{"id":28772,"date":"2025-01-17T05:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T10:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28772"},"modified":"2024-12-16T16:09:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T21:09:45","slug":"a-chat-with-mitch-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/17\/a-chat-with-mitch-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chat with Mitch Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his deep immersion into 20th<\/sup> century American musical styles, Mitch Woods is adept at channeling the sound and spirit of that music into his own winning original material. Woods\u2019 latest album, Mitch Woods\u2019 Happy Hour<\/b><\/i> captures the feel of a live gig with his band the Rocket 88s. Woods chatted with me about how he fell in love with the music, and how he brings it alive for new audiences.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The prime era of jump blues and swing came and went before you were born. How and when did you discover it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, first I got into boogie woogie; for me jump blues came later. I opened for Charlie Musselwhite; and I think it was his guitarist was High Tide Harris who said, \u201cYou sound like Louis Jordan!\u201d And I was like, \u201cLet me go find out who that is.\u201d So I got all the Louis Jordan records, and I just loved his stuff. And that really led me into that whole era of music, which is my favorite. It\u2019s the foundation of rock and roll, really, when the big bands were breaking into smaller units after the war. Guitar was just coming in, so you could have a six or five piece band that really jumped.<\/p>\n

I love the humor in Louis Jordan\u2019s songs; there\u2019s so little of that anywhere [else]. I emulate that and write songs that have that humor. I have a song, Broke<\/i>. It\u2019s on the new album, but I wrote it awhile ago. It\u2019s all about a guy wants to buy a gal a drink, and she orders the whole bar. It\u2019s modeled after Louis Jordan\u2019s Beware, Brother, Beware<\/i>, and people love it. But I did have one night when a woman came up to me and said, \u201cDon\u2019t ever sing that song again!\u201d Obviously, I never listened to her.<\/p>\n

How did your early immersion in classical and jazz inform what you did when you moved into boogie woogie and other more modern styles?<\/b><\/p>\n

When I started on piano, my mom was a single mom in Brooklyn, and she would hire the superintendent of the building to take me to school, to first and second grade. He was an African American man, and one time we stopped off at his cousin\u2019s house, and I heard somebody playing boogie woogie piano. I said, \u201cWow! I\u2019d like to do that!\u201d<\/p>\n

My mom married my stepdad, and he went out and got us a piano. They got me classical lessons, so for about three years, I studied classical. I was about 14 when I started to get bored with it. My [step]father said, \u201cWe got the piano; you\u2019d better play.\u201d So I asked, \u201cHow about if I get a teacher who can teach me jazz and popular music?\u201d<\/p>\n

I got this great teacher who was a bebop musician. And he taught me scales, riffs and chords \u2013 the bag of tricks you need to know to improvise. That got me going, and I just kept with it after that. And then, of course, we started bands. We didn\u2019t have garages; we had basement<\/i> bands.<\/p>\n

When you started playing these styles of music in front of audiences, did people \u201cget it\u201d right from the start? <\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, I think people got it from the get-go. The thing is, when you hear this music, everybody loves it. It might not be the hip music of the time, but people love it. Swing dancers have become a big part of my audience. And at the very beginning, when swing was not even a thing, swing dancers would come down and dance to us. They became a big part of my audience.<\/p>\n

Boogie Woogie Bar-B-Que<\/b><\/i> makes me think of <\/b>Boogie Woogie Blue Plate<\/b><\/i>, <\/b>Saturday Night Fish Fry<\/b><\/i> and <\/b>Beans and Cornbread<\/b><\/i>. Was that intentional on your part?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, all that stuff inspires me. As I tell people at my shows, we sing about all the important things in life: food, booze, love and cars. Those are great American traditions; Chuck Berry was the master of that. We\u2019ve begged and borrowed different riffs from some of those old songs, and I\u2019ll add a bridge or something to make it my own.<\/p>\n

What was your approach to recording the album at Kid Andersen\u2019s Greaseland? <\/b><\/p>\n

We did it all live in the studio; that\u2019s always been my M.O. for this kind of music, really. You want to get that feel.<\/p>\n

The Kid\u2019s studio is interesting place. The grand piano\u2019s in the kitchen, and the drums and the other guys are in another room. Kid\u2019s sometimes in the control room playing guitar. When I first came in the studio, I thought, \u201cThis is\u2026 not going to be good.\u201d But he\u2019s such a whiz at getting great sounds, and it all came out great; it really captures that live feel. And that also has to do with the contribution of the musicians that I was working with in this iteration of the Rocket 88s.<\/p>\n

With <\/b>Happy Hour<\/b><\/i>, were you trying to create the vibe of a live set? <\/b><\/p>\n

Every album that I\u2019ve done, I always want to pace it like a set. Maybe you start out really strong with some great jump stuff. Then I throw in a little New Orleans for a nice variety. And then maybe an early rock \u2018n\u2019 roll styled tune like Long, Lean and Lanky<\/i>. And then a slow blues; you bring it all down again, and then you bring it back up. And that\u2019s how I do a set.<\/p>\n

But when I recorded them, I just wanted to record some of my best songs. And then after that was done, the process was to listen to it over and over again, and then make a set list that flows.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for you? <\/b><\/p>\n

I concentrate on playing festivals around the world. I do the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise; I started the piano bar on the ship, and I\u2019ve been doing that for over 20 years.<\/p>\n

I still want to do some more recording, too. Kenny Neal invited me to do some recording with him at his studio in Baton Rouge, so that might be my next recording project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his deep immersion into 20th century American musical styles, Mitch Woods is adept at channeling the sound and spirit of that music into his own winning original material. Woods\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,60,62],"tags":[5593],"class_list":["post-28772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-rb","category-rawk","tag-mitch-woods","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-60-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28774,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772\/revisions\/28774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}