Sound Theory

The mystery that is Woodgrain Theory

by John O'Neill

It's just past midnight, and the club lights are dimmed to near-black as the canned instrumental music rises slowly out of the sound stack and curls around the room. Fog spills forward over the length of the

stage, and the sampled noise builds to a dry-heave. Then, from out of the back-lit mist, members of Woodgrain Theory take the stage -- the audience, wrapped up in the mind-scrub they've received, do little more than stare. Mike Dell'Ovo's bass carries the momentum into the opening number, hitting a primal, repetitive riff. And the rest of the band kick in; the big wash of noise carries over the room. Steve Gaffney, rocking and bending, lets loose with a snarl somewhere from way down inside. The band bend and twist the riff -- now a psychedelic, reverberating monster-- till it finally crash lands some seven-plus minutes later. The crowd is hesitant, not sure what it's witnessed, then breaks into a sustained group howl.

"The reason we [open with instrumental music] is to try to get people on the same level -- purify their brains from all that bullshit on the radio," says Gaffney.

We're hole up at the Woodgrain HQ, in an apartment somewhere off Shrewsbury Street. It looks exactly like you'd expect. The walls are painted deep red -- lighting to match -- Miles Davis plays from the stereo, and Gaffney's tortured and enigmatic (but engaging) paintings hang from the walls. The only things missing to complete the scene are a hash pipe and a Phi Krappa Zappa poster. The boys (Gaffney, Dell'Ovo, and drummer Joe Vecchio -- guitarist Alan Palubeckis is absent) have just played a rough-mix copy of "Movement," the same song that stung the crowd earlier, and are understandably excited by its potential.

"The show will always be better than the CD, but I want the CD to be almost the same thing," says Dell'Ovo after a minute. "The sound has to be there. The last [disc] was done in two days. This one we've done three months of pre-production and we still aren't done. It's gonna be 74 minutes of a lot of different stuff. We've been writing crazy music . . . working on stuff that feels good. We just make sure the tune is fully evolved, and then we record it. If [the song] continues to go further, we'll go back and re-record."

If the Woodgrainers sound like they take their music seriously, it's because they do. Probably more than any other band, they consider their calling a sacred art, and the interview hop-scotches from influences to meaning to the half-assed mysticism that comes with a rack of Rolling Rock down the hatch. But they are sincere, and they truly want to change the world.

"Music is the most personal, vulnerable form of art you can make. It grabs you, makes you remember, triggers the most personal parts of you" explains Gaffney. "It's about moods and colors, moods and questions. It's gotta be a show. Not to the point of a rock opera or a spectacle . . . just another form of music. There's more to music than just shaking your head. What do you have to offer? What am I gonna learn? Each song we do is thought through. They are experiences."

In December '96, after Vecchio returned home from UMass, Dell'Ovo was just ending a hitch in the Air Force and Gaffney, a high-school pal of Dell'Ovo, was looking to start his first serious group; they came together as Woodgrain Theory, who have consistently made strides to push music in new directions. Jazz, psychedelia, grunge, and metal influences can be heard all over their debut, Sounds of Perception. An uneven affair at best, Sounds showed a young band who wouldn't ever admit that, as far as music goes, it's all been done before. Rather, they banked on creating that which didn't exist, trotting it out on stage and scaring the crap out of everyone who had no idea under which catagory to file it. At times riveting, at times perplexing, it nevertheless scraped at the listener's brainpan like a dental probe against an eye tooth. And, while flying high over the heads of most, it also hooked the ear of Providence-based Big Noise, which signed the band with the intent of shopping them around to a larger label. Big Noise will release at least 10 compilation discs featuring them. Not bad for a bunch of misunderstood idealists. Currently cutting a second disc with Roger LaVallee, the band figure to work on it an entire year before letting it loose on the public. Where it goes from there is anyone's guess.

"You know it took [Big Noise] a year to even listen to [our disc], so whatever happens," Gaffney says with a shrug. "We want to focus on making music and traveling. It's not an easy life to have . . . it's more problems than good. Playing and having people look at me like I'm an alien. I could be poor, or I could make ends meet, but I just can't get away from music. It blows my mind."

"I don't mind when people don't get our music, that means we're doing something right," Dell'Ovo adds when asked to explain their ability to make folks scratch their heads. "There are a few that do, and I'm playing for them. That's why the next disc has to be awesome."

You can catch John O'Neill on Fridays on Hank Stoltz's morning show on WTAG (580 AM). John previews the weekend's best events, and then hangs around to be clobbered by the WTAG All-Star Trivia Team. Call up and harass them.