There aren’t many bands out there quite like Wovenhand. Their sound is equal parts mystical, psychedelic and apocalyptic. It’s not heavy in the traditional sense at all, but man, it’s heavy!
The Denver quartet, led by singer/guitarist David Eugene Edwards (of 16 Horsepower fame) have spent the last 20 years taking a blueprint that’s part Nick Cave, part Joy Division, and stamping a full serving of Old Testament drama and colour to their recordings. It’s beautiful, bruised music that screams for redemption but knows such a thing isn’t necessarily forthcoming.
, mere weeks ago, we knew we’d have to at least try for an interview! Lead guitarist and co-writer Chuck French gamefully agreed, and so we had a most entertaining conversation via Zoom. Chuck was great company: funny and happy to share details on Wovenhand’s whole process, from song inception to touring. As Chuck co-write the entire record, much of the conversation revolved around how a band operates and writes during these current strange times, but there’s plenty of talk about unusual guitars, the joy of feedback, Rat pedals and vintage amplifiers recovered from rubbish heaps! If you’re familiar with the band, there’s hopefully lots to get stuck into here. If you don’t yet know about Wovenhand, it’s our pleasure to make this introduction. Hold on tight, now…
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: So, I’m quite familiar with most of Wovenhand’s material. Am I right in saying that this is the first time there’s been such a specific co-writing split between yourself and David Eugene Edwards?
Chuck French: Yeah, definitely. David will usually have, like, 90% of the material musically, and then we just kinda flesh it out in the practice space. Then he’ll do the vocals on top of that. This time around, I did 90% of the music and David did his vocals on top, not in the practice space because of the pandemic but just in my house here. We fleshed it out, slimmed it down and trimmed off parts that didn’t need to be there, stuff like that.
GG: You play with other bands as well. Is the material on Silver Sash stuff that was written specifically for Wovenhand? Did you sit down with David and say, ‘I’m gonna write a bunch of stuff and give it to you’?
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) So it was kinda selfish in a way. I was just like, ‘let’s make a record, I have all this music’. I kept sending it to him and sending it to him, and finally he was like, ‘Alright, let’s do it’, you know? And so, we tracked all the drums and everything in the house here, except for his vocals.
CF: Yeah, there’s live drums, but they’ve been manipulated and edited, to keep ‘em in time and also to move parts around and stuff. There’s a lot of studio magic in that respect. Some of the songs are definitely all live drums, but some of them are ‘doctored’, like just trimmed up a little bit to fit in nicely.
GG: Cool! One of the things I wondered about is: going from early Wovenhand to the more recent records like Refractory Obdurate and Star Treatment, there’s a kind of progressively more…’heavy’ is the wrong word, but guitar-intensive, rocky…
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GG: More rocking, right! And this particular one is perhaps the most rocking of the lot! There’s proper feedback squalls and things like that!
GG: Was that you saying, ‘I really want Wovenhand to sound like this’? Or did the songs just kind of happen that way?
CF: I think it’s more just where I come from, musically. It’s my noisy punk rock background. The thing that turned me on about Wovenhand is that they’re super-intense, but they’re not really heavy. Not heavy like, they don’t have tons of distortion and they’re not like a metal band, but they’re fuckin’ heavy man! First time I saw them play, it was like goddam! I saw this dude (
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) that looked like, I dunno, a Vietnam POW that had just been freed or something, and he was just fuckin’ losing it! It was awesome, I was really turned on, like, ‘Wow, I wanna be a part of that!’ So yeah, the noisy guitar stuff, that’s definitely my influence for sure! (
GG: Cool, cool. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to see Wovenhand live unfortunately, but is the new record maybe more representative of how you guys sound live anyway?
Record came out, that’s when things got super heavy, as far as things like volume and the amount of distortion on the guitars. Also, when I first joined the band, David always sat down to play on a chair. I was like, ‘You should stand up and rock with us, man. Like, let’s fuckin’ rock this shit’. I think that also brought out some stuff in him, too, in his playing. He’s an amazing guitar player, and with him standing up and rocking, feeling it, I think that kinda like made him turn his shit up a little bit more, you know? (
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GG: Yeah, yeah! It’s such a simple point but it’s such a good point. His perspective of leading the band as it were from a seating position is not as confrontational as standing. And the dude’s already quite intense, from what I can gather from seeing videos! It must then be more so, right?
CF: Yeah, right, totally. No less effective, but a more in-your-face kinda thing. You see this guy walking around, freaking out: it’s pretty intense!
CF: Well, I have this other band called Get Some and I was friends with Wovenhand’s driver. So, I was always like, ‘You gotta tell David to get Get Some on tour to open for Wovenhand!’ The music is nothing alike at all (
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). Get Some is more like a hardcore band. I just kept on bugging him and bugging him, till finally they let us go on tour opening for them. It was awesome but we would just clear the room, you know? People would come back in after we’d finished playing! (
) We were just so fuckin’ loud! After that, some shit went down, I got fired from my job, then David was like, ‘Hey, I want you to join the band’. That was a wild turn of events, but yeah! That’s kinda how it happened.
GG: That’s not bad, man! That’s not bad at all! Now, in terms of the co-writing, if we simplify it by saying that most of the new songs started with yourself and then you gave them across to David, do you have input on the lyrics? And do you, for want of a better term, have a say on the lyrics?
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CF: Well, for lyrics and any kind of vocal melodies, I leave it to David because he’s got such a good grasp on how he wants it to sound. He’s got a really good ear for how melodies work and structure and stuff like that. I’m just like, ‘Do what you gotta do, cuz I totally trust you man’, you know?
CF: He’s doing a great job. He’s an amazing lyricist and singer, and a great person to work with. He makes me feel like a real musician (
GG: This co-writing thing is so interesting, especially when you’re at a remove because of covid and so on. Presumably you’d send files across and he’d work on them on his own. Did you ever get any surprises back where you were like, ‘Wait a minute? What have you done with my song?’
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CF: Yeah, always! And the songs sound totally different with singing over them. It’s like, wow, this is a totally different song now! Vocals can do that: bring new life to the song where it’s like, ‘I didn’t know this could exist like that’.
GG: That’s so cool. Without focusing too much on David, it sounds like he doubles his lead vocal tracks. Is that correct?
CF: Yeah, he does. He’ll do a lot of backup vocals too, to accentuate parts and bring out things that he thinks should be there. He does do a lot of doubling and he uses that effect very effectively to enhance his lines, he’s really good at it.
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GG: Awesome! For me, Wovenhand’s music is very visual. To my British ears, there’s a lot of ‘America’ in Wovenhand’s sound. Even the fact of David’s cowboy hat, and the kind of frontier vibe and Native American stuff that David’s interested in: all of that helps me visualise big open dark skies, grand canyon, all that great imagery. When you’re writing your pieces of music - for Wovenhand or other bands - I wonder: do you see the music in visual terms? And if so, how does Wovenhand’s music look to you?
CF: Sometimes, well, definitely, you're in the desert for sure. It’s like you’re stuck out there, what are you gonna do? It’s kinda scary and yeah, it can happen like that, totally, for sure. This picture comes into your head and I can see David, hear him singing. Or, a piece of music will present itself and it’s like, ‘this definitely is
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