Chris Zink of Wood Belly Talks New Recordings and 2018 Success
Over the last year, Chris Zink experienced a tremendous spike of success as the Dobro player in his Fort Collins based band Wood Belly.
Coming off the high of winning the 2018 Telluride Bluegrass Competition and being nominated for an IBMA Momentum Band of the Year, Chris agreed to a live interview where he talked about the band’s new projects releasing soon and success from the last year.
Josiah: I’ve heard through the grapevine that Wood Belly has a new EP coming out this year.
Chris: Yes. We do. One of the prizes for winning the 2018 Telluride band Competition was recording time at eTown Studios. We went in there in November and recorded with James Tuttle. We finally got it mastered at Airshow Mastering and its all ready to go.
Josiah: When can we expect to get the music in our hands?
Chris: The first single comes out this Friday on Spotify. We are really excited, it’s been a long time. You know how it is. You record something and its months later before you start to get it out there. And in that time we’ve even recorded a full length album and it’s like we are kind of backed up on recordings.
Josiah: When do think that album is coming out?
Chris: For the full length one, we are kind of discussing that right now. Probably toward the end of the year, maybe Septemberish. We might up it to July since we will be doing the String Summit Tour in July and it would be cool to have some records to sell.
Josiah: I saw you had Jeremy Garrett recording on that album.
Chris: Yeah! We had him hired for three songs and he came in and just killed it. It was really cool to listen to him play. It went so good that we added a fourth song that was not even planned.
The first three songs we left room for him but on the fourth we didn’t do it. We tried to figure a way we could fit him and of course he could, he’s Jeremy Garrett, he’s a pro.
Josiah: How’d you get hooked up with him?
Chris: You know he actually reached out to us which was funny. We did one of our video shoots up in Drake at a really cool spot called The River Forks.
He actually lives in Drake now and I guess he saw it on Facebook and said “Hey, I hear you’re in my neck of the woods” and we kind of emailed back and forth.
He ended up giving us advice as a new band and when we got nominated for the IBMA last fall we went out there and our bass play Taylor met up with him for drinks. And thats when he said he would be down to play on our album.
Josiah: It sounds like it worked out really well for you.
Chris: You know he was also recommended to us by Sally Van Meter, the producer on the new album. We had wanted to have a fiddle on the album and we were already thinking about him and she said she had worked with him in the past, absolutely go with him.
Josiah: How long have you guys been doing stuff with Wood Belly?
Chris: Wood Belly started in I guess 2015. I had met Chris Weist our mandolin player the week before Rocky Grass of that year. We had met with a mutual friend and we were just sitting and picking some tunes and Chris and I just hit it off and started the idea of having a band.
He was going to his first Rocky Grass that week and he met up with Craig, our guitar player and they picked all weekend and had a great time. Craig was playing a ton of his own material and Chris was really diggin’ his song writing. Chris came back to FoCo and told me he found somebody to join the band.
It was funny too because he had mentioned Craig, and I had actually had a similar experience with him at Rapid Grass a month before that and I knew he would be perfect. When he said Craig, I was on board immediately and it just goes to show how small a world the bluegrass scene really is.
Josiah: What about the rest of the band?
Chris: The next year was really filled with member changes. But within the year we ended up getting our banjo player Aaron, which I had played in a different project with. We also got our bass player Taylor around then who was in another band who broke up at the right time. When they came around was when we really got serious about the whole band thing.
Josiah: You had mentioned Craigs original music. Do you all write for the band or do you leave it to Craig to do that.
Chris: Yeah, we all wright in the band, but Chris and Craig are the most prolific writers and they write all the lyrical songs. Our bass player Taylor writes some of the lyrical songs too. And then myself and Aaron write the instrumentals. All of our albums except the new EP have at least one song by every band member.
Josiah: I’m assuming there are a couple covers on the albums.
Chris: No, it’s all original actually. One of the things that I really like about the band is that everybody writes and especially Craig and Chris seem to have endless amounts of original material. Having two prolific songwriters in the band is really great.
Josiah: Working with them, have you yourself become a better songwriter?
Chris: Yeah, at least in some capacity. Being in a band that has such a creative environment has really inspired me to write instrumentals that are more intricate.
And having that filter also. I think everybody enjoys that they can have a shell of a song and bring it to the band and we can all help get through those hurdles like writers block. We can assure each other that what we think is cool, is actually cool or that maybe the song could use some more work.
Josiah: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Chris: Yeah! Last year was kind of our “big year.” The four last years, we weren’t struggling as a band but we needed a boost. The last year really acted as that boost because we released our first album in May, then we won the bluegrass competition in June, and then got nominated for the IBMA Momentum award in August.
It has been really cool to get these experiences. They have really boosted us to get the level of gigs we have now and given us the opportunity play at festivals we had always wanted to attend. It’s going to be an awesome year and we are really excited about the future.
Oh and I was actually able to quit my job last year and focus on music which was really dope. It has really been a dream come true this last year. Other than that we are just gonna keep on going and see where this takes us.
Chris Zink and the rest of Wood Belly will be playing shows across Colorado this spring. Visit their events page on the Wood Belly website for details. If you are looking for a local show, check them out on March 8th when they play with Meadow Mountain at Avogadros Number. Visit Avo’s website for tickets and details.
