Oliver, The Wood Brothers & Their ‘Muse’

The story of The Wood Brothers is a tale of two brothers traveling different paths before finally coming together to make their own music.  Stand-up bass man Chris is one-third of the “avant-groove trio” Medeski Martin & Wood.  Oliver spent several years playing guitar in Tinsley Ellis’ band which led to him founding King Johnson, a hard-touring band that combined elements of jazz R&B, funk and country into a sound uniquely theirs.

Released earlier this month, The Muse marks the transition of The Wood Brothers from a duo to a trio with the addition of drummer/multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix.  While chatting with Pollstar from his home in Nashville, Oliver described the advantages of having Rix in the group, his favorite guitars, and what makes for a great Woods Brothers performance.

Having just moved to Nashville, from a musician’s standpoint are you seeing more out-of-towners in the local musicians’ community than people from the area?

It’s getting that way. It seems to be a real haven for musicians, especially lately. Of course it’s always been a big music town.  I think a lot of touring musicians enjoy living here.  I don’t consider myself to be a big part of the Nashville music scene as of yet but we do love it because there are a lot of people like us. People don’t ask us, “What’s your real job when you’re not playing music?” because everybody is a musician.  It’s kind of nice that everyone understands what’s going on.

On top of that, Nashville has a great non-country music scene going on now which I would love to be a part of.  At some point I started working with studios a little bit as far as producing Americana and roots stuff that I really like.  There’s a big indie rock scene and a bunch of hipsters running around so it’s not just country music like some people think.

Your own music has been described as Americana and roots.  Are you comfortable with labels people put on your music?

Never comfortable with it but it’s a lesser of evils.  Some labels fit better than others and sometimes it’s just for lack of a better one. Our record just came out and on iTunes it’s [labeled] “singer/songwriter” … I don’t know what the heck that means.  “Americana” is kind of interesting.  There are a lot of people in the so-called Americana scene that I really like. Although there are a lot of blues people I think should be in the Americana scene, or gospel people that aren’t.  [Labels] don’t make sense to me.

How is the new album different from past Wood Brothers records?

It’s our first studio album with our own drummer, a fulltime band member.  Chris and I started out as a duo and we would hire musicians to play with us when we made records.  We would tour as a duo, really stripped down.  A couple of years ago we added Jano Rix and he plays really good drums, percussion, keyboards and sings.  He’s added a lot to our sound. We made a live record with him a couple of years ago but now we’re excited to have him on a studio album and have him involved in writing and arranging things.  That’s different.  It feels like a real band.

Our producer, Buddy Miller, was a pleasure.  We never really worked with anyone quite like him before.  He was a great force to have behind us in a very subtle and understated one.  He’s sort of quiet but somehow wise and Yoda-like.  He seemed to really understand what we do and how to get the best out of us by just making us feel comfortable, turning us on to a lot of great music and helping us realize he was on the same page as us.  We felt real comfortable.

Did he give you a lot of freedom in the studio?

Absolutely.  Complete freedom.  Yet he was this amazing voice of reason. Sometimes you just need this extra set of ears to reinforce what you already believe in.  And other times you just get lost and you need someone to speak up and take the reins for a minute.  Buddy seemed to know just when to do that.  He never overdid it.

Did the finished album sound like you imagined it would before the sessions began?

I don’t think that ever happens. … After a while you learn to be open and probably something different and possibly even better than you can imagine might happen.  I think that’s exactly what happened.  A lot of things [about the music] exceeded my expectations completely and other things were completely different than I thought they would be but I still embraced them.  Sometimes what you think is going to work doesn’t work so you need a Plan B, or sometimes you just deviate from the plan and it’s great.

Was there any sibling rivalry when you and Chris were growing up?  Would one brother try to outdo the other one?

Certainly not on a conscious level.  I’m four years older than Chris. … I was the first guy to listen to Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin and oftentimes my brother sort of followed and was influenced by a lot of the same things.

Personality-wise, we were quite different.  My brother was a little more obsessive than me and driven.  He was one of those guys who just disappeared with his instrument in his room for like three years while he was in high school and came out as a virtuoso.  He really, really worked hard and got very good at a young age where I was sort of easily distracted and … not as focused.  Maybe his drive comes from being a younger brother and trying to keep up. I’m not sure. He may have had some competitive stuff going on.

We played together when we could.  When we left the house we went in different directions. What’s cool about that is we went through our salad days and young and rambunctious, competitive and angry years with other people.  We went to the school of hard knocks out there on the road separately. By the time we started playing together again we had sort of matured, became comfortable with ourselves and developed our personalities enough to enjoy each other, enjoy what’s different and make it work for us. I can’t say we were ever super-competitive with each other in any unhealthy way.

How old were you when you began playing guitar?

I was probably 10 when my dad got me a crappy acoustic guitar that was frustrating.  I think I put it down for several years.  I wouldn’t say I got serious about guitar until I was a teenager, maybe 16, 17 years old.

At that age were you already considering music as a possible career choice or was it more for playing at parties and meeting girls?

It was probably a little of both. I don’t know if I knew what the heck I wanted to do, specifically.  Electric guitar when you’re a teenager, and you crack some of the codes of Hendrix … you can’t help but fantasize about the girls and trying to make a living.

Do you remember the first time you plugged in and played an electric guitar?

I do. It was pretty amazing.  In a way as I got older I got the same thrill out of going acoustic again. Now it’s sort of 50-50 with The Wood Brothers.  We have an acoustic part of our show and an electric. [Also] on our album, for that matter.

Our dad is a real folkie.  He’s always played, not professionally, but is a very accomplished musician and singer.  He knows a lot of songs and he was our first exposure to live music.  He has this great old vintage Martin guitar, nothing sounds like it.  I didn’t appreciate it at the time.  When I was plugging in later on, after years of rocking out with an electric guitar it was kind of fun to get a good acoustic guitar and appreciate what it could do.

Do you have a lot of guitars?

I don’t have an excessive amount of guitars. I definitely have more than I need.  I wouldn’t call it a problem yet.  I know other people who have a much worst problem than I do.

You haven’t had to add an extra room to the house for guitars?

No.  I can quit any time I want.

Do you have any favorite guitars?

Yes.  Probably my favorite … I have a mid-’50s Gibson flat top guitar called a CF-100.  That’s my acoustic baby.  Then I have something I’ve had for 25 years, my electric hollow-body Guild guitar which I’m especially fond of.

You mentioned puzzling out Hendrix and Zeppelin when you were a kid.  You also played in several cover bands at the time.  Were there any songs or guitar parts that were challenging at that time?

Cracking the code, so to speak?  It was all challenging. … If you watch someone play music and it looks so easy, you just feel you should be able to pick it up and just do it.  You realize quickly that, “Wow! This is not easy.”  I mean, just to make a decent sound off of any instrument it’s going to take some work and practice.

My dad had a Lightnin’ Hopkins record and a Jimmy Reed record.  That stuff seems really simple and basic, especially when you learn a couple of patterns and things they do.  There’s a little vocabulary that they have and there’s not much to it.  Of course, I thought I was pretty slick when I mastered some of those [songs].  Like a complicated Jimmy Page song or learning “Stairway To Heaven” or something like that, that was really challenging from a technical side of things. I remember working really hard on Hendrix songs. I remember trying to learn “The Wind Cries Mary” and “Purple Haze” and things like that and really working on it.

But when I think back about it, the subtleties of the blues guys like the Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy Reeds, and later on get into Albert Collins, Albert King, all the Kings – B.B. King, Freddie King – there’s something about that stuff, although it was a simpler and not quite as technical, it had a deeper and more subtle part that was really … not just anybody can do that.  I don’t know if I’ve ever done it but I’ve always enjoyed the emotional side of that, the rawness.  The real trick was learning the emotional stuff.

Working with Chris, did you ever have any doubts or worries that the collaboration might take a turn for the worse similar to other brothers-based bands such as The Everly Brothers, or the Davies brothers in The Kinks?

We never worried about that.  Even as kids we got along pretty well.  You asked about the competitiveness, I feel like we’re … separated in age enough that we never had a real rivalry.  We have such different strengths and we’re different personalities.  It seems like we kind of complement each other.  I think of Chris as sort of the virtuoso of the group.  As a musician he’s just world class.  He’s got some things I don’t have and I think it goes the other way.  I guess we’re just real secure with our roles in the group.  We’re also learning. We’ve learned how to co-write and collaborate. Collaborating is not something that’s easy to do when you’re writing songs which are very personal.  We’ve learned over the years how to do that.  I don’t think [rivalry] has ever been a problem.  We sort of eased into the Wood Brothers.  Just in the last five to six years it’s become a fulltime enterprise that required all of our energy.

You’re playing Zac Brown’s “Southern Ground” festival.  Do you like playing festivals?

Yeah, we like it.  For me, personally, I don’t love the gigantic stage with the barricades and how people are far away, the audience is separated from the stage.  I don’t enjoy that as much as maybe a smaller stage.  It’s awesome to be outside and stuff. I do enjoy it when it’s a real music festival, when people are there for music.  It’s great fun.  I think what Chris and I really enjoy is the variety of it. … We just did our first trip to Europe and that was like starting over, basically.  We were playing in tiny little clubs.  Nobody knew who we were over there, not enough people to fill a big room.  And it was great.  We loved it. We loved playing little places and that intimacy.

So we do anything from that to the giant festivals. We’re opening some shows for Zac Brown in a couple of weeks, 20,000 seat basketball arenas and that’s just completely bizarre.  You can’t do anything subtle.  You have to be really clear, loud and stupid and that’s really fun, too.

I think it’s the variety that we love.  Ultimately we like a small theatre or something like that where you get some space but you also get a balance.  I think a variety of all the different kinds of venues is great. It never gets old.

What do you think makes for a great Wood Brothers show?

I think it’s just when we’re having fun. We’re not thinking about, “Oh, crap, we’re on TV. This has to be good.” We’re not putting pressure on ourselves, … we’re connecting, we’re listening to each other.  You’re basically not thinking of anything and you’re in the moment.  We had a night like that just recently. Sometimes you get half a night.  You remember why you’re doing it. … When you’re out on the road doing two weeks of shows in a row and one or two days off, you’re really waiting for that hour and a half of music.  Everything else is just waiting for that and just trudging around getting in and out of a van, bus or airplane, eating crappy food and all the clichés.  That hour and a half is the time you really get to have fun and do what you love to do.  When it goes great it really reminds you of why you’re doing it. 

The other thing that makes it [worthwhile] is a renewed feeling of connection with the audience.  Often times you talk to people and they say, “You know, this music just healed me.  I’m going through a tough time, a divorce” or “I just lost a relative.” That’s what ties it all together for me, brings it full circle.  “Oh, yeah, we’re doing this because it makes people happy and it’s healing” – that’s a big deal.  That’s something that makes me feel really lucky.  I’m not just indulging myself.  I’m actually doing something important.

Going back to your early days learning to play guitar, do you think there are fans out there, budding guitarists perhaps, who are puzzling you out?

Absolutely. … That’s what’s cool when you’re learning to play guitar.  You’re trying to crack some kind of code.  And there is a code.  There are themes that all of us guitar players have. You learn a couple of those secrets, you’re in good.  Then there are all the different subtleties of different guitar players, they all have their own quirks. It’s real flattering when people email us and say, “What are the chords on this song?  Where did you put your capo on that one?”

We did one of those Kickstarter campaigns a couple of years ago to raise money for our Europe tour and we offered guitar lessons over Skype.  What a cool thing to have people who want you to show them how to play your songs.  It’s awesome.

Do you kind of wish that was the situation when you were growing up?  That you could have communicated with some of your heroes?

That’s [would have been] pretty amazing.  I’m definitely not in the same league as some of those heroes but I can imagine some lucky people must have sat in a hotel room with one of those guys and had them [share] a couple of things.

What’s the best bit of advice anyone has given you over the years?

Never focus. … Col. Bruce Hampton said, “Never focus.” I think he might have been kidding. Somehow I always remember that. Depending on how you interpret that, how I think of it is, never try to focus.  You can’t try to do something, you just have to do it.

Upcoming shows for The Wood Brothers:

Oct. 11 – Charlotte, N.C., Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre (opening for Zac Brown Band)
Oct. 12 – Virginia Beach, Va, Farm Bureau Live At Virginia Beach (opening for Zac Brown Band)
Oct. 13 – Bristow, Va., Jiffy Lube Live (opening for Zac Brown Band)
Oct. 15 – Ashland, Va., Ashland Coffee & Tea
Oct. 16 – Chapel Hill, N.C., Local 506
Oct. 17 – Wilmington, N.C.,  Ziggy’s By The Sea
Oct. 18 – Greensboro, N.C., Blind Tiger
Oct. 19 – Charleston, S.C.,  Blackbaud Stadium  (Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Music & Food Festival)
Oct. 20 – Asheville, N.C., The Orange Peel
Dec. 5 – Steamboat Springs, Colo., Chief Theater
Dec. 6 – Boulder, Colo., Fox Theatre
Dec. 7 – Englewood, Colo., Gothic Theatre
Dec. 8 – Aspen, Colo., Belly Up Aspen
Dec. 10 – Lawrence, Kansas, The Bottleneck
Dec. 11 – Tulsa, Okla., The Vanguard
Dec. 12 – Dallas, Texas, The Prophet Bar
Dec. 13 – San Antonio, Texas, Sam’s Burger Joint Music Hall
Dec. 14 – Austin, Texas, The Parish
Dec. 15 – Houston, Texas, Fitzgerald’s      

Please visit TheWoodBrothers.com for more information.