Hush Arbors

Keith Wood, a Virginia-born singer, songwriter, and guitarist, established Hush Arbors in 2001 as his individual outlet. After logging extensive road time as a supporting player in experimental and freak folk circles with Sunburned Hand of the Man and Six Organs of Admittance, Wood shaped his solo acid country and drifter folk material in comparable directions. The first Hush Arbors efforts surfaced as limited CD-R editions on Digitalis, yet the earlier album Since We Have Fallen waited until 2006 for its official reissue on Foxglove Recordings. Landscape of Bone arrived the same year with newer songs and prompted a series of live appearances.

Wood continued his own flexible participation across multiple groups and applied that same fluid, multi-player model to Hush Arbors performances by drawing in experimental-scene contributors such as drummer Ryan Sawyer, Wooden Wand’s James Toth, and additional musicians. Beginning in 2008, the project placed its recordings with Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label, opening with a self-titled long-player. Yankee Reality followed in 2009 under the production of Dinosaur Jr. leader J Mascis. Wood simultaneously maintained a heavy schedule of outside collaborations while generating his own material in volume, issuing numerous tour-only CDs, live documents, and split releases alongside Jerusalem and the Star Baskets and the North Sea, and he also toured as a supporting musician with Current 93, Jack Rose, Thurston Moore, and others.

In 2011 a reduced Hush Arbors lineup of Wood and New York City improviser and composer Jason Ajemian completed a two-month U.S. tour before heading overseas. The collaborative emphasis extended into 2012 with the Thrill Jockey split LP Aureola, shared with like-minded psychedelic group Arbouretum.