The Blue-Collar Ballads of Donovan Woods

Donovan Woods doesn’t consider himself a God-given singer-songwriter. Creating music has always been work — which he's used to, given his blue-collar background.

“I grew up in a pretty working-class place," he says of his hometown of Sarnia, Ontario. "I’m the only one of my friends who is an artist of any kind." Most of his peers make their living in the construction field or are chemical plant employees.

Woods sees his music as a way to connect with people who share a similar salt-of-the-earth ethos and may not know how to express themselves or share their emotions. Ultimately, he says, it’s the words that help bridge that gap.

“I don’t think I have any particular gift for it or anything. I think I just try to think about it until it works. It’s just a trick of language. It’s like when you’re reading a really good novel and you don’t know why the tone of it is appealing,” Woods says from his home in Toronto. “I wish that God would channel some music through me. It would be really handy for me. We’ll hold on for a miracle.”

But Woods is already something of a miracle worker: Listeners, particularly men, regularly reach out to him to share personal notes about how one of his songs helped them through a tough time or provided a different perspective on life.

“I think a lot of the emotional work that we all have to do eventually, a lot of men, myself included, do it through music,” he says. “I do think of myself as a conduit to that. I know that world; I’m from there. I think I have a responsibility to represent people — men — in a good way.”

Whenever he hears from someone about his songs, Woods says, it’s “emotional” for him, too.

“A lot of those guys don’t really have an internal life. I don’t mean that in any way to say that they’re not intelligent,” he notes. “They just don’t have time to sit and think about their feelings, and they’re not rewarded for it.”

Woods's music isn’t designed to make you cry in your beer, he notes, but is more “useful” when you might be a little upset or frustrated with certain circumstances. At least that’s what he hopes.

“I don’t have much of that healing power of music or stuff like that. I don’t think much about that. I think the highest compliment for a song is that it’s useful. It makes you feel a certain way when you want to feel that way,” Woods says. “It’s not sad, like people say to listen to sad songs because it helps you. It’s like regretful.”

Whatever it is, Woods will be sharing it when he joins Henry Jamison and Isabel Pless on Thursday, April 27, at the Bluebird Theater.

Woods started his solemn songwriting when he was a teenager, after taking guitar lessons at fifteen. While his friends were learning tabs from Guitar World magazine and playing “Green Day stuff,” he recalls, he was writing country and folk songs more akin to those of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. As he matured, and particularly after his college years, that approach allowed him to cover more serious everyday topics.

“I wrote songs about girls who I liked and stuff. You know, stupid shit," he says. "I think it was when I started to write about quotidian things, like domestic things, like a fight in the kitchen, that words just kind of appeared, and people liked it more than they liked the other things that I was doing."

After that, Woods settled into the singer-songwriter life. His self-deprecating sense of humor allows him to poke fun at himself when the subject of his work comes up.

“I don’t feel any particularly deep love for the singer-songwriter genre,” he admits. “In fact, when I see many people do it, I think, ‘God, when can we be done with this shit?’ Like, when can we be done with a white guy and a guitar? I think even if I walked in and saw me, I would be like, ‘Get the fuck out of here.’”

But Woods believes that “we love to please each other,” and the style he’s developed over the years continues to be the “most resonant” with audiences.

“It’s still true to do this. If I’m writing about the relationship between a son and a father, words just come. If I’m writing about trying to have a fun time, I’m at a loss,” he explains.

At this point in his career, he's connecting with artists who recognize his ability to come up with moving melodies, and he's had songs recorded by Tim McGraw (“Portland, Maine”) and Lady A’s Charles Kelley (“Leaving Nashville”).

But despite his success, each new song “is like a little puzzle," he says.

“That’s the thing that thrills me the most. They’re all challenges. … Sometimes they’re easy. They’re not always easy. Everybody loves the idea of being like, ‘God wrote through me’ or whatever the fuck. I don’t have that. It’s always pretty challenging for me to get at something that works or does the thing I want it to do.”

Donovan Woods, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 27, Bluebird Theater, 3317 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are $20; get them here.