Despite tragedy, the Steel Woods carries on
The Steel Woods came into being in 2016 based on a shared vision. The Nashville band’s cofounders, Wes Bayliss and Jason “Rowdy” Cope, had struck up a friendship that led to a lot of fishing and a lot of discussion about what they thought was important in good music. “It was the two of us, writing and hanging out and just figuring it all out together,” Bayliss says during a recent Zoom exchange. “It seemed like we had really found the right partner in each other, and so it was kind of a no-brainer at that time to put something together and start this journey.”
The partnership came to an untimely end with Cope’s unexpected passing two years ago, but the journey continues, and it brings the Steel Woods to the Paradise Friday for the band’s first Boston appearance.
As Bayliss describes it, the vision was about “being a band’s band, for the ones who really listen to the music, to the playing, to the parts; there’s a lot of thought put into those things. We wanted to be something a little deeper than you get on the day to day.” The emphasis is on being loud, but not just loud: “Especially in this kind of music, there’s a lot of simple stuff that’s not normally very deep. Matching up really strong lyrics to songs that are also big and exciting, I think that was the objective.”
Cope had been playing guitar in Jamey Johnson’s band for several years; Bayliss was in Nashville pursuing his own musical career. After sussing out their ideas, they were in the studio bringing them to life a few months later. The result was an initial EP and then the band’s 2017 debut, “Straw in the Wind.” The album displayed the Steel Woods’ singular mix of Southern rock, country, bluegrass-hinting acoustic, and fillets of metal, along with Cope’s muscular guitar dexterity and Bayliss’s arresting vocals and multi-instrumental talents (save for a few guest contributions, he plays everything on the forthcoming Steel Woods release). The album also introduced the band’s proclivity for combining its original material with wideranging yet complementary cover choices — on that release, Black Sabbath’s “Hole in the Sky,” John Anderson’s “Wild and Blue,” and a simply staggering version of “Uncle Lloyd,” singersongwriter Darrell Scott’s grim snapshot of an aging down-and-outer.
Relentless touring followed, and follow-up release “Old News” came out in early 2019. Then, in January 2021, as the band was finishing work on its third album, Cope died due to complications of diabetes. “It feels like 10 days ago and 10 years ago at the same time,” Bayliss says of the passing of his friend and bandmate. “All of Your Stones” came out three months later and was naturally received as a tribute to Cope. But what was to follow?
Bayliss says that ending the band was a momentary consideration “because it was me and him writing the songs. I did lose half, or in my eyes more than half, of what we were doing. But it was never a serious question because I feel like even now our music has been heard by, I don’t know, two or three, four percent of the people that it’s supposed to be played to. So it would seem like a real waste to not continue it.”
So continue he has. The next chapter of the band’s story, fourth album “On Your Time,” will be released in October, and it brings something the band has done before: a story line that arcs across albums. Bayliss wrote several of the album’s songs with the character portrayed in “Uncle Lloyd,” that Darrell Scott song the band covered on their debut, in mind. He had co-written a song called “Stories to Tell to Myself,” but he didn’t really know what it meant or where it belonged on the new record. “Then I was looking at some other songs I’d started and I went, ‘Man, I really think of Uncle Lloyd when I hear ‘Stories to Tell to Myself.’ It’s a guy that made a lot of mistakes and didn’t do everything right; he probably has a lot of stories to tell but doesn’t have anyone to tell them to. I think I had the idea right there to have half of a record that is kind of aligned with the story of Uncle Lloyd.”
The idea caused him some trepidation, though, since “Uncle Lloyd” wasn’t his song. So he arranged a writing session with Scott, who Bayliss regards as “kind of a hero,” laid out the idea, and asked for his blessing. Scott not only gave the go-ahead, he contributed some pedal steel guitar to the record.
Though Bayliss’s partner is gone, “On Your Time” does sound very much like a Steel Woods record. “We spent a lot of time figuring out what it is that we do,” notes Bayliss, “and thankfully, we came around to that before Rowdy was gone. So I think that it’s different in a lot of ways, but a lot is the same. It’s something that’s a part of me now; it’s just the way I do things after all these years of touring and making records.”
He sees more of the same in store: “Just grinding, playing shows, writing, and putting out records. I’ll keep on keeping on, building what we started. That’s work I’m happy to do. I’m happy about where we are and optimistic about where we’re going.”