Wood Box Heroes: Experience and Realness

Members of the Wood Box Heroes are no strangers to performing with the biggest names in the music business. While this fresh outfit doesn’t yet have longevity, the individual band members definitely have high-profile experience and playing chops. If all goes as planned, referring to them as a burgeoning super-group wouldn't be wrong.

Banjo player Matt Menefee plays with the ultra-popular Mumford and Sons. Jenee Fleenor has played fiddle for George Strait, Blake Shelton and Larry Cordle. Bass player Barry Bales gigs with Alison Krauss. Last but not least, lead guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Josh Martin has played on recordings of Willie Nelson. 

Based in Nashville, Martin said he’d been gigging up in Michigan during summers and “always took a bluegrass band with me to play my country stuff.” This particular configuration seemed somehow…right.

“It was so much fun…it just kind of fell together real naturally,” Martin said.

The band’s name seems to be a source of amusement. He laughed when telling its story.

“It kinda fell off the tip of my tongue one day,” he recalled. They kept toying with name ideas, and someone would inevitably bring up the phrase “Wood Box Heroes” again and again. They liked the words, but the story of the name’s symbolism sort of came retroactively.

“We were asking ourselves: What does it mean?” Martin laughed. In the end, they came to a consensus on how it related to their stringed instruments. “All the heroes we looked up to were making music on wooden boxes.”

“Towards those heroes,” Martin continued, the band has “a reverent mindset…but also a kindred spirit mindset.”

He said taking in a live performance will be more instructive than simply listening to recordings. This is true of almost all music.

“Any time we’re out close to y’all, definitely come out to experience it,” he said, speaking directly to readers of The Bluegrass Standard. “Get to a live show if you really want to dive into what the band is all about.”

In its second year, Wood Box Heroes has tripled the number of public appearances but still aims for a measured approach that focuses on quality rather than quantity. Last year, they did about ten gigs, and this year, they are scheduled for about 30. In May, they appeared onstage at the Grand Ole Opry.

“We wanna go play places that make sense and are conducive to what we do,” Martin explained.

What they “do” is meld “an eclectic array of sounds” from country, bluegrass, blues, jazz, rock and classical. 

As a songwriter, Martin said he focuses his writing on things that are “real.”

“The real world,” Martin said, of what inspires his lyrics. “Living…going through this thing that we call living, and relating and sympathizing with others…giving somebody else an opportunity to see they aren’t the only one to have a situation go down. At its core, it [music] is how we make sense of things.”

This writing—and the group's musicianship—are showcased on the band’s first album, the June release titled “444.” They’ll spend time performing to support the record, but it sounds as if they’re not content to sit for long before bringing more new music to the table.

“We’re chomping at the bit to get back in the studio,” Martin said, explaining that he’s written quite a bit that’s sitting waiting in the hopper. “We probably have five albums already of songs.”

Martin sets his hopes high; he believes this group can become the next big thing. He said after several experiences of being part of various projects, this one feels…different. He “knows” that things are clicking into place and ready to fly (or, as he laughed about it, “the key is in the lock and turning.”)

“In a band situation, it’s a ‘feeling’ type thing,” he said. “I truly think that this group of musicians – the caliber of it – I think it can go as far as we are able to take it.” If Billy Strings can do it, so can Wood Box Heroes.

“Billy’s taking it to the arenas and selling out every show,” Martin said. “Something happened in the psyche of the whole world during the pandemic that made them yearn for something real. Billy’s giving it to them…and we can, too.”