Overview: Where are you, Jay Bennett? is a feature-length documentary on Jay Bennett, a legendary musician and recording studio savant, who as a member of Wilco, was a large part of the genius behind their three seminal albums (Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

He also co-wrote most of Summerteeth and YHF with Jeff Tweedy, as well as the Mermaid Avenue/Woody Guthrie sessions with Billy Bragg and went on to a critically acclaimed solo career, before dying tragically at the age of 45.

Blu-ray Verdict: In my humble, journalistic and lover of all things quality music opinion, Jay Bennett is one of the least known geniuses of popular music whose name should be mentioned in the same breath as Brian Wilson and Brian Eno.

Unfairly cast, by an earlier documentary film, as the necessary villain of the early Wilco story, luckily this one Where are you, Jay Bennett? is a much more poignant, a wholly moving celebration of a true innovator in music who tragically passed before his time.

Bennett was born in the Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows, and began playing with rock bands while still a teenager. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning degrees in math and political science, but music was always his primary focus.

In the late 1980s he formed the alternative-rock band Titanic Love Affair, which survived into the mid-90s and released three albums before being dumped by its record label.

By 1995, Bennett was working at a video repair shop in Champaign when he was approached by Wilco, who had just recorded their debut album, A.M., and were looking to expand their country-rock sound.

Bennett’s abilities on keyboards and multiple stringed instruments began to bear fruit on the follow-up, Being There (1996), in which Tweedy was consciously pushing the band away from its supposedly alt-country roots and introducing more diverse styles, from power-pop to psychedelia.

By the time Wilco began work on Summerteeth in 1997, Tweedy was relying heavily on Bennett to write music to accompany his lyrics, and the album’s orchestrated sound owed much to Bennett’s efforts. Like its predecessor, Summerteeth earned rave reviews, hailing Wilco as true rock auteurs in a world of pale imitations, but the group was experiencing turbulence with its record label, Reprise, a subsidiary of the debt-laden Warner Bros.

An attempt to please the label by recording a radio-friendly version of the song Can’t Stand It flopped, and Summerteeth sold fewer copies than Being There. It also sold less well than Mermaid Avenue (1998), on which Wilco collaborated with the British musician Billy Bragg in adding music to some unreleased lyrics by the folk icon Woody Guthrie.

Its success might have been greater still had Bragg not clashed with Bennett over the way the songs were produced, and further squabbles arose over royalties and promotional touring. Nonetheless, the parties managed to patch up their differences to make Mermaid Avenue Vol 2 in 2000.

The same year Wilco reconvened to make what would become Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, little anticipating the difficulties that lay in store. Tweedy became intrigued by the work of the experimental musician and producer Jim O’Rourke, but inviting him to join the recording sessions provoked clashes with Bennett over who should mix the songs, while O’Rourke also tampered with the contributions of other band members.

When the disc was finally completed, Bennett, who had disagreed openly with Tweedy about the album’s direction, was sacked. A full-blown crisis erupted when Reprise rejected the album and asked Wilco to leave the label, but the band negotiated an arrangement whereby they were able to take the finished tapes to the Nonesuch label.

The ensuing publicity helpfully heightened the impression of Wilco as crusaders against a heartless record industry, and the album subsequently sold 600,000 copies while garnering euphoric write-ups.

Bennett was subsequently left to cope with his role as solo artist. He retreated to his studio, Pieholden Suites, in Urbana, where he worked with Edward Burch on his first post-Wilco album, The Palace at 4am (2002). Bigger Than Blue (2004), The Beloved Enemy (2004), The Magnificent Defeat (2006) and Whatever Happened I Apologise (2008) followed. A sixth album, Kicking at the Perfumed Air, was near completion at the time of his death.

With regard to this brand new documentary Where Are You, Jay Bennett? and having been the product of over 10 years of work, it shows, trust me, especially the way sections have been painstaking filmed, edited and oh-so meticulously framed, and so I can honestly say that now is the time, and that this is a story that needed to be told.

A compelling and truly fascinating story, and one well told and with love from all concerned, it also serves as the most perfect introduction/epitaph to a highly-underrated musical genius. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

The Ken Coomer interview
World Premiere interview with directors moderated by Andy Leech of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Commentary from co-director Gorman Bechard
Jay’s Mom Remembers
The Billy Bragg Interview
Jay Bennett Tribute Concert
Ketchup, Ketchup, and More Ketchup
Deleted Scenes
Interview with filmmakers conducted by Brian Otting

Official Trailer

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