Royal Wood Learns to Let Go

After successfully self-producing previous efforts such as 'Tall Tales' and 'The Milkweed EP,' singer-songwriter Royal Wood is finally ready to let someone else take control -- no easy feat for an artist who's accustomed to doing everything himself.

"I've always kind of held on to the reins and I felt I reached the end of my production ability," he tells Spinner prior to a performance at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel. "I really wanted to learn something and be uncomfortable, I had to work with someone else and push myself."

That extra push has made his new album, 'The Waiting,' a more well-rounded release, thanks in part to acclaimed producer Pierre Marchand, who's best known for his work with Sarah McLachlan.

"He brought a definite spark and a definite energy and magic that I hadn't felt in the studio working alone before," Wood says of Marchand. "That also coincided with bringing my band in with me instead of just arranging things and playing them myself.

"One of Pierre's tricks is he didn't want to hear the songs and he didn't want anyone in the band to hear any of the songs," he continues. "He wanted it to be something that I came in with each morning. 'This is the song. And now go.' He would hear something and basically say, 'I have a vision of how I want this and I hear what it is, but I want you guys to familiarize yourself with the song.' He was never like, 'I want you to play this chord.' So he drew the performances out of people as opposed to just handing them a part. He was just the puppet master."

Wood brought Marchand one song entitled 'The Island' as a litmus test to see if they could work together. From there things flowed easily, with the opening track 'You Can't Go Back' being perfected by the afternoon of the first day. Other highlights include the solid single 'On Top of Your Love' (whose video recalls a combination of Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' and 'Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing') and the more poignant, Coldplay-esque 'Birds On Sunday,' a tune Wood describes as his "song on faith."

"It's not that I subscribe to any particular religion -- I'm not atheist," he explains. "I believe there's too much chance that we actually exist in the first place when you biologically, scientifically, physically look at the universe, at what had to happen for it all to happen. There's a spark of life that we all carry and occasionally you lose sight of it and at times you're so entwined in it that it is buzzing through you."

Generally, 'The Waiting' sounds like an artist who feels quite comfortable discussing topics like death, love and loss -- something Wood says comes with maturity.

"Your focus changes, your priorities change, your relationships get a lot more serious and you just kind of realize the power of being in the moment," he says. "My twenties are kind of a blur. I wouldn't say I was self-centered but I was focused on one thing and that was my career. Now that I've hit my thirties I understand the balance of what life should be and how much that inspires and translates into a far more successful career.

"If you've actually lived and are involved -- heart-open involved -- with family and friends and life, what better material is there to write about? You can't truly love someone unless you have both love and loss. It's like when you call your parents and they're well into their sixties, seventies, eighties -- there's that fear that when you say goodbye to them it could be the last time I'm talking to my parents or grandparents because time is against them."

The artist also saw his song 'Paradise' appear in the ABC drama Private Practice last month, something he sees as vital to Canadian musicians.

"If you're an independent artist in Canada you depend on song placements because people don't buy records anymore, they steal records," he says. "So you're depending on touring and placements and other avenues of revenue because it just doesn't exist anymore. They're lowering the benchmark of even what a gold record is in Canada again.

"You get artists that will make statements [against selling-out] but then you find out they licensed a song out in another country, so it's like, 'Well, own up to it for god's sake.'"

Wood will play several summer Canadian festivals before a headlining national tour takes shape this fall. Earlier this year he opened for British singer David Gray on a 12-date Canadian tour, an experience he definitely relished.

"They treated us like absolute equals from the second we got there," he says. "But even more [amazing] than that was to talk to him about his own career and discuss 'White Ladder,' how he didn't even feel much like that person. The career he has now feels like that's him as an artist. It just exploded and it was so inflated as to what the reality was. I mean you would buy a house or rent and apartment and you get a copy of 'White Ladder' with it. It was amazing to discuss that and realize that shouldn't be your aim, if it happens, great, but it doesn't make you happy. Being artistically fulfilled makes you happy, not success."

Wood is already working on material for the follow-up to 'The Waiting.' Some might expect that material to be somewhat gloomy given the tone of earlier albums, but Wood insists he's a very happy man.

"It's funny, but people always seem to conclude that I'm brooding and dark, but music gets that all out," he says. "It's cathartic and I don't have to deal with it. It's like when people write in their diary or talk to a friend they get it out. My friend is my songbook and the piano in front of me."