RIDGEFIELD — Ahead of a brief and highly anticipated mini tour that rolls into The Ridgefield Playhouse on July 10, soulful songwriter and musician Oliver Wood knew in the back of his mind that several stops along the way, including his only Connecticut appearance, would involve two shows in one day.

But he told The Newtown Bee during an exclusive pre-show chat that he probably hadn’t given that dynamic enough thought. More on that later.

As the frontman of the Wood Brothers since 2004, Oliver Wood is a testament to “slow and steady wins the race.”

Back in the early 2000s, when opening for his brother Chris’s band, Medeski Martin & Wood, he was invited to sit in, which instantly reminded them of the deep musical bond they shared. Soon thereafter, the Wood Brothers was born.

They have since gone on to blur the boundaries between folk, gospel, country-soul, and Americana, selling out shows around the world, releasing seven studio albums, performing high-profile shows from Red Rocks to Bonnaroo, and earning a Grammy nomination along the way.

Wood has written for and lent vocals to the likes of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Blackberry Smoke.

And his debut solo album, Always Smilin’, is a true testament to his penchant for — check that; extreme passion for — collaborations, as evidenced by the collection of guests on the project, including Susan Tedeschi, Phil Cook, John Medeski, and many others, to say nothing of the pair of capable players accompanying him on this tour.

As the conversation touched on a number of subjects - his talented sidemen and longtime musical partners Jano Rix and Ted Pecchio; his brand new solo project; and that despite the new project, he is still very much engaged with the acclaimed Wood Brothers ensemble - Wood was suddenly faced with a question about those potentially daunting “double-headers.”

The Newtown Bee: Ridgefield, along with a few other stops on your July tour, is offering fans a two show opportunity - and I know it's an age-old tradition for entertainers to do two, even three shows a night sometimes. Are you ready for that?

Oliver Wood: Wow, that’s a great question. That’s a real Vegas kind of thing, but I don’t think I’ve ever really done that — at least for a very long time. I feel that when we play two nights in one place, we try to give people a different show on each night because you assume some people will come to both shows. I can imagine it being sort of similar to that.

The Bee: Do you think it's a situation that requires you to sort of consciously bank some creative energy so there's enough gas in the tank for set #2?

Wood: I don’t want to peak too hard and not have anything left for the second show, (laughing), but I’m excited about the challenge of it. I guess even if you played the exact setlist both shows, this is the kind of music that can be loose and dangerous — ideally, for me. So we might play the same song on the second show, but it goes somewhere else, or we stretch out the solo section, or somebody forgets something and it sounds completely different, which is great. It’s kind of fun to discover things that way.

The Bee: There's not a huge amount of background on you out there, but I understand you really jumped in all the way writing songs as far back as your King Johnson days - way before you sat in with MMW (Medeski Martin & Wood) and formed The Wood Brothers, right?

Wood: I would qualify that. In King Johnson I did participate in all the songwriting. I would not take full credit for it all. I learned a lot from someone else in the band who was an elder and mentor - the first primary songwriter who encouraged me to do that. Even singing - it was my King Johnson days that I learned how to sing - from my peers and with my peers, you know?

But in King Johnson, we really had no business [sense], we struggled to make a living as a regional band. In the meantime, while I was struggling with King Johnson, Chris became very successful with his band. So when we started The Wood Brothers, we had his organization, a powerful booking agent, and management - it was more professional, shall we say. So I was able to concentrate more on the music - and we've been doing this for 15 years now.

The Bee: Once you and Chris formed The Wood Brothers, was it a half-and-half thing with the songwriting right off the bat?

Wood: When we started The Wood Brothers, I was the primary songwriter because I had been one already. My brother was with a completely instrumental, experimental, kind of cool jazz thing. So early on in The Wood Brothers it was me bringing the songs. But over the years, Chris and I have collaborated more and more. And Jano Rix in recent years- we've all contributed to the songs.

When you make music with other people - that's the joy of it. So this (Always Smilin') being called a solo album sometimes feels a little funny to me because it's really a series of collaborations. My name is on it, of course, and I made a lot of the decisions - but I also collaborated with some great people - the same way The Wood Brothers is a collaboration. I still have mentors, but I'm at the point where I'm mentoring younger guys, too. I'm somewhere in the middle, and I've still got some learning to do, too.

The Bee: Let's talk about the show we're going to see here at The Ridgefield Playhouse - will you be showcasing pretty much the whole new album?

Wood: I think most of the songs will get performed, save one or two. And I like to mix in a few others - some Wood Brothers songs. You know, some of the songs people think they know as Wood Brothers songs are really King Johnson songs that go back a ways. I also like to throw in some covers. I like to balance it out by the feeling of the songs and how they work at a certain points in the set. We've got at least 30 or 40 songs I feel we could mix in.

The Bee: As far as the new album goes, Always Smilin' has such a natural, comfortable groove from front to back - what was the recording process like?

Wood: The Wood Brothers have had a really cool studio space here in Nashville for about three years. So I have this fantastic resource - what I don't usually have is time to use it other than for The Wood Brothers. And when we're not in here, we're touring - so between touring and family I never have the time to work on much else. So one of the pluses of the pandemic - with no touring I found time in the studio without The Wood Brothers.

The Bee: Are you a real hands-on guy in the studio?

Wood: There's a lot of tracking to tape and working digitally after that. So that was really important during the pandemic where I had some guests who performed on the album remotely. That's obviously easily done digitally these days. But I am not a super technical, hands-on guy in that department. I dabble a little, but I have people around me who are super technical. We have Brook Sutton, we're partnered with him and we have our studio in his space.

The Bee: Always Smilin' sounds really rootsy - but there are a lot of moving parts going on in there.

Wood: Yeah, on the creative side there's a lot of variety. I actually found a little time before the pandemic to start collaborating with past friends and new collaborators like Phil Cook and Carsie Blanton, Chris Long, Susan Tedeschi, John Medeski - people I never have time to work with. If one of them came through town, I'd try to get them in the studio to at least work on writing something if not writing and recording.

I wasn't thinking about making an album at all - just trying to be creative. But with time, I started to put together songs, I even put one out during the pandemic called 'Soul of This Town,' just because I didn't want a perfectly good song to sit there and do nothing. That got such a good response I started writing more songs and eventually decided to make an album. But it's a combination of these co-writes and improvisations.

The Bee: Crack a few eggs, chop up some peppers and see what happens...

Wood: (laughing) Exactly, exactly. There's nothing like it when you've got nothing at stake - you get in this frame of mind, you're take chances, you can get weird, you can make mistakes. And it's all useful. We've noticed some of the songs never got better than that. That was just the coolest stuff we played, and it probably never would have happened if we were all in there thinking about making a song. I wrote several of these new songs around those improvisations.

The Bee: Well, thanks for the call, Oliver - I just can't let you go without making you tell the chicken coop story for the 727th time - you picked up that idea when you were with Coup DeVille?

Wood: There's not a ton of info on this, but coming up in Atlanta as a young player until just a few years ago when he passed away, I had a really good friend named Donnie McCormick - a really good drummer and vocalist who fronted bands as a signing drummer. In the '70s he was in a band called Eric Quincy Tate that was on the Allman's label Capricorn Records. In his later years as I got to know him, he didn't want to tote around a drum set anymore, so he got himself a chicken coop.

Here's a vintage clip of Coop da Ville with Oliver Wood and Donnie McCormick on chicken coop:

For those who haven't seen one, it's like a lobster trap but more angular made of plywood with slats made of dowels. So you could get a washboard sound, and you can kick and beat the plywood. It started as a novelty but it was really something to watch - really cool. I admired the man, and that coop is a symbol of him. He made such an impression on me as an artist. By the end of his life he was pretty feeble - he could barely walk. But he's get up on stage and he would just go to this other place. He'd become this vessel for the music. I've not met many people like that, he really inspired me. So cut to now - we got a chicken coop in the studio because I wanted to honor Donnie. And I'll tell you, you hand a chicken coop to a drummer and it's really fun to see what they do. I think we're at the most creative when we're figuring something out, and we got some good results with that chicken coop. We have it on 'Get the Blues' - it's the first thing you hear. Also the song 'Kindness' and 'Fine Line' - that one has no drums, just a chicken coop.

For more information or to purchase print-at-home tickets for the 4 or 7:30 pm shows ($45), visit ridgefieldplayhouse.org or call the box office at 203-438-5795. In addition, while supplies last, Playhouse EventVIP Party Passes are available; they include priority parking and free house wine and beer from 6 to 6:30 pm.

Check out Oliver Wood performing 'Fine Line' with Jano Rix and Ted Pecchio.

Oliver Wood dropped in for 'Ball and Chain' with the Tedeschi Trucks Band at New York's Beacon Theater October 10, 2017.

Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com.