Style
Wood's piano-led style often changes from one song to the next, drawing influence from folk, pop, jazz, rock and roll, latin music, doo wop, and klezmer. He is also known for his unconventional use of tenor and baritone ukulele. When recording in studio or performing live with his band, "The Tapeworms", he has mostly been accompanied by Mike Bottiglieri on guitar, Matt Berger on alto saxophone, Mario Conte on drums, Vater Boris on bass, and Rob Schaefer on trumpet. [1] [7] The band is known for high energy live performances. [8] Much of Wood's music is, "often inspired by the feelings around the cycle of recovery and relapse." [9]
Wood primarily performs solo, his shows featuring a combination of music, monologue, and stand-up comedy. [10]
Personal life
Wood has been described as "reclusive", [11] and is known to avoid social media. Little is known about his personal life, and sources about Wood contain conflicting accounts of even basic information about his personal and professional life. [12] He is also known for having fictionalized his life early in his career, and appearing in character in some press appearances or onstage, as well as engaging in experimental live performance art. His acts sometimes feature simulated mental breakdowns, conflict with audience plants, appearances from fictional characters, and intentionally botched performances. [13] His image in pop culture has been heavily influenced by this, but the artist has expressed that his work and persona will continue to change. [14]
Wood has consistently been open about his past struggles with drug addiction and mental illness, having entered recovery early in his career and later being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. [11] [15] Wood famously states on multiple occasions that he has no recollection of the year 2012, saying that he had done so many recreational drugs around that time that he had no memory of the year. Wood made a song about this in his album SELF-iSH entitled "2012". Wood donated 50% of ticket sales from The Real Will Wood to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, a mental health charity, saying, "I’ve gotten a lot better. I want to try and do something to help others get there." [16]
Releases
Wood began releasing music under the eponymous band "Will Wood and the Tapeworms" with two studio albums: Everything is a Lot in 2015 and SELF-iSH in 2016, along with the live album The Real Will Wood in 2018, which later served as the soundtrack to the mockumentary concert film of the same name.
In 2019, a crowdfunding campaign began for The Normal Album, which offered invitations to record gang vocals for the album in exchange for support, among other benefits. It raised $27,631 and was released in 2020 under his name. [17] Following the release of The Normal Album , Wood began to attract a more significant fanbase. The album featured Wood's most popular song to date, "I/Me/Myself", which has been regarded as a source of controversy, due to some misinterpreting the song to be anti-transgender. However, according to Will Wood, it is both a satire of what he believes to be problematic proponents of the gender identity movement and his own exploration into his own gender identity and realization that being gender non-conforming did not make him "less of a man." Despite this, Will Wood has expressed support for the gender identity movement as a whole and later stated that "I believe It's incredibly important that we as a society move toward a place where gender roles no longer limit us, control us, and hurt us." [18]
In 2021, Wood worked on the soundtrack for the fictional horror/comedy podcast Camp Here And There. A "Campfire Songs Edition" of the soundtrack, with lyrical versions of three of the initially instrumental tracks, was released in 2022.
His 2022 release "In case I make it," was crowdfunded on Indiegogo in October 2021. Wood has described the collection of songs as being his most personal yet, saying: “I've always tried to consistently re-invent myself as an artist, I think. But this time is different, because for lack of a less dramatic phrase… I've reinvented myself as a person. I couldn’t be more different than I was even a year or two ago." [19]
Six singles from "In case I make it," were released prior to the album's full release. [20] [21] In September 2021, prior to the crowdfunding of the album, Wood released the single entitled "Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll", which would later appear on the album. [19] On June 10, Wood released the single "You Liked This (Okay, Computer!)", a black comedy track about social media platforms with spoken word by Bev Standing. It pastiches the Radiohead track "Fitter Happier" from their 1997 album OK Computer . [22] Other singles included "Tomcat Disposables", "Cicada Days", "Euthanasia", and "White Noise", all of which were accompanied by music videos co-created by Wood. On July 29, the full album was released to positive reviews. [23] [24]
On August 19, 2022, Wood was featured on singer-songwriter Shayfer James' single "Ferryman", [25] which would later appear on the latter's third studio album Shipwreck (2023). [26] On September 1, Human Zoo released "Wealth & Hellness" featuring Wood, a single for the former's second studio album of the same name (2022). [27]
On January 13, 2023, Wood released the album IN CASE I DIE:, a live compilation of songs recorded at US tour dates in 2022. According to a guest blog post on V13, after the release, he would begin an "indefinite break or possibly retire from [his] music career." [28]
On August 9, 2024, Wood released a new mix of The Normal Album (2020) with producer Kevin Antreassian, additionally featuring three demos. These consisted of 2018 recordings of "I/Me/Myself", "Laplace's Angel", and "Memento Mori", [29] which were released in the previous month as singles. [30]
Before this, Wood collaborated in a number of smaller projects, such as The Stereosexuals, [31] A Verbal Equinox, Strange Thick, and Jamface. [32]
