After the Conversation #320: Donovan Woods

On specializing vs. master of noneing

“You’re not very good at guitar,” I said. “Why?”

Donovan, wearing a soft plaid flannel and his trademark toque, laughed mightily on the other side of the table. I could tell I put it wrong. After all, his catalogue of songs has amassed more than 200 million streams on Spotify, while mine amount to, well, a lot less. Who am I to question the king of soft-sung folk pop?

The man on the other side of the table has written some of the best songs in modern folk. Hundreds of songs. “Iowa”, “Back for the Funeral”, “When Our Friends Come Over”, “I Ain’t Ever Loved No One” (listen in the conversation for him to talk about the unlikely inspiration behind that last one) What they have in common: plain-spoken tenderness, the startling admissions of a reluctant confession, the clever wordplay. Musically, they tend to hover around the same tempo, chord progression and vocal delivery. There’s nothing that pokes out, that isn’t kin to its cousins.

I wanted to know what informed that approach, the almost stubborn refusal to strike out in a new direction. I wondered if that was intentional or just the way he did it. After all, people tend to drink their coffee the same way every time. Maybe that’s how Donovan approaches songwriting.