Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Covers Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid”: Listen

Jeff Tweedy has shared his own take on “Union Maid,” a labor standard written by Woody Guthrie. The Wilco frontman covered the song as a bonus cut for the soundtrack to Jesse Eisenberg’s When You Finish Saving the World. Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard star in the A24 comedy-drama about an aspiring teenage musician in his mother. Check out Tweedy’s “Union Maid” below.

Guthrie championed organized labor and working class solidarity throughout his work, writing “Union Maid” in 1940 amid some of his other best-known numbers, such as “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya,” “Tom Joad,” and “This Land Is Your Land.” Pete Seeger and Old Crow Medicine Show have both recorded versions of “Union Maid” in the 80 years since Guthrie wrote it.

In 1998, Tweedy joined Billy Bragg, another longtime pro-labor advocate, for Mermaid Avenue, an album of songs that Guthrie had written but never recorded before his death in 1967. The project was named for the street where Guthrie once lived in Coney Island, Brooklyn.