Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen
The thrill of songwriting and creating in the studio remains such a joy for Oliver Wood that he kept the process going after he completed the next Wood Brothers album. His second solo effort, Fat Cat Silhouette, is the result. Containing an intimate, loose vibe like a series of recording sessions with friends — which it was – with lyrics that bear deeper truths about the human condition.
Produced by his Wood Brothers’ bandmate Jano Rix, the nine-track album features multiple collaborations including songs co-written with Rix, Seth Walker, Sean McConnell and Ric Robertson and guest performances by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin and Marshall Tucker Band’s Marcus James Henderson plus a reworked version of “Have You No Shame,” performed as a duet with Katie Pruitt, that was written by Donnie McCormick, one of Wood’s mentors from his early years on the Atlanta music scene.
Wood will perform a few dates this week, including appearances at AmericanaFest and Healing Appalachia. He will return to the road with Wood Brothers later this fall.
JPG: With your solo shows and touring with The Wood Brothers, your life and career are often mapped out well out in advance. Is that a positive for you or is it constricting in any way?
OW: Well, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s definitely nice to know your schedule and then you can plan a family vacation or you can plan a break. And then, the downside of it is, for me, has been to overextend myself, adding solo shows. It’s something I want to do. I took the time to make this record. I enjoyed it.
The downside of what you’re talking about is to not really be in that moment that’s six to nine months in advance. And then, when you get there, you’re like, “What was I thinking? I’m not gonna be home at all that month.” So, it’s easy to overextend yourself and make decisions that haunt you a little bit later. It’s not necessarily all about being away from home, but mostly they are.
It’s really exciting to make a record and to finish the record but because of the way the industry works your record comes out, if you’re lucky, like six months later. Sometimes a year later. As nice as it is to put out a record, you’ve already creatively may have moved on, and by moved on I mean those songs aren’t your primary focus anymore. But, you still have to treat them like it’s new music because it’s new music to the fans in the outside world.
It’s not that I hate doing that. That’s one reason I did a solo record, this last record of mine. I had a blast making a Wood Brothers record. It’s not going to come out for a long time because we have to wait for all the publicity to line up, for the vinyl to be pressed and things that take a long time. So, I just wanted to make another record. I just love making albums. It’s a cycle. Then, when my album came out, like all of them, it’s a bit anticlimactic. Not to say anything negative about it because I’m very proud of it.
I think it’s wonderful and I realize the funnest part was making the album. I read stories about bands in the ‘50s and ‘60s where they cut Elvis’s record, and the next day somebody drove it over to the radio station and then the next day they pressed it up for all the radio stations across the country. That seems like instant gratification. You’re still connected to whatever you worked on because it’s been days and weeks rather than months and years.
JPG: I’m glad that you mentioned that because it would drive me nuts if I had an album completed today and it just had to sit for months to nearly a year. It’s like I’m holding on to this big secret.
OW: I think of recorded music as a snapshot. You’re capturing moments when you record songs. Although those moments may age really well, I get a thrill from listening to old records like old Wood Brothers records. It just takes me right back to that time and I love them and I’m proud of them and there’s that feeling. But there’s also the feeling, like right when you finish writing and recording a song, you just feel like, “Wow! I captured this as me. I captured me and all the people that were playing with it. That was us that day and it was magic and all the collaborators and everything.”
Then six months later, you’re a different person, you’ve been reborn a couple times. You’ve evolved. It’s a little bit like, “Oh, that’s not quite me. I’m proud of it. I love it. That was me then. It was awesome.”
JPG: For myself, I used to have a perfectionist part of my personality. I would think, if the recording’s sitting there all mixed, it would still be running through my head a month later, and I’d be like, “Can we go back in the studio? I want to add tambourine,” or “I want to take this track out…”
OW: Yeah. I know exactly the feeling you’re talking about. You can always feel like, “I never quite finished that?” or “I never quite made it as good as it can be.” And actually, these last couple records — both Wood Brothers and my solo record — I learned, and I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ve learned to just let go of that and be like, “Okay. It is what it is. And it was a moment and it’s over.” I feel like I’ve gotten better at that.
I also know it’s not going to do me any good. Once the mastering happens, I pretty much don’t listen for a long time. The next time I’m listening is because we’re gonna play ‘em on tour and I need to learn how to play ‘em live, and that is actually refreshing because you take some time off and go back to it and learn it, it’s almost like it’s someone else’s music. You’re like, “Oh cool! Look at what these guys did with this song. We’re gonna learn it. We’re gonna play it. It’s gonna be fun.”
JPG: Also, when you’re playing it live, you’re tweaking it a bit for the live situation.
OW: Yes. Oftentimes, it requires you to adapt it to being a live song. I think most of the stuff we record is pretty live to begin with. However, there are always things that you may have to adapt, and that’s a fun challenge. It’s fun to innovate in that way, innovate in a way that makes it a live song now.
JPG: Speaking of playing it live, is there any chance that a Wood Brothers performance would incorporate a song or two from Fat Cat Silhouette?
OW: So far, this has been a separate entity and my little vanity project for me to keep things going. So, that has yet to happen. There’s yet to be overlap other than [Wood Brothers member] Jano Rix producing this record and often playing shows with me when I do shows.
That’s the other thing. The Wood Brothers is such a full-time bread and butter…that’s the foundation of my creative life and career. It takes up 90 percent easily of my energy. So, I guess the answer is those two entities have yet to cross.
I definitely do certain Wood Brothers songs when I do my solo shows. Most of them are songs that actually predate the Wood Brothers. I had a band called King Johnson that predates Wood Brothers. Some of those songs were songs that the Wood Brothers actually made more popular.
So, there’s some conscious separation to separate it not in any negative way but just to, maybe, make it feel like it’s a little something different.
JPG: On the Marinade podcast I heard you say: “I wanted to get outside my box and grace the uncertainty of what’s out there.” You wanted weird guitar tones, more percussion less drums on your new album. Was that a desire before you entered the studio or was it something that as you started recording, you and Jano had an idea of, “Let’s take this away or do this or…?”
OW: I feel like a lot of those thoughts are subconscious until you get down to it. Then, when you’re arranging a song in the studio it becomes apparent that, “I’ve heard that before. What can we do that we hadn’t done?” So, it becomes a conscious effort to make something sound…and really the Wood Brothers do this, too, where, when we’re in the studio our goal is for what we’re coming up with is to not fit in entirely with what we’ve done previously or with what other people are doing. There’s this conscious decision to…you don’t necessarily know what you want to do but you know what you don’t want to do, and there’s where the experimentation and the curiosity and, hopefully, the innovation comes in.
For instance, there were some songs where it was really intuitive for Jano just to play a drum set. I was really interested in him playing more percussion and less drums. Luckily, he was open to that, partly because I know how great…he is such an innovator and he’s such a master, it’s cool to catch him a little bit out of his box, having him play something weird. On my first solo record I was like, “Will you just play the chicken coop on this song?” (laughs), and he did, and he made some magic out of it.
It’s like as guitar players, if you hand us a weird guitar or a new tuning or something where we’re kind of uncomfortable, oftentimes, it forces us into an innovative frame of mind where we come up with something that we normally wouldn’t have come up with.
With Jano alone, there were things where it’s like, “That song really needs a shaker or something like that on it. Something percussion. What can we do that’s not typical?” I joked and said, “Hey, can you do it with your mouth, like make a sound?” Next thing you know, he’s in there with a microphone in his hand and headphones on and at the mixing board cutting these tracks of mouth percussion. I wouldn’t call it beatboxing. It was more like “percussion boxing” but it was cool, and he’s imitating shakers and hi-hats with his mouth and it just was really cool and interesting.
There are several moments like that. Let’s not put bass on this song. Let’s make this tuba. There’s a song called “Whom I Adore” that’s almost like a fife and drum. Sometimes, you add certain elements in there and it goes to more something typical. When you sub something out with something less likely and a combination that’s less likely to happen out in the world, that’s when you break some new ground. It might be subtle that some people don’t even notice but for me, it’s really refreshing. So, you’re just trying to turn yourself on by innovating and by innovating by being curious and stumbling on to things. I don’t think of it as genius. I think of it like dumb luck and that’s what’s fun about it.
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