Patrick Woods

Raucous, creative, imaginative and interesting are all terms one can use to accurately describe guitarist Patrick Woods. Woods, a former resident of Columbus, Ohio who now hails from the Hoosier state, continues to wow audiences with his very inventive spin on playing the guitar. For thosefamiliar with the avant-garde stylizing of the gone-but-still-great Michael Hedges, it's clear thatPatrickWoods is doing his part to carry on Hedge's legacy...but with his own spin on the music.
Let me make it clear, Woods isn't a Hedges cover artist. It's more a matter of style and substance that connects Woods with Hedges, the guitarist who made a name for himself by tapping, slapping and extracting a vast array of interesting sounds out of his harp guitar. Woods has adopted several of Hedges' traits and in addition to his acoustic guitar also enjoys playing a rather non-standard instrument, in his case a ten-string Santucci Treblebass. The guitar was, developed by it's namesake, Sergio Santucci, a professional musician who played guitar and bass all over the world. Santucci was an accomplished guitar and bass player and saw his
Treblebass as an apt vehicle for those who wished to stretch out and explore a few different musical
perspectives yet play one instrument.
Patrick Woods certainly would garner praise from Santucci. In his hands, the Treblebass fits the style and intensity of his playing. One moment he'll be playing a chorus-enhanced ballad and moments later slapping and tapping away at the lower-octave strings in a manner that would make Stanley Clarke proud. Woods is far from one dimensional in his playing and in his set list he'll go from an oblique experimental sounding jazz-based tune to his own spin on a contemporary rock tune by "Rush."
For those savvy enough to wander into a Woods gig, it's a neat experience and it's not often one finds a guitarist slamming away at an axe with 10 strings. Woods recently released his second CD, Power Fields and has continued to grow and mature as a performer. You can learn more about Patrick Woods, his music and his performance schedule by visiting his Website at www.pwguitar.com.
- Chris Armold

Making a transition from a rural small town to a large city can be overwhelming for just about anyone, let alone a musician or troubadour who wants nothing more then to create original music. While not exactly known by outsiders as the next Mecca for aspiring musicians, Fort Wayne's music scene has for years been less than inviting to outsiders testing the creative waters of the city. Yet for others, Fort Wayne offers something different and exciting.
For independent finger-style guitarist, Patrick Woods, coming to Fort Wayne isn't so much overwhelming as it is a blank canvas with musical energy ready to explode. Wearing his avant-garde blend of finger-style guitar, jazz and folk on his sleeve, Woods hopes to wake up the sleeping giants of the city by breaking all the rules.
At age eight he started playing guitar and was plucked from the quiet world of childhood
and into the daydreams of an aspiring musician. "Back then all I wanted to be was a rock star, like every other kid fantasized about" said Woods. "As I got older I began to appreciate other styles of music, and that feeling of wanting to make music never really went away. So in junior high and all throughout high school I was in a band and began to experiment with classical and jazz, but at my heart was always playing rock in various progressive forms. I was 18 and someone introduced me to Michael Hedges, the father of acoustic-finger style playing." At that moment everything changed. Since junior high Woods had obsessed over music. Yet when most of his peers were going off to college and partying, joining a rock band and occasionally doing some studying, Woods couldn't help but feel as if there was something more "out there." Even though he was schooled in classical finger picking, percussion, music theory and progressive rock for much of his youth, Woods' musical appetite was for something very, very different.
"Up until that time I was really struggling with what direction should I go as a musician, and what should I do with it" said Woods. "The thing about finger-style guitar is that it blends so many different genres and so you don't really have to settle. The downside is it takes awhile to find your niche."
Instead of waiting, however, for some magical inspiration to illuminate his niche, Woods began to experiment with the different elements of his musical upbringing. He saturated himself with albums from the gods of finger-style music and in waited for his music to distill. After years of work and experimenting with the elements of previous finger-style musicians, Woods' musical wine was ready to be sampled, but not without some hesitation.
"There are a lot of finger-style guitar albums out there" said Woods. "I couldn't imitate. Too
many people are listening to them, and instead of coming up with something new they simply adapt the style to something they already do. An original style starts from day one. Rather than sit around all day and listen to finger-style guitar albums, as inspiring as they are, I decided to play rock and progressive music on an acoustic guitar. There's no accompaniment, no background track. I play everything, the rhythm, melody, all of it."
Yet despite a pseudo original musical voice, Woods' style was still in the fetal stages of development. He moved to Columbus, Ohio, and in 2000 recorded his first album Nightlands. "I wasn't happy with it," he said. "I recorded it with my acoustic and my 10-string, and the album sounded inconsistent, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. In some sense I guess I was still struggling with where I wanted to be."
Over the next few years Woods played everywhere from cafes to bookstores and small concert venues, all the while fermenting his music inside the barrel of Columbus' music community. Three years after Nightlands, Woods went back into the studio with new material and a different vision to record Power Fields. Rich in layers and vibrant acoustic energy, Power Fields represented a musical brew that audiences could stand to drink. For some, having a good album and no major record label to distribute would be a problem. Taking a more grassroots approach to distribution than mass marketing, Woods continued to promote his album in any venue that would let him play, developing a very subtle cult following.
Despite growing a very grassroots following, Woods' endurance was reaching its threshold. By the time he moved back home to Indiana, Woods was spent. Physically exhausted, but creatively energized. Woods set his sights on Fort Wayne to test the relatively quiet musical waters of the city and saturate himself with the local musicians.
Instead of gimmicks and cover songs to use as a calling card to venues and audiences alike,
Woods kept to his "music first" approach to connect with Fort Wayne's musical underground.
"It seems as if everybody all over the place wants to sound like Coldplay, Staind or System
of a Down" said Woods, " and while this has been going on since even the 70s, today musicians really only have one shot to make it on a major record label. The general feeling is that if you don't sell at least a half a million copies of your first album you're never going to make it, you'll get shelved. Today's bands will make two or three albums, then break up and release solo albums. Go back to the 70s and look at how many of the successful bands are still together and touring. We just don't give young musicians the same breathing room anymore to create."
Woods now plays regularly at Henry's on downtown Fort Wayne's west side, dishing out his own blend of music to musicians, and onlookers alike. " "I've found ... a lot of ... people who, through Henry's, have more of an open mind when it comes to music" said Woods. "Regardless of the fact that I play instrumental finger-style guitar fused with folk and jazz and rock and Celtic, the people who come in really support the music unlike very few other places I've been. Henry's is the first venue I've been to in Fort Wayne where I've met musicians that legitimately care about the music. After the dinner crowd has come and gone the musician crowd starts playing, and then the night gets going. On a good night we don't stop until the early morning hours."
It's this neo-bohemian attitude that drives Patrick during every performance where the music pours out of his fingers to an audience thirsty for something blissfully unusual.
- Matt McMclure

It's just a few pounds of wood, some electronic gizmos and 10 strings, but in the hands of Patrick Woods such instruments become vehicles for astounding musical, feats - adventures where picker picking; string slaps,
guitar body slaps, strumming and a few things they have yet to name all come together to form
a spellbinding experience.
And yes, you read that right, 10 strings (as in the treble bass, an instrument that has six guitar strings and four bass strings all coexisting peacefully on the same neck). And instead of ploddingly thunking the root note or straight eights; Woods weaves funky bass lines that intricately mesh with the challenging guitar parts. Either of these alone would be difficult enough but Woods plays them both at the same time and does so with enough melodic panache and compositional integrity to leave fellow musicians drooling.
Power Fields is his second collection of astounding instrumentals with 12 of his best on aural display. "Time And Fire" is perhaps the most easily digestible of the group, as Woods merges pop and jazz, throwing in enough percussive knocking on the body of his guitar to simulate a drum kit to appease popular music fans. One listen to this track and you'll swear that there are two or three tracks making up-this experience, but if he is to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt him, he plays the entire thing at one time. Woods goes for a more blues-infused sound on "Inertia Island,'° a kind
of Muddy Waters-meets-classic rock, with a mid-eastern twist.
While the majority of the songs are maniacal flurries of notes, a few manage to calm down enough to lay their beautiful melodies out for the ear. "Lights Of the Burning City," played on an old-fashioned acoustic six-string is deceivingly simple (until you try to play it) with a clear tonality and breezy, light feel. Woods evokes a pastoral emotion with the expressive "Morning Wind," while "Far From Home" is a cleansing, purifying album-ender, wonderfully sending the listener optimistically off to enjoy their day
with clear memories of music in their head.
Woods has spent a lifetime honing the finger-pick guitar style, creating a fusion of elements that is unique even to casual listeners. Knowing that mere flash burns out rather quickly, he performs his technical mastery upon highly crafted and highly enjoyable instrumental compositions that engage the heart as well as the mind. Power Fields is indeed a power play that should catapult Woods to national attention. (Jason Hoffman)
- Jason Hoffman