The Wood Brothers “Ways Not To Lose” is an album that should be required listening for any real music fan.

With doses of Delta swagger, Chicago blues and New Orleans shuffle, this album is a keeper. Smart lyrics, stellar songwriting and flawless performance have earned this album’s keep in heavy rotation on my stereo, iPod etc.

About The Brothers

The Wood Brothers is a duo consisting of brothers Oliver and Chris Wood. Chris is the “Wood” in Medeski Martin and Wood (MMW) - one of the premiere jam bands today. But Chris and Oliver have been playing together for much longer. With a father that instilled a love of good music in them at an early age through live performance and recordings, the Wood Brothers were destined to pay homage and move beyond their musical roots.

The Wood Brothers work in tight folk-blues grooves and songwriting structures. The complex and sometimes dark lyrics are offset by very catchy, upbeat - almost positive musical backdrops.

What goes into creating smart catchy albums like “Ways Not To Lose”?

To find out, Blogging Muses spoke with one half of the duo, Oliver, on the topic of songwriting and this is what he had to say:

The Interview

Blogging Muses: It’s been about a year since “Ways Not To Lose” Came out. Have you been pleased with the reception by fans and critics?

Oliver: Absolutely, I feel we made the album we wanted to make and we’re really proud of it. It’s been really well-received. It certainly didn’t sell millions of copies or anything like that or become this huge commercial success. But it’s received plenty of critical success and we’re proud of it. We feel like in the last year - a short time - we’ve definitely connected with a lot of new fans. For a first record we’re real excited about it. It’s nice that alot of people seem to enjoy it enough that they want to come to shows and even sing along with the words.

Blogging Muses: So you have been touring with Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I realize this is probably a question you get asked a lot - but how have the live shows been with the song-focused angle of The Wood Brothers compared with the improvisational jams of Medeski, Martin and Wood?

Oliver: It’s cool because the MMW fans are real receptive. At first they were open to it maybe just because Chris is involved. But MMW fans are a pretty deep crowd and they appreciate good musicianship in all forms whether it’s a singer-songwriter, or whether it’s pure musical chops. Originality and all that really counts for Medeski fans. So I think they really ended up embracing it for what it was when they actually heard it.

The nice thing is we have had a lot of luck in different kinds of crowds. We’ve had the sort of younger jam crowd turned onto us through MMW, then we do a lot of songwriter type events like Listening Rooms - which we sometimes jokingly call the NPR crowd. You know, the listening room.

Sometimes an older crowd or even just people that prefer listening rooms instead of louder nightclubs or festivals. So it’s been really cool to appeal to that crowd as well. And to be able to go back and forth. Sometimes a more jammy show is gonna be louder and higher energy. Whereas the songwriter crowd is a different dynamic. We can play ballads and accent the more sensitive side of things.

Blogging Muses: When I put the album on at home during parties and so forth I get great reactions from people all across the board.

Oliver: I like that. I appreciate that. It’s nice to not have to feel stuck in one crowd or one demographic or something like that.

Blogging Muses: Let’s talk influences. I hear some really great influences in your music that make me think of New Orleans, Delta Blues, and even some Texas Singer-Songwriter stuff. I know one of your other groups, King Johnson hints at some pretty powerful influences. But besides them, what are some of your other biggest influences.

Oliver: I’m real into people from Willie Dixon and the school of blues. Willie is a cool example of someone whose lyrics - even though his music is generally blues and Chicago Blues- touched on a lot of different things. He had a unique way of putting things compared to your average blues guy.

But branching out from that I really love Lowell George - he’s a favorite. I love The Band. Anything The Band did. Big fan of Levon Helms. Of course supposedly Robbie Robertson wrote most of those songs - but who knows. (Laughs) Guys like Taj Mahal. Of course The Beatles, Reverend Gary Davis. Not necessarily all songwriters, but people who sing songs and tell stories.

But I have to say one of the biggest influences on me and Chris both was our dad. He wasn’t a songwriter necessarily, but he is definitely our first musical influence. He’s the one we first heard playing music. He plays guitar and he kinda comes from the folk school - similar to where Dylan came from as far as the northeastern folk scene of the late fifties and early sixties. So we heard my dad playing guitar acoustically - entertaining us and family at parties and stuff like that.

He’s a huge influence on us as far as how we just feel comfortable sitting down in a room and playing music.

So a lot of people that he turned us on to when we were kids like old folk stuff like Josh White, and Woody Guthrie kind of stuff to the blues stuff like Muddy Waters, even the Beatles, Dylan, Joni Mitchell and stuff like that.

Blogging Muses: So having that musical exposure early in life helped you two a lot?

Oliver: Yeah, as a kid that exposure definitely tends to be your earliest influence - what your parents are listening to - even if it’s only catching the secondhand sounds of it, you know. And what was really cool is that my dad is such a great player. We actually got to see him playing live. We realize much more now than we ever did the importance of his influence.

Blogging Muses: Let’s talk about your songwriting processes. What would you say are some of the most common ways your songs are constructed. Do you go off a riff? melody? lyric? title? chord progression?

Oliver: It is definitely varying. I feel like I’m learning to do it a lot of different ways. I think normally I used to just come up with a riff or a chord progression and then the words come to mind. I think that’s probably the way I usually do it. But lately, when I am just sitting on the airplane or whatever, I have been getting into just trying to free write. Write ideas down that come to me. Carry a notebook around and when a phrase or idea comes to me I just write it down. Because somehow it becomes important later. I’ve been into just letting the writing happen without thinking about it too much. I’m starting to think there is some kind of subconscious system that I have absolutely no control over.

And I’ve read lots of stuff about it from other songwriters. They all say the same thing in pretty much different ways that they don’t really feel they have much control over the process. The actual part that is the best seems to happen in a magical way. I try to just let it happen. If it means just writing a whole song with just the words for the most part - that will happen. It’s been happening a lot more recently. You know, just screwing around and writing words and not being too serious about it and then coming back to it and saying “Wow! Let’s put some music to that.”

It used to be more the other way around. I think it’s a sort of ebb and flow.

Blogging Muses: So it’s important to be willing and receptive to the inspiration when it comes to you?

Oliver: Exactly. The less and less I try to control it and get anal about it the more success I seem to have.

Blogging Muses: One of my favorite songs is Chocolate On My Tongue - specifically the chorus -”If I die young at least I got some chocolate on my tongue”

Oliver: Yeah.

Blogging Muses: Do you have any interesting stories about how some of these songs came together.

Oliver: Well … uh … (Laughs) I have some generalizations that might end up sounding kind of boring.

Blogging Muses: No worries. If not that’s cool too.

Oliver: For those songs. I feel like those songs came from life experiences. Sort of painful life experiences. They’re not like funny stories, they’re actually kind of tragic or whatever. But the weird thing is, they’re a bit more real - sort of compassionate kind of songs. But they are compassionate towards somebody besides me. I think that’s sort of how I look at them.

But of course when I look back at them they are all really about me. They’re more about me telling myself to be more compassionate towards - myself. And again it’s one of those things that you don’t realize until you look back at it. So it’s just kind of interesting because with a lot of the songs I felt like I was writing for somebody else.

Blogging Muses: I know with me personally, I am always attracted to songs that have a personal meaning to the songwriter but seem to have a more general or universal meaning as well.

Oliver: Right, right. I think that is what I learned to appreciate about songs. The songs I like the best are a little bit ambiguous. They are not so personal they are only about the writer, but anybody can hear it and make it their own somehow. I’m really appreciating that as a fan of other songs, but I’m appreciating it as a writer myself to not get too specific might be better. To keep things a little vague in what might be real personal so that someone else can take personal too - even where they might come to a different conclusion, that’s OKAY. They might miss my whole point entirely and that’s fine.

You mentioned that line from Chocolate On My Tongue. Some people have said that is such a sweet and light little song. But honestly, when I wrote it I was thinking, “I might just die young. Things aren’t going so well.” In other words, coming from a painful place and trying to make the best of it.

But I think it’s great that someone else can hear it and think positive or laugh or whatever and get something from it. But it doesn’t have to be what I got from it.

Blogging Muses: That can be a challenge for songwriters. To make a serious song that doesn’t sound like a funeral dirge or something that makes you want to drive your car into the ocean, end it all or something.

Oliver: There can be some really cool songs that move you subconsciously in darker ways. I’m always interested in the subconscious effects of music.

And earlier when you asked about songwriting methods or flows. Something new I have been doing is writing with Chris much more. We’re actually about to make a new record which we have written basically all the songs for the new record. But it’s different because the last record is predominately my songs, and we were under the gun to make a new record and we had all these songs that I already had. We only wrote a few together. But this new record is cool because it is truly a collaborative effort as far as the writing is concerned.

Blogging Muses:
And how is that going?

Oliver: Yeah. It took a little while because songwriting is such a personal thing. It’s not easy to let go of your own ideas and let someone else take the wheel. With our new songs, even though one of us might have come up with the general idea, words, or whatever, these new songs have allowed us to really get involved in ways that didn’t happen before. It’s allowed us to really tweak each others songs and make them OUR SONGS. I think the upcoming record will truly be a Woods Brothers record because of the degree of collaboration.

Blogging Muses:
Did that involve letting go of certain lines or things about the song you loved for the general sake of the song?

Oliver: Exactly. And also getting a different perspective. If you work on something so much and you are so close to it you sort of lose the vibe or you start doubting yourself and start wondering if the song is worth it. So it’s nice to have a fresh mind to work on it and say “Yeah right, this could be changed.” or “No no this is great!”

Blogging Muses: Fresh perspectives?

Oliver: Yeah, exactly. You know a producer is what would normally provide that outside perspective. To have someone to bounce things off of. So we’ve been getting good at that.

But we live in different parts of the country. He lives in upstate New York and I live down in Atlanta. So we sometimes we get together during a tour or during a tour. Other times we’ll email lyrics or an MP3 demo.

Blogging Muses: How about lyrics? With everything in the songwriting process, how difficult are lyrics for you?

Oliver: That’s the hardest part for me. The hardest part.

Blogging Muses: I recently received a book about songwriters and lyrics and it had about 3 pages of quotes from Joni Mitchell to Kurt Cobain - all of them saying they are often in the control room of the studio while the band sits around waiting for them to finish a final verse or whatever. It was the most difficult thing for them. I was wondering how that went with you?

Oliver: Yeah, definitely the lyrics are what holds things up sometimes. For me, somedays it’s like pulling teeth trying to say what you want to say in the way you want to say it. More recently I have written a bunch of words and then realized I don’t really know what I am trying to say.

So that’s definitely the hard part. Because between Chris and I we can come up with music EASY. It’s just really easy to come up with all kinds of interesting music ideas. But for the lyrics to be as free and loose [as the music] is hard.

Blogging Muses: Okay, so you’re telling me you don’t have the magic pill for writing lyrics?

Oliver: (Laughs) No, I don’t think there’s any magic pill. You know you check out all the information out there about Bob Dylan and there is one guy who seems to never be short on lyrics. Some people, just like Joni Mitchell or whatever that seem to have more lyrics than they need - and great lyrics at that. I’ve never felt like that. I feel lucky for every good line I get. There’s no extra at all. In fact sometimes I feel like some parts are filler.

Blogging Muses: True, but I always like when I come with a filler phrase at the end of a song and then play an Open Mic or Songwriter Night and someone says ‘I really liked that line!’.

Oliver: Yeah yeah! (Laughs) I guess maybe I should never really think of stuff as filler.

Blogging Muses: If someone was starting out as a songwriter, what kind of advice would you give them?

Oliver: Well, I probably don’t have any advice someone else hasn’t said already. But I am really into the idea of just writing. Not getting hung up on if what you are writing is good or if someone is going to like it or whatever. Just to DO it rather than thinking about doing it. It ends up being much more fun and ultimately productive in the long run. If you’re thinking you NEED TO BE PRODUCTIVE you’re screwed - at least I am.

Blogging Muses: Me too.

Oliver: And recently there has been more pressure with the new record to come up with more music and I’m like "Wow, this isn’t fun, this is pressure. I’m scared."

So somewhere along the line I started just writing in a notebook - not even songs - just making it a daily thing and not worrying about if anything is gonna come out of it or not. I started really having fun and all these great ideas started coming out because I didn’t really care about the pressure part of things anymore.

More Information

The Wood Brothers Website

Upcoming Shows

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