An Interview with Oliver Wood: Happy Accidents

The Wood Brothers, for the past dozen years, have put out consistently great albums and have developed a live show that is communal, shows incredible range, and is just a damn good time. Their last album, One Drop of Truth, is nominated for a Grammy award, for Best Americana Album. Last year, I had a great chat with bassist and vocalist, Chris Wood, and this time around I got to chat with guitarist and vocalist, Oliver Wood. The Wood Brothers are bringing their show to The House of Blues on January 26, and if it is anything like last time, there will be some raucous joy, my friends. Read on.

(photo credit Alysse Gafkjen)

RLR: Congratulations on the Grammy nomination for One Drop of Truth. What was that like when you heard about the nomination?

OW: Well, it was kind of a shocker and a little surreal. And also just a big honor in the pool with John Prine, and Brandi Carlile, Betty LaVette, and Leann Womack.Those are all people we really admire, so it feels good.

RLR: One of the things I like about talking to folks when they have some distance from an album release is that they’ve had these songs on the road for a while and the songs tend to evolve a bit–that you find little textures in the songs that you didn’t know were there when you wrote them. Are there any songs that stand out for you in that way from One Drop of Truth?

OW: That’s a good question. I feel that way about a lot of our albums. There are things that got better in terms of how we arranged them, and how things evolved. For this album, it’s still a little early for that, even though it’s been out for about a year, so most of the songs get played pretty true to the album.

I will say there are some songs, though, that have an improvisational feel to them; they did when we recorded them—we were just sort of winging it—and we do that when we play live, meaning that every night’s a little different. Some nights might have an epic, long guitar solo, and other nights we might cut it short. We have a song called, “Laughin’ and Cryin’,” that’s just got all kinds weird little movements in it and they can go a different way every night, just depending on what happens spontaneously.

RLR: Yeah, I’m not even sure I mean “better.”

OW: Yeah, you’re right; I know exactly what you mean. So, as the years go by, songs definitely evolve. If nothing else for our own enjoyment, we like to change things. So, it’s “Let’s make this big rock song an acoustic, and give it a folky vibe.” So I see what you’re saying. I don’t think we’re there yet with these songs but we’ve certainly done that with many songs.

RLR: I’d love to talk about, “Laughin’ or Cryin’,” a little more. There is so much going on sonically on that song in the quiet spaces, almost a tension and release. Do you mind talking us through some of those decisions you made?

OW: That’s one where we were just writing and learning and when we got to the studio, we had sort of had a basic idea, and we just played it a couple times; then we played it live, with a live vocal, and we ended up using the first one. That doesn’t always happen but somehow we just captured something on the first one that we really felt good about.

 

 Honestly at the time, we weren’t sure if it was just a demo or if we would use it on an album. It was nice–we weren’t pressuring ourselves, we were just relaxed about it, saying, “That was cool, let’s revisit that in a few days.” And when we did, we just really loved it. That being said, since it was new, and we didn’t know what we were doing, it was very improvised. Sometimes when you record a song that way, you realize it could be different and special in lots of ways. So, when it’s performed, we can try and do different things, and some things happen just by accident.

RLR: You’d mentioned before the improvisational quality of some of these songs. What does that communication in the moment look like between you, Chris, and Jano?

OW: There’s a lot of unspoken, dare I say psychic, connection with musicians when they play years and years together where you just read body language, and what you’re hearing and you just go with it, and you just really tune in. If I am soloing, and Jano’s soloing, and Chris is soloing, we listen to the soloist and follow. And if they keep going, we go with them. Chris, Jano, and I all come from backgrounds in improvised music so we’re not just writing songs and playing them down every night.  

RLR: A different song on the album that’s just gotten inside me a bit is “Can’t Look Away,” which starts in this lopey kind of way and then builds to this barn-burner with this furious slide at the end. Was that a similar process as “Laughin’ and Cryin’”?

OW: It was very similar. It was a song that was new to us, and still figuring out and it just had a freshness to it, and that’s another one that feels a little different every night. Sometimes, if it feels good, I’ll just solo forever on that one. It was sort of a groove tune based on these weird lyrics.

That’s one of the fun things about making records, and really any kind of art: being OK that you’re not really in control, letting something happen, and trusting that something cool’s gonna happen literally by accident. And I love that part, as opposed to being super prepared and anal about it and having expectations of exactly how it should sound. That can be efficient for some things, but it’s fun to experiment and it’s why we had so much fun making this record. When I watch other people make art, that’s the magic of it to me: what’s it gonna look like when it’s done? No one really knows.

RLR: Is that something you had to come to or are you kind of hard-wired that way?

OW: Well, I think you learn a lot about appreciating that. I’ve certainly had plenty of situations where something didn’t turn out the way I pictured and I got uptight about it. We’ve made a lot of records now. Even before The Wood Brothers, all of us had been doing this for years. So after a while, you learn things about the psychology of the music. To get a little more spiritual about it, you let somebody else be in control, and not feel like everything has to be planned and perfect. I think that’s a learned thing. It’s like parenting: I try to keep these kids under control, but at the same time, I just gotta let them fall on their face sometimes and discover things on their own.

 

 RLR: It seems like you’ve taken a different approach to the recording process for each album. I think with The Muse, it was your first time as a band being in one room for recording; with Paradise, it was your first self-produced album; with this record, you recorded in different studios. How important is that sense of novelty in the process of making a record to give it its own feel?

OW: I think I know what you’re saying. The way we felt about this last record, we were super liberated by the fact that we were producing it ourselves, which is something we’ve learned and earned over the years. We worked with some great producers, and we made a lot of records, so at this point, we realized, “You know what, we are producers; we’ve been doing the forever.” And we learned a lot from the producers we worked with: The Muse was [produced by] Buddy Miller, and he was just great. I think what we felt really good about, and we had to work our way up to it, but we felt good about being completely independent of a producer, and of a record label, and of any input whatsoever. We had this really safe place to just experiment.

The concept of trying different studios–and I will throw in there inexpensive studios, studios that aren’t as fancy and expensive, and we’re not watching the clock, and we’re not concerned with if what we’re doing is going to make it on a record. We didn’t do it all in one two or three week chunk. We spread it out. In between tours, we’d go into the studio for a couple of days and record a new song. That process was the most liberating, it was freeing, because we felt no pressure, no one was looking over shoulders, we were beholden to no one financially. That was a new feeling for us, and it was very liberating and it made us experiment and made us have fun. Nothing about that process was stressful; it was just fun to try stuff. That approach is something we’ll continue, you know, because we can.

RLR: Sometimes you don’t know you want something until you experience it–was that the case for you, or is that type of process something you’d been chasing for a while?

OW: It’s a little of both. Like I said, we had to work our way up to it. We needed record labels at first; it’s expensive to make a record. And we needed producers: they’re like editors. They help you organize all your stuff, and make you feel confident. It’s nice to have that. At the same time, Chris and I always did fantasize about this idea: instead of writing a bunch of songs and recording them all at once in a fancy studio and a producer, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to over the course of a year, write a song, go record it, go on tour, and do that a few times?” We’d always wanted to do that but I think up until recently we weren’t ready to do that, but now we know that’s doable. And it’s fun.

RLR: A bit of a left turn here, Oliver: I think the only time I’ve been really happy that people have phones at concerts is your recent show in Boulder, where your dad joined you around Big Mike. Can you talk about that experience with him?

OW: That was great. Our dad is a retired biology professor, but he also, in his day, was a really great folk singer and a professional musician. He played lots of gigs, and back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, he was a big part of the whole folk explosion. He has a huge repertoire of songs, so when we were kids, we would see him around the campfire or in the living room, playing song after song, and we would watch and sing along.

 

 When we went into music, he was always sort of supportive and vicariously happy that we were doing what we were doing. And, turns out he was a big influence; we had just thought it was normal to grow up having somebody around playing music all the time. We started The Wood Brothers about about twelve years ago but in that whole twelve years, we’d never had our dad come up and play. I’m not sure why, but, I don’t know, maybe finally we were ready.

The Wood Brothers bring their brand of magic to The State Theatre in Portland on Friday and The House of Blues in Boston on Saturday. Get out there people; you’ll be grinning if you do.