Next year The Wood Brothers celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band, and in advance of that milestone they are about to release their ninth studio album, Puff of Smoke on August 1. Recorded at The Wood Brothers' home base The Studio Nashville, the record addresses the human condition in 2025 with the band’s trademark wit and a general sense of joy and positivity. It’s a record that first and foremost puts the trio’s remarkable musicality at the center of the action. That’s why the videos that accompany the first two singles are so full of impact. They help amplify the lyrics and deliver the songs’ messages.
The album’s opening track "Witness" and first single is a funky back-beat groove replete with back-alley New Orleans brass. The second single, “Pray God Listens” comes from an entirely different musical angle, with a folky jangle that puts its focus on vocals that are delivered with a wink and a smile. For this listener, I couldn’t help but think of Bob Schneider songs like “God Is My Friend” and “The Bringdown” when hearing these tracks. Like Schneider, The Wood Brothers break from convention and the result is a creative output that presents so much to explore.
The Wood Brothers, Puff of Smoke, album cover.
The summer months leading into the release of Puff of Smoke find The Wood Brothers on the road with festival dates and headline shows across the US, including playing with the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Sun, Sand and Soul festival in Miramar Beach, Florida, at Del McCoury's Delfest (Cumberland, Maryland) and the Rochester Jazz Festival, as well as a co-headline run with St. Paul and the Broken Bones beginning in June. Copper caught up with Chris Wood to talk about the new record, the role that videos play, and what lies ahead as the band turns 20.
Ray Chelstowski: Your approach to tackling the issues of the day with these singles is refreshing. It seems absent of anything partisan and shoots right down the middle.
Chris Wood: Well that’s amazing! You never really know when you create these songs how they are going to hit people. And of course, when they are released and what’s happening in the world that may affect that interpretation is unpredictable. We are living in intense times but we have been for quite some time. It just keeps getting more intense. So I think that even a song that we wrote a couple of years ago that finally gets released maybe more than ever has a real meaning. It’s the same old stuff we’ve been dealing with. It’s just being amplified.
RC: So these weren’t all songs that you created during the recording process? These were written earlier?
CW: Yeah, we met in the studio last October to record a collection of songs that we’d already written. They been kicked around and messed with over 2023 and 2024. When you get into the studio you never really know how they are going to turn out. The arrangements, the music, even the lyrics are tweaked at the last minute. But those songs were kind of forming over a few years.
RC: You are underway with your tour. Is this the first time that you have performed these songs in front of a live audience?
CW: Yesterday was the official release date of the “Pray God Listens” song and we happened to be playing in this little venue in Rocky Mount, Virginia that had a piano. We don’t typically tour with a piano, but when a venue has one on stage that we can incorporate into our show, we do, and last night that happened to be the case and we performed the song for the first time and it was fun.
RC: When you sit down to write, how do your individual styles and approaches help improve each other’s work?
CW: That’s a big, complicated question but the main thing we bring to each other is mutual respect. I think that our strength is our respect for each other and our understanding of where each others’ strengths and weaknesses reside. This allows us to sort of self-produce each other. When a band goes into a studio and hires a producer they want someone to be objective because they are so close to the music that it’s easy to lose perspective. But if you happen to be in a group where there’s a lot of mutual respect and everyone does have producing experience, we can take turns being that person and produce each other and help each other work through moments of doubt or insecurity. That’s how we work together and when it works it's playful and we make decisions quickly because we are all just feeling it.
RC: You have videos to accompany the release of the first two singles. How do you approach video?
CW: So the “Pray God Listens” one is just a lyric video and that was done by someone who had a certain kind of style that they landed upon, and they chose imagery that matched and helped animate the lyrics. As far as the “Witness” video, which we really made ourselves, this is something new for us. I’m interested in working with video and film and the biggest roadblock for me was the technical side of things. Even if you buy a nice camera and start shooting footage you end up with these gigantic files and to transfer and edit them becomes cumbersome. What we love about making music is the playfulness and the instant gratification that keeps it that way. So I wasn’t in a hurry to get back into making videos until the technology was where the process would have that kind of playfulness we enjoy with music. Now with our phones, I can do everything on one device and like with music it allows for a lot of trial and error. You know if things work right away.
RC: Given that this new record is going to be available on all formats, does it impact how you approach track sequencing?
CW: We definitely still think of things from an album perspective. We grew up with album formats and I can’t help but think about that kind of listening experience, how songs lead into each other and all of that. I mean we grew up with Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin being so anti single that they’d make sure that every song was connected to each other so that they couldn’t be isolated. Or on purpose, add an absolutely avant garde section in “Whole Lotta Love.” He wanted albums to be a full experience and we did that with Medeski Martin & Wood too. It’s partly because of the era we grew up in.
RC: That’s a perfect segue. Next year the band celebrates its 20th anniversary. Do you have anything special planned and is there anything on the horizon for Medeski Martin & Wood?
CW: We might do something our very first record, Ways Not To Lose, but we’re still figuring that out. In terms of [jam band] Medeski Martin & Wood, we have a show confirmed for next year. Right now I’m so busy with The Wood Brothers that it’s basically consuming my whole life right now. But we’ll see. We’re excited that we have a show booked for next year [for Medeski Martin and Wood] and we’ll see where that leads us.
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