The Wildwoods return to Iowa

After spending much of the last four years on tour, The Wildwoods have made their road album — “Dear Meadowlark” -- about missing their Nebraska home.

Three years ago, the folk/Americana trio of wife and husband Chloe and Noah Gose and their high school friend Andrew Vaggalis began posting videos of their original songs and covers like Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Our House.”

“We had a few videos do really, really well, so that kind of broadened our horizons as to a, how many people were going to come out to our shows, and b, it would be more sustainable to tour,” Noah Gose said in a recent interview. “So Andy had joined us full time, and after that we've kind of just been touring pretty frequently.”

That touring has allowed The Wildwoods to build up pockets of strong support in Chicago; at the Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan; in Northampton, Massachusetts; Saratoga Springs, New York; and Denver to become one of the rare bands from Lincoln, Nebraska, to support itself entirely from its music.

But it’s also made them long for home, family and friends, and turned “Dear Meadowlark,” the group’s fourth album, into the heartfelt reaction of the three 20-somethings to spending weeks on the road.

“Throughout all that (touring), a lot of our songs have been about stories from on the road,” said Noah Gose, the trio’s songwriter. “But since we've been touring so much, this album became about songs that we wrote that were about kind of missing home, missing Nebraska. All these cities, all these places are really neat, but the family and friends and community that we have here, you know, really just is such a vibrant part of our lives.”

From its cover painting of the state bird soaring into the wide sky to its production and the songs, “Dear Meadowlark” couldn’t be more Nebraskan.

Recorded, engineered and co-produced by Omaha’s Ben Brodin at his Hand Branch Studio, with Harrison El Dorado adding drums, Sam Stanley playing cello and Brodin on organ and vibraphone, the album is an all-Nebraskan production.

Songs like the opener, “Meadowlark,” and “Sweet Niobrara,” which recounts a trip to a scenic river, and “I Will Follow You to Willow,” a love letter to unincorporated hamlet, make direct references to the state while others like “Hideaway” capture the yearning for the peace of home.

The Wildwoods are, in a narrow sense, hard to classify. While they’ve been tagged as bluegrass and traditional folk, they’re neither. Nor do they sound like the groups to which they’re often compared.

“People say Nickel Creek, people always say Peter, Paul and Mary,” Vaggalis said. “I feel like the only Peter, Paul and Mary resemblance we have is that we're two guys and a girl and do three-part harmony. Whenever I listen to the music, it feels really different.”

That different sound is rooted in Nebraska, specifically Lincoln’s music scene, where the trio that attended Lincoln Pius X High School and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln musically grew up.

“You go to other cities that just have a main genre, like this city has the blues or this is a bluegrass city,” Noah Gose said. “But Lincoln is such a mixing pot of so many different genres. I think growing up and going to so many shows and just seeing all these different kinds of groups and songwriters around town influenced us to just try to make our own path. I’m not saying that we're crafting our own genre or anything, but just, you know, we're not pulling from just one tradition.”

Other influences pop out on “Dear Meadowlark,” including Paul Simon.

“I was listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel when I was writing, Joni Mitchell, CS&N, The Milk Carton Kids, The Beatles, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings,” Noah Gose said.

Since they began as a Noah-and-Chloe duo just out of high school a decade ago, The Wildwoods have had a signature in their sound — beautifully arranged, precisely sung harmony vocal.

“In the beginning, it seemed like a more difficult task, and we definitely sang easier harmonies than we do now,” Chloe Gose said. “Now we have a little bit more thought behind them. Because we've been playing for so long together and we've essentially grown up together has made it easier and easier.

“And with Andy, he's been playing with us since 2017 even though we didn't become like the trio that we are now until 2022, so we've been singing together for a long time,” she said. “All of us were in choir together and are just very comfortable singing harmony.”

For Vaggalis, who adds his stand-up bass to Noah’s guitar and Chloe’s violin, his contribution to the harmonies is essentially filling in the blanks.

“My job becomes easy when you guys have your parts,” Vaggalis said. “I guess this is moreso like upon joining, when you had all these songs arranged with two parts and there's only so many notes in between that, it sounds like a little puzzle piece, essentially, kind of fitting in.”

For marketing purposes, The Wildwoods get a “folk/Americana” tag. So who are the band drawing to their shows?

“I feel like it's a lot of folk fans or indie folk,” Chloe said. “I don't know that a lot of our fans really know the term Americana. I could be selling some short. There are some bluegrass fans, too, because even in our sets, we have a couple songs that are like more bluegrass based.”

Since the videos took off online, The Wildwoods have increased their national visibility by capturing ears of critics and industry insiders at Folk Alliance, appearing on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert and becoming finalists in a songwriting contest and two high-profile band competitions.

They’ve spent more than half of the last few years on the road, taking their Lincoln-rooted music across the country.

“I feel like so many of our friends could do it, could do what we're doing, if they really wanted to,” Chloe Gose said. “Not everybody wants to live that kind of life. I always say you kind of have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because it's very, like, hard.

“It's very time consuming, and just being gone so many weeks at a time, and then only being home for a couple days, as well as planning it all out and making sure that we're able to support ourselves while being gone, it’s hard,” she said.