrar, who left the band two months after Tweedy joined. Before leaving the band in 1984, Dade Farrar introduced its members to
Mike Heidorn, the younger brother of his girlfriend; Heidorn then joined the group as their drummer. Due to the unpopularity of punk rock in the
St. Louis area, The Primitives began to play
blues-oriented garage rock at fast tempos. They performed regularly at a wedding hall in
Millstadt, Illinois, where Tweedy's mother Jo Ann would collect the cover fee. Explaining the decision, the band said that "[our] original goals don't get distorted with an independent label."
Recordings on Rockville Records Shortly after Uncle Tupelo's signing, Giant Records changed its name to Rockville Records. The band's first album for Rockville,
No Depression, was recorded over ten days in January 1990, at Fort Apache South recording studio in
Boston,
Massachusetts. The album's thematic structure revolved around their lives as adolescents in Belleville; examples are songs about wanting to avoid factory work and songs about fearing a potential
Persian Gulf War military draft. Impressed by their previous work on
Dinosaur Jr.'s
Bug, the band wanted
Paul Kolderie and
Sean Slade to produce the album. Slade let Farrar play on the same 1961
Gibson Les Paul SG Junior that
J. Mascis originally played on
Bug. The album was released on June 21, 1990, and the band celebrated by playing at Cicero's for two nights. In between tours, Farrar, Tweedy and Heidorn formed a country cover band named Coffee Creek, along with Brian Henneman (later a member of
The Bottle Rockets). Henneman impressed Uncle Tupelo, and he was invited to be a guitar technician and occasional multi-instrumentalist for the band. While Farrar and Heidorn would avoid drinking too much after shows, Tweedy would continue drinking throughout the night. Although Tweedy stopped after he began dating Sue Miller in 1991, a significant communication gap had already been opened between Tweedy and Farrar. By March 1991,
No Depression had sold an estimated 15,000 copies, and was featured in a
Rolling Stone article about rising stars.
Major label contract In 1992, Joe McEwen of
Sire Records began to pursue the band. McEwen, who brought notable acts such as Dinosaur Jr. and
Shawn Colvin to Sire, had been interested in them since hearing the
Not Forever, Just for Now demo tape. At the urging of
Gary Louris, McEwen offered Uncle Tupelo a contract. Band manager Tony Margherita invoked the $50,000 escape clause he had put in their Rockville contract, freeing the band to sign a seven-year deal with Sire. The deal required two albums and specified a budget of $150,000 for the first. Around the time of the recording of
March 16–20, 1992, Mike Heidorn had secured a steady job at a Belleville newspaper company and was dating a woman who had two children from a previous marriage. Uncle Tupelo had planned a tour of Europe, but Heidorn wanted to stay in Belleville with his girlfriend, whom he married in August 1992. The group toured until the end of the year, finishing with a sold-out concert at Tramps in New York City. Because of their concert draw, major executives at Sire began to see the band as a potential hit. In 1993, the band contributed a cover of
Creedence Clearwater Revival's track "Effigy" to the AIDS-Benefit album
No Alternative produced by the
Red Hot Organization.
Breakup With the addition of Stirratt, Coomer, and Johnston just prior to the recording of
Anodyne, Farrar and Tweedy's relationship became more tumultuous, leading to verbal altercations after concerts. In one account, Tweedy recalled: Around this time, I would say something into a microphone onstage, and afterward [Farrar would] pull me aside and say, "Don't you ever fucking talk into that microphone again." He would misconstrue me talking into the microphone as more evidence of my out-of-control, rampant ego, more evidence of me feeling like I didn't have to be so fucking afraid anymore. Tweedy felt the new members gave him a new opportunity to contribute to the band, but Farrar felt disdain for Tweedy's new carefree attitude. Years later, Farrar would claim that he had been tempted to quit the band after seeing Tweedy stroking the hair of Farrar's girlfriend, an act which he believed to have been a proposition. In January 1994, Farrar called manager Tony Margherita to inform him of his decision to leave the band. Farrar told Margherita that he was no longer having fun, and did not want to work with Tweedy anymore. Soon after the breakup, Farrar explained his departure: "It just seemed like it reached a point where Jeff and I really weren't compatible. It had ceased to be a symbiotic songwriting relationship, probably after the first record." Tweedy was enraged that he heard the news secondhand from Margherita, rather than directly from Farrar. The following day, the two engaged in a verbal confrontation. As a favor to Margherita, who had spent a substantial amount of money to keep the band running, Farrar agreed to a final tour with Uncle Tupelo in North America. Tweedy and Farrar again engaged in a shouting match two weeks into the tour, due to Farrar's refusal to sing harmony on any of Tweedy's songs. The band made its first appearance on national television during the tour when they were featured on ''
Late Night with Conan O'Brien''. Sire had requested that the band perform "The Long Cut" on the show, which further irked Farrar since the song was written and sung by Tweedy. Uncle Tupelo's last concerts, two shows at
The Blue Note in
Columbia, Missouri and two shows at
Mississippi Nights in
St. Louis, took place from April 28 to May 1, 1994. A special "last leg" poster was created for the occasion which facetiously promoted the band as "St. Louis's 4th best country band", based on a readers' poll in the
Riverfront Times. On the last night, Tweedy and Farrar each performed nine songs during the concert, and Mike Heidorn performed as drummer during the encore.
Post-breakup Following Uncle Tupelo's final tour, Tweedy encouraged his bandmates to join him in a new group, while Farrar searched for members for a band of his own. Tweedy was able to retain the rest of the Uncle Tupelo lineup, and created
Wilco. They began rehearsing a few days after the final Uncle Tupelo concert, and by August 1994 they were in the recording studio for their first album,
A.M.. Farrar asked Jim Boquist to join his new band,
Son Volt; Boquist was a multi-instrumentalist who had performed with
Joe Henry as the opening act on Uncle Tupelo's last tour. Boquist also recruited his brother Dave, and Farrar convinced Mike Heidorn to leave Belleville to join the group. Farrar's new four-piece began recording their debut album
Trace in November 1994. Wilco signed to
Reprise Records while Son Volt signed with
Warner Bros. Records. Son Volt had an early
college rock hit with "Drown" from the album
Trace, but Wilco maintained a more commercially successful career in the years to follow. Regarding the possibility of a reunion, Mike Heidorn reported in a PopMatters interview that "nothing's ever for sure, but I would have to say, 'No such thing'." Farrar said that he does not want the band to get back together, while Tweedy said that he believes that a reunion would not be productive musically. Farrar and Tweedy sued Rockville Records and Dutch East India Trading CEO Barry Tenenbaum in 2000 over royalties that the label allegedly owed them, winning restitution from Tenenbaum and the joint rights to Uncle Tupelo's first three albums. After securing the rights, the band released a compilation entitled
89/93: An Anthology. In 2003, Uncle Tupelo re-issued their first three albums, which before the lawsuit had cumulatively sold over 200,000 copies. == Influences ==