Royal Wood's muse both dark and bright

Ever After the Farewell, the Canadian singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album, was inspired by his lowest low and his highest high.

“Thematically, this record has such polar themes,” Wood said recently on a visit to Saskatoon.

“I lost my father to Alzheimers and a lung condition. I dealt with that for awhile but it condensed itself in the last few years of his life. That was a huge amount of emotional effort for myself and my family.”

Around the same time, he was falling in love.

After a show at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, Alison Waldbauer and her friends were chatting with staff and volunteers when Wood’s manager brought them over to meet him.

Allie and I just started talking and immediately, it was something I had never felt,” says Wood. “Everyone talks about the lightning bolt. You think it’s all in literature but it’s very true.”

They were married in September.

“I said farewell to my father and signed up for ever after. The two things definitely fit together.”

Wood had already started working on the new album, making several trips to the UK to work with producer Jamie Scott (Ed Sheeran, Michael Kiwanuka, Niall Horan). One of the first songs they worked on was Someone Like You, which is about the things you think when you’re head-over-heels. The song came together in 30 minutes. Wood says it was fate: a week later, he met Allie.

Sonically, Wood gravitates toward artists like Cat Stevens, Paul Simon and Paul McCartney.

“If I get home at the end of the day and pour a glass of wine and then make dinner for my wife, we end up throwing on a singer-songwriter from the ’70s. It’s just what happens.”

Wood and Scott clicked immediately, too. The vintage hardware and historic instruments in the studio didn’t hurt.

“The console was the actual console that the Beatles recorded Abbey Road on. You’re, like, sitting at a piano that Elton John wrote on. I was losing my mind in the studio.

“I got to be where most of my idols came from, I got to use their gear. That energy, those ghosts and all those things — I was this kid that wanted to do this all his life and I got to do it in the same air that they breathed.”

Wood played on a variety of instruments on the album without straying from his love of creating songs in the studio.

“I don’t believe in scripting a record or overthinking too much because I think that cuts off the creative process. I believe in writing a song in the morning and basically recording it, capturing it as I go.”

As for commercial appeal, that’s not where Wood is at.

“Basically, my goal was to make a record that I would want to listen to at home as opposed to what’s on the radio, what’s current, what’s the latest trend.”

There’s a flow to Wood’s creative process, a trust that the muse is always present and will only escape you if you try to grasp it.

“I read years and years and years ago that you should live your life as a work of art, and everything you do you should think of it from a creative perspective. So I do that, from making dinner to looking at wine and pairings, from coffee culture to clothes. Everything has a creative spin on it.”

Ever After the Farewell comes out on April 6, triggering a five-province tour in May including a stop in Saskatoon on May 24 at Knox United Church promoted by the Broadway Theatre.

Wood doesn’t view promotion as a necessary evil but as part of his job as an artist.

“There’s talent and there’s hard work and then there’s the business portion of it. I love the business part of it, I always have. I love working with my team, I love planning, I love thinking of goals we’re going for and accomplishing those goals.”