“Why?” It’s a simple question we all ask for endless reasons, from the mundane to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract. Accordingly, it seems that this vast question is the perfect banner under which Yoni Wolf and the rest of the Cincinnati-based band WHY? release their genre-defying brand of music, almost as if in an attempt to give an answer to the allusive question in a way that is all their own. Begun by the 4-track recordings of Yoni Wolf, the project has since evolved to include Yoni’s older brother Josiah Wolf and Doug McDiarmid, to form a group that can still only somewhat adequately be described as indie-folk-trip-hop. The release of their last two records, Alopecia and Eskimo Snow, garnered much attention in indie music circles. I was able to chat with Yoni a week or so before the start of their latest tour in which they will be debuting material for their latest album.
Are you currently in Cincinnati or are you guys still in Texas recording?
I’m in Cincinnati right now. I was in Atlanta just a few days ago, but I’m up here for the next couple of weeks. Then I go back down to Atlanta to do some more mixing with a guy named Graham Marsh. Tremendous mix engineer. We did most of the recording in a town called Denton, near Dallas.
Can you tell me anything about the new album? How is it differing from your previous records?
It’s hard to say, you know? Being so close to it, to me, it sounds super different than anything we’ve done ever really. It’s a lot clearer, is something that we’re trying to do, so that you can hear each sound [and] what’s happening in a way. Where as I feel like when we were mixing the last two, we kind of drenched stuff in reverb and delay and made it more psychedelic for lack of a better word or whatever. This one is a lot more dry and just kind of clear sounding. I’m in the middle of mixing so that’s what I’m thinking about is that kind of thing. In terms of content, I feel like it’s got a lot more sort of rap style content, like non-melodic, rhythmic seeming, if you want to call it that, than any of the WHY? records ever. Yeah, I’m very happy with what’s happening.
Is it sounding like you had imagined it would before you started to record?
I did extensive demoing for the recordings, so they’re not super far off from the demos but as far as before that I wouldn’t have known really. So no, they’re not too far off from the demos but things always change of course. But definitely, before I made the demos, I didn’t really know what things would sound [like]. Things just develop gradually over time into what they are and I forget what I thought things would sound like in a way.
Even though WHY? has been established as a group for the past couple of albums, you have still kept the songwriting reigns pretty close. Was that the case for this past album? What was the writing process like?
I’ll say that [it’s] not always the case and I have collaborated a lot with the other guys and whatnot in the past but this album was definitely a solo effort in terms of writing because my brother lives an hour away, and Doug, the other guy in the band, lives in Seattle. And I felt like it was my trip this time. Like I had lost confidence in some ways in my writing and my ability to finish things out and put the songs and the arrangements together and everything. So, I took a good portion of time basically over the winter when I was stuck in the house and made demos over the course of 19 weeks. I made one demo a week and would send them to the guys on Saturday afternoon and then I would go to the gym, do calisthenics, hardcore, and go sit in the steam room and then go to a movie. That was what I did for 19 weeks and then start the new song on Sunday. So yeah, that was my effort this time. That was how it worked and I feel like I really learned some things about myself and working.
Do you feel like you’ve gained that confidence back through the writing of this record?
Yeah, man. For sure, for sure. Now I feel like at any time, if I have a few months off from touring, I feel like I could just sit down and just kind of force myself to make something. Even if it’s not great. Just the idea of sitting and working. Learning how to do that.
That’s interesting. I had read that, in the past, you had trouble making yourself sit and create, so that’s great that you’ve figured that out.
I’m learning how to do that. It’s hard from the beginning stages. It’s hard to sit down and say, “Okay. Well, I’m going to write a song. What should I write a song about?” I tend to collect lyrics and melody ideas and chord structure ideas and things like that over time. And pulling from those bags, as I sit down, I can kind of work things up and just take a little seed and then start to grow it over the course of time. Still, it’s not really an easy thing to say, “Okay. Well, let me start this thing from absolute scratch.” That is not easy. But taking some things that already have a little seed to it and growing them I’m really learning how to do that.
You essentially recorded your last two albums at the same time. Are you excited to finally start performing new material?
Yeah. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. This tour is going to be good. It’s sort of like just dipping the toe in, in a way, for the record. We’re going to play maybe half new songs, half older songs and the versions are going to be pretty stripped down, sort of songwriter versions I would call it. One chordal instrument, maybe bass to hold down the root notes and some kind of percussion to give you that feeling. So it’s a little stripped down in a way to sort of spoon feed the songs to people in a different way. I’m looking forward to that but I’m also very much looking forward to doing a full-blown thing whenever the record comes out. That’s definitely also [something] I’m looking forward to
Is that why you decided for this upcoming tour to be in seated venues, because they emulate that kind of vibe?
For sure. Yeah, it’s about people coming, sitting down, getting comfortable, really listening to new songs. Because when you’re hearing something for the first time, it’s hard to catch. It’s hard to catch every word. It’s hard to catch exactly what the structure is, that kind of thing. That’s why we want people to come and sit down and be able to focus rather than getting pushed around by a bunch of people and beers spilled and people screaming the lyrics to all the songs. It’s more like a chilled out vibe and we’re going to be that way too. We’ll be hanging out there and talking to people. Not like super backstage-y, keep me hidden until I have to get dragged out of the casket [and perform] and put me back in the casket. It’s a more chilled out kind of vibe.
As I said, the material that was used for your last two records was recorded during the same time period. During the last legs of your latest tour, did it get especially hard to continue to perform those songs since they were written such a long time ago?
Well that’s a good question. I mean you get tired of touring if you tour just a ton. There was a time when it was like, “Okay I’m ready to not be traveling to a new city every single day.” As far as the songs go, yeah, you can get a little bit tired of singing them. We have enough songs at this point that if we get tired of any single song we can get rid of it for a bit and keep doing the ones that feel right. The ones that feel right, still feel right. I have to say like, I still enjoying singing “The Vowels.” It feels nice to sing. Certain songs they’re kind of fun to sing and remain that way. For a while, and I don’t know how long, we definitely have retired most everything before Alopecia, so we sing maybe a couple songs off of Elephant Eyelash, the album that came out before Alopecia, but for the most part we do mostly Alopecia [or] Eskimo stuff. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the new album. And there’s a plethora of songs on the new album. We’re finishing 19 songs in November and I’m going to write a couple more so there could very well end up being two records as well. It depends how much on a tear I get when I get back, if I start really writing a lot.
I know you’ve worked on the album art for your previous records. Do you regularly work in any other mediums besides music?
At this point I really don’t do visual art except for when in relation to the music. I went to art school and everything back in the day. I thought I would be a visual artist for my whole childhood basically until I was like 19 to 20 when I discovered recording, which I really fell in love with. Nowadays I really just sort of save it for the album covers and t-shirts.
What is it like to have a creative working relationship with your older brother? How did your musical relationship begin when you were younger?
It’s great! It’s really great. He’s starting to step up a little bit in terms of really helping out with everything, which is really great. I mean he’s done that all along. It’s really terrific. We started playing together I guess when I was around 18, 19 [and] we started a band together. Before that it was kind of like he was a musician and I was a visual artist and that’s how we thought of things. I played in bands and stuff like that but I didn’t take it seriously, just kind of garage bands or whatever. Then once he heard some recordings that I did for a group called Reaching Quiet back in 2001, he called me up one day and said, “Hey man. I really like what you’re doing and I want to do it with you,” and I was like, “Absolutely.” Then a year or two later he moved out to the Bay Area where I was living at and we started working together everyday.
Your lyrical content and style conveys very vivid, detailed imagery. Was their any literary or musical inspiration for you to begin writing this way?
I think it came from me trying to write poetry I guess. Listening to poets like Galway Kinnell, Marilyn Hacker, Dylan Thomas, just to name a few. I was into a whole lot of folks. I would listen to these tapes of them reading poetry. Sylvia Plath and just lots of different folks. I would listen to tapes and then I would think [to] really aim high. And [with] music I thought, “Okay, I’m going to really aim high lyrically and try to do something that feels like it could be read on a page and it could be appreciated.” I felt like I wanted to really get stuff across in a nitty gritty way and not in a sort of way that everyone’s heard always their whole life, which is this rock n’ roll cliché or rap clichés or something. I wanted it to really feel like something original and from my heart and so I guess that’s what I was doing. But the people I was looking up to I think were more poets than songwriters really. That’s what I aspired to be like.
People can label the music that WHY? makes as many different things, but it clearly has strong roots in hip-hop. What first attracted you to this genre of music and can you name any artists that you initially listened to?
I grew up around rap music from when I first went into elementary school. That was the music that everyone listened to at school. But I didn’t really. I wasn’t really allowed to listen to secular music until much later. Even if I were allowed to, the music that I liked [were bands] like Stryper and Petra, which were these Christian Rock bands and felt a little different than everyone in school like an outcast in a way. I wasn’t like a weirdo, super outcast. I could blend in but I did feel different than everyone. And I always thought of rap as being the main music of the culture. It was kind of like that’s what everyone listens to and back then I guess it was Big Daddy Kane and Salt-n-Pepa and Heavy D. That kind of stuff I didn’t really know. And then later it started getting into gangster shit. Tupac came out and before that I don’t know who else. Public Enemy and NWA and this kind of stuff and I didn’t’ really like that. I didn’t like the sound. It always sounded aggressive. I didn’t hear enough melody in it. It always sounded like people just kind of screaming. I hated that. It never appealed to me. That testosterone, it never appealed to me. And then when I was around 13, I was at this conference that I would go to every year, this religious conference. I was bunking with my friend and he had a Discman and a nice pair of Sony headphones or something. And he was like, “Hey man, I just got this record. You got to hear this album. I think you would like it.” And I’m like, “Okay.” This was as we were going to sleep around midnight or something and I pressed play on it and it’s Midnight Marauders. And I listened to it from front to back, loud in headphones as I was laying there in the dark in rural Pennsylvania and it just blew my wig. I was like, “Hooly shit.” Because it was these guys just talking super rhythmic, really good voices, and the music was just lush and I always felt like hip-hop music was cheap, like someone [threw on a] quick drum machine. Because I did have like Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill or whatever and it was like that Rick Rubin production. Super, super raw. And I was like, “Eeeh.” I liked it in a way where I wanted to like it because other people did. My friends were skaters and they were into that kind of thing. It never really appealed to me, but then when I heard Midnight Marauders, that album was like, “Yeah, this makes total sense.” It’s melodic. The songs have beginnings, middles and ends, and that album just felt right. I still really like that album. From then forward, I started to get into stuff in a similar vein, Native Tongues, East Coast stuff and other stuff branching out from there all through my teens.
You’ve said that in comparison to your most recent to albums, your earlier album, Elephant Eyelash, had a sense of “taking itself too seriously.” Do you think the absence of this quality since then has allowed you to give yourself more creative freedom?
Maybe I said that but I definitely have trouble not taking things seriously. I’m the type of person, I get a bit obsessive about things. It’s not like it frees me up [like], “Oh yeah man that’s cool. Whatever. I’ll just write whatever.” It’s not like that. I think I mean there’s some melodrama maybe in stuff in Elephant Eyelash. I do feel like now, I’m still dealing with sometimes darker stuff or dramatic stuff or whatever but I like to get it across in a way that has a little more humor to it or just doesn’t take itself so seriously I guess is the way to say it. I just feel like there are good things, there are bad things in life but you gotta laugh about it all.
Do you think the creation of music with an established group of people that have known each other for a long time has benefited the music in a way that it would not have otherwise?
Yeah, for sure. There’s definitely something about getting back together with the guys that you know what each other’s going to like. You have a similar vocabulary. Definitely. Without a doubt there’s something really cool about it.
I’ve gotten the feelings that you find the creative process more rewarding than touring and playing the material live. Do you think that’s changed at all for you?
There’s definitely a truth to that. There’s definitely a certain feeling that I get from those little eureka moments of figuring something out for the first time that I don’t get stuffed in a van and people screaming at you and whatnot. Though I have come to enjoy traveling around. I like seeing different places a whole lot and I do like performing, especially when the band is hot. I definitely have come to appreciate it more but there is something to the creative process that makes me feel fulfilled I think. That is sort of my main recharge as a human.
Check out WHY? on their upcoming tour through October. They will be playing on 9/30 at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas, TX and on 10/1 at Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX.
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