Senior Editor Eric Snider wrote this post:
Woody’s dead. I’m not going to get maudlin on you, but, we all know, it sucks.
I didn’t know him as well as some, and I hadn’t seen him in quite awhile, but we were buds of a sort. I met him while he was the drummer in Joe Popp. I did a profile on the trio — Joe Popp, Martin Rice and Woody — early in my tenure as the Weekly Planet music critic. It was probably 1997 or ’98. We drank a lot during the interview. Then we walked around downtown St. Pete, and Popp and Marty started throwing each other into chain-link fences or something. I don’t remember if Woody got into the fracas or not. He and I might have strolled along while the other two did battle.
I went to a lot of Joe Popp shows. As far as I’m concerned, that was the last band around here that really brought a sense of concert-style excitement to local stages. Woody drove that band. Whatever I might remember about the dude, tops on the list is that he was a great fucking drummer.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.