For nearly three years, the duo have been DJing various events under the name Wooden Wisdom and decided to kick off a tour this year, spanning nine dates throughout North America and Europe.
Surrounded by music for his entire life, Wood, perhaps best known for his roles in “The Lord of the Rings” and “Wilfred,” initially began their foray as DJs as a hobby 15 years ago.
For him, Wooden Wisdom serves as a positive creative outlet and energizing medium that fills a certain space that acting does not.
Along with Cowie, who has worked with an impressive variety of record labels and artists, both personalities suitably compliment each other due to their aligned musical interests.
Wood and Cowie share an encyclopedic knowledge of the art of music, with their vinyl DJ sets serving as a sonic odyssey covering sounds from around the world. Though their audience probably does not recognize most of the artists that they play, it certainly doesn’t stop their fans from dancing and having fun.
First off, how did you guys meet?
Elijah Wood: We met through mutual friends, fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, whom Zach has DJ’ed for at their after-parties and has done their show music for the last four years, we met at one of their after-parties he was DJ’ing. I had my iPod with me and I think either Kate or Laura were like “You should go introduce yourself to Zach and play songs off your iPod!” and I was like “I don’t know, he’s already holding it down!” But the thing I noticed all night that really made an impression on me was everything he was playing. I kept thinking, “That’s stuff that I would play!” Our music taste was really similar and varied. Anyway, long story short, we played that night one-for-one, iPod to records, and we kind of ended up crossing paths again through Bushmills. I ended up doing this campaign for them and [Zach] got hired to do the DJ’ing for the launch event for it. Unbeknownst to me, he had already gotten hired, I had put him up for it and [said to Bushmills], “You should get Zach Cowie, he’s really good!” So, we ended up DJ’ing again through that and just realized that we liked playing music together. It happened really organically.
Source: ABC News
