After the release of their full length self titled album, The Hill and Wood are looking to take their show on the road and introduce their sound to a wider audience. With strong roots in folk, the group has now fleshed out their sound with more instrumentation and what they describe as a “multifaceted and stratified sound”. We caught up with band leader Sam Bush to learn more about their latest record and what stops we can expect them to hit on their tour.
Make sure to grab their full length album on their bandcamp and become a fan of The Hill and Wood on facebook.
So you guys are from Charlottesville with original ties to the Boston area. Can you tell us a little bit about where you started and how the group came together?
Since it’s beginning, The Hill and Wood lineup has been influx – we’ve had about 15 people be a part of a 5-piece band. That said, I’m excited about this current lineup. We’re all actually from up and down the east coast – one from Asheville, one from the D.C. area, I’m from Boston originally, and two of us grew up in Charlottesville. UVa was the big connecter – four of us went to school hear for undergrad and Juliana is in the MFA program. It’s funny that most of us have known each other for years, but we’ve only been together as a band for about 4 months.
You mention that singer songwriting is kind of the backbone for the project. How does that work? Do most of your songs start as acoustic tunes that get fleshed out?
Most of the songs started with a melody in mind and luckily I was close enough to a guitar or piano to give them some basic structure. I’m not much of a instrumentalist so melody is almost always the backbone. I suppose each of the songs can be carried by a guitar, but the intent is almost always to flesh them out with the full band. Once the skeleton of the song is in place the sound can change pretty dramatically. We’re really interested in trying out different routes for each song – turning them inside out and putting different faces on them. That’s something that happened all the time on the record which is why I think it has such a dynamic feel.
How was the process of making your full length record – what was the studio experience like and who was involved in making and producing the record?
By the time I had written about 20 songs to choose from, Isaac Wardell had been living in Charlottesville for a couple of years. He had accomplished a lot during the time he was in New York – he had made a ton of records, collaborated with Sufjan Stevens and The Welcome Wagon and was someone that I really admired on a lot of levels. I asked him about a year ago if he’d be interested in producing The Hill and Wood record and I think he had been missing that part in his life since moving to Charlottesville – he spent a surprising amount of time reworking the songs, coming up with ideas I would have never come up with on my own. We then spent a few months demoing songs, then brought Alex and Jay Foote of the Welcome Wagon down from Brooklyn. The four of us spent about a week in a cabin that a friend of mine owns. It’s such a beautiful space – we really could have stayed there all summer. The following month I brought in a bunch of friends to help with the finishing touches – lead guitar parts, backup vocals. At that time, Juliana wasn’t even in the picture. I asked her to record backup vocals for one song and she was so good that she ended up being on 9 out of the 10 songs. Now she’s a completely indispensable part of this project.
You guys recently played DC (Acre 121) for your record release party. How was the show and the response to the new record?
Up until the album release, we never really toured. We felt that there wasn’t a point until we had a record to leave with people as a keepsake. We had been dying to play somewhere up there for a while since D.C. is sort of a home away from home for us – a lot of people from UVa end up there for work. The show ended being fantastic. The place was packed; we brought our three backup singers so the stage was barely able to fit the eight of us and it was just perfect. It was about six months of energy crammed into a one-hour set in front of a lot of good friends we hadn’t seen for a while.
What are the next shows you have lined up for the Hill and Wood tour and what can fans expect when they see you live?
We’ve been really economic about how we tour. Spending 30 days on the road and playing a lot of obscure places on Monday and Tuesday nights isn’t something we can afford. This week we’re heading up to Philadelphia, Boston and New York for a three day mini-tour. And we’ll probably hit those cities, along with D.C., Richmond, Asheville and Chapel Hill on a regular basis. That way we’ll be able to build fan bases in each of those places and keep our day jobs until we’re able to support ourselves on the road full time. Our sound has already started to develop on the road which is exciting. These days I would expect to hear really precise drumming, three-part harmonies, a lot of melody driven songs and some inspired guitar playing.
Other than touring, any big plans for the band in 2012?
Now that the record has been released it feels great to write songs again. I’m not sure if these new ones completely fit with the album we just put out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we started recording an EP or began working on another full-length in our spare time this year. Of course, we hope to be given so many opportunities to tour that spare time is really as spare as possible.
Any last thoughts?
We’re thrilled to be in cahoots with Pick-Up Productions. It sounds like a really great network of artists and people who want to support them. Hope to see you next time we’re in D.C.
