I first encountered Nick Woods years ago in a bar. Since then, we’ve run into each other regularly, and shared insight on everything from Twin Peaks to The Silver Jews and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. In getting to know him as a musician, I’ve found that Woods presents the human condition in a unique, dynamic fashion. He takes risks with his non-traditional voice and his penchant for introverted observations that cater to both the metaphorical and the logically literal. He spends a great amount of time determining the best way to construct songs powered by innate personal recollections, filtered through intriguing abstractions. I’m not sure that everybody who encounters his music is into it, but the ones that are seem really into it.
I first encountered Nick Woods years ago in a bar. Since then, we’ve run into each other regularly, and shared insight on everything from Twin Peaks to The Silver Jews and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. In getting to know him as a musician, I’ve found that Woods presents the human condition in a unique, dynamic fashion. He takes risks with his non-traditional voice and his penchant for introverted observations that cater to both the metaphorical and the logically literal. He spends a great amount of time determining the best way to construct songs powered by innate personal recollections, filtered through intriguing abstractions. I’m not sure that everybody who encounters his music is into it, but the ones that are seem really into it.
Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Woods could never stay still. He split his time between the suburbs of northern Virginia and the small town of Fenton, which is located outside of Roanoke. When he turned fourteen, he received his first guitar. In his earliest musical memories, Woods recalls hearing George Harrison alongside numbers by the Cascades and Wham. He was a product of what was popular on the radio until he began to take notice of groups like Nirvana and the Talking Heads. “Nirvana was the first big band for me, which I was too young to be into,” he says. “When I was a kid, I really only listened to the music that my parents listened to. I never had an older brother, but I had friends who had older brothers that would get me into different types of music. With Nirvana, it was the first time that I had ever really wanted a CD, and I didn’t know how to go about [getting it]. They were the first band that really spurred that interest in me, to want to play music.”
The first songs that Woods wrote were written on bass, in the group Magnus. The group was in need of a bass player, and his friend Patrick O’Neill, who was in the band, asked him to take on that role. Woods recalls how “Pat asked me if I played bass and I told him I did. He told me to come by the next day and play with him. I had never played before at all. I didn’t even own a bass at that time. I went to a shop and traded in a guitar I had for a bass. Before I went over to his house on that day, I had pulled the price tag off and developed an elaborate story about how my amp was busted or how I had forgotten to bring it over.”
Despite Woods owning a guitar, it came as a surprise to his parents that he would end up playing bass in a rock band. Growing up in a primarily religious household, his parents were distressed, to say the least. “I was brought up in a strict household and secular music was frowned upon,” he says. “All of a sudden I was in a band and playing in bars. My parents weren’t happy about it, but it was really exciting to me.”
While being involved in Magnus, Woods attempted to write songs, which only increased his desire to have a musical project of his own. “I tried to write songs in Magnus but it just made me really want a band, and to play guitar in a band,” Woods recollects. “So I decided to quit the band, and it didn’t go as planned.”
At this point, Woods was in his early twenties, and made an honest decision in pursuit of where he was headed as a songwriter. “I eventually left the band to follow these urges, and Pat was pissed,” Nick relates. “He left town for Montana the next day, and I started to write songs immediately. I spent time in my room, and came up with ten songs. I got permission from my church to record the songs there, and I spent time with Dave Wolfe recording. A lot of those songs didn’t really amount to much, but the few that stuck around [became] Cheap Seats songs.”
When Woods started writing these new songs, he knew he would need help developing them. Having left Magnus, he was fairly certain that Patrick O’Neill would have no interest in participating. That is when the idea of inviting Matthew Wirt to play with him first occurred. Wirt was the ideal fit for his new band in Woods’s eyes. He had known Wirt for several years and saw him as an equal to his past collaborator, O’Neill. Wirt spent time at Berklee studying music. Before that, he had been in the jazz band at their high school, coincidentally replacing O’Neill as the ensemble’s guitarist. “I put together a band and I realized that the guy that I wanted to play in my band lived in Richmond,” he says. “So I knew I had to be here.” The lineup for the Cheap Seats also included collaborators PJ George (a former member of Magnus) and Taylor Lineberry. They spent time practicing in Lineberry’s father’s waterbed shop. Moving past the initial set of songs that Woods had put together, they began forming a better idea as to what the Cheap Seats would be.
Before they had even played a show, Woods convinced the band to relocate. “I didn’t even really know two of the other guys in the band, but I was able to convince them to leave school and come live in Richmond with Matt to focus on the band,” he says. They played their first show in Roanoke, but it would be their first and last show in the city. They departed for Richmond soon after.
One of their first shows in Richmond was the one-year anniversary party for local independent radio station WRIR. Dave Wolfe, who had recorded Woods’ earlier material, lent his talents assisting the group in recording their full-length, Fly Low, Icarus. Woods had agreed to financially supply Wolfe with anything he would need to help with the recording, which soon led to the construction of a studio in the house that Woods currently lives in. “It was really exciting taking the money that we had saved up and [using] it to create a home studio,” Woods says. Fly Low, Icarus was recorded over the course of a week, before Cheap Seats had really started to play together as a band. Woods recalls writing choruses in the basement of the house, wearing headphones and staring at the scaffolding tape spread around the room. The nine songs that ended up on the release were an early indicator of the group’s promise and potential. “We were still getting to know each other as a band,” Woods relates. “A lot of the songs on the record [didn’t] really feel finished until after we were done recording. The idea of the band [came] together after we did the work on Fly Low, Icarus. The [band] never really sounded like the [record].”
In its nine songs, the group covered a wide spectrum of sound and lyrical territory. “Britney Burned The Books” features a lovely lyrical refrain; the title character sets fire to literature on a front lawn, as crooning vocal oohs and aahs settle against the pop fervor of the music. Despite the record’s limitations as a representation of the group, their practical approach to Fly Low, Icarus was an enormous influence on the way they eventually developed.
Although the group only lasted for about a year, it was still an exciting experience for Woods and his cohorts. “It was just exciting to be in a band and have people seeing potential,” he says. “I don’t really sit around thinking about how I wish the Cheap Seats would have been signed, because I don’t think the Cheap Seats should have been signed. If we had, and [we’d] made an album, I would have done it, and probably had fun with it. I just don’t think that I would have been that excited about it. When it came down to it, I think the way people saw it was that it was a group of hard-working dudes that could be a really great band someday.”
Although the band’s existence felt like an isolated incident in his creative timeline, Woods still considers it to have been important in his life, and in the lives of his bandmates. “The Cheap Seats may have been more of a band that needed to exist for reasons outside of us being a band,” he says. “Two of the people in the band ended up in long-term relationships that started as a result of the band, and they are still together. PJ needed to [leave the band]; he had somewhere he had to be. I completely understood that, and I guess I felt like a catalyst in accelerating other people lives. It wasn’t about the band. It was about getting a bunch of other people to the next step in their lives. I think if the band were still around, it would probably be horrendous. With PJ leaving, I think I saw it as an opportunity to let go of all of those songs and start over.”
After George’s departure, the Cheap Seats began searching for a replacement drummer. Not long after the search began, though, keyboardist Judson Lowe also quit the band. Lowe, a recent addition to the group, had been a friend of the Cheap Seats for a while before joining. “It wasn’t so much that he didn’t like being in the band, he just never really wanted to play shows,” Woods says now. “When he called me to tell me he was leaving, we were both on the same page. As Matt, Taylor and I started looking for a new drummer, it became even clearer that [Cheap Seats] was over. I guess that’s how Orioles began.”
Along with Wirt and Lineberry, Woods was joined in Orioles by drummer Kevin Willoughby. Woods took a different approach to Orioles, in a few respects. “I wouldn’t say that I began listening to things I hadn’t listened to before, but I tried to reduce my scope,” he says. “I wanted to try and understand the songs by the people that I really enjoyed. The songs that encouraged me to try and write my own songs in such a way that I would want to listen to what I was writing. I wanted to find that line between catering to my musical sensibilities and expanding on that to cater to the senses of others who might find themselves drawn to [similar] songs.”
Intentions were some of the biggest things that Woods had to consider with this new project. “When I was in the Cheap Seats, I wanted to write songs that I felt the other guys in the band would enjoy playing,” he says. “With Matt and Taylor joining me in Orioles, I had a hard time figuring out what to do. I had spent a year in a band and upon receiving the record, I wasn’t satisfied with how it came out. In no way was that anyone’s fault. With Orioles, I started to consider more of my proclivities to music, and how I could express that in a way to satisfy my own creative needs.”
Considering how fast the Cheap Seats moved as a band, Orioles has been a far steadier road in certain respects. As Woods put it, Orioles began at a point where he was “closed down as a songwriter.” To escape this blockage in his creative output, he tried to write in a stranger fashion. “I wrote very slowly,” he says. “We were a band for a really long time before we started doing anything. It just took a long time for me to make sense of the songs I was writing. Eventually they became more coherent. It just took some time to reach that point.”
The group’s development was slow but steady. They played out occasionally, but didn’t feel the need to play shows as frequently as the Cheap Seats had. This allowed them to focus their efforts on songwriting while still allowing time for their personal lives. Luckily, their friend Allen Bergendahl was starting a new recording venture called Viking Recording. In exchange for their assistance in setting up the space, Bergendahl offered to help record a selection of the first Orioles tunes.
At that point, Woods says, “Things began to get strange.” Wirt, Lineberry, and Willoughby all departed from the group to focus on other things. Woods began playing with a rotating cast of other musicians. This allowed Woods to continue working on new material, while revisiting older songs with new eyes that grew excited at the prospect of improving the older tunes.
Since then, Orioles has existed in many different configurations. Nonetheless, the core of the group has always been Nick Woods. By taking his time, Woods has been able to solidify himself as a distinctive songwriter. “Where I may have been writing songs with a purpose in my past experiences,” he says, “[Now] I think I just try to let songs exist. I don’t try to force much, and as a result I think I am probably writing more consistently than I ever have before.”
One particular moment helped Woods figure out a better approach to songwriting. On an ordinary visit to a local drinking spot, Woods was approached by someone who had seen a recent solo set. In this conversation, Woods says, “this guy opened my eyes to a lot of ideas. He told me that he thought I was great, but that I bummed him out with my songs. He wanted to reassure me that he wouldn’t be telling me this if I hadn’t left an impact on him, but that he thought I might be better than just writing sad songs. I took that to be a good incentive to try and write outside of the more depressing spectrum.” Woods has revealed several of these new songs on an EP entitled The Basement Tapes, on which he’s joined by Matthew Wirt and his brother Ryan on percussion. The songs don’t completely shed all sadness, but they do provide priceless glimpses of redemption and hope. In “Positive Slope,” Woods contemplates the meaning of objects from the past. As he moves further away from the time of their familiarity, the main protagonist’s thoughts grow more concerned with the effect his presence and actions have had on those he has encountered in his lifetime. A similar sentiment occurs in a personal favorite of mine entitled “It Would Be Alright,” which is taken from a Woods family tale. In this particular song, the narrator throws his wallet into a bay, only to later leave his mother in town, as if she could find the wallet there. Perhaps what the narrator really seeks is the recovery of his identity, but Woods chooses not to make this clear. Instead of the partially positive attitude found in “Slope,” there is a sardonic sense of humor at play, along with the tragic weight of the narrator’s actions. The song presents all actions without judgment, which could be the way in which Woods has figured out how to write in a new fashion. The judgment is left in the hands of the listener, and a stronger connection develops.
Recently, Woods received an invitation to visit Nashville from his old friend and former drummer PJ George. George expressed the idea that if he were truly interested in making music a potential career option, he should be in a place like Nashville, where opportunities could be anywhere. Woods thought it was worth a shot and took a trip down to the musical capital of Tennessee. He was amazed at what he discovered. “I was really pleased to see how established PJ had become in Nashville,” he says. “It was really something else, to be introduced to all of these people and feel how contagious the general excitement for music was in this place. There were people that I [saw] play music that just floored me. I couldn’t really shake that sensation when I came back. I think that helped me decide to relocate there.” Woods immediately adds that nothing is set. However, he now has a clearer focus on where he would like to see himself in the near future, and looks forward to returning to that city. “Why wouldn’t you want to try that, and play music in a place where you are going to be exposed to people who are really talented? I think PJ might be right about being happier there. [So] that’s the plan.”
As we closed out our conversation, I was curious to hear Woods’s thoughts on a particular matter. When speaking to Woods, or listening to his music, I always find myself contemplating whether he belongs in a different time. Would Nick Woods make more sense if the people that inspire him to write the songs that he creates were his peers? Woods laughs, but provides a serious answer. “Perhaps that is my greatest tragedy, but I’ve given that a lot of thought. I think if I had grown up in another time period and learned how to play music in that time period, [my music] would be different. I think my goal would be to erase any idea of time frame when it comes to the music that I write. It’s like Bob Dylan. He writes albums that are timeless. It never really sounds like Bob Dylan of a given era. It sounds like American music of any time.”
In the years that Nick Woods has spent as a musical laureate of this fair city, many people have attached themselves to a particular song or idea that Woods has presented in his music. He evokes circumstances of past and current life experiences in a way that gives distinct impression of lyrical depth. It will be a blow to Richmond’s music scene to see Woods venture to Nashville, but I truly believe that the world deserves to be exposed to this impressive songwriter.
