John Stirratt

John Stirratt is a composer and bassist/instrumentalist for Wilco, and The Autumn Defense.

Stirratt was born in New Orleans, LA November 26th, 1967 and grew up in nearby Mandeville, LA. He attended Mandeville High school and the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. He played regularly around the Southeastern US with The Hilltops, a band based in Oxford, MS that included his twin sister Laurie. During this time he met and befriended the band Uncle Tupelo and supported them on tours of the east and midwest. After the breakup of The Hilltops in 1990, he recorded a record under the name The Gimmecaps, and then briefly joined Lafayette, LA band The Bluerunners, before joining Uncle Tupelo in 1992 as bassist/guitarist on their last album Anodyne, in 1993.

After the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, he joined Jeff Tweedy and the remaining members Ken Coomer and Max Johnston to found Wilco in 1994, and promptly recorded their debut A.M. He went on with Tweedy to be the only founding member to contribute to all their releases, including Being There, Summerteeth, Mermaid Avenue Vol 1 and 2, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born, Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (the album). The band has been nominated for 6 Grammys, in 4 different categories, winning best Alternative album for A Ghost is Born in 2005. They have also played thousands of shows in their 15 year career, and have become, according to Rolling Stone, “one of the most well-known and innovative bands of the new millennium.”

Stirratt joined Wilco members Jay Bennett and Ken Coomer to form Courtesy Move, an early Wilco side project that recorded an album in late 1996 that was never released. Soon after, he formed a band in 2000 called The Autumn Defense with friend and fellow New Orleanian Pat Sansone. They recorded their debut, The Green Hour in New Orleans and Nashville with former Wilco members Bob Egan and Ken Coomer in 2001 and released it on Stirratt’s own Broadmoor records. Circles, released in 2003 was recorded with drummer Greg Wiz and bassist Brad Jones in Nashville. Sansone’s subsequent addition to Wilco in 2004 allowed the band more studio time and the result was the self titled The Autumn Defense (2006) which brought Sansone’s orchestral production to the forefront. Using the name Laurie and John, Stirratt also recorded an folk-rock album with his sister Laurie in 2003 called Arabella, that represented the twin’s first recorded output in 12 years.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stirratt. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.