Q&A: Yoni Wolf of Why?

Photo by Phoebe Streblow

​At the twilight of a decade in music that produced innumerable left-field success stories, Why?'s journey from alt-rap obscurity to indie scene heavyweight is one of the more compelling. Early in the new century front man Yoni Wolf introduced the Google-stumping moniker Why? as his rap alias while sharpening his teeth with the Anticon hip-hop collective. Since then Why? has morphed from a bedroom project into a full scale band that provides a completely organic canvas for Wolf's provocative rhymes. 

After a pair of overlooked records, Why? found their audience with 2007's Alopecia, recorded in Minneapolis. It was an immediate success, garnering rave reviews and making it the best selling Anticon release to date. The same studio sessions that produced Alopecia birthed the recently released Eskimo Snow, an album so far removed from Yoni's beginnings that a new listener might not pick up on the hip-hop influences.

In anticipation of their show tonight at the Triple Rock, City Pages spoke to Yoni from his family home in Ohio.  Both 2008's Alopecia and the recently released Eskimo Snow were recorded in Minneapolis during the winter of 2007. What motivated you to leave California to make these records in a place where spit freezes before it hits the ground?

Yoni Wolf: The people. I have been friends with the Fog guys for awhile. Marty Dosh, Andy [Broder] and Bear--or Mark [Erickson], he doesn't like to be called Bear. I wanted Mark and Andy to be in the band for those recording sessions. I talked to them for awhile and finally they agreed to do it. And, basically, we didn't know where we wanted to record. We had done backup vocals on the last Fog record while we were on tour [in Minneapolis]. Andy wanted us to do a little cameo on the new record, and just being over at Third Ear again, it just felt like the right place. It had a real homey vibe.

What was a typical day like in the process of making those albums?

Wolf: We would pick up food for the day in Seward. It was so cold that winter, I don't know if you remember. We would stock up on food and just hole up at Third Ear all day, and not venture out at all.

Did you go into the studio to make two records, or did this just come out?

Wolf: We didn't know what we were doing. We had 20 songs going in, and I had demos for most of them. If there wasn't a demo, it was already fleshed out anyway. After about a week I started to realize there were two types of songs. Two types of moods, feelings, recording set ups...wait, there are enough songs for two records! It was either that or a record and then a shorter record, or an EP or something. There were two different moods going on--integrate them and we'd have a real hodgy-podgy sounding record, or split 'em up and you have two strong, unique records.

Two years is a long time to sit on a record. Have you made any changes? Are you the kind of artist that needs to go back and re-edit songs?

Wolf: That album is pretty damn live. There are some overdubs, but by and large everything's happening at once. And I didn't want to fuck with that aesthetic. No vocal overdubs. I have one vocal on every track.

While your life is under the microscope in a lot of your songs, there are other people's stories that seem to carry through the records. Where do the characters on your albums come from?

Wolf: They're like clip art. There's a website called music-characters.com, where you can pick your flame. The "love of your life" character, the "this is my dad" character, stuff like that. You just plug and chug. No, there are people and things from my life, but altered sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes they're made up. It all depends.

In an interview you did years ago, I read that someone covered the song "Gemini" and you said it made you feel sort of violated, because it was such a personal song.  

Wolf: That's always weird, to hear someone else play my music, to say my lyrics, even when we asked some other artists to do it for the Hollows EP. Even that, hearing friends of mine it was like euuggh, it was bazaar. Maybe every songwriter feels that way, or maybe it's because I have a little more nitty-gritty information in there about my life or something.

When you write songs that are autobiographical and you're revealing things about yourself, or talking about your relationships with other people, are you worried about how your family and friends will perceive them?

Wolf: Yeah, sometimes I feel weird. I think that I've learned to put aside that embarrassing feeling or that worry of judgment. I don't know if that's a good thing necessarily, but that's something that I've become comfortable with. Because I used to be so shy and so worried about what everyone thought about me. Somehow it got flipped around. I was able flip it all around and just go the other route. You've got to be true.

Why? play with AU and Dark Dark Dark tonight, October 7, at the Triple Rock Social Club. All ages. $15. 6 p.m.