Oliver Wood (Solo) wsg Ric Robertson

Whenever Oliver Wood isn’t touring with The Wood Brothers — the Grammy-nominated roots trio that he co-founded in 2006 — he typically begins his mornings the same way: in Nashville, at home, with a coffee cup in his hand and a notebook in his lap. “There’s a chair in my living room, right in front of a window,” he says. “Every morning, I go down there to drink my coffee, meditate, and write. It’s like a therapy session for me, because I can write without any specific goal in mind. I can be creative without being self-judgmental.” Many of the songs from Fat Cat Silhouette, Wood’s second solo record, began taking shape in that chair. Produced by his Wood Brothers’ bandmate Jano Rix, it’s an album of unexpected twists and turns. Longtime fans will recognize the earnest, elastic voice that has always anchored the Wood Brothers’ mix of forward-looking folk and southern country-funk, but Fat Cat Silhouette doesn’t spend much time looking backward. Instead, it abandons convention, breaks a few rules, and positions Oliver Wood as a roots-music innovator who’s every bit as interested in the process as the product. “I wanted to get outside my box and embrace the uncertainty of what’s out there,” he explains. “I wanted weird guitar tones. The song ‘Yo I Surrender’ has the worst guitar sound I’ve ever heard in my life, and I just love it. I wanted more percussion and less drums. Once we began experimenting and doing whatever we wanted, the pressure melted away and I felt liberated.” On the album’s opener, “Light and Sweet,” Wood matches an imaginative storyline with a melody that leaps from ground level into the stratosphere. Eight songs later, he brings things to a close with “Fortune Drives the Bus,” which he recorded on an iPhone in his own backyard. While tracking the rest of Fat Cat Silhouette to analog tape, Wood pushed himself to keep things weird. This is an album that finds the art in the unexpected, and Oliver Wood — whose songwriting and vocal chops remain as sharp as ever — at his most adventurous.

Ric Robertson crafts the kind of music that doesn’t beg for your attention — it quietly earns it. One note, one image, one breath at a time. He’s a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist — but mostly, he’s just trying to make sense of the absurd beauty in being alive.
Robertson has lent his voice, songs, and musical curiosity to projects with artists like Lucius, The Wood Brothers, and Sierra Ferrell, but it’s in his solo work where his vision comes fully alive and his voice shines most true. His latest album, Choices and Chains, is a crooked little odyssey of transformation- following the technicolor psychamericana on his breakout album “Carolina Child”.