By Paul Robicheau

Billy Bragg reunion, festival deep cuts, and a weekend of discovery turn MASS MoCA into a communal music feast.

Wilco and Billy Bragg at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Guitar virtuoso Nels Cline was winding down a Sunday jazz set by his Consentrik Quartet when he posed a thought about the Solid Sound Festival, which his rock band Wilco hosts every two years. “It’s always pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it?”

The tone of his voice made clear that this wasn’t a boast, just another music fan’s shared wonder. Wilco members kept as busy as any of the fans traversing MASS MoCA’s repurposed Berkshires factory complex for Solid Sound this past weekend. Not only did they play multiple sets with Wilco plus side projects, but they hustled around to sit in with or simply check out the diverse artists they’d assembled.

Kai Slater of Sharp Pins at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Solid Sound provides an exercise in discovery that crosses genres and generations, featuring rock groups young and old as well as jazz, folk and experimental music, with two nights of Wilco and one of leader Jeff Tweedy headlining the main stage. Its most novel stroke remains Friday’s opening night, when Wilco offers a themed set that in past years has served deep cuts, whole albums, covers, and even karaoke.

Wilco hatched its most special, in-demand Friday event this year, a reunion with Billy Bragg for the first-ever full performance of songs from their quarter-century-old Mermaid Avenue recordings that supplied music to previously unheard lyrics of Woody Guthrie. As Tweedy said before a packed field of 8,500 fans, “This may be my favorite thing I’ve ever been a part of,” to which Bragg interjected “Amen.”

The two singer/songwriters traded smiles, jokes, and lead vocals while working through the treasured songs. Tweedy blew harp on the mildly suggestive “Walt Whitman’s Niece” while Bragg sang “Give me the word and I’ll sing it” in “Give Me a Nail” and grew whimsical about “Ingrid Bergman.” The last third of the set truly took off when Natalie Merchant (a contributor to the original albums) emerged for “Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key” (one-upping Bragg on the line “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me”) and a gorgeous lead on “Birds and Ships,” only to skip back out during “Hoodoo Voodoo” to dance in utter joy, whipping her hair around.

Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie, who instigated the albums, played cowbell on that last tune before giving kisses to Bragg and Tweedy – an act slyly repeated by Jon Langford when he and his Mekons mate Sally Timms joined on vocals for a romp through Woody’s “All You Fascists,” chiming that they’re “bound to lose.”

But the night’s most touching moment came when Tweedy arrived for the encore with a tribute to estranged Wilco multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, a champion of the Mermaid Avenue sessions who died in 2009. “I kind of feel like if he was still around, he’d be here, and I wish that could have happened,” Tweedy said. Then he emotively sang Guthrie’s legacy ode “Another Man’s Done Gone” (to sole piano accompaniment by Wilco’s Mikael Jorgensen), waving to the backdrop of the folk legend’s lyrics and drawings for the line “I feel like these scribblings might stay.”

Guthrie grandchildren and other musicians filled the stage to sing the best-known Mermaid Avenue tune “California Stars” and Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” with extra verses. “I’ve waited 28 years to have Billy on one arm and Jeff on the other,” Nora Guthrie said at the end, adding to the crowd, “Let’s get to work, OK?”

Gail Greenwood and Jon King of Gang of Four at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

In a fitting setup to Guthrie’s political rather than romantic fare, English post-punk band Gang of Four remained a force, manned by Belly bassist Gail Greenwood and indie-rock guitarist Teo Leo, who refracted the late Andy Gill’s shrapnel style. Starting strong with “To Hell with Poverty,” the band’s charismatic singer Jon King stalked the stage with a penetrating stare, then banged a microwave to pieces with a bat in tempo on “He’d Send in the Army.” Tweedy added guitar bristle to “Anthrax” and “What We All Want.”

Kelley and Kim Deal of the Breeders. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Brandishing a guitar in his earlier Friday solo set backed by piano, Bragg delivered his own cultural commentary, singing of hungry Palestinians, king tides a-comin’, libertarians in New Hampshire, and the power of unions. He extended “Sexuality” to the trans community, noting opponents will next target gay marriage and want women back “in the kitchen.” Music can’t change the world, the English punk-folk veteran suggested, but it can “make you believe that the world can be changed.”

Much of the Solid Sound lineup skewed young. That included Friday outfit Sharp Pins, whose mildly psychedelic mod rock echoed the Beatles and the Who, with singer/guitarist Kai Slater mimicking the (once) high leaps of Pete Townshend. Saturday, which spanned 12 hours of music, leaned into shades of ’90s alt-rock with young female-fronted bands on the small courtyard stage. Winnipeg’s Living Hour went from a Sam Sarty vocal hush to a Dinosaur Jr.-ish guitar squall (Tweedy also joined them to sing a Silver Jews cover). Prewn, the project of singer/guitarist and ex-Pioneer Valley resident Izzy Hagerup, eschewed the cello layers she’s used on record for more straightforward alt-rock, switching between clean and sludgy guitar. Those bands alternated with larger courtyard sets by Souled American (who slid into dirgy Americana) and the Mini-Mekons, highlighted by the Timms-sung “I Love a Millionaire,” with Langford inflating the song’s monetary plateau.

Still, by mid-afternoon, the courtyard sets hadn’t quite reached a discovery-level impact found at past Solid Sounds. But Kentucky artist SG Goodman, who’s done the recent rounds at New England festivals, arrived in the larger courtyard with a rocking band. Amid wispy stage fog, she decryed the rich getting richer in “Work Until I Die.” Goodman then worked a slower, moody vibe in songs like “Snapping Turtle” (where she sang, “Small town is where my mind gets stuck”) before ending with the Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper.” In the smaller courtyard, the Iowa-bred, Chicago-based Elizabeth Moen also impressed with her pure vocal verve, earning her an invite to join Wilco later that night for alt-country nugget “Forget the Flowers.”

SG Goodman at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band finally delivered the day’s revelation in the larger courtyard. Sporting a knockoff Vince Gill shirt and Gravediggaz cap, Davis was a leg-kicking sparkplug, sprawling clever lines like “I used to hock primordial truths in the faces of men, now I’m down here pacing the pawn shop.” And his Roadhouse Band mixed honky-tonk swagger and freaky sonic bursts, complete with pedal steel, violin and a keyboardist who doubled on mad bongo playing.

L’Rain at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

The Breeders represented the actual alt-rock of the ’90s well when the band preceded Wilco on Saturday’s main stage. Twin sisters Kelley and Kim Deal, paired on guitars and vocals, and with their classic rhythm section of Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim MacPherson served up such scuzzy pop gems as “Divine Hammer” and a not-quite-as-good-as-the-record hit “Cannonball” plus their Beatles cover “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” The Breeders also joined a string of Tweedy-led musicians providing an example for over 5,000 fans using simultaneous yo-yos to set a world record.

Hannah Cohen at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Wilco’s Saturday sets at Solid Sound has often turned out just as memorable in some way as themed Friday counterparts and this one drew similar raves, even if there was little chance of outshining the magic of Mermaid Avenue. Touching on all of Wilco’s 14 albums (while including only “Jesus, Etc.” from jewel Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), the Chicago band unleashed a decidedly guitar-centric two-hour-plus set. It bridged the early dark buildup of “Hey Satellite” and majestic guitar blends of “Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull” with a back-to-back climax of “Impossible Germany” (Cline barely picking as he reshaped its solo with vibrato-hung trills before neck bends forced him to re-tune mid-stream) and “Art of Almost,” where Cline outdid himself with mind-melting stabs to his high frets. Set closer “Kingpin” kicked up more stinging leads before an encore of Krautrock-styled jam “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” inserted electronics from Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso (which added a late-night DJ set like Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley did on Friday).

Natalie Merchant at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

As if that wasn’t enough, Wilco performed the deep cut “Sonny Feeling,” brought Merchant back for “You and I,” had ex-Wilco member Leroy Bach play keyboards on “Handshake Drugs” and debuted two new songs. “Flawed Men” was somewhat ruminative – and unfinished, while “Losing Traction” was peppier, riding Cline’s mournful lap steel. “I was only depressed when I still gave a fuck,” Tweedy sang.

Saturday’s late stages were worth the afterburn, with the punk-jazz fusion of the Messthetics (whose Anthony Pirog did a gallery pop-up of graceful noise guitar with Cline to start the day) and tenor-sax force James Brandon Lewis, while the banjo/percussion/electronics trio Setting floated minimalist soundscapes in the indoor Hunter Center. Cline also sat in for Friday’s late-night courtyard set of atmospheric jazz-funk from the band of guitarist/bassist/vocalist L’Rain.

Richard Dawson at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Sunday provided more of a wind-down afternoon, highlighted by the booming voice of English avant-folk eccentric Richard Dawson, who flashed squirrely lead guitar in addition to seemingly ancient storytelling on the main stage, and singer-songwriter Hannah Cohen who, in contrast, was quite conventional with her sweet vocals, closing her courtyard set with the apt “Summer Sweat.” There was more jazz from drummer John Hollenbeck’s chamber quartet George (which lent international flavors missing from this year’s Solid Sound) and Cline’s often sublime Consentrik Quartet with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap, and drummer Tom Rainey, which maintained an audience through the weekend’s one persistent shower.

Ryan Davis at Solid Sound. Photo: Paul Robicheau

That’s one of the benefits of MASS MoCA’s open gallery spaces. They not only provide refuge for Solid Sound attendees who seek shelter from the rain, sun, or crowds but a variety of art exhibits as well. What’s more, the galleries also hosted additional pop-up sets from many of the courtyard artists as well as Merchant, who drew an overstuffed audience to one sweltering space. “I can’t work under these conditions,” she seemingly half-joked, her appearance even interrupted by security clearing a way to get to a medical emergency. In great voice despite the heat, Merchant only played a few tunes on an electronic piano, singing a folk call-and-response, “Lulu” (her song about 1920s actress Louise Brooks), and “Wonder.”

As usual, Jeff Tweedy offered Sunday’s concluding set, backed by his family band of sons Spencer on drums and Sammy on keyboards, guitarist Liam Kazar, bassist Sima Cunningham (Kazar’s sister) and violinist Macie Stewart – and they all sing. The late-day sun continued to bake as the somewhat smaller main-stage crowd thinned while the prolific Tweedy wove through a broad batch of his often folkier songs. Some revved up the energy, like “World Away” (which was funky like Little Feat) and “Love is the King.” But “Feel Free,” one of the standout tracks from Tweedy’s triple album Twilight Override, slipped into monotony as he ran through a list of suggested freedoms—“spin around and get dizzy,” “fall in love with the people you know, and fall harder with the people you don’t. The last line: “Feel free, make a record with your friends, sing a song that never ends.” At least he followed that with the “Roadrunner”-like groove of “Lou Reed was my Babysitter,” singing “Rock ‘n’ roll is dead, but the dead never die.”

Finally, for diehards who stuck it out until the end, Tweedy brought out members of Wilco, Cohen, and other singers for a one-time burn through Massachusetts native Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” as well as John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”

“Be better at being human,” Tweedy told the crowd, extolling the concept of community. “Taking care of each other is the only thing we can do.”

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian, in addition to writing and photography for The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.