Donovan Woods: The Full Interview

There’s a guitar in the background. A red abstract painting that resembles flame. Simple shelving to his right with some electric devices, box-files and hiking boots on the top. Donovan Woods is a softly-spoken self-deprecating Canadian troubadour.

Andrew: Congratulations on a fine album with ‘Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now’.

Donovan: Thank you. Thanks very much. Sorry, I’m just trying to get the audio sorted. I think I’ve got it.

Andrew: Technology is a wonderful thing.

Donovan: It’s the best, when it’s working right. It’s a nightmare when its not. But I’m all good.

Andrew: Were your parents’ fans of the sixties Donovan Leitch of ‘Sunshine Superman’ fame?

Donovan: That’s who I’m named after. He was my Dad’s favourite singer, so I grew up listening to all that stuff – ‘Season Of The Witch’, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ and all those things – so yes, that’s my Dad’s favourite. That’s who I’m named after.

Andrew: I guess you’ve been asked that question many times before?

Donovan: Yeah, well – not that often. I mean, he’s not around that much anymore in the culture, Donovan Leitch, but he was around me when I was a kid. I loved it. I loved it all. I remember he had this record – I can’t even recall what the name of the album was, but the song was ‘The Intergalactic Laxative’ (on 1973 ‘Cosmic Wheels’) – remember that one? It sounds like a joke song, and my sister and I used to love it.

Andrew: In your song you write that ‘your hometown’s just the first place you don’t understand.’ Was that true about you growing up in Sarnia, Ontario – on Lake Huron?

Donovan: Yes, I think so. I think it was, er… you don’t… I don’t think I understood how working-class that place was. I don’t think I understood the politics of that city, just how intensely blue-collar it was. I don’t think I understood the motivation, how people were motivated in Sarnia and I was sort-of, always lost. I felt I was – not that I felt different from that, I was certainly of that type of family, but I think that I just didn’t… I don’t think I realised just how small that city is. I didn’t really understand it. So I left.

Andrew: Was that because you had a more artistic sensibility?

Donovan: I guess so. I also guess you don’t understand it, until you leave it. Because, when you leave it you realise it’s a really good place to raise kids. You realise that it would be a really nice choice. So you take its shortcomings, everybody tolerates its shortcomings for a reason. Its because it’s a really nice place to have your kids, and a safe place to have them.

Andrew: Were you always a musician, or were there other ambitions, writing fiction – you claim in one of your song-titles to be ‘well-read’?

Donovan: I always wrote songs. As soon as I got a guitar and took a lesson, the first thing I did was write my own songs. That would have been when I was like – oh, thirteen, fourteen or something. But for a while I thought that I wanted to be an actor. I went to Theatre School and I did a lot of acting. I did a lot of acting in commercials and stuff, before I sort-of, gave it up. I don’t know why I thought I wanted to be that (he laughs). I did not like doing it, but I thought that I did. But all through that I wrote songs. And when I gave up acting I just focussed on the songs. And then they started to kind-of get good. It took me – like, ten years to write ones that I thought were OK. Fifteen years to write a song that I thought was good.

Andrew: Were you always solo? Was there never a band?

Donovan: I was in a band at High School. But I wasn’t the singer. I was just playing guitar. But it didn’t take off, it didn’t go anywhere. But I’m sometimes envious of – y’know, being in a band, and being with your friends and hanging out, seems like it must be fun. But then, I’m not envious of having to listen to anyone else’s opinion.

Andrew: Being in a band has that swaggering gang ethos, four of you, or maybe five of you against the world.

Donovan: Yes, that must feel very good too, you sort-of just roll into town, get the money and just get the hell out of there. There must be some sort of… it must feel pretty good. But no, I never really got to do it on a big level.

Andrew: On your song ‘When The Party’s Over’ you sing of the ‘vinyl still spinning’ on the turntable. Is that nostalgia, or trendy Boho chic?

Donovan: I think that’s probably trendy. That song was sort of… that song sort of felt like it was about an older couple to me, it didn’t feel like it was me in that song. Felt like it was an older couple. So maybe it wasn’t trendy in their world? In that couple’s world I feel like maybe they’re still listening to vinyl. But something about that feeling of the vinyl spinning, you don’t really hear it ‘cos it’s so loud, the record’s over, but you don’t notice…

Andrew: Do you think there’s a qualitative difference between hearing vinyl or streaming?

Donovan: We know that there’s a difference, there’s some tangible difference. Of course there’s just something better about it. There’s a sort-of depth to a recording on vinyl that I don’t think we’re going back to, and I don’t think it’s ever going to matter to kids of this generation. But there’s something better about it, I’m sure there are – like, technical reasons. The music is being made in front of you. Part of this is that its like part-performance whereas now it’s just being… the sound quality of streaming obviously leaves things to be desired. And people are just listening to music out of their phones all the time. Which it’s hard to believe that the speakers in their phones can broadcast the full spectrum of the sound. But, like, music is different to kids now. I wonder if they even think about music quality, it’s a different thing to them now. It’s a tool more than it’s an art.

Andrew: But one technology doesn’t necessarily replace another. People still buy vinyl. It all coexists at the same time.

Donovan: Yes, that seems to be the case, doesn’t it? It’s that thing where it doesn’t really replace something else, and never will. Just like e-readers haven’t replaced books in the way that we thought they would. Makes a ton of sense for them to replace… it made a ton of sense that books would kind-of stop existing – but they didn’t, which is interesting. Everything sort-of happens at the same time. And that’s interesting to think of, that all those things are coexisting.

Andrew: Have you ever written fiction, or prose? Your songs are very literate and have a narrative structure.

Donovan (laughs): I read a lot. I have… writing something is my – my ultimate goal is to write a piece of… I’ve written stories. I’ve written short stories. I’ve tried, but I find it really difficult. I like the length of a song. I really enjoy the form and constraints of a song. And I’ve tried to write short stories. But that – like, to me, those people are the real heroes, those are real writers, people who are coming up with a whole novel, a cohesive thought that has a beginning, middle and an end… and a depth. That type of writing is what I’m most attracted to in terms of an artform, for sure. But I’ve never done it. I wish I could.

Andrew: Yet you were saying earlier that your song ‘When The Party’s Over’ was written through invented characters, through personas. That is a form of fiction.

Donovan: Well – yeah, I think a lot of them are characters, to me. Or they’re versions of myself that didn’t work out. I’m always just exploring, trying to find the best way to tell… the best story to communicate the feelings. And if the best story doesn’t involve me, then that’s OK.

Andrew: The video for your song ‘How Good’ features a Surfer Girl, while you only get a walk-on part at the end, in your own video!

Donovan: That’s how I like it. Yes. I like a little cameo. Just me for a little bit. I think that’s a good amount of time. It’s me singing the whole time. So there’s plenty of me. Just a little cameo is good.

Andrew: You don’t feel the need to be the ‘star’?

Donovan: I think that’s certainly right about me. I don’t think that I am the type of person… I don’ like to see myself that much. I don’t like how I look – especially in a video. You see yourself from the side and from the back. The side of me is none of my business. I feel like this in me. The front of me is me. So it’s like – y’know, I just don’t view myself as the centre of the world. I think, listening to me sing for three-&-a-half minutes is plenty of ‘me’ content.

Andrew: That video was also centred around eco-concerns. Is that something that’s important to you.

Donovan: The Great Lakes are important to me. I grew up on the Great Lakes and I do a lot of work towards conservation of the Great Lake. I just love the Great Lakes. I am an environmentalist as much as anybody my age is. I have kids so I’m very worried about it all the time. But my focus really is on waterways and the Great Lakes just because I grew up on them and I just love them. I love swimming. I just think it’s the best thing for kids. It’s just the best thing you can do – is swimming. Makes everybody tired in the right way. Hungry in the right way. It’s just as good as it gets, is being on the beach.

Andrew: You sing Alanis Morissette’s ‘Ironic’. It seems a curious choice of a song to sing. Is there a story behind that video?

Donovan: That was a long time ago. She was being inducted into – I think she was being inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame, or she was getting a Lifetime’s Achievement award at the. Juno’s, I think, so a bunch of artists picked their favourite songs of hers – and, I’ll be honest my favourite one was ‘One Hand In My Pocket’ – that’s the one I wanted. But how I got around it, I thought that’s an interesting song to sing, so it’s so present in our culture, you forget how many hits that woman had – during that process I was reminded how famous she was for a while, and how many hits she had off that album (‘Jagged Little Pill’, 1995). It was the eleventh single off that album, or something like that, there were tons of singles off that record!

Andrew: The only non-original song on your ‘Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now’ album is Marc Cohn’s ‘Don’t Talk To Her At Night’.

Donovan: I don’t love it. Doing covers is not my forte, but yes, there’s a cover on this new record that I’m just putting out. There’s a cover of a Marc Cohn song called ‘Don’t Talk To Her At Night’. Often it’s like… I have often worried about the songs that I love. I think they’re so good that they’ll just make my songs seem worse by contrast, so I have sorta shied away from that. But there’s a few that I’ve done, I do this Mark Cohn song now, and I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think if I’ve ever done another one. Oh! – there’s a band in Canada called the Tragically Hip that we all love, and when you’re in their hometown – Kingston, Ontario, you basically have to play one of their songs as a sort-of tribute, so I have played a Tragically Hip song when I was playing in Kingston. But I don’t do it that often. I think of myself as a writer, more than I do as a performer. I think I will make those songs worse! (He laughs).

Andrew: The way you do the Marc Cohn song slots easily into your style.

Donovan: Yeah, I think when I listened back to Marc Cohn’s record – his self-titled first album (1991), and then ‘The Rainy Season’ (1993) – which that song’s off, I think about how much I am stealing from his narrative style. It doesn’t really occur to me until I listen to his record. I think there’s just something in the point of view that really stuck with me. It’s the music my Dad really liked when I was just a kid. My Dad was very filled with records, he had them in his car constantly. Yes, I don’t think I ended up far from where he led. I think I was about the same age as him when those records were coming out. And something about his point of view was always sort-of noble and good, to me. There’s a real dignity in his songs. The real real human dignity to his songs that I aspire to get to. But I think he’s… in terms of being a singer-songwriter, he’s one of the gold standards to me. For sure.

Andrew: Canada has a strong tradition of singer-songwriters, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson.

Donovan: Certainly, there is. I think this… yeah, I dunno, I don’t know what that is. It’s interesting to think of. There’s a lot of them. But those things happen in America also.

Andrew: William Prince and Madi Diaz guest on the album. Are they friends, people you’ve met while touring?

Donovan: Yes – friends. Madi is someone who I really admired her songs. She’s got a new record out now (‘Weird Faith’, 2024), but when I first heard her last record (‘History Of A Feeling’, 2021) I was really blown away by it. And – I knew that she lived in Nashville, I’d heard her name around, I just hadn’t listened to her records, but when I did I was blown away. I reached out to my publisher and asked if we could write together. And that’s the song we wrote – ‘When Our Friends Come Over’. The song on the record is the song we wrote when we first met. And I just want to… when someone is that good of a writer, if they’re a person who cowrites, I just wanna get in the room and see, and just watch what they do. I really admire songwriters, really love to see how they do it – everybody does it in a new and interesting way. And there’s little tricks that everybody has that sort-of make that thing special that they don’t even clock as unique, or maybe even that they’re tired of. They feel they’re tired of it, but to someone else it’s so special and fresh. And William (Prince) is a friend of mine. He’s a Canadian singer-songwriter. Just a guy who’s had a real ascending in Canada in the last few years, whose singing voice is just about the calmest warm billow that you could ever imagine. There’s just something about what he’s… his output that is so… ah… there’s just like a wisdom to it and a depth in it that’s hard to chase. And I thought that song that he’s on – ‘I’m Just Trying To Get Home’, I just thought that it needed another voice, that it needed something else – and he was the first thought. And he did it. And I was so… so happy that he could.

Andrew: Writing collaboratively is a different creative process to writing solo. You have to adjust and adapt to the other person’s writing style.

Donovan: You learn a ton from it. You also have to… when you’re with someone, you have a responsibility to make some sort of sense. Unless you have a sort of shorthand with the person. There’s a sort of leeway that you get with yourself, where, if it doesn’t make literal sense, but it makes sense in your gut… if the words for some reason mean the thing that you think that they mean, because you can feel that in your gut, you can get away with that when you’re alone. When you’re with someone else you have a responsibility to at least rationalise what you’re trying to get at. And I think – like, overall, I think really great things are made when there’s two people with the shared vision for a song. For some reason one more little perspective – when it gets to be three people, I wonder at times. I wonder if three perspectives can work their way and tell a really good story. But for some reason when there’s two – it’s just that little degree of difference that you need to find a space, to make an idea feel capacious rather than just one thought, you know?

Andrew: Holland Dozier Holland were three people with a shared vision. They made some rather wonderful songs.

Donovan (laughs): Yes, I think – like, three people with a shorthand or a like mind – of course! But it gets tougher the more people there are in the room. Although you see these Pop songs with eighteen writers now! I can’t imagine all those people were in the same room at the same time.

Andrew: Songs written by committee.

Donovan: But I do think… who knows? Who knows. It’s all a mystery.

Andrew: ‘Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now’ is a sensitive poetic album. Do you never feel like turning the amps up to eleven and just rocking out?

Donovan: I don’t really – I have attempted that in my career (long thoughtful pause). Sometimes I feel that. I feel that. I watch someone doing that and I think that must be some cathartic thing to be doing. I just don’t have it in my body. I don’t have that mood in my body. I don’t. I’m being truthful to music that is coming out of me. That’s what it sounds like. It sounds restrained, and it sounds a little bit… it sounds (he holds his clenched fists in tight to his chest) a bit like a buttoned-up tight fist, you know? – rather than an explosion.

Andrew: Your ‘When This Is Over’ with Dabin & Nurko veers into Dance-Pop (from ‘Between Broken’, May 2021).

Donovan: Yeah-Yes. I sing very loud on that. And I do remember feeling very uncomfortable in the vocal booth when I was screaming the ‘when this is over’ part. I wrote the melody – kind-of, it was all a big collaboration, but – man, I’ll tell you singing the loud part, I did not… I don’t like… that’s very much like looking at the side of myself, to me. It’s like that type… It’s like that type… hearing my voice screaming in that way, it doesn’t sound like me, to me. It’s a bit uncomfortable.

Andrew: There’s a sample used on the track ‘All Raked Flat’ which goes ‘I don’t want to feel the way I feel ever again’, is that taken from a movie? I can’t seem to be able to identify it.

Donovan: That’s me. That’s me speaking. It’s a recording of a therapy session. It’s me talking at a therapy session, yeah. It’s something, I was talking about the way I had felt in a specific situation, and I was saying I did not want to feel that way ever again, which is sorta… as you get older I think that’s a great motivation, you’ve experienced so many things, and you can think ‘no, not that again, please, I would not like to do that again. No, at the end of that song all those clips – there’s a church bell from Copenhagen, and there’s a street performer from New Orleans, and then there’s a bit of my therapy session. I took to… what I’m doing is, I want to be a great photographer but I’m not good at it. Like, if I take a picture it looks like someone took a picture by accident. So what I’ve been doing is just recording audio in places where I think the noise ids interesting when I’m on tour. And listening back to those – I don’t know if you’ve ever done that?, but like when you’re on a vacation, recording the audio on a beach, those things they’ll transport you back to the place so realistically, so I was doing that a lot on a tour that was going through Europe, and then one that went through the entire United States, just recording sounds of cities. And it’s wild to listen back to them now, you remember details, I remember there’s one with a jackhammer and I remember what the guy using the jackhammer looked like when I hear that sound. It’s just like it brings you right back to the moment. It’s interesting.

Andrew: ‘All Raked Flat’ was cowritten with Jake Etheridge, who appeared in the ‘Nashville’ TV-series. Did you follow that show?

Donovan: Yes I did, he’s in a bit, right? Yes – I watched it a little bit. I don’t think I ever saw Jake in it! I watched some of those episodes though. But I’m very fond of Jake, and he’s such a great writer. Such a fun person to collaborate with.

Andrew: You’ve had a number of your songs covered by other artists. Are there versions of your songs by other people that you like or respect?

Donovan: Yeah. That to me is like the… I mean, there have been one or two where I was like ‘I don’t think that that’s good.’ But it’s all a matter of taste. There’s no accounting for taste. More often than not, when you hear it, it’s so flattering that somebody else would want to sing something that you wrote, that they previously didn’t have anything to do with. It’s just sort-of the highest compliment, for a song. You know, there are standards like Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, those ones that have become standards over time. Those are the best songs. They exist, sort-of like, it feels like no-one wrote them, it feels as though they’ve always existed for all us of. So I feel that, when someone else wants to record your song, I don’t think there’s a higher compliment for a song, so even if it’s a little bit different from the way I would have done it. I’m always just flattered. I never thought that would be my job. I didn’t think I would sing, I didn’t think I would do any of this. I thought that I would just write for other people. Because that would seem… like a really reasonable job to me. And when it does happen, I’m always really flattered.

Andrew: Is there anything else you want to add that we’ve not already talked about?

Donovan: I think you’re certainly right that ‘Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now’ is a peaceful poetic record. I think I’m really diving down to the bottom of myself on this one, and enjoying the process of sharing some real private moments. I think – like, as you get older you question why you’re doing it, you’re away from your kids all the time, you’re on the road, things are not always easy. I’m happy to be making art that I really wanna be making… I think it makes me… it makes everything else easier. It makes the being away easier. Because it feels as though I’m doing something important. And I hope people find it really useful. Because I found making this record really useful…

Andrew: I think that rounds things off nicely.

Donovan: Thank you, have a good day.

 

THINGS WERE NEVER GOOD IF THEY’RE NOT GOOD NOW

 

  1. ‘Rosemary’ (written by Donovan Woods with Connor Seidel)
  2. ‘116 West Main, Durham NC’
  3. ‘Trompsingel (Another Life)’
  4. ‘It’s Been Like That For A While’
  5. ‘Living Well’
  6. ‘Well Read’
  7. ‘Back For The Funeral’ (written by Donovan Woods with Lori McKenna and Matt Nathanson)
  8. ‘Don’t Talk To Her At Night’ (written by Marc Cohn)
  9. ‘I’m Just Trying To Get Home’ featuring William Prince (written by Donovan Woods with Amy Wadge and Matt Prime)
  10. ‘When Our Friends Come Over’ featuring Madi Diaz (written by Donovan Woods with Madi Diaz)
  11. ‘All Raked Flat’ (written by Donovan Woods with Jake Etheridge)

 

https://www.facebook.com/donovanwoodsmusic  

 

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

 

 

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