The Wood Brothers on the road with new album and experimental sound – San Diego Union-Tribune

Olivia Jacobs / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Fresh off the release of a new album, the Wood Brothers will bring their genre-blending experimental sound to Solana Beach on Saturday.

The Grammy-nominated progressive Americana trio is touring with new music from its ninth studio album, “Puff of Smoke,” which was released in November.

The Wood Brothers fine-tuned the live versions of the album’s songs during a string of dates last fall. Then they hit the road again March 26 for the North American “Puff of Smoke” tour that will finish up Aug. 29 in West Virginia.

In describing the album on their website, the band wrote that the songs represent “the state of the human condition.” Instead of a literal soundtrack to uncertain times or a roadmap showing how to live through them, the album has a happily contrarian outlook: Life can turn on a dime, and all we truly have is the moment at hand. And that’s perfectly fine.

“We’re not in control,” says guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Oliver Wood, “and that can be good news.”

The band started more than 20 years ago as a duo of brothers Oliver and Chris Wood, who plays bass and electric guitar. They became a trio in 2011 with the addition of Jano Rix on percussion and keyboard.

“We play roots-inspired music, we do a lot of traditional music,” Oliver Wood said in a recent interview. “But our goal is to be experimental and to mix different traditions and come up with something unique, un-categorizable, that when people ask us what kind of music do you play, you can’t just say one thing.

“It’s a real combo of things, and that’s kind of our goal, is to make something that we enjoy and have fun playing and feels like we invent a new musical recipe,” he continued. “I think traditional fans will enjoy it and music nerds will also like that we try to innovate within these traditional styles.”

The Wood Brothers have played at a variety of bluegrass and jam band festivals.

For the most recent album, the band set out to surprise themselves and create something different from previous projects.

The result was a blend of Latin, calypso, gospel and other musical styles that Wood said they are excited to share on the road.

“I think our fans that we built over the last 20 years appreciate that we’re kind of experimenting, and we’ve done it even more on this latest record, very intentionally so,” he said. “But I think no matter how far we depart, we still sound like us.”

“Our fans will recognize this new record as still the Wood Brothers, but they got a little weird, and just have done something they haven’t done before, and it’s cool.”

On this record, Wood is particularly proud of a few songs, including “The Trick” for its spontaneity and “Above All Others,” which he described as both weird and fun to play live. The band recently released a music video for the latter.

“Just looking forward to playing music, and for the fans of the old music, we play old music, too, and it’s awesome to do that, (but) it’s fun and challenging to play new songs for people who haven’t heard them live yet,” he said. “Expect a lot of new songs, some old favorites, great musicianship, and improvisation as well as some cool songs.”