Q&A: Yoni Wolf of WHY?

City Paper caught up with WHY? frontman Yoni Wolf as the band continues its worldwide tour.

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Q&A: Yoni Wolf of WHY?

POSTED: Friday, September 14, 2012, 10:00 AM

Filed Under: Interview | Music

Despite having members dispersed across the country, WHY? remains a productive purveyor of hummable confessionals. The group’s recently released Sod in the Seed EP contains enough witty wordplay and memorable melodies to keep fans sated until the full-length Mumps, etc. is unveiled on October 9. City Paper caught up with frontman Yoni Wolf as the band continues its worldwide tour. WHY? plays Union transfer tonight.

City Paper: You’ve mentioned during previous Philly shows that you used to spend a lot of time in this city. What’s your connection to Philly?

Yoni Wolf: My parents are from Philly so I used to come back all the time to see my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and shit.

CP: A couple years ago, you left the Bay Area to live with your parents in Cincinnati. What inspired this move back home to Ohio?

YW: I’m not sure exactly. It just kind of felt right. I had gotten rid of my apartment in Oakland because we were going to be touring for a few years. So I did and I was just kind of getting sublets here and there between tours. And after the last bit of touring on Alopecia and Eskimo Snow, I was kind of sick and I just went to stay with my parents and decided I am going to stay in Cincinnati. So I bought a house and stayed there.

CP: During the time when you were living with your parents, you’ve said that you had very little contact with the outside world. Was this a source of relief or stress?

YW: It was what it was – a necessary thing at the time. I developed a routine of going to the gym, yoga classes, and Whole Foods. That was all I’d pretty much do: go to the gym, Whole Foods, and then album. I would work almost every day on demos for the new album.

CP: Let’s talk a little bit about the new material. You admit to minor stardom in your new song "Sod in the Seed." What’s that like? Are people recognizing you on the street?

YW: Sometimes. It depends on where I am. But yeah, sometimes it happens. It’s weird. It’s definitely a weird thing, how our culture deals with [fame]. But also I think I desire it in some way otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing in the way that I’m doing it. It’s a strange conundrum and I haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s hard to say.

CP: Does it distract you from the songwriting at all?

YW: I don’t live in LA or New York…I have my own life. Even when I lived in Oakland, I was tucked away; I had my own little situation. I guess I’ll deal with it more when I’m on the road playing shows like I am now. But songwriting isn’t something that’s happening with me, it’s not my chore du jour right now.

CP: People often describe your lyrics as confessional. There’s a candor to your songs that I don’t think comes naturally to most people. What makes you so open in your writing?

YW: I don’t know. I just figure, why shouldn’t I be? Why should I hide stuff? It only makes things more stressful.

CP: Have you ever written anything that felt too raw or exposed details too intimate that you had to trash it?

YW: Not for that reason. More because it felt forced, y’know? It doesn’t come across as natural.

CP: The new material that’s on the EP is more percussive and upbeat than your previous work. Was it a conscious decision to go in this direction?

YW: Yeah, I think so. We definitely wanted to do a lot of percussion stuff. The demos I was making were like that and it felt right. I was getting into this real sparse thing, cutting up patterns, and stuff like that. Then we continued to edit material in the studio.

CP: How does the upcoming full-length compare to the Sod in the Seed EP?

YW: It’s from the same sort of group of songs essentially. I prefer the album myself. They have a different vibe I guess. The EPs feels a little lighter in a way. The EP is like the Ultimate Warrior and the album is like Hulk Hogan. You have to grow up when I grew up and think about things the way I think about things to understand that reference.

CP: Is this a similar scenario to what you did with Eskimo Snow and Alopecia in that you recorded the songs at the same time, but you felt like they should go in different places?

YW: Well, it’s different. That one started to become two albums…we teased the songs apart like that to make two albums. This one always felt like one album. We put together one album and then had songs that…I then had to try and figure out how to make another thing out of them. That was the EP basically. But I don’t know what the EP means altogether. It doesn’t have a cohesive theme I don’t think in the same way [the album does]. It’s just kind of like, “here, here’s some songs to check out.” That’s why I did the interesting transitions; the flow’s really cool because it’s almost like a mix tape I think. But the album is way more thought out and all the album art, all that shit, really relates. And I spent so much time working on all of it. The album is really where the work was for me.

WHY? plays tonight, Fri., Sept. 14, $15, with Doseone and Serengeti, 8 p.m., Union Transfer, 1024 Spring Garden St.

(michael.blancato@citypaper.net) (@mikeblancato)

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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