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Ways Not To Lose, the 2006 debut from the Wood Brothers
had, in a sense, been a lifetime in the making-the first
public collaboration between vocalist and guitarist Oliver
Wood, who fronts Atlanta-based blues band King Johnson,
and upright bassist Chris Wood, of the long-running, genre-blasting
trio Medeski Martin and Wood. As players, they displayed
an easy-going virtuosity; as siblings, they had an extraordinary
rapport. Their folk and acoustic blues tunes, tinged with
gospel hopefulness and country melancholy, were welcomed
like old friends by both fans and pundits.
National Public Radio named their debut disc one of their
top ten discoveries that year. Rolling Stone declared,
"The flip, easygoing party music on 'Lose' disguises
sneakily deep inquiries into what it means to be alive,
struggle with temptation, and every once in a while seek
some truth."
With Loaded, the Wood Brothers engage in a more expansive
musical dialogue that commenced well before they hit the
studio; they collaborated for the first time on writing
material together. John Medeski, returning as producer,
got into the mix as the songs were just taking shape,
and he plays keyboards on several tracks. The crew, working
at a studio near Woodstock, New York, opened up the sessions
to other musicians and friends-singers Amos Lee, Pieta
Brown and Frazey Ford, steel guitarist Darick Campbell,
violinists David Mansfield and Jennifer Choi, cellist
David Eggar, drummers Billy Martin and Kenny Wolleson,
and percussionist Donnie McCormick-making this a more
fleshed-out, multi-layered band effort compared to the
spare, live-in-the-studio approach of Ways Not To Lose.
Oliver still does the lead singing, in a voice that is,
by turns, weathered, wounded or yearning, but Chris takes
his first lead-vocals turn at the mic on the gentle "Don't
Look Back," bolstered by Frazey Ford of Canadian
roots music trio The Be Good Tanyas. Jokes Chris, "After
being in an instrumental band for eighteen years, it was
pretty weird to be stuck in front a microphone. When MMW
fans see us play, they say, that's the first time I ever
heard you speak, much less sing."
"We initially just brought our songs and our musicianship
to the table," continues Chris, "We had a chemistry
that was good and we captured that on the first record.
It's been almost two years now and, having played constantly
for the last two years together and written things together,
we've just evolved. We have different things to say, different
things are happening in our lives, and we combined our
efforts much more. That combined voice has taken us to
a different place and this record illustrates that."
Songwriting, as well as playing gigs, became an important
connection for the brothers, as Oliver explains, "Chris
and I live pretty far apart, so unless we're on the road,
we really don't see each other. A lot of times one of
us will start a song, introduce some music or some lyric.
It took a little while, but we got used to the idea of
getting the other person involved to where both of us
have our hearts invested in a song. That's a different
feeling than, 'Hey, here's my song, let's play it together.'
It's different for both of us to have something at stake
there."
Most importantly, their songwriting and playing got them
through some tough times for their family, Oliver says,
"We lost our mom last spring to ALS, Lou Gehrig's
disease. She was deteriorating over the last year or two,
so we couldn't help but have that influence what we were
feeling and what we were writing about. It's a unique
situation because we are working together, but we're also
family, so we were both hit in kind of the same way by
the passing of our mom. That definitely shows up in the
music quite a bit."
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