HOLY TOLEDO, ALTERNATIVE CONTROL IS BACK!
Some things are just hard to get rid of — old electronics, bed bugs, and your favorite underground local-national-international music blog.
And now for our first post since December 30, 2021, we bring you THE GHOST WOLVES! This slammin’ Austin punk band has been making soundwaves for over a decade and we get the feeling they’re not stopping any time soon. Even adding a little wolf pup to the pack hasn’t slowed them down. The Ghost Wolves’ upcoming album Consumer Waste will be released on October 31, 2024. Capturing the aggression of the duo’s live shows, Consumer Waste rails against greed, complacency — and of course, consumer waste.
Thanks to the modern marvels of The Internet and a little help from Ilka Erren Pardinas at Fly PR, I overcame space and time barriers to conduct an email interview with Snarly Carley and Jonny Wolf. Here’s what they have to say about this vicious album:
Hi! Thanks for doing this interview! First, tell me a little bit about your upcoming album Consumer Waste.
Carley: Consumer Waste is the first album we’ve done that has the live feral energy of our live shows. I’m really proud of it. It has an urgency to it that I feel is important in art. There are some topics we cover in the songs that are very timely with the election coming up and the mess we are in as humans here on earth.
What was the writing and recording process like for this album, and how do you feel your music has evolved since The Ghost Wolves’ inception 11 years ago in the “Austin shack,” as you call it in your bandcamp bio?
Carley: We started out playing Ronnie Dawson rockabilly covers and RL Burnside blues songs, along with our originals. I played in standard tuning and open G and played through a single guitar amp. The sound has evolved quite a bit since then!
Consumer Waste is mostly played in open D minor which has a bassier tone and I play through a bass amp and a guitar amp simultaneously. This makes my tone way more powerful, and meaner sounding, and gives us the low end we need without a bass player. This record has more of a punk flair to it, while still maintaining the Texas blues sound with the slide and some of the beats. I’ll always use a slide. I just love that sound.
Jonny: We did the record in 3 days! That was it! It’s all we could afford, both in cash and time. But, that was a blessing, really. When we had the songs ready, we looked at the band coffers, and at our lives as parents of a 6 month old, and we said, you know, we can really only go do this for three days and that’s gotta be it. We have to get this done. And then, the music was also lending itself to a rock n’ roll feel, just a full throttle type situation, where I’m hitting the drums really hard and the guitars are freakin’ out.
So we got into a great studio called The Finishing School in Austin with Jim Vollentine doing the engineering and it was perfect. We lived there for 3 days over Halloween and just put in 12-14 hour days. Our kid came into the studio and hung out with us, and we also had a babysitter come to make sure he could go get a nap! The studio was amazing, it had this really 1950’s feel to it – with just enough isolation between instruments to keep the sounds hi-fi, but we could see each other through the glass and everything was done live, at the same time. We only overdubbed a few little key parts and some effects later. Most of what we kept is the first take, including the vocals! There’s a good video here of us recording “Consumer Waste” where you can get a feel for it:
In one of the songs — of course now I can’t find it! — there’s a lyric to the effect of how people need to stop talking about things and change their ways to make a better future so that humankind doesn’t kill itself off. (That seems to be an underlying theme of a lot of the songs!) What are some things you do in your own lives to hopefully make way for a better future, or what do you think people should be doing in general?
Carley: Yes, that is a common theme through the record! “Mankind is losing his mind! Man’s mind frame is going insane!” (Track 2, “666 Mankind 666”). One thing people can do is get their faces out of their screens and think for themselves!
“Consumer Waste. A planet defaced. The human race displaced.” (Track 1, “Consumer Waste”) Our society is not aligned with the planet that supports us. There are too many conveniences causing major problems for future sustainability. There’s too much greed and not enough foresight. The masses need to think about it and it’s urgent!
Hopefully, these songs will inspire people to make some changes. Stop using so much plastic. Stop buying fast fashion and supporting sweatshops and child labor. Buy from trusted companies. Buy used, trade, recycle, reduce, reuse! Look at the ingredients in your food!! Don’t eat toxic dyes or other toxic ingredients, don’t feed them to your children! Don’t use toxic chemicals on your skin or in your home. Stop supporting factory farms, eat less meat or go veg. Support local farmers, grow your own food, buy organic food.
It can all seem totally overwhelming to get started, but if you decide to make one small change today, and one tomorrow, that does make a difference! It all adds up! Just like the bad decisions, the convenient ones we have all made, have added up and gotten us into this mess. Our future on this beautiful gift of a planet depends on each of us!! It depends on the choices we make with our money and our vote. It starts with our decision to start! More and more people are deciding that the systems aren’t working and it’s time to make change happen. It’s about us! Let’s get together and do it!!
Jonny: It might be “Wage Slave”, track 4 — there’s a section about “you can’t just hope for a better future, you gotta vote for a better future.” Even with how screwed up our election system is in the USA — it really should be decided all by popular vote instead of the electoral college — it’s still so important to get out and vote. Even in Texas.
And yeah, a lot of this album is about how f’d up the world is and that’s kind of hard to swallow in a way, but also I hope maybe there can be some positive angle to it in the end. Personally we do what we can to effect change…things like being aware of how much trash we make at home, trying to make everything reusable, avoiding plastic as much as possible, minimizing the new stuff we buy — even though that’s unavoidable sometimes — but instead of a brand new pair of jeans maybe trying to hit up a thrift store, that kind of thing. Not feeding our kid or ourselves bad food, so we can be healthy and contribute to the world. On our rider we ask for access to a water source like a tap or cooler, so we can refill our canteens, instead of the cases of plastic bottles every promoter wants to give you that just end up in the trash. Little actions that can add up to significant change if more people do them.
(Editor’s Note: reading all this back, it was definitely “Wage Slave,” but any of those songs would fit the bill!)
As someone who is also one half of a husband/wife band, it was incredibly convenient to be in a band together before we had kids — and now that we have kids, that’s not the case at all. How do you balance family with The Ghost Wolves logistically? (Maybe I’ll borrow some of your tips!)
Carley: He’s just a part of the pack now! We used to travel with two big white dogs, now we leave them at home and bring the baby and the granny. We love for him to come along when it is possible to absorb the culture. It has slowed us down on our tours but we were also getting tired of all the waste and use of resources that go into touring. We love getting our music out there and very much believe in the mission of the band and live show. It’s been transformative in so many ways, but at what environmental cost? On our scale it wasn’t so bad, touring in a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle, not using plastic disposables, eating vegetarian, etc. It’s just a hard pill to swallow sometimes, especially when you see the massive waste at festivals and larger tours we’ve been a part of.
When it comes to making time to write and record, there is an urgency now. Having a baby has forced us to narrow our focus and really buckle down, so when we do get the opportunity to put time into the project we can make the most of it. We have to be more efficient now, and it’s great! We’ve learned to adapt. We do miss our tour family though, who we do not get to see as often as before. We still love all of you!!!
Jonny: The dogs are probably happier at home anyways, they don’t have to ride in the van all day and wait around while we do a gig. It was definitely a little more convenient pre-kid, but we’ve never really been ones to compromise on getting what we want. If it’s harder now, fine, we’ll keep going. I don’t really see us ever stopping making music and we both have pretty much affirmed that we want it all in life, so we are going to go for it. But if we aren’t out there burning the road up, doing 30 shows in 30 days anymore, that’s fine too. We did that for a decade, and it was great. But after a while there definitely is a little bit of “been there, done that” feeling creeping in, at least for me.
What’s next? I think we’re gearing more towards quality, versus quantity at this point. My goal is for us to do big shows, more festivals, travel frequently, but shorter trips….internationally, hopefully…bring the kids and let them have a great childhood in a creative world, but also a safe, stable life at home too when we aren’t doing it.
We built a studio next to our place, took an old decrepit 12×24 shed and gutted it, and are slowly finishing it out ourselves. It will be our new headquarters. It’s got a video setup and will have a project audio rig when we’re done, our Tascam tape machine. We are working on that really hard right now to get it finished. We’ve already shot two videos there while it’s half-done. You just have to squeeze creativity in, when you can. The urgency is good for us. It keeps us from questioning ourselves. “Ok, that’s pretty rad, the video feels good, let’s finish it, stop messing with it and get back to the kid. Get it out there.” Maybe having a kid is the most important creative decision we ever made. We just made a video for the title track there:
I read a post about performing a sold-out show while Carly was eight months pregnant. Carly, what was it like performing late into your pregnancy?
Carley: I very much enjoyed performing late in my pregnancy! I got a black vinyl mini maternity dress and rocked that belly! It is something you rarely see up on a rock and roll stage, so people were enthralled. I got a lot of support from the audience. I announced the very special guest at the end of the show and the crowd went wild! Once I’m into the music I kind of leave my body, so I didn’t notice the extra weight or roundness. I did have to lengthen my guitar strap a bit though!
Does the little wolf seem to have an interest in music??
Carley: Yes! He loves music! He learned the sign for it early on and asks for it constantly. He loves to dance and has taken to every instrument we’ve put in front of him. It’s very exciting! Jonny and I both look forward to teaching him what we know and then learning from him as he develops into his own creative musical force.
Jonny: The kid is a natural. I asked her doctor, when she was 9 months pregnant, if it was OK if we did that last gig with her being so close to giving birth. I knew it was going to be a loud show. So I asked her, “Is it ok, with the loudness of our stage sound?” Her doctor said “He’s in there floating in fluid, so the volume will be dampened, and he’ll mostly just feel the vibrations. It’ll probably be good for him!” HAH! I loved that.
I can’t say that I’ve changed my wasteful ways since listening to Consumer Waste, but now I do hear the title track in my head every time I use a paper plate. The Ghost Wolves temper a noble message that’s sometimes tough to hear with music that’s a rollicking good time. Carley’s use of slide guitar also gives the band a unique Southwestern feel that stands out from the pack. (See what I did there?? It’s good to be back!)
Preorder your digital or vinyl copy of Consumer Waste today! https://theghostwolves.bandcamp.com/album/consumer-waste
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Fun interview! You all have much in common. Jessie, not sure when you sleep with a full time job, kids and band(s). However you do it….its well done! Keep on keeping on….!