Jeff Tweedy Recalls That Time P. Diddy Thought He Was a Grammys Usher, Performs ‘Gwendolyn’

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy beamed in to Late Night With Seth Meyers Monday from his Loft studio in Chicago to perform “Gwendolyn,” off of his newest solo album, Love Is King. He was joined by his son, Spencer Tweedy, on drums.

Tweedy recently recruited an array of celebrities for the video for “Gwendolyn” — from Jon Hamm to Norah Jones — including Meyers, who discussed the clip with the Wilco frontman in an interview. The duo also discussed making music with one’s family (“Playing music with your family is just the most amazing gift I can ever imagine being given,” Tweedy says) and Tweedy’s newest book on songwriting, How to Write One Song. The singer-songwriter then recalls a hilariously macabre sight he recently saw that could potentially make it into a song: a hearse stuck at a tollbooth.

As a nod to Tuesday’s Grammy nomination announcements, Tweedy recounted an early experience at the awards show in which he ran into P. Diddy: “My most notable encounter, I was with a big group of people — all the Wilco guys and wives and girlfriends — and somehow I ended up outside one of the bathrooms of the Staples Center holding everyone’s programs for the Grammys. … And P. Diddy walks up to me and he thought I was an usher handing out programs. He tapped the programs that I was holding with a cane and said, ‘Gimme one of those.’ And I’m like, ‘No, they’re mine.’ It didn’t escalate, thank goodness.”

Love Is the King is Tweedy’s fourth solo album, following 2017’s Together at Last, 2018’s Warm, and 2019’s Warmer. How to Write One Song came out in October, as did Spencer Tweedy’s book about self-recording, Mirror Sound: a Look into the People and Processes Behind Self-Recorded Music.