Jeff Tweedy has been hosting an Instagram Live performance series called The Tweedy Show, which mostly consists of him playing original tracks and putting his own spin on music he likes. During yesterday’s show, he played a cover of Japanese Breakfast’s “Kokomo, IN”. As it turns out, Michelle Zauner is a huge Wilco fan and she’s geeking out — like any of us would!
For his rendition, Tweedy stayed rather faithful to the original version of “Kokomo, IN” as heard on Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast’s new album and third full-length LP under the moniker. Armed with an acoustic guitar and seemingly a lyric sheet off screen, the Wilco singer went about playing a stripped-down version of the sweet violin-laden track. If there was any doubt that Tweedy genuinely loves this song, it’s made clear during the end when he expresses frustration about missing a chord in the first verse. “No one cares,” says his son, to which Tweedy responds, “I care!”
After seeing the cover, Zauner reposted it on her Japanese Breakfast Instagram with an enthusiastic caption. “Words can’t begin to express how mind blowing it is to discover this vid of Jeff Tweedy covering ‘Kokomo, IN,’” she said. “Wilco has been such a huge influence on my music for so many years. The arrangement of ‘Jesus, etc’ was the elegant perfection we strived for when we were recording ‘Kokomo.’ The narrative arc of ‘Posing For Cars’ and my need to solo for three mins was directly inspired by ‘At Least That’s What You Said.’ I freaking walked off the aisle to ‘She’s A Jar.’ I just can’t even handle it and had to share. Fuck.”
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Japanese Breakfast has been having one hell of a year. Not only did she leave her comfort zone as she hoped to with Jubilee, but she also sang her own song in Simlish for The Sims 4 Cottage Living, penned an original score for the highly anticipated video game Sable, and her bestselling debut memoir Crying in H Mart is going to be adapted into a movie. It looks like this Tweedy cover is the cherry on top of a very, very good life sundae.
