![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.royalwood.ca\/assets\/royalWoodWebsite05-OnTopOfBuilding-HighRes.jpg\" "\\"Royal")
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by Darcy Penner<\/strong><\/p>\n This coming Monday, October 15, Toronto\u2019s Royal Wood<\/a> will be kicking off a cross-Canada tour in Winnipeg, at the West End Cultural Centre, to support his latest MapleMusic release<\/em>, We Were Born to Glory.\u00a0 Stylus had the opportunity to meet up with Wood at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and had a brief conversation about the album, growing older, and Wood\u2019s successful career.\u00a0 The following is an edited transcript of the interview.<\/em><\/p>\n Tickets are $20 through Ticketmaster or the Winnipeg Folk Fest Music Store. Elisapie<\/a> is opening. \u00a0Doors at 7:15 pm, show at 8:00 pm.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: First off, some small talk \u2013 how has the Winnipeg Folk Festival treated you so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n Royal Wood<\/strong>: It\u2019s really one of the better ones.\u00a0 You know, obviously I\u2019ve done a lot of folk fests, and this one\u2014I\u2019d always heard good things.\u00a0 I was supposed to do it a few years ago.\u00a0 I had to pass because I was getting married.\u00a0 So I\u2019m thankful to be here. It\u2019s a professional festival.<\/p>\n Stylus: Your fourth album, We Were Born to Glory,<\/em> comes out July 10th<\/sup>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a summer release and you\u2019re starting touring it almost exclusively with festivals.\u00a0 Did you pick the date to release based on being able to hit a whole bunch of festivals in a row?<\/strong><\/p>\n RW: <\/strong>No, it just ended up being slotted for around June-July release, and we decided we\u2019d get a bunch of festivals lined up.\u00a0 The full proper tour will happen in the fall, and it\u2019s going to be Europe in September-October, Canada in October, November, December, and the States in the new year.\u00a0 It\u2019s a big run coming.<\/p>\n Stylus: Do you prefer festival hopping or the more traditional club after club?<\/strong><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Honestly you can\u2019t compare the two.\u00a0 They are such a different experience.\u00a0 You\u2019re at a festival, it\u2019s more like a big family reunion.\u00a0 You\u2019re surrounded by all of your friends and peers, and when you\u2019re on the road, it\u2019s kind of insular.\u00a0 You\u2019re with your crew, but it\u2019s just you going from town to town to town, flight to flight, and its pretty encapsulated in a small, little family.\u00a0 And Folk Fest, there\u2019s just so much going on all the time.\u00a0 So much for you to do \u2013 relax and food.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of like a big family reunion at the park.<\/p>\n Stylus: So presumably most of the musicians here you\u2019re acquainted with to some degree?<\/strong><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Yeah, everywhere you go it\u2019s catching up with old friends.\u00a0 Ironically enough it\u2019s people you see more at festivals than you do in your own hometown, even though they live a few blocks over.\u00a0 Because we\u2019re just always on the road.<\/p>\n Stylus: A lot of your press releases for this upcoming album, and your own bio, regularly reference the upbeat nature of this album relative to your other ones.\u00a0 Was this a conscious choice or was this more of a natural process for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: This was a natural progression.\u00a0 It\u2019s just where I found myself.\u00a0 I feel, just confident and hopeful.\u00a0 I went to Montr\u00e9al to write the record, and that\u2019s what came out.\u00a0 I came out with a ton of songs that are all up-tempo, and as much as they are examining darker subject matter, this record is melancholy as anything I\u2019ve ever recorded.\u00a0 I just feel like I found hope in each song.\u00a0 And I wasn\u2019t a cynic.\u00a0 I feel like I was sometimes a bit of a cynic in my past records, and I think I just was in my twenties.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of being in your twenties.<\/p>\n Stylus: Which gets to my follow up question: Does that come from getting older?<\/strong><\/p>\n RW:<\/strong> It comes from getting older and experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s a combination of things, but it\u2019s getting married, having a mortgage, seeing your family members have their first kids, it\u2019s being a professional, being recognized by your peers.\u00a0 I just feel grounded now, and I felt kind of like a paper bag in the wind in my twenties.<\/p>\n Stylus:\u00a0 You wrote 50 songs getting ready for this album, and you selected 13.\u00a0 How do you go through the process of picking about one in five of the songs you have written?\u00a0 Obviously you will have invested a fair degree into all of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n RW: <\/strong>They are all honest, emotional, and they all got to the core.\u00a0 They all come from the same spot. \u00a0I looked at the body of the work, felt like there\u2019s a certain driving theme\u2014hence the title, We Were Born to Glory<\/em>\u2014and felt like I wanted to choose everything that would really encapsulate that.<\/p>\n Stylus: It\u2019s described as hopeful, and you\u2019ve also described it as a celebration of experience.\u00a0 As large as the theme of this album is\u2014a massive celebration of life\u2014the lyrics focus on immediate, personal situations.\u00a0 Why did you choose to go that route as opposed to directly dealing with broader, more meta-concepts?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n RW:<\/strong> I think because from the macro to the micro, it\u2019s all the same viewpoint.\u00a0 It\u2019s just, magnified differently.\u00a0 I examine my relationships in songwriting as much as I examine the world.\u00a0 I think the glory is at the shout out to the universe as much as not giving up is such a relationship driven song.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t want to overlook our relationship as something that is pedestrian, because it\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s the most important thing that happens in your life.<\/p>\n Stylus: It seems that you receive a lot of attention for your songwriting.\u00a0 Obviously there are the awards you have won (the Juno and iTunes one) which are exclusively songwriting awards, but also a lot of your press coverage, rather than covering how good of a singer and multi-instrumentalist you are, tends to focus a lot on your songwriting skills.\u00a0 Do you push that forward as an identity, or did that just end up?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n RW: <\/strong>I don\u2019t know how it ends up.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how you garner certain attention for certain things.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same reason they want to discuss me going to McGill for business and working in the financial district.\u00a0 Those are one hundredth of my story.\u00a0 I went to business school because I had a scholarship, but all I did was skip class and go and play jazz music in smoky, dirty bars in Montr\u00e9al.\u00a0 All I did was play music.\u00a0 And in terms of working in an office, it was because I couldn\u2019t afford to make a record otherwise.\u00a0 So I got a professional job, paid for my records, and once my career took off, I was able to quit.\u00a0 Like I ever wanted to be there?\u00a0 I was an artist from the womb, but that\u2019s what the press focuses on.<\/p>\n I\u2019m as proud of my production, lyrics, vocal styles, and working with my band and crew as I am of my songwriting.\u00a0 But I\u2019m certainly flattered as hell, like, if there was anything to be recognized for, I\u2019d like to be recognized as a songwriter.\u00a0 It\u2019s a feather in my cap, yeah.<\/p>\n Stylus: What are two or three records\u2014not obvious ones\u2014that you think people who are into you should check out?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n RW:<\/strong> Start with John Southworth<\/a>, an artist out of Toronto, and now lives in Montr\u00e9al.\u00a0 I think he is one of the greatest songwriters Canada has ever had, and he has never been recognized.\u00a0 He will play to fifty people, maybe.\u00a0 But he has a huge decade of work. \u00a0I think he is visionary, and one of his records is called Pillow Maker<\/em>, if you can find it you will not be disappointed.<\/p>\n