They Are Going Away EP Donovan Woods

• 1 Drove Through Town 04:06
• 2 Empty Rooms 03:01
• 3 It'll Work Itself Out 03:02
• 4 What They Mean 03:22
• Total Runtime 13:31

Info for They Are Going Away EP

When you listen to Donovan Woods, you can hear the craft of songwriting being carried forward: Stripped down, but never simple; direct yet poetic; new and timeless. The music is delivered with confidence, and in an evocative voice that you wouldn’t expect from someone as young, approachable, or humorous as Woods.

His acclaimed fourth album Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled received a 2016 Polaris Music Prize nomination and three original songs intended for that project have now surfaced on a new digital EP, They Are Going Away, made available through Woods’ own label Meant Well and with thanks to Canada’s historic Massey Hall. There’s a distinct sense of motion throughout the narratives. In “What They Mean,” – a fan favourite from live performances - Woods responds to a curious child in the backseat who is listening carefully to the car radio. “It’ll Work Itself Out” shows someone who is traveling furiously to outrun problems. “Drove Through Town” provides a backdrop for the big issues, from living up to expectations to escaping a dead-end relationship.

Woods, who is an exceptional acoustic guitarist in his own right, says these songs didn’t make the track listing for Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled because he didn’t want to rush the lyrics or force them to be finished. A fourth selection, “Empty Rooms,” is about moving on from a relationship—when that’s not such a bad thing. Although it’s new, Woods felt it was a comfortable fit.

“The songs are about coping with loss, and wholesale changes, that sort of thing,” he says. “The title I suppose is trying to get at the temporariness of everything. Time speeds up when you get older, that’s an observable fact. It starts to feel like you’re always chasing some ineffable thing. It’s why your dad often had a slightly bewildered look in his eyes.”

Woods was raised in the small city of Sarnia, Ontario, to the sounds of country music, with a healthy dose of folk and pop, a combination that instilled in him a strong belief in the power of a memorable melody, the importance of everyday language and the impact of a well-crafted song. While amassing a catalogue of rousing and well-received music of his own, he has worked with some of the top songwriters in North America to craft cuts for performers ranging from Alan Doyle to country stars Billy Currington and Tim McGraw.

It’s not that Woods makes music that is a product of both country and folk; it’s that his songwriting shows how distracting the line separating the two can be. Whether they’re written about big ideas or seemingly minor incidents, broken promises or the hint of romance, Woods’ stories affect listeners deeply. As he dissects the downward spiral of a small town (“They Don’t Make Anything in That Town”) you feel for the folks left behind. A subtle string arrangement adds a delicate layer that underscores the song’s spare tone and language.

The offbeat rhythm of “On the Nights You Stay Home” elicits the excitement of a hoped-for big-city quiet night in, while faced with the terrifying number of opportunities to inspire jealousy. Rewriting history to confront a breakup (“We Never Met”) is a new twist on telling the story of a relationship. And “What Kind Of Love Is That?” which topped the CBC Top 20 charts, shines a light on the complications of caring for someone in trouble.

Given Woods’ songwriting successes you can’t help but ascribe the dark vision of “Leaving Nashville” to an active imagination, but the details contained in the lyrics make you wonder about his source material. Woods wrote “Leaving Nashville” with aspiring Nashville songwriter Abe Stoklasa. Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley recorded it for a solo album. In time, their hard luck story of a hopeful but downtrodden talent in Music City helped Woods land a songwriting deal with a major publisher, Warner/Chappell.

Throughout Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled and its companion EP, They Are Going Away, what is clear is that Donovan Woods possesses a compelling voice made to tell stories – his stories, and ours. Although it gently rises just above a whisper, it cannot be ignored.

“wistful songs that tug at the heartstrings of anyone who's had feelings about partners, ex-partners, where you're from, where you shouldn't have gone” - NOW Magazine NNNN

“a gentle, honest collection of melancholic observations and hushed tunefulness” - The Globe And Mail

“By balancing such fringe and mainstream elements so effortlessly, Woods looks poised to finally bring those disparate camps together. … he does it time and again” - Exclaim!

Donovan Woods, vocals, acoustic guitar, piano
Joey Landreth, electric guitar
Robbie Grunwald, organ, piano
Aaron Goldstein, pedal steel guitar
Jon Hynes, bass
James Bunton, drums, percussion, vibraphone

Produced by James Bunton

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Donovan Woods
In 2019, a decade into his recording career, Donovan Woods pulled back the curtain on both sides of his artistry. He went unplugged for The Other Way, an acoustic and nuanced reimagining of 2018’s Both Ways that captured the Canadian artist in miniature and at his most vulnerable.

Cutting right to the bone of his intimate songwriting and spectral vocals, the album showcased why Woods has become an in-demand songwriter across folk and country music, nimble enough to collaborate with both vanguard artists (Tim McGraw, Lori McKenna) and rising ones (Tenille Townes, Katie Pruitt).

Released on Woods’ Meant Well label, Both Ways finally scored Woods a Juno Award (contemporary roots album) after a handful of previous nominations for songwriter of the year, along with a Canadian Country Music Award (roots album). Woods followed up The Other Way with a series of songs that added even more color to his palette. Pulsing with an electro-acoustic heartbeat, “Way Way Back” paid homage to the long shadow that old lovers often cast and the ways they creep back into our memories.

“While All the While,” co-written with ace singer-songwriter McKenna, was a portrait of quotidian life that swelled into a poignant meditation on how we sit with and reconcile our conflicted feelings.

Perhaps without even knowing it, Woods has explored that feeling with quiet grace throughout his celebrated career, starting with his 2009 debut, The Hold Up. To date, his work has been recorded by McGraw (“Portland, Maine”), Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley (“Leaving Nashville”) and Billy Currington (“Sweet Love”), while racking up over 200 million streams.

On his latest song, “Grew Apart” (released on March 6), Woods lays bare yet again his penchant for showing us the soft underbelly of love’s vagaries. “ ‘Grew Apart’ is about all the things we tell ourselves a breakup is about when perhaps the truth is just that the two people didn't like each other enough,” Woods says.

“I think men tend to speak about breakups in this way so their pride doesn’t get wounded, when in truth, they’re hurting. When I wrote the song, I liked it, but I didn’t think I could sing it,” he adds. “I loved to sing it, and even though it didn’t feel like it was about me, I know the guy in this song, I know what he’s trying to say.”

Audiences tend to feel the same way about Woods’ songwriting. They might not know the characters, but Woods paints his themes – of heartache and joy, connection and redemption – in such vivid hues that we all see ourselves in his narratives.

This album contains no booklet.