“We getting closer to the big jam festivals,” Woods guitarist/singer/founder Jeremy Earl said in late 2011, shortly before he started work on his band’s new album Bend Beyond. At the time Earl was talking about his label’s annual Woodsist festival but he could also have said the same thing about the sound on his band’s road-ready record. Earl originally envisioned Woods as a home recording project but over the past seven or eight years the group has grown into one of the most dynamic live acts to emerge from Brooklyn, NY’s DIY underground.
While their early releases were filled with sound-collages and minimalist noise jams, the band’s more recent albums have pushed Woods into more roots-leaning freak folk and psychedelic territories. As they have become more comfortable live, Woods—Earl, multi-instrumentalist Jarvis Taveniere, tape-effects technician G. Lucas Crane and bassist Kevin Morby—have also started to stretch out live; most of their shows now include at least a few pockets of extended improvisation that push past the 15-minute mark. On their most recent studio album Bend Beyond, Earl and Taveniere—the group’s core recording duo—managed to channel that live energy without loosing their more delicate touches. The result is both the band’s best studio album, and the best set of live material. Below, Earl and Taveniere take Jambands.com and Relix through their shared history.
Jarvis, before we jump into Woods’ current tour, let’s talk about your new album Bend Beyond. I heard that you switched things up this time, with Jeremy focusing on songwriting while you assumed more of a traditional producer role. Is that true?
JT: Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Normally, when we try to write songs together, we get too excited and just bust [these songs] out real quick. The ideas are just flying, and we don’t have that third party person to rein it in—especially since we are recording the album ourselves. So this time I kind of wanted to sit out on the songwriting a little more, and Jeremy was writing a good portion of our songs anyway. I just wanted to make sure every song had the chance to really develop, and then, I could just be the guy that made sure things were in tune and things were sounding ok.
We recorded in Warwick, NY [where Jeremy lives]. I brought all my gear up there to his house. For about two weeks we kind of just hunkered down and did it. Jeremy and I played most of the instruments, and we spent most of that time just getting the bulk of the basics down. Then, [Woods bassist] Kevin Morby came up and recorded a few songs live in the living room. But most of the record Jeremy and I did by ourselves. I knew I was going to focus more on the production value so I wasn’t interested in trying to change things up that drastically as far as personnel goes [with additional musicians]—I knew we’d be changing up a lot of other things this time around [given our new approach].
And given that process, did you road test a lot of this stuff before you started recording it or did you kind of want to create a different dynamic in that sense?
JT: A little bit of both. There were definitely some songs we played out for a while like “Bend Beyond” and others weren’t road tested. It is something we would like to do more in the future though—just kind of develop the songs live.
How did that approach differ from your previous record, Sun and Shade ?
JE: We started Sun and Shade in the summer of 2010. Actually, it was broken into two recording sessions. The main one was in July. Our friend Glen Donaldson from Skygreen Leopards flew out to my place in Warwick, New York from San Francisco. Me, him, and Jarvis kind of locked ourselves in for about a week and recorded pretty much constantly. That was pretty much the main recording session. But before that—that winter—me and Jarvis had the first session and he came up to record a couple of songs and then there was a blizzard. It was a similar situation, but not planned. We were trapped for five days and just recorded. [Laughter.]
I can see where the album’s title comes from.
JE: Definitely, I mean in many ways the Sun and Shade title really fits the record.
Jarvis, for the past few Woods albums, you and Jeremy have recorded the bulk of the records as a duo. Yet, as Woods has moved from a studio project to more of a live band your albums have also reflected your loose, jammy live aesthetic. Did you go into this recording process trying to create more of a live album?
JT: Totally. That being said, a lot of times we just write and record immediately, which was sort of the idea of the whole band. You know, that was kind of the deal: Just to get these ideas out quickly—evolve songs from a nugget of an idea. But we did that so much, so definitely this time we were going for more of a live feel. Even the stuff that was overdubbed, the basics were still the two of us in a room—we had a lot of room ambience going on.
JE: The other guys are more live members but we like to have them track the more jammy tracks.
A few years ago you moved your recording base of operations from Woods’ Bushwick, NY headquarters to Jeremy’s current home studio upstate. How has that change of scenery impacted the band’s recording approach?
JT: Yeah, it’s really just amazing to get so deep into it. You know, I just wake up on his couch and start recording immediately. We’ll have these ideas which are still lingering from the night before when we’re too exhausted to keep going and, I’m like, “Oh, we needed to do that organ thing!” and then just wake up and walk straight to the organ. On our last record we had such minimal equipment that this time I went up a day early and set up everything, and just turned his house into a studio for a good two weeks.
And you came out with an album…
JT: Yeah. And after that we spent about two weeks in Brooklyn, adding overdubs and having friends like Matt Valentine [keyboardist from MV & the EE] put some stuff down on it. But for most of the album, it was me and Jeremy live on the drums.
Jeremy, what inspired you to move back home to Warwick?
JE: I moved back a few years ago. I grew up here, went to high school here. I went to college in Westchester, New York and that’s where I met Jarvis and Lucas [Crane] from the band. Then, I lived in Brooklyn after college for five years at Rear House and started the label there, and I started Woods there. Just a couple of years ago I ended up back in Warwick.
Have you found that being a little bit removed from the city has helped your creative process? Has it helped you dig into the music?
JE: Definitely. I love being in Brooklyn and recording at Rear House, but there are a lot of distractions. Everybody’s got their different distractions and different things going on, so when you get in a sort of closed environment in the woods where not much is really going on downtown, it’s nice to just lock yourself in and concentrate on the record.
You mentioned going to college in Westchester, NY at Purchase where you guys first met. I was wondering if could give readers unfamiliar with your previous work a quick synopsis history of the band. I know you guys were in a couple of bands together before Woods as we know it came to be. When did you go to school at Purchase?
JE: I graduated in 2002, so it was kind of a while ago. I mean, Woods wasn’t even an idea yet. I had sort of fiddled around on guitar and stuff, but at that point I was mainly a drummer. So in many ways, me and Jarvis’ roles were reversed. He was the guitarist and singer, and I was the drummer. We kind of started doing more indie rock stuff and were in hardcore bands. But my main focus at Purchase was art. I went there for fine art and print making, so that’s where I was. At that point, music was kind of something for fun every once in a while. But then, when we moved to Brooklyn things changed. I started fiddling around with playing guitar, writing songs and recording them on four-track. That was basically how Woods started—just me in a bedroom learning how to write songs. About 2004 we recorded our first record, and around then we first started playing every once in a while. It didn’t really get rolling as a full-time band until 2007, 2008.
For readers who have not been there, can you describe Rear House?
JE: When we first moved from Purchase that was the first place we found and it’s basically surrounded by apartment buildings on all four sides. It’s in this little kind of quad thing, behind one apartment building that’s on the main street, Bushwick Ave. So you walk through an apartment building and it opens up to a small little backyard and this tiny house is there.
It was great because we got the whole house, two floors, five bedrooms and a kitchen. Everyone started living there and it was the band’s house, practice studio and recording studio. At this point, it’s been boiled down to pretty much practice space and recording space. It’s now evolved to Rear House Recording. He [Jarvis] works out of there. There are a couple people living upstairs. Kevin Morby lives upstairs. He’s actually the only band member that’s still living there. But we’ve got a couple of subletters that help pay the rent and all. At this point, we’ve kind of separated the home life and the practice space and the recording studio life. After living there for five years, it got to be like, “Okay, I’m living in a practice space. Let’s get out of here.”
Is that how Kevin joined the band? By moving in?
JE: Yeah, which is funny because he ended up just subletting a room in Rear House. At one point Woods had another member and he moved out. We knew Kevin he was looking for a spot—I should say we kind of knew of him. I don’t think he was even playing music at the time, or if he was, we didn’t know about it. But he moved in and I remember me and Jarvis were talking about adding a new member. At that point it was just me, Jarvis, and Lucas. That’s when we first started to really play shows in Brooklyn. We were playing all the time, almost every week. We were like, “You know, we really need a bass player. Who can we get? I think Kevin could actually play bass. Let’s see what he thinks.” He was like, “Yeah, I can play bass.” It sounded simple enough. He learned some songs and that was it. It was like, okay, you’re in the band, man. He was instantly touring all over the world after that.
In terms of Woods’ current tour, the biggest change is that you [Jarvis] have moved from playing drums to guitar. This spring you were playing both instruments on different songs and now you are on guitar fulltime. What led to this change?
JT: Well, I started playing drums in the band because [Woods] started out as a recording project of Jeremy’s. I wanted to be involved, and they needed a drummer—even though I was a guitarist—and the vibe was just right. I never really had the muscle I needed live. And you know, sometime’s it’s cool but… We’ve just tried so many live configurations for so long—when it hit it was great, and when it didn’t it felt a little weak. It just felt like it was time to have a drummer and kind of open up the possibilities of having someone new in the band. I would have tried to find another second guitarist and just stay on drums, too—it was just about the idea of having somebody else who can multitask and just do whatever was needed. And we met Aaron Nevu, who’s a really great drummer, so it kind of worked out that I get to go back to guitar.
Aaron plays in a band called Mmoss that are really good. We really like them—we did two tours with them. We’ve been teaching him songs as the tours went on, a new song or two each time. It worked out that he could come on tour and play behind us the whole time.
I saw on Twitter you’ve also done some double drummer shows recently. Is that inspired by the Grateful Dead’s ‘rhythm devils’ sound?
JT: Well, since having Aaron in the band, we’ve done a few double drummer shows just because we’d be in town and have our friends sit in. Like I said before when it was when I was on drums, we’d roll through town and have a friend that we trusted as a musician, teach him three songs on drums during sound check and I move back to guitar. So we had people scattered around that would jump up on stage with us and we would just get together on sound check and have two drums set up and try to get in some Dead territory. We are a well-oiled machine [Laughter.]
I was actually trying to get them do some of that and would be say, “it would be cool of you can complete each others fills.” But our shows are sometimes only 45 minutes so I am not sure how successful we’re going to be. When the Dead do that, it is mind-blowing. We listened to Dick’s Picks from ‘68 in the van the other day and the drumming was “Oh my God!”
I mean, the force of that band is that everybody is an equal. If you pull out anything [it changes]. It didn’t collapse—they did the single drummer thing— but listening to that Dick’s recording just got me thinking how much you noticed if the drums dropped out for a second. Maybe when we are making more money we can do the double-drummer thing more. [Laughter.]
I remember back in the MySpace days—when many actual jambands were trying to keep the media from calling them jambands—you listed Woods as a jamband.
JE: Totally, I mean we kind of thought it was fun to push that from the beginning. Because we did jam, we were a band. Not your everyday jamband. We’re not really in the scene of Phish and stuff, but coming out of where all modern blues bands came out of, which was Greatful Dead and that world, we were right there. It felt right, it felt fun to do.
I know you grew up listening to a lot of punk music but did you also listen to a lot of jambands when you were younger?
JE: I grew up listening to that music, especially in high school. I got into a lot of other jambands from the Grateful Dead. I’d go to Phish concerts and stuff like that—I was really into MMW. But The Dead was the one that got me. I had Phish records, but it wasn’t quite there for me. But the Dead were sort of with me my whole life.
In terms of the band’s ethos, the band Woods started as a recording project and, in many ways, actually still is a recording project. But I’ve felt that when the shows have taken up a more rock energy to them that’s not as loose and jammy as the Dead, but more of a live feel. Do you think that developed out of the fact that you guys are touring more or because you guys have had a more stable lineup for the past few years?
JT: Yeah I think that’s pretty much it. Like really getting into it because even if we’re trying to go into more of a live feel, things being a little off, like a little discombobulated. We dig that feeling a lot. It’s kind of the backbone of our playing and touring over he last three years. We are starting to having more fun on stage that way, too. I’m back on an instrument I feel really comfortable on. And the live shows are just a blast. You know, I feel like I can go anywhere, do anything. And kind of move together as a unit more. The format is just so rigid, you know. If I drop the beat it’s all over.
Jeremy, do you think that having been in a band for years and starting Woods in your late 20s made it easier for you to figure out your vision for Woods?
JE: Maybe, I don’t know. I think it being so fresh to me and not really doing it for too long, I think it just started to come out easy. But I don’t know if it has anything to really do with age. I still feel really young. It’s funny because I meet people who are like 21 and I never make the connection that like, “Oh wow I’m like more than 10 years older than them.”
We’re all 34, and Kevin is almost 10 years younger then us. When we met him, he wasn’t even 21 yet. I remember when he turned 21 and that is really cool. It spices things up and gives us some younger energy.
Jarvis, though you and Jeremy have been responsible for most of Woods’ recent studio albums, your core live band included Kevin on bass and G. Lucas Crane on tapes for a number of years. At this point are they still part of the core band?
JT: Kevin’s still playing with us. He has his own band The Babies, too and when we get home he goes out with The Babies ten days later. Lucas has still been doing tapes for us but he’s not out with us on this trip. He was on the last one with us, though. [Crane recently moved upstate where he got a job fixing vintage keyboards and opted to take this tour off].
How did Lucas become involved in the band?
JE: We went to college together but didn’t play music together. I later started hooking up with him again in Brooklyn where he lived in this old house, DIY space called Fort Awesome. Then, he became really involved in the underground, experimental music scene. Everyone kind of reconnected around the band Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice. Jarvis and Lucas both played in that band during the peak of their touring days and I played with them every once in a while.
That was kind of my first experience with a more DIY venue space in Brooklyn. I think the scene definitely evolved and once we met [DIY] promoter Todd P it just seemed to open up a whole new world. He seemed to be great at finding spaces and putting on great shows for a ton of bands with a variety of musical genres. It was pretty amazing.
From your perspective, now that you are playing all these songs, playing them live probably hundreds of times, playing on drums and playing on guitar, do you ever go back in your mind and relearn guitar parts for songs that you helped write and recorded over the years?
JT: Yeah, definitely. But guitar is my first instrument, so it’s pretty easy for me. And it’s the thing that I’m good at, in life. And it’s pretty easy for me to switch back over. I mean it took a while for it to lock in totally, but that’s just a normal thing I think in tour.
Let’s talk about your current tour. You’ve been across the country and back. What have been the highlights?
*JT: All the Northwest like Portland and Seattle, it just rained all the time—a blanket, you know. It was pretty wild, the shows were good, pretty fun. Oakland was insane.. The most manic sound I’ve ever felt in my life. We just had fun with it, and had a good show. We invited people up on stage to dance, which is very, very not us but it seemed appropriate. We had this crazy sound guy: it just like too crazy of a situation. Things were cutting in and out onstage and you can’t beat the crazies.
We just played Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s new club in San Francisco. Elvis Costello just played here, too and a few other people like that. We didn’t get to play with Preservation Hall this time but we were talking back in the motor lodge about trying to hook that up for the future.
In terms of your setlists so far, have you been able to translate all the songs on the album into the live set, or are there some that you guys are keeping back and some that work better into the live show?
JT: There are some that work better live than I thought would. But this is the first record that we’re capable of playing all the songs live if we wanted to, which is nice. Before we could only perform four songs per album live, just because we’re touring so much we don’t have time to switch up personnel, but we didn’t really find the right fit. So we found Aaron, so that kind of worked out.
It is interesting for a while your albums were filled with so many sound-collages the songs couldn’t be performed live and now, for the first time, you have to decide which songs fit in the set and which don’t?
JT: The softer stuff is a little trickier live because if the setting isn’t right you can lose the crowd. It’s weird…rock clubs. Sometimes if it can work, we can do at least like one acoustic song—or maybe two—sometimes in these stellar rock sides, you just want to go for it, don’t know. You just want to go for it. You just want to turn it up.
Sometimes it’s the songs I would never expect to be playing live are the ones that are good in a set that we haven’t not played in a live set for two years, we always play it. We did this show [update] at the Storm King Arts Center this spring, and we got the Widowspeak drummer to play a couple songs with us. We did this long version of “I Was Gone.”
“I Was Gone” is a song that just came out of thin air [in the studio] by putting the mic over the drum set and putting the mic in front of the guitar. And I really love the recording of that—and what it’s become live is just so different.
JE: Yeah, in the recording process we can’t help but experiment in the studio—it’s probably the most fun part of recording. Sometimes, I’ll record a really sparse song when it’s just vocals and guitar, but rarely. It’s just so fun to get in there and just carve out and try new things. It would be boring if we just did a record that’s completely straight up, no experimenting.
That being said, since your new album has a such a live feel, would you want to document the live band in the studio?
JT: Yeah, I mean I think next time we want to do a more studio/live band thing. Kind of in the way the song “Bend Beyond” was recorded. I like that we can stretch out a little more. I mean invariably we always will probably write and arrange songs in the studio on the fly kind of songs. And of course we’d like to release a live album—it is something we talk about every day [Laughter.]
Have you recorded certain shows with that intention?
JT: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of live stuff taken around that we need to go through. Really randomly, people show up at a show and say, “Hey, I’ve been here for three hours and got a seat next to the soundboard and I have a multitrack of the show.” We are like, “Really? Tonight?” [Laughter.]
Your taper section is forming…
JT: Yeah I know, it’s growing! But I’d like to go through all that, and that’s something that’s definitely on the horizon. If we get something that we think makes for a fun listen we will put it out.
Jarvis, you have also developed into the house producer/engineer for Woods’ old studio Rear House. I know you recently recorded Real Estate bassist Alex Bleeker and his band the Freaks there. Do you have any other studio projects coming up?
JT: Mostly it’s just a lot of Woods touring and, you know, being on tour talking about the next year ahead of you and more touring. So hopefully some more great projects are ahead. Kevin’s got the Babies album coming out soon, so that’s pretty exciting.
