THE WOOD BROTHERS Heart is the Hero The Wood Brothers have learned to trust their hearts. For the better part of two decades, they've cemented their reputation as freethinking songwriters, road warriors, and community builders, creating a catalog of diverse music and a loyal audience who’ve grown alongside them through the years. That evolution continues with Heart is the Hero, the band's eighth studio album. Recorded analog to 16-track tape, this latest effort finds its three creators embracing the chemistry of their acclaimed live shows by capturing their performances in real-time direct from the studio floor with nary a computer in sight. An acoustic-driven album that electrifies, Heart is the Hero is stocked with songs that target not only the heart, but the head and hips, too. "We love records that come from the era of less tracks and more care," explains co-founder Oliver Wood. "When you use a computer during the tracking process, you have an infinite number of tracks at your disposal, which implies that nothing is permanent, and everything can be fixed. Tape gives you limitations that force you to be creative and intentional. You don't look at the music on a screen; you listen to it, and you learn to focus on the feeling of the performance." Throughout Heart Is The Hero, those performances are matched by the visceral storytelling and songwriting chops that have turned The Wood Brothers into Grammy-nominated leaders of American roots music, even as their music reaches far beyond the genre's borders. The strippeddown swagger of "Pilgrim" underscores Oliver's reminder to slow down and experience each moment as an interactive observer, rather than a passive tourist. A similar theme anchors "Between the Beats," where Oliver draws upon a meditation technique — maintaining one's focus on the space between heartbeats — to reach a new level of presence. The gentle sway of country soul gem “Rollin’ On,” featuring horns by Matt Glassmeyer and Roy Agee, expounds on the timehonored tradition of love as the guiding light through darkness, while ”Mean Man World" finds Chris Wood singing about his responsibilities as a father whose young daughter is poised to inherit an uncertain future. "Line Those Pockets" is a universal call for mercy and understanding over materialism. "Everybody's just trying to be happy, so put your money away; line those pockets with grace," the band sings in three-part harmony during the song's chorus, which emphasizes compassion over cash as the world's true currency. Together, these songs offer a snapshot of a spirited, independent-minded group at the peak of its powers, always pushing forward and seeking to evolve beyond what’s come before. "There's still acoustic guitar, upright bass, and percussion on this album — things people use all the time — but we're always thinking, 'How can we make this sound like us, but not like something we've already done?'" Oliver says. "Sometimes, the only way to do that is to get weird." That sense of exploration pumps its way through Heart is the Hero like lifeblood. Arriving on the heels of 2019's Live at The Fillmore, 2020's Kingdom In My Mind, and Oliver Wood's solo album Always Smilin' — all of which were released on Honey Jar Records, the band's independent label — Heart is the Hero is bold, bright, and singularly creative, a fully realized collective effort ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that's to be expected from a group whose willingness to experiment has earned acclaim from Rolling Stone and NPR, as well as an annual touring schedule of sold-out music halls and theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. Ask The Wood Brothers, though, and they'll tell you to expect the unexpected. "We are never satisfied if we are not searching for new musical recipes," says Jano Rix, nodding to the uncharted territory that Heart is the Hero covers. Chris Wood agrees, adding, "We are one of those bands that isn't easily categorized. We know what our strengths are, but we can’t help but push the envelope, as well. It’s too much fun."     “Everyone has these little kingdoms in their minds,” says Chris Wood, “and the songs on this album all explore the ways we find peace in them. They look at how we deal with our dreams and our regrets and our fears and our loves. They look at the stories we tell ourselves and the ways we balance the darkness and the light.”     That balance of darkness and light is at the heart of Kingdom In My Mind, The Wood Brothers’ seventh studio release and their most spontaneous and experimental collection yet. Recorded over a series of freewheeling, improvised sessions, the record is a reckoning with circumstance, mortality, and human nature, one that finds strength in accepting what lies beyond our control. Thoughtfully honing in on the bittersweet beauty that underlies our doubt and pain, the songs grapple with the power of our external surroundings to shape our internal worlds (and vice versa) through vivid character studies and unflinching self-examination. The lyrics dig deep here, but the arrangements always manage to remain buoyant, drawing from across a broad sonic spectrum to create a transportive, effervescent listening experience that’s indicative of the trio’s unique place in the modern musical landscape.     “My brother came to this band from the blues and gospel world, and my history was all over the map with jazz and R&B,” says Chris Wood, who first rose to fame with the pioneering trio Medeski Martin & Wood. “The idea for this group has always been to marry our backgrounds, to imagine what might happen if Robert Johnson and Charles Mingus had started a band.”     Kingdom In My Mind follows The Wood Brothers’ most recent studio release, 2018’s One Drop Of Truth, which hit #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and garnered the band their first GRAMMY Award-nomination for Best Americana Album. NPR praised the record’s “unexpected changes and kaleidoscopic array of influences,” while Uncut hailed its “virtuosic performances and subtly evocative lyrics,” and Blurt proclaimed it “a career-defining album.” Tracks from the record have racked up roughly 8 million streams on Spotify alone, and the band took the album on the road for extensive tour dates in the US and Europe, including their first-ever headline performance at Red Rocks, two nights at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore (captured on their 2019 release, Live At The Fillmore), and festival appearances everywhere from Bonnaroo to XPoNential.     On past records, the band -- brothers Oliver and Chris Wood, and Jano Rix -- would often write a large batch of songs and then deliberately capture them all at once, but when it came to making Kingdom In My Mind, The Wood Brothers began recording without even realizing it. At the time, the trio thought they were simply breaking in their new Nashville recording studio/rehearsal space, laying down a series of extended instrumental jam sessions with engineer Brook Sutton as a way to learn the lay of the land. Some rooms, they found, were spacious with natural reverb, others were tight and dry; some recording setups required a gentle touch, others encouraged blistering energy.     “We weren’t performing songs,” explains Oliver. “We were just improvising and letting the music dictate everything. Normally when you’re recording, you’re thinking about your parts and your performances, but with these sessions, we were just reacting to each other and having fun in the moment.”     There was something undeniably alive and uninhibited about those performances, and after listening back, the band realized they’d never be able to recreate such spontaneous magic. So, like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble, Chris took the band’s sprawling improvisations and carefully chiseled out verses and choruses and bridges and solos until distinctive songs began to take shape, songs that reflected influences and elements of the band (like Jano’s smoldering piano work and Chris’s affinity for Latin and African music) that had never shone through in quite the same way before. From there, the brothers divvied up the material that spoke to them most, penning lyrics both separately and together as they pondered what it takes to know contentment in our chaotic and confusing world.     The jaunty “Little Bit Sweet,” which was born from the band’s very first session, learns to appreciate the ups and downs in the circle of life, while the soulful “Cry Over Nothing” and hypnotic “Little Blue” playfully meditate on ego and perspective, and the funky “Little Bit Broken” celebrates the imperfections that make us human. Tracks like the bluesy “A Dream’s A Dream” and hypnotic “Don’t Think About My Death,” meanwhile, grapple with separating truth from fiction, ultimately coming to terms with the fact that our brains will always find new ways to blur those lines. Though the album advocates for acceptance, it’s not a passive brand the brothers sing about, but rather one rooted in strength and empowerment. To understand exactly what that means, look no further than album opener “Alabaster,” which paints a deeply empathetic portrait of a woman who’s broken free from the shackles of her old life and started over fresh.       “At the same time we were making this album, we were looking for some sort of philanthropic organization we could support with our music and in a bit of synchronicity, we came across this great group called Thistle Farms, which was based just down the street from our studio,” says Oliver. “Their goal is to help women who have been victims of sex trafficking or prostitution or addiction to get off the street and into safe housing where they can participate in therapy and job training. The work they were doing was so inspiring and it felt like such a fit with the kind of album we were writing that we teamed up with them to donate a portion of ticket sales from all our shows. It’s our way of using what we’ve got to do whatever good we can in the world.”      More than anything, it’s that mindset, that recognition that we’ve all been dealt our own particular hand of cards and life is in the way we play them, that defines Kingdom In My Mind. As Oliver sings on the captivating “Satisfied,” which finds its narrator wondering about the glories of the afterlife before ultimately deciding to make the most of his time on Earth, “I’ve got nothing left to be afraid of / Because I will be satisfied.” With an album this remarkable, The Wood Brothers have plenty to be satisfied about.     For more info on The Wood Brothers, please contact: Kevin Calabro at Calabro Music Media: 917.838.4613 / kevin@calabromusicmedia.com

Maya de Vitry’s dynamic and vibrant voice seems to rise out of some necessity of bringing songs to life, embracing listeners with what Folk Alley calls a “soulful intimacy”. She grew up in a musical family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, understanding music to be a place of gathering, a way to spend a summer night by a campfire. She was surrounded by bluegrass and old-time music, and country, gospel, and folk songs. She took piano lessons from her grandmother, and took up classical violin in school, but it was some combination of the groove-centered fiddle music of Appalachia, the vulnerable poetry in Townes Van Zandt’s songwriting, and the deeply emotive phrasing of Billie Holiday’s singing that first compelled her to begin creating tunes and songs of her own - and it was around campfires that she slowly found the courage to begin singing them. Maya first traveled and performed as a fiddling street musician, and then in bars, theaters, and on festival stages as a founding member of The Stray Birds. When the trio parted ways in 2018, Maya embarked on an ever-evolving musical path of solo work and new collaborations. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, she enjoys moving between acoustic and electric worlds, playing in the musical spaces between folk, country, and indie rock - although she thinks of it all as “song music”. Her recordings and live performances embody both sincerity and playfulness, and a compelling reverence for the power of songs to be a place of gathering - whether played on stage, or around a campfire. Maya tours with her acoustic trio, and with her electric band, each featuring a fluid lineup of consistently stellar musicians who create a powerfully dynamic show. An engaging solo performer and an inspired collaborator, Maya also enjoys the art of warming up the stage for other artists and she has been invited to support a variety of tours, from innovative singer-songwriters like John Craigie and Aoife O’Donovan, to the roots-minded supergroup Mighty Poplar.