News – Woodsist

Welcome Jens Kuross to the Woodsist Family

June 24, 2025/in Uncategorized /by admin

Welcome Jens Kuross to the Woodsist Family. Crooked Songs, his Woodsist debut will be out on August 29th. Listen to the first single, Beggar’s Nation and pre-order the limited edition vinyl.

Who on earth is Jens Kuross?

He’s been hiding in plain sight: a fumbled career as an LA session musician and songwriter, a cabinet maker in Idaho. Crooked Songs, his debut for Woodsist, is mysterious, warm, and heart-stirring. Using just voice and electric piano, the music delicately enswathed by ambient synth – minimal without losing sight of his songcraft Crooked Songs suggests an otherworldly naturalism akin to a ghost returning to earth to observe the passing of time, life, and light.

A Note from Hayden Pedigo:

Back in December of 2023, after being on the road for a month opening for Devendra Banhart, I played a solo show in the basement of a Shriner lodge in Boise, Idaho. I’d never heard of Jens Kuross, a local act selected by the promoter to open the show. Before the show, we went to dinner together and he told me, “I’m just gonna play my Wurlitzer and sing with some ambient synth stuff and see what happens”

An hour later, with everyone sitting on that basement floor, Jens began to play. In the first twenty seconds, my wife and I looked at each other like, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” Jens played these beautiful, touching songs that sounded something like Arthur Russell-meets-Harry Nilsson. By the second song, I was in tears. It was the first live performance that ever made me cry. At the end of his set, I told my wife that it was the single best live performance I had ever seen.

It turned out that Jens had moved back to Idaho from LA after souring on the LA music scene, believing after so many years that his music was never going to find an audience there. After the move, both his management and booking agents dropped him assuming his career was basically finished. I listened to his previous albums. They didn’t sound anything like what I’d heard that night. His older songs were more polished, and the pristine production missed the weight and sincerity I’d heard during this stripped back live performance.

A few days later, I reached out to him over the phone and said, “Hear me out. I think you need to record an album that sounds exactly like what you played the other night. Just minimal and ambient. Like Arthur Russell’s World of Echo.” I was honestly surprised when he agreed. A few weeks later, I started to get recordings from him that sounded nearly identical to the show. I said, “Man, this is it. This is the exact sound”

In a way, I think Jens being dismissed by the music industry for so long is exactly what he needed to make this record. This feels like the sound of someone making music for themselves for the first time. The last song on the record ends with what is, to me, the mission statement of the album. “Today I feel like singing, to stop this world from changing me.”

I genuinely believe this album represents the music Jens was always meant to create. There’s something incredibly heavy, beautiful, touching, and magical about these crooked songs. I hope you hear that in them, too. I think this album will find people at the exact time they need to hear it. It certainly was that way for me. Jens Kuross has tapped into something people need to hear.”

All songs written, performed, recorded and mixed by Jens Kuross at his home in Boise, Idaho.
Produced by Jens Kuross and Hayden Pedigo
Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering

Photography by Mark Oliver
Layout and design by @dnorsen_design

Woodsist Festival 2025 Tickets On Sale Now

April 25, 2024/in News /by admin

We are proud to announce the return of the beloved Woodsist Festival at Arrowood Farms in Accord, New York on September 20-21, 2025.

Arrowood Farms, a sustainably-minded farm brewery and distillery located in New York’s scenic Hudson Valley, will host the performers on two alternating stages throughout the weekend and feature food from local Hudson Valley-based vendors and craft beer brewed directly on site. Tickets are on sale now at www.woodsistfestival.com.

We hope to see you on the farm, With Light and With Love.

Arrowood Farms is located at 236 Lower Whitfield Road, Accord NY 12404. Tent and RV camping is available at the Rondout Valley Campground one mile away from the festival site.

Woods Announce New Album, Perennial, Out September 15th and Fall U.S. Tour Dates

August 30, 2023/in Uncategorized /by admin

Woods share the new double single, “Little Black Flowers” b/w “Day Moving On,” from their forthcoming album, Perennial, out September 15th on the band’s own Woodsist label, and expand their North American tour. This summer, Woods have teased Perennial through a steady stream of double singles, and today’s entry continues revealing the band’s shimmering soundscape. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the elliptical grooves of “Day Moving On.” With each Perennial preview, Woods showcase the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves.

This fall, Woods will embark on a headline tour in support of Perennial, beginning with a performance at their own Woodsist Festival at Arrowood Farm in Accord, New York. As in previous years, Woods’ Jeremy Earl curated the eclectic lineup, tapping into his striking family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the band one of the most dependable outfits in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. The festival will also feature Kevin Morby, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Avery Tare, Cass McCombs, Bombino, Natural Information Society, Scientist, MJ Lenderman, Water from Your Eyes, Alabaster DePlume, Taper’s Choice, Daniel Higgs, Tyvek, Anna St Louis, Aquarium Drunkard DJs, and Tubby’s DJs. The following week, Woods will continue their tour through the Northeast, before embarking on a West Coast leg in November. A full list of dates is below.

Listen to “Little Black Flowers”

Listen to “Day Moving On”

Perennial grew from a bed of guitar, keyboard, and drum loops by Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks.

Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communicable spirit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges.

Formed in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do.