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“With a really great artist, it’s not actually coming from them, it’s coming from their environment,” said Chris Wood, shown at right with his brother Oliver Wood (center) and Jano Rix (left). “They’re just open to reflecting what’s happening around them, and they just have the ability to intuitively recognize what’s good. It’s the beautiful mystery of the creative process, and we’re just constantly trying to surrender to it.”
(Photo: Laura Partain)Through nine studio recordings since 2006, along with two live albums, The Wood Brothers — guitarist Oliver and bassist Chris — have established the kind of indelible chemistry that only comes from being siblings. Think the Louvin Brothers, Everly Brothers, Vaughan Brothers, even the Brecker Brothers. The bond that comes from that blood connection is undeniable, often translating to extra-musical results. And yet, these brothers spent a great part of their respective careers avoiding it.
“When we left home we went different ways,” said Oliver, four years the elder Wood Brother at age 60. “Chris went to school in Boston (New England Conservatory), then left for New York and eventually started Medeski Martin & Wood. Meanwhile, I moved to Atlanta and started a band called King Johnson with my friend Chris Long. We worked with our bands over the years and sort of grew apart. But we also kind of grew up during that time and maybe established our individual personalities both psychologically and musically. When we finally decided to put The Wood Brothers together, I was pushing 40 and had already been out on the road with my own band for a solid 15 years.”
Chris recalled what rekindled their close familial bond. “King Johnson and Medeski Martin & Wood did a double bill in Winston-Salem way back in the early 2000s, and Oliver sat in with MMW. And it was uncanny chemistry with him, just like the same chemistry I felt with John Medeski and Billy Martin, who were my road brothers. But to have my actual brother on stage, there was something so familiar about his approach to the music that I felt it immediately. So that was the spark that made us realize we both had the same job, we both had gotten decent at it and we should try to do something together. But we didn’t know what it was going to be.”
Chris believes that in delaying the formation of The Wood Brothers, they avoided the pitfalls of many sibling bands. “I think there’s a benefit to starting the band after you’ve each grown up a little bit,” he said. “Like all those young brother bands who have this amazing success early on, they inevitably blow up and fall apart.”
Added Oliver, “Many of those family bands that have been playing together since they were teenagers never got a chance to create their own space. So they’re always struggling with their own identities because they’re sort of married to each other in these family bands. So I really appreciate the way that we did it. Rather than a meteoric rise to the top, with all the consequences of the fast lane, we had a slow rise to middle.”
“And it went from being like an inside self-deprecating joke in the band to almost a philosophy,” said Chris. “Because this is a sustainable way to have a music career and just keep having fun, keep being creative, not getting overwhelmed by the pressures of the extreme fame that everyone kind of desires but don’t really know what they’re asking for.”
That Wood Brothers anthem, “Slow Rise (to the middle),” is one of many insightful commentaries they lay out on Puff Of Smoke, their ninth studio recording, following 2021’s Heart Is The Hero. With Oliver fronting on lead vocals and guitar and Chris alternating between upright bass and his prized Höfner electric bass, they are augmented by a third member in the versatile multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix, who came aboard for the siblings’ fourth studio recording, 2013’s The Muse. While playing drums and keyboards (often simultaneously), Rix alternates on second guitar and contributes strong harmony vocals while also playing something he’s dubbed “the shuitar.” (Pronounced shit-ar.)
“It’s basically a crappy acoustic guitar that he uses as a percussion instrument,” explained Chris. “It’s sort of like the antithesis of Future Man (with the Flecktones) playing a Synth Axe. So we call Jano Primitive Man because he’s beating on this shitty guitar, but he makes it sound amazing.”
Added Oliver, “He wears it around his neck and hits it on the low part of the neck to get a low percussive sound. And he has strings on there that he hits to make a hi-hat sound. Then his wedding ring knocks the side of the guitar for a snare effect. So it’s almost like a mini beatbox drum kit. And Chris’ upright bass with that shuitar is a really cool sound.”
“Jano’s shuitar allows us to be very unplugged and acoustic-sounding when we want to be,” said Chris. “But then he can get on the drum kit and we can be like a slamming rock band. And he’s also an incredible piano and organ player. So he’s an amazingly talented, hardworking dude, and he’s just getting better all the time.”
Rix’s distorted Fender Rhodes electric piano brings an alt-rock grunge feel to “The Trick,” the band’s first single. Elsewhere on Puff Of Smoke, they deliver thoughtful, topical messages on tunes like “Witness” and “Money Song,” the latter an ode to “highly intelligent billionaires who are building bunkers and think they can create an existence separate from the interconnectedness of life,” as Chris put it.
Oliver’s idea for “Pray God Listens,” which blends elements of Cuban groove and buoyant calypso, sprang from a sign he observed on the street that read: Pray, God Listens. By removing the comma, he had a song title that was both cynical and hopeful at the same time. “I’m a big fan of ambiguity in songs, which Dylan and John Prine seem to be the standard for,” he said. “I like the ambiguity in this particular song and the fact that a comma changes everything. With the comma it reads: ‘Pray, because God is listening.’ Without the comma, it reads: ‘You better hope that God is listening.’ Probably a lot of us are skeptical of God or the way people present God, but are also hopeful about it. Like, ‘I hope it’s true, because we need it.’ So it’s a bit skeptical, but hopeful, too.”
The infectious title track is a statement about letting things roll off your back in good time. “It’s a little bit like, ‘If you have a lousy day today, it’s gone in a second and you’ve got tomorrow again,’” said Oliver. “Or you can also look at it like, ‘Make the most of it because it’s going to fly by.’”
Both Wood brothers believe that the key to the songwriting process is simply getting out of the way. “The idea is to not try to feel like you’re in control of writing the song but that you’re sort of following the song and seeing what happens,” said Oliver.
“It’s like, we don’t want to stranglehold the creative process by trying to steer it too aggressively into any one direction,” added Chris. “You have to just constantly have an open mind and pay attention. A lot of times, you start a song and you kind of don’t even know what it’s about until you have some hindsight on it. You just go through the process and sometimes you put it aside for weeks so that you can look at it later with fresh eyes and ears. But having a good writing partner like Oliver helps so much in speeding up that process.”
The idea of a composer or songwriter being a vessel for the muse to flow through rings true with the bass-playing Wood brother. “With a really great artist, it’s not actually coming from them, it’s coming from their environment,” he said. “They’re just open to reflecting what’s happening around them, and they just have the ability to intuitively recognize what’s good. It’s the beautiful mystery of the creative process, and we’re just constantly trying to surrender to it. We just have to pay attention and admit, ‘We’re not in control here.’ And try to not take our intellectual ideas too seriously.
“Meanwhile, the muse either visits you or it doesn’t, and it’s not up to you,” he continued. “So you really can’t take credit whether your work is good or bad. Naturally, we want to take credit for things. We want to get the reward. You want to get the Grammy because you did it. But I think the truth of the creative act is that you’re not doing it, you’re just stepping out of the way and letting something happen that’s already there.”
In a June 1985 DownBeat cover story this writer did on Robert Fripp, the guitarist and King Crimson founder called it “getting a visit from the Good Fairy.” Said Chris, “All artists are fascinated with that state. And there’s different names for it — the flow state, being in the zone. Whatever you call it, I do think it’s a gift that we’re not in control of. And if you really study what it means to be in that state, then you actually can learn how to get there much easier and also be very aware of all the things that prevent it from happening.”
As for what to call the music of The Wood Brothers heard on Puff Of Smoke — Progressive Americana? Folk-Gospel-Blues? Countrified Talking Heads? Don’t ask these brothers. “I feel like our subconscious goal is to not be categorizable, to not commit to any one genre,” said Oliver. “Because even the genres themselves are just marketing tools. You know the old adage: ‘How do you sell something if you can’t say what it is?’ So that probably contributes to our slow rise to the middle.
“But there’s also a freedom in that,” he added. “Like, you can say anything you want, you can write anything you want to write, you can combine any musical ingredients you want. But I’m not sure what kind of music to call it if someone asked me.”
How about Bob Dylan meets John Prine, The Band and Medeski, Martin & Wood at Derek Trucks’ farm in Jacksonville, Florida? DB
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