Wood Bros’ rootsy weirdness on tap for first Moonlight MUSICFEST
Soon to visit Southwest Montana, Nashville-based Americana trio The Wood Brothers will lend their talents to Big Sky’s first-ever Moonlight MUSICFEST at the halfway mark of August. The mountain music extravaganza offers locals and visitors the opportunity to experience the perfect summer send-off with two days of live music in a picturesque, outdoor setting.
The Bros – comprised of Oliver Wood, Chris Wood and Jano Rix – add their name to a lineup that includes headliners Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers and Grace Potter, as well as Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Mission Temple Fireworks Revival with Paul Thorn and Blind Boys of Alabama, Anderson East, Sam Bush Band, The Suffers, Hawthorne Roots, Kylie Spence, and The Well.
In anticipation of the upcoming Madison Village performance, The Rolling Zone hopped on the phone with brother Oliver to talk the band’s latest album and often experimental artistry.
RZ: You’re joining forces with the likes of Bruce Hornsby and Grace Potter as part of Big Sky, Montana’s first-ever Moonlight MUSICFEST this month. What can festival-goers expect to experience from your portion of the show?
OW: We’re just going to play a lot of Wood Brothers music, to be honest – which, for those who haven’t seen us before, is a variety of rootsy, sometimes experimental or outside of the box stuff. We have a virtuoso upright bass player in my brother Chris Wood, and multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix who plays drums, keyboards and a weird percussion instrument called a shuitar. We have songs from our new record that we’re playing, as well as some classics. We’re also big fans, buddies and sometimes collaborators with Hornsby and Grace Potter, so we’ll be excited to see them as well.
RZ: You’re touring in support of the band’s sixth album, One Drop of Truth, released early this year. How have audiences and longtime fans responded to the new material?
photo by Alysse Gafkjen
OW: Quite well. I think people have really been liking it for the most part. We’re really proud of this record – it has elements of old Wood Brothers stuff and then it has experimental sounds we haven’t tried before. There’s plenty for the fans of the old stuff, but then [we] also pushed the envelope a little bit, doing some weird new stuff. That’s mostly for our pleasure, but I think people appreciate that.
RZ: You’ve said each of these songs have their own little world, the sound of the album being a bit of a mixed bag. Did the Wood Brothers’ decision to diversify its recording and production methods allow room for that experimentation?
OW: Yeah, absolutely. The idea was not to think in terms of an album, as much as each song a song. Rather than write a bunch of songs and compile this cache, we just wrote a song and recorded right after it was written, while it was still fresh and while we were still passionate about it. It’s maybe not as homogenous as the past albums, [but] we liked that it was a little bit diverse.
RZ: The majority of One Drop of Truth was written and recorded as a group. When you guys get together to create, how do you decide what a song or album is going to be about?
OW: There are lots of ways we end up going about it. We’re constantly working on music – whether by accident and we’re just warming up and somebody stumbles across a cool riff or groove, or sometimes we have these designated rehearsals where the goal is to just not sync at all, and without any rules, just improvise and see what happens. We can make up any kind of sounds we want and get as weird as we want. We often find new avenues by doing that, and then later, add lyrics. Other times, the lyrics and the music just come together. But then there’s times when there are notebooks full of lonely words that need music. So, there are all kinds of methods.
RZ: Have you noticed a certain shift or progression in your music since Ways Not to Lose was released some 12 years ago?
OW: There’s definitely an evolution that comes from exploration. Sometimes you get tired of a certain thing. You feel like, ‘Nah, we’ve already done that,’ and you try new things. Other times, we embrace some of the old Wood Brothers stuff – and that’s what I was saying about this record. I feel it has elements of both new things, new boundaries we’ve crossed and also some old-style stuff. It’s just fun to try stuff and not… think. That’s kind of the goal, to just see what comes out.
RZ: But there will always be a signature sound, so to speak, that the Wood Brothers will always retain.
OW: Yeah, I think so. With this record, we have evolved. We added Jano Rix about six years ago, and he’s become an integral part of the sound. He adds a lot with his percussion, his vocal additions, his keyboard-playing – all of those things are a big part of our sound now. It’s certainly evolved since the early days. We have a whole ’nother realm we can go into with Jano.
RZ: Is there one standout tune on this album you’re particularly smitten with? What’s the story behind it?
OW: One that comes to mind is called “Can’t Look Away.” Somehow that one just has a neat vibe to me, it’s just kind of weird. The way it came about, like I mentioned, was with lyrics I had in a notebook that I didn’t know what the heck to do with. Chris and Jano came up with this really cool groove one day in a rehearsal, and those words and the music just sort of married each other later. The beauty of some of this stuff is that you’re not fully in control and you don’t really know how something’s going to turn out when you start. It’s really an adventure every time to finish a song. It’s often completely different than you even imagined it would be in the beginning. And that’s the way “Can’t Look Away” was. It was a pleasant surprise how the song came out.
RZ: The Wood Brothers are coming to Southwest Montana for an outdoor music festival, but you guys have seen crowds of all shapes and sizes. What does your preferred audience look like? Who do you like to play for?
OW: I think we really like the variety. It’s fun to play an intimate venue sometimes, for like a seated, sort of civilized audience. Then other times, it’s fun to play a big festival with a couple thousand people that are just raging and dancing. But I really like that we have a nice cross-section of people, young and old. We have had people tell us – whether it’s a couple or a father and kids or whoever – that our music is something they can agree on. ‘We all like this music,’ instead of it being exclusive to a certain audience. I like that kind of audience, a diverse one.
RZ: What artists genuinely inspire you as a musician? Maybe even those you were last listening to on the road.
OW: Aww, man. There’s all kinds of people, so many. I’m into some Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Charles Mingus – it’s all over the place. I like Tedeschi Trucks, and Los Lobos is a favorite of mine. Ry Cooder. Gosh, I could think of hundreds.
RZ: You’ve got a busy tour schedule into late fall, then what? Where do you go from here?
OW: We’re touring domestically until fall, then we go to Europe in September. Then we’ll get back on a bus and do some regional touring. We’re kind of all over, but really looking forward to starting our new record. I think we’ll probably approach it the same way, writing songs and recording them as they come.
RZ: Very nice. We’re looking forward to that and seeing you in Big Sky for the mid-August festival!
OW: I’m actually excited to have a Montana vacation with my family in the summer. I’m going to be going all over the place, so this is a real Montana summer for me.
The Wood Brothers join headliners Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers and Grace Potter, among other national and regional acts, for the inaugural Moonlight MUSICFEST, coming to Big Sky August 17th–18th. Oliver, Chris and Jano are set to take the stage Friday night at 7:30pm.
Advance festival tickets ($125 weekend, $65 Friday, $75 Saturday plus fees) are available at www.moonlightmusicfest.com where you can learn more about the featured acts and weekend festivities. Kids 12 and under are admitted free. Events will unfold at Moonlight’s Madison Village. Be sure to follow the Fest on Facebook and Instagram for updated event information, @MoonlightMUSICFEST.
Learn more about the Wood Brothers at www.thewoodbros.com or find them on Facebook for updated tour details and band announcements, @thewoodbrothers. Their latest album, One Drop of Truth, is available now. •
