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The Wood Brothers & James Hunter

Air dates: Aug 02-Aug 08, 2006
Tape location:The Boulder Theater

Boulder, Colorado native sons The Wood Brothers come to etown this week. They join forces to share the musical craft they've honed in their careers with Medeski, Martin and Wood and King Johnson. The etown audience is treated to their unique collaboration'a rootsy and genre-bending blend of blues, folk, and rock. Also, hosts Nick & Helen Forster welcome English soul singer and guitarist James Hunter. His 'Motown meets Memphis' songwriting and 'Sam Cooke meets Ike Turner' singing are making him an international phenom, and he and his band get the etown house rockin'! And, there's another inspiring e-chievement award winner to round out a fantastic hour of radio - right here in etown.

The Wood Brothers
Oliver and Christopher Wood were born in California before moving with their parents to Boulder, Colorado. Their father, Bill Wood, is a Harvard-trained microbiologist—but in the late Fifties, he also was active as a singer and guitarist on the Boston-Cambridge folk revival scene. For Oliver, a shy and laconic teenager, "the idea of playing in front of people was a scary thought." Chris Wood, on the other hand, became "a full-on music geek" while still in junior high. After his older brother had taught him the rudiments of electric bass, Chris began formal lessons on the acoustic upright. He played in the Boulder High School jazz band, sang in the madrigal choir, and was working local jazz gigs well before his graduation.

"Then about three years ago, MMW played a show in Winston-Salem [North Carolina] on a double bill with King Johnson," Chris Wood recalls. "Oliver sat in with us—he just played guitar, didn't sing. But he was so good and so familiar—it was eerie, almost like watching myself play. And he was great—Medeski and Martin thought so, too. Even though we'd been pursuing music in two very different worlds, we shared a perspective that made our collaboration feel really natural."

During a family gathering in the summer of 2004, The Wood Brothers began working up some tunes, rearranging some King Johnson songs, and recording their first demos. In December 2004, the duo retreated to a studio near Chris' home in Saugerties, New York, to create a more professional demo—one that soon elicited an offer from Blue Note. "Ways Not to Lose" is the striking result, the debut album by The Wood Brothers, recorded in one week of September 2005 at Allaire Studios in bucolic Shokan, New York.