For Folk Duo Patchouli, Inspiration Comes From Both Outside, Inside The Music

“Our favorite song. This one is kind of our mantra,” said Julie Patchouli as part of the introduction to her song, “The Woods.”

This performance of the song, which is marked as this month’s “Download of the Month,” was recorded in September 2012 when Patchouli and her partner, Bruce Hecksell, were in the WPR studios for an interview with Stephanie Elkins.

Performing as the duo Patchouli, Julie and Bruce said that they try to create a big wall of sound with just their two guitars. And on this track, they certainly accomplish that.

“We always kind of strive to see how much sound can we make as two people,” she said. “We both really love playing percussion. I grew up as a percussionist and so we like to incorporate that.”

That wall of sound comes from both technique and their mix of styles.

“We’re using a lot of overtones and things like that,” Bruce said. “We grew up with modern rock music and also loved folk music and the music of the ‘60s … You want that power to drive it, and so we figured out a way to do that.”

On the lyrics side of the song, Patchouli said she was inspired by some time outdoors.

“I actually wrote that one on my bicycle …. They’re free, the trees and lakes … and sometimes, it’s what you need, to sit by the river and just let your mind run and get out and get some fresh perspective,” she said.

The words to the song share that “fresh perspective”:

I go to the woods to feel good
I go to the river to let my mind run
I go to the mountain to gain perspective
I go to the fields to open up
I look to the lake to reflect
I look to the sky to imagine
I travel highways to go somewhere new

The song goes on to reflect on the need for time outdoors, when the moment — whether personal or social — becomes difficult and starts to wear on us:

This anger is hard to love
This danger is hard to embrace
But sometimes as much as it hurts
We still need to find our way out

I go to the woods…

When she wrote the song, Patchouli said she was “thinking about all the greenspace we have in our different cities and how sometimes when everything else seems to kind of, you know, fall apart, you can get outside into those places and they’re always available to us.”