The Wood Brothers Confirm New Album ‘Heart Is The Hero’ + Tour Dates With Shovels & Rope

The Wood Brothers will release a new studio album entitled Heart Is The Hero on April 14 through Honey Jar/Thirty Tigers. The trio also detailed 20 additional Spring Tour 2023 shows with support from Shovels & Rope.

The Wood Brothers – guitarist Oliver Wood, bassist Chris Wood and “honorary sibling” percussionist Jano Rix – recorded their eighth studio album at The Studio Nashville in Nashville with engineer Brook Sutton. The analog sessions saw the band tracking directly to 16-track tape “with nary a computer in sight.”

“The chorus of the album’s title track says, ‘the heart is the hero of every song,'” said Oliver Wood. “By no means was it intentional, but much of the material we were writing for this record seemed to come full circle to the idea of trusting in your heart in matters that you can’t control. Those words seemed to illustrate so much of what we were feeling – that heart and spirit guides us through this world. Even by recording completely analog, we had to commit to feeling the performances and have faith in what the three of us were creating together instead of trying to make things perfect by letting technology or overthinking things get in the way.”

The 10-song LP serves as the follow-up to their 2020 full-length Kingdom In My Mind. The pending album was co-produced by The Wood Brothers and Sutton.

“The recording process for this album was completely different from our last one, Kingdom In My Mind, where we had all the time in the world to experiment, tinker, and shape performances,” Chris Wood said. “For those sessions, I was living in Nashville close to Oliver and Jano, but I’ve since moved to Canada, so our time together to record this time around had to be extremely focused and intentional. I think those limitations actually added something special in that the end results feel raw, honest, immediate, and vulnerable, more so than any other record we’ve made to date. I’m excited to go on the road with these new songs from Heart Is The Hero and see how they evolve from night to night when performed in front of audiences.”

The Wood Brothers will release the new album while on their Spring Tour 2023. The trio confirmed 20 new shows taking place in May and June in the Midwest and Northeast with support from Shovels & Rope. A pre-sale for the new tour dates begins tomorrow, Thursday, January 26 at 10 a.m. local venue time through the band’s website. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, January 27 at 10 a.m. local time.

Heart Is The Hero Tracklist

1. Pilgrim
2. Heart is the Hero
3. Worst Pain of All
4. Far From Alone
5. Between the Beats
6. Line Those Pockets
7. Mean Man World
8. Rollin’ On
9. Someone for Everyone
10. Kitchen Floor