From a purely geographical perspective, it was all but certain that Boulder, Colorado natives Chris and Oliver Wood would start a jam band. Their father, who played alongside artists like Joan Baez during the nascent 1960s folk scene, had instilled in them what would become a lifelong passion for music of all kinds. And the Boulder area became famous for birthing\u00a0the jam-band genre and is still home to both veteran and up-and-coming jam bands.<\/p>\n
But rather than start their own band in the vein of Leftover Salmon and the String Cheese Incident, the two brothers set out in different directions, both musically and geographically, for more than a decade before reuniting to form the Wood Brothers, a trio that All Music critic Steve Leggett likened to an \u201cAmericana version of jazz, or country with an edge, or folk with some rhythmic bite, or maybe secular gospel with a touch of swing,\u201d<\/p>\n
But the two brothers\u2019 first forays into the realm of professional music didn\u2019t sound much like any of those things.<\/p>\n
Chris Wood, whose duties include playing bass and singing, headed east to make a name for himself in the New York City jazz scene, or at least that was the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d trained really hard playing jazz music and being a good soloist, all the techniques that you need to have,\u201d he said. \u201cI was young and naive, and all I thought was, \u2018Well, you go to New York City and you become a sideman for a famous jazz musician.\u2019 But when I got there in the \u201890s, I found that the actual jazz scene wasn\u2019t a very warm, creative, open- minded kind of scene, to put it mildly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, the bassist found what he was searching for in the much more eclectic new-music scene<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an incredible ecosystem of music back then in the East Village,\u201d he recalled. \u201cSo I was just this young, naive, white kid from Boulder, Colorado, who ended up playing in a radical Jewish music festival and the Black Rock Coalition. I was playing every style of music. Some of it was very weird and experimental. Some of it was rock and roll. Some of it was R&B. It was everything. They were all very versatile and creative musicians, and that was the scene in which Medeski Martin & Wood were formed.\u201d<\/p>\n
A primarily instrumental group, MMW soon drew national attention as they pushed as many envelopes as they could find, exploring different genres, finding new ways to mix genres, and, as Chris puts it, \u201clearning what it means to BE a genre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver, meanwhile, found a prominent role in an entirely different genre. Traveling south and ending up in Atlanta, he built a following with his hard-touring band King Johnson, which released six albums of blues-infused country, R&B and funk. \u201cIt was just something that was inside of him and natural for him,\u201d said Chris of those influences, \u201cbecause he put so much of his heart into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the two bands played on the same bill that the idea of finally joining forces came into being.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had this fantasy image in my head of like, \u2018What if Robert Johnson and Charles Mingus had started a band? What would that sound like?\u201d Chris said.<\/p>\n
Chris recalls the first time the reunited brothers played together in the same room.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just this weird feeling, like I was looking in a kind of mirror when I was playing with him,\u201d he said. \u201cI just saw the way he approached the instrument, like the musical choices, his style. There was something sort of almost creepily familiar\u201d.<\/p>\n
Soon the siblings had turned their attention to starting the Wood Brothers, and over the course of nine albums and more than two decades, that musical familiarity has continued to grow. As a trio with drummer\/keyboardist\/vocalist\u00a0Jano Rix, they\u2019ve earned a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album, reached #1 on \u201cBillboard\u201d magazine\u2019s Top Heatseekers chart, and built a loyal fanbase by touring across the United States and abroad.<\/p>\n
The Wood Brothers\u2019 new album\u00a0\u201cPuff of Smoke,\u201d\u00a0which was released on\u00a0Aug.1,\u00a0is as eclectic as ever, from its pan-American influences to a Fender Rhodes keyboard and analog synth that Rix used to create an \u201cunderwater calliope\u201d sound.<\/p>\n
The band is on tour promoting the album, and stops Dec. 5 at Archer Music Hall in Allentown.<\/p>\n
One listen to the opening track \u201cWitness\u201d and you\u2019ll get the idea, or at least some of it. Oliver\u2019s lead vocals on the verses are straight out of the Dr. John swamp-rock playbook, complete with references to the Seventh Son and the Hoodoo Man. From there, it segues into Caribbean-style acoustic interludes, choruses with catchy vocal harmonies, and an extended instrumental break.<\/p>\n
The album also includes tracks recorded with \u201cBig Mike,\u201d the affectionately named single microphone that the three musicians gather around at centerstage to play a few all-acoustic songs during their live shows. Oliver plays\u00a0a national steel guitar with a built-in speaker cone that amplifies itself. Chris plays an upright\u00a0bass with gut strings, while Jano beats on a shuitar, which Chris describes as a crappy old guitar to which the percussionist attached things that makes it sound like a weird drum kit.<\/p>\n
With or without Big Mike, the trio continues to find ways to challenge themselves, both live and in the studio. An example from \u201cPuff of Smoke\u201d is the song \u201cPray God Listens.\u201d The trio was in the studio, sitting around in a circle working out an arrangement, when their engineer walked in and insisted they record it on the spot. And that\u2019s what made it onto the record.<\/p>\n
From Chris\u2019 perspective, an artist\u2019s relationship to control and, to an extent, their willingness to let go of it is an important part of the creative process. He cites the French poet Paul Val\u00e9ry, who said that \u201cA poem is never finished, only abandoned,\u201d at which point the artist should make no further changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe initial writing of the idea is where all the creative fire is,\u201d Chris said, \u201cbut then as you start editing and agonizing over this word or that word, there\u2019s a certain point where you\u2019re like, \u2018This is stupid. I give up. This is fine.\u2019 And that\u2019s kind of what happens with the songs on a record. You work on it to the point where you\u2019re feeling the returns diminishing and diminishing and diminishing. And then you realize you\u2019re worrying about things that only you will ever notice. And that\u2019s when you just let go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From a purely geographical perspective, it was all but certain that Boulder, Colorado natives Chris and Oliver Wood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,1681,1213,289,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-46143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music-and-concerts","13":"tag-things-to-do","14":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}