In a recent recording for NPR Music Live Sessions, The Wood Brothers performed "Little Bit Broken" at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia. The session was part of NPR Music's World Cafe, a production of WXPN.
The Wood Brothers are an Americana and blues band, and consist of real brothers Chris and Oliver Wood, as well as multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix. From early in their childhood in Boulder, Colorado, Chris and Oliver were steeped in American roots music. Their father, a molecular biologist, performed classic songs at camp fires and family gatherings, while their mother, a poet, instilled a passion for storytelling and turn of phrase.
The brothers bonded over bluesmen such as Jimmy Reed and Lightnin' Hopkins, but their paths, musical and otherwise, would diverge. Oliver moved to Atlanta, where he played guitar in cover bands before earning a spot in Tinsley Ellis’s touring act. At Ellis’s behest, Oliver began to sing and then founded King Johnson, a hard-touring group that released six albums of blues-inflected R&B, funk and country over the next 12 years. Chris, meanwhile, studied jazz bass at the New England Conservatory of Music, moved to New York City and, in the early 1990s, formed Medeski Martin & Wood, which over the next two decades would become a cornerstone of contemporary jazz and abstract music. - Courtesy of NPR Music Live Sessions.
WGBH is a member and contributor to NPR Music Live Sessions, a music video platform of emerging and established rock and indie artists in collaboration with other NPR Music stations across the country.
