The Chicago-based band Wilco has gone back to the Woody Guthrie archives in search of lyrics for another album of unreleased songs by the folk music legend.

Guitarist Jay Bennett told JAM! the group, which performs Nov. 20 at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre, wraps up the tour behind their latest album "Summerteeth" on Nov. 24 in the Windy City. After some time off, they expect to reunite with British protest troubadour Billy Bragg for a second round of Guthrie songs, possibly in December.

Bragg and Wilco first collaborated on 1998's acclaimed "Mermaid Avenue," a collection made from lyrics drawn from the Guthrie archive of thousands of pages of incomplete songs. Bennett said Wilco spent several hours in the Guthrie archive in New York late last month, searching for new material.

"You just dive in. Usually, you have just got a couple of hours (in the archive)", Bennett said. "It would be nice to spend a week there".

The song lyrics, drawn from throughout the career of Guthrie (the father of the modern folk music movement and best known as the author of "This Land Is Your Land"), are handwritten or typed on pages cut from journals or on sheets of loose-leaf paper, often accompanied by Guthrie's handwritten notes commenting on his work.

Because access to Guthrie's files is limited, Bennett said his research techniques are necessarily unorthodox.

"Some of it is alphabetical and you go: 'Give me L.' You get this weird feeling of guilt because you are skimming these lyrics, looking for something that grabs you. You feel incredibly guilty," Bennett said.

"That one grabs me, and you set it aside. You haven't even read the whole thing, because you know if you sit there and read every lyric all the way through, you are just going to walk out of there with one or two to work on.

"And then when you get home with them, you have got to remember you are skimming the work of a great artist."

At the end of the research session, Bennett emerged with about 30 lyrics that he and singer-guitarist Jeff Tweedy will work on. The process of posthumously collaborating with Guthrie (who died in 1967 after suffering the debilitating effects of Huntington's disease) has been instructive, he said.

"The main thing is he just kept on writing. Not everything is great. He even makes comments to that effect, usually at the bottom. Almost every lyric has a little paragraph that says: 'This is the way I see it, and if you feel like changing it a little bit, it's okay with me. I think this is a good little one, but you may not like it'."

The notes and comments almost suggest that Guthrie knew one day someone would undertake exactly the kind of posthumous collaboration Bragg and Wilco are working on.

"It's spooky, isn't it? A lot of these lyrics were written before he was the American icon that he is," marvels Bennett.

"But I do know he saw himself as part of the folk tradition, so I kind of read those comments not as, look he wrote a note to me. I read them more as, you know, that is what folk music is all about, passing it down.

"He was just saying that, just because I wrote these words down on paper doesn't make them sacred. He knew he was passing something on, and that's what folk music is. That's why he wrote all this s--t down."

At the time of "Mermaid Avenue's" release, it was reported that there were enough completed songs in the can to issue a second full album of Guthrie songs, but Bragg and the members of Wilco were said to be at odds. Bennett said neither statement is exactly correct. Both the tension with Bragg and the readiness of a second album were exaggerated.

"One thing that everybody forgets is there are conflicts in every band during the final stages of making a record. There were more conflicts with this band on what songs to put on 'Summerteeth' and what mix (of the songs) to put on Summerteeth'," said Bennet. "But it is a given within a band.

"Some of the conflict towards the end (of making "Mermaid Avenue") was what to put on the record, knowing that whatever happened, we were going to have some good ones left over. The easiest way to ease this conflcit was to say we are going to do another record.

"There was definitely a conscious effort made not to put all the good material on ("Mermaid Avenue"). But I don't think there is enough material for a strong record just from the outtakes ... We already have a head-start on (the next Guthrie record). Some of the good stuff we wanted on ("Mermaid Avenue") Billy didn't want on. We said let's do another record and the five, six, seven, eight we were conflicting on, that will be the start of the second one."

Bennett said he'd like to tour with Bragg behind the Guthrie album but said sorting out everybody's schedules poses a huge obstacle. As well, he and Tweedy have already worked up eight new songs for the next Wilco project, and "they are all over the place. Rockers and ballads, uptempo catchy things, to really complicated pop songs."

Although Tweedy debuted some of that material at a solo acoustic show recently, Wilco won't be performing the new stuff on the road yet. They consciously avoid performing unrecorded material on the road because of what happened with 1996's "Being There," which was heavily road-tested before they went into the studio.

"We peaked early on some of those songs. Some of them we got (in the studio), but some of them, I wish we had had the tape rolling on maybe the fourth or fifth time we played it live. We have avoided that really consciously since then."

An unauthorized tape of a Wilco small-club gig from early in the "Summerteeth" tour has been trading among collectors under the title "American Stars In Bars." Bennett is aware of the bootleg but said the band thoroughly documents every gig by recording both through the P.A. system and with an "audience tape," and he hopes to one day issue Wilco's own live package.

"Whatever that (bootleg) show is, we have a better tape. It would be kind of fun to find out which show it's from. I wish whoever made it would just call us. We have done some pretty fun live shows, but I don't know. Maybe it is the best live bootleg of us out there, but I bet we have a better one."