Adam Woodall Band

Ask Adam Woodall how he writes his distinctive tunes and the musician hems and haws for a few seconds before giving an answer.

"It's really hard to explain how it all works," he finally responds. "It all comes together at the same time. Sometimes I write a song from the centre and work backwards. It's almost like it's already written and I have to find out the clue to what it is."

The creation of the songs may be difficult to describe but the end result is no secret - Silver Ring is a brilliant pop record from start to finish.

Woodall and his band have been working on their sound to get to this point for quite some time. They've played regularly around the North Shore for the past five years with Monday nights reserved for a steady gig at Seymour's Pub.

They actually started out as The Savary Island Pie Company Band naming themselves after the West Vancouver bistro where they used to play Wednesday nights but that moniker had obvious limitations. The current name doesn't really do the group justice either suggests Woodall as they are truly a band and not just hired hands.

"It's an interesting symbiotic relationship that we have," he says. "We're all really good friends, really tight and it just seems to work well with me being the writer."

Woodall's been writing songs for more than a decade and been working with different North Shore bands even longer. Like many others who have come up through the North Shore musical foodchain he got his start at West Vancouver's rockin' Hillside secondary.

"I really wanted to join the Smugglers," he says. "They already had a guitar player and a bass player and a drummer and my friend Nick Thomas said, 'Why don't you learn to play the harmonica?' So that's how it all started. My first gig was in the basement of the West Vancouver Presbyterian Church on Marine Drive."

Woodall was a member of the Smugglers for several years (1988-90) before striking out on his own to work with Two Trains - named after a song Lowell George wrote for the Little Feat album Dixie Chicken. "All the bands I've played in have always been Little Feat fans," he says. "Why? I don't know. There was a real big Grateful Dead culture thing for a little while. A lot of people were going down to shows right before Jerry Garcia died and Little Feat were connected to that - Little Feat would open for the Grateful Dead a lot. I've just always loved them. I consider that to be good music. It must be a West Van thing - everybody grew up listening to the same kind of music."

Woodall focused on rhythm guitar and harmonica with Two Trains and it wasn't until his next band, Juice Company, that he got involved in the writing process. By the time he released his debut album, Songs from My Parents House in 2001, he was a prolific tunesmith. "I've got hundreds of songs," he says. "I just like to write them quickly. I don't hang on to songs - I write them and if I don't play them I archive them but I probably won't play them again I will just write a new one. I like to keep it fresh. I get bored extremely easy."

The Adam Woodall Band recorded their new album over the past year at Ryan Stewart's WineCellarMusic Studios in North Vancouver. They worked with producer Stewart in his converted wine cellar to get the right mix of material.

Woodall went in with a number of songs ready to go but others were made up on the spot. "There's a lot of free-form on this album," Woodall says. "Some songs were nailed down other songs were absolutely fresh - flipped upside down in completely different styles because it was lacking energy. You know where that energy is coming from and you have to go there. You've got to do it that way."

Although the album clearly came from the same musician who gave us Songs from My Parents House there is a new-found maturity on the record. "I'm trying to say something more direct within this record," Woodall says. "I think we're all more seasoned and not trying to overdo things - just trying to get right to the point."

Some of the songs he wrote during the sessions didn't make it onto the album and in fact they have already been back in the studio to record some more tunes.

"Our new concept is to record when something is fresh now and get it down right away. Once you play a song for awhile it changes. You've really got to get it while it's fresh - you almost have to get it down when no one knows what they're supposed to do on it."

The band celebrate the release of Silver Ring with a show Thursday, March 16 at the Buffalo Club, 1161 Granville St. Doors open at 8 p.m. with special guest Andrew Babuin opening. For more information and to purchase a copy of the new album go to www.adamwoodall.com.

- John Goodman