Concert review: Oliver Wood Trio at The Grey Eagle
Oliver Wood — who would’ve known?
Well, judging by the amount of people packed into The Grey Eagle for The Oliver Wood Trio tour stop in Asheville on Jan. 18, I’d say just about everyone but me.
I had never seen Wood live before, just I had never seen so many show up for a show at the mid-size music hall, especially for a mid-week mid-winter show. What did they know that I didn’t? I was familiar with The Wood Brothers, Oliver’s main musical outlet. They are always listed high on most posters for whatever music fest they are featured at. And they typically get not one but two nights when they come to town to play The Orange Peel, the twice-as-large downtown venue in Asheville.
I have an appreciation for American roots rock, but more as an occasional Pandora channel than a must-see performance option. So that was what I was expecting: to stand and appreciate some plucky steel blues guitar matched with some gravely vocals like you might hear over the opening credits to a celebrated series like The Wire or The Sopranos. What I did not expect was just how entertaining the show would be, from the move-your-feet music that put me in mind of Little Feat to the varied setlist to the spirit in which it was all played.
The first indication that this show would not be a bunch of blues rock ballads best played on a porch looking out over Lake Pontchartrain was that the trio was more of a quartet or even a quintet, with Oliver on guitar and vocals, Ted Pecchio on bass, and the ever versatile Jano Rix on drums and keys (sometimes at the same time) as well as something called the shuitar (their word, not mine — a self-described originally crappy acoustic guitar now adorned with percussion elements that allow for many possibilities in the hands of a master).
Even just a few songs in, I’m hearing playful keyboard riffs that I’d expect from Jools Holland of Squeeze or Dave Moore of The Jam, rather than a rustic roots rock trio. What a nice surprise! More than just a blend of blues and country meant to be revered for its origin story, this is music meant to rev you up — music that I enjoyed hearing as much as Rix enjoyed playing whatever instrument he was playing.
But the main source of mixed expectations is Wood himself. With his glorious long golden locks framing his equally long, hard-life lived face, he struck me as a cross between Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence and scary and scarred action star Danny Trejo.
And somehow that makes sense. Oliver has the grit to deliver songs like “Came from Nothing” and “The Battle Is Over (But the War Goes On)” from his 2021 solo album, but also the glow to name that album Always Smilin’ and sweetly sing other songs from it like “Molasses” and “Kindness” (where the title is taken from).
I did expect that he might play a song that made us feel like we should be at the crossroads somewhere with the spirit of Robert Johnson bellowing below, and he did with “Souls of This Town,” but I can’t say that I expected him to crush a Joni Mitchel cover, “Black Crow,” as part of his meant-to-please musical set. I love the songs he chose, whether his own like “Fine Line,” or ones by The Wood Brothers like “One More Day” or ”Atlas” or the delicious “Chocolate On My Tongue.” But especially the surprising off-menu selections like Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Up Above My Head I Hear Music In the Air,” and Ed and Lonny Young’s blues classic “Chevrolet,” and Asheville’s own Seth Walker’s “Grab Ahold.” So good. So glad this is what this show that so many turned out for turned out to be.
I should have suspected this show was not a trendy top-of-the-charts choice but a show that justified its wall-to-wall Wednesday attendance by the median age of the audience — middle. It was nice to be in a somewhat older crowd. There was energy but not aggression in that crowded crowd. Most concertgoers seemed to enjoy just being at this show, with very few feeling the need to hoist their phones above everyone’s heads to record the proceedings for posterity. But even an older crowd can sometimes need encouragement to resist the temptation to chat when a show is in motion, with Wood telling us for this next song we would need to breathe through our noises, which he confessed was the polite way to tell a room to shush.
Some may have kept talking but I just kept lovin’ on the show as Wood gleefully leaned into lyrics like "I like my lovin’ in the light.” Every so often, he would ask the audience, “Are you still with us?” Most were from the moment he started, and I caught up quickly. The repeated loud roar from the crowd conveyed a resounding “Yes. We are with you, Oliver Wood Quintet! And I don’t mean to dismiss appreciation, as I did appreciate that they did a solid 90-minute set with a modest break for an encore, just long enough to make us be loud but not so long to make us beg. And when they returned and treated us to a version of The Wood Brothers “Luckiest Man,” we all felt pretty lucky. And then we all went our ways smiling.
(Photos by Joshua Black Wilkins)
