After a decade playing music in a variety of bands, Jobe Woosley believes he has found his niche with his new CD, “Don’t Get Me Wrong.”
“I like it,” Woosley said. “I love it. It showcases the sound that I’ve been trying to work on for years. It’s the best representation of what we sound like when you come to a show.”
Jobe Woosley & Co. released the CD in May, kicking off a busy summer.
“We’re booked through September,” Woosley said. “We have no openings. If I’m not playing a show, I’m taking a motorcycle trip.”
He’s staying busy in between gigs and his job at the Pepsi plant in Corvallis, he said.
“I’ve been busking a lot lately in Eugene and Salem.”
He’s scheduled to play Saturday, Sept. 2, at The Point restaurant, where he performed to a capacity-audience show early in The Point’s new (this year) concert summer series on June 9. He also has appeared at some wineries, weddings and festivals around the state.
Woosley’s band includes longtime collaborators Tim Meyers on the harmonica, vocals and guitar; Chuck Fitzsimons on the bass; and Charlie Fitzsimons on the drums. They recorded the new album at The Castle House in Lebanon. Nate Roos produced and mixed the album and played a guitar solo on one track.
It’s really the band’s first CD, Woosley said. “The last CD we did, ‘From the Mountains to the Sea,’ which is also available everywhere, that CD was fresh songs. We were excited. We recorded them at home.”
The band mainly recorded it for friends and family and used it as a demo to book gigs, Woosley said. The new album features seven new recordings, but they’re the band’s defining sound.
“Some of these songs are 10 years old,” Woosley said. “The reason we have a following is some of the songs on this CD.
“We went in there with the idea of him just miccing us up and capturing what we already had,” Woosley said. “We had a really strong idea of what we wanted it to sound like.”
Recording live in separate rooms, recorded all seven songs over three days with minimal overdubs and tracking afterward, Woosley said. Overall, the album is more professional than the group’s first album. “I’d say it’s a lot more refined.”
Woosley, 29, graduated from Sweet Home High School in 2006.
In the eighth grade, he and Sweet Home Junior High classmate Charlie Fitzsimons had a pop-punk band, playing Blink 182-style music with Mike Webster, Woosley said. They made a CD, sold it at the junior high and bought a drum kit.
“Me and Charlie went on to play old country with his dad (Chuck),” Woosley said in a 2010 interview. Webster went on to play metal.
“Chuck has brought out our actual style that we like playing, like taking Merle Haggard and doubling the tempo.”
They went on to different things, playing with Chuck Fitzsimons as a summer project.
Woosley and Charlie Fitzsimons have played all kinds of music, ranging from emo and punk to metal and techno, for 10 years, Woosley said.
“We spent years trying to figure out our niche.”
They’ve found it, Woosley said. The new album continues the singer-songwriter, folk and Americana style the group recorded in its previous album.
“One of the songs on this CD which really got the ball rolling is ‘Stop Moving to Oregon,’ which you can tell is a total joke,” Woosley said. Another song is “Sweet Home,” which is about growing up in Sweet Home and the Oregon Jamboree.
His favorite tracks are “Deja Vu” and “Far From Japan,” he said. “Far From Japan” was inspired by a girl he met at Oregon State University who had just flown in from Tokyo.
It’s an adventure song meant to convey the “sense of wonder looking around, being in a new place,” he said.
The new album is available digitally from Amazon, CD Baby and iTunes. The album is available on Spotify. The group’s concert schedule is available on its Facebook page.
Further information for Jobe Woosley & Co. is available on Facebook.