Today we’d like to introduce you to Carley Wolf.
Hi Carley, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started playing guitar as a kid. My dad taught me. I had my first band, The Clabber Girls, with my friends when I was 11. Through my teenage years, I fronted my rockabilly band. My mom and Aunt would make all of my costumes and take me to the honky-tonks, dance halls, and clubs for my gigs all around Texas since I was too young to get in by myself to do the shows. My band comprised some of the best guys around then, and they were all in their 20s, so they called me “little girl.”
I went to Texas State and majored in Sound Recording Technology with a minor in classical guitar. The SRT program was a comprehensive course of study in sound and all of the math & science behind it. It was more of a science degree than a performance or average recording degree. It was very challenging, but I got through it and learned a lot. When I started to work in the recording industry after graduating, I realized that being in a studio all day wasn’t making me happy. The studio world was male-dominated, and they sometimes treated girls pretty badly, too. I just wanted to perform again, like I had my whole life.
While dealing with all those feelings, Lloyd Maines called me out of the blue and offered me a job playing mandolin in a band he knew called The Crooked Jades. They were a string band doing early American-type music; it was excellent. I went and toured with them across Europe and the USA for about a year. I fell in love with early folk music, making me want to front my band again. When that gig ended, I started my band, The Howls. We did a record in Lockhart, TX, called “Set Sail” in 2008, and I took that on the road for a while, too. It was a mix of folk but with a gypsy flavor, lots of fiddle and upright bass, and I played many instruments like piano, mandolin, and guitar.
I met Jonny Wolf around that time, and he drummed in my band, touring and recording with us. At some point, around 2010, we both got tired of the acoustic music scene. The whole “Americana” thing became stuffy and not fun. I also went on tour playing upright bass with Johnny Falstaff in Europe, who was doing energetic rockabilly/country stuff and shredding on the guitar. It made me want to play electric guitar, work with him, and do it in a rocking kind of way like he was. Jonny and I got the idea to do a guitar/drum duo somehow – there were so many great ones before us, like Flat Duo Jets and The White Stripes, so it wasn’t anything new, but we figured we could make our mark with the format. It also made getting the band started so much easier, not having many people to deal with. Jonny’s previous band had 6 members who were always fighting about something. I had struggled to keep my band together, so we both saw the idea of doing a duo as a much more fluid way of getting our music together in the way we wanted it done.
I bought some heavy, super loud amps and an electric guitar, and we started by covering some old blues music like R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and early Muddy Waters – a lot of the Mississippi-type sound. We also did rockabilly covers of artists like Ronnie Dawson for some good old Texas swagger. This gave us a good starting point to learn to play together, so when we started writing, it all made sense. We were explosive on stage, and people were drawn to that. We made a point always to play as hard, loud, and with as much effort as possible to make up for the fact that it was just two of us! I was constantly rolling around on stage or doing whatever I felt – it was like we were terrible kids again, doing everything wrong! And it was FUN. We called the band GHOST WOLVES. I grew up with a pack of wolves and wolf hybrids on my parent’s ranch. My dad raised them. So we got inspired by that.
GHOST WOLVES is still going to this day. We’ve been at it for 11+ years now, have released 4 albums, toured the world, and played thousands of shows all over the place – our music on TV and in film, lots of wonderful partnerships, and memories playing our crazy blend of punk rock, blues, and trash music. Right now, we’re working on our next record. It’s been a great experience so far, and I’m looking forward to the future of it.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s not been smooth – the music business is oversaturated as all hell, and you have to fight for every inch of territory as an artist with your fans, the industry, and everyone in between. The money struggles are real for musicians at our level and sometimes even at higher levels. The occasional bad apple promoter who doesn’t want to pay you – that happens rarely, but it does. We almost had a knock-down fight with a girl once in Germany who didn’t want to pay us. Also, we’ve had one or two business dealings where people tried to hide money and steal from us. Traveling is also demanding. We’d do 30 shows in 31 days sometimes. Or have long drives between gigs—very late nights, with little sleep. You get worn out quickly. Our show is intense, to make it all harder – we both walk off stage completely drenched in sweat after every gig. Jonny nearly passes out before going backstage after a wild gig. We both wake up completely sore the next day, necks, backs, everything. Right now, I’m struggling with my arms from guitar and from having a baby, too. Physically, it’s demanding, and you have to take that aspect seriously, or it will sideline you. But the truth is that for all of the bumps along the way, struggles, and issues we’ve had, there are 100 times the number of wonderful things that keep us in it to this day, over a decade later as GHOST WOLVES. We’ve worked with some of the industry’s most generous, honest, lovely people. We have had fans turn into best friends. Labels who only want the very best for their artists and aren’t out to make a buck. Venue owners who are like saints risk it all for the music daily. Especially with the style of music and the true intention behind our art, we attract the type of people doing it for the right reasons. We aren’t here to get rich or famous; we are here to make our art and be satisfied that we are doing it our way.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We aim to make the music inside us, nothing else.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I like to keep words like “success,” mentally speaking, in the rearview mirror as much as I can. Touring and playing shows every day provides the perfect example of this idea. The crowd and the challenge of performing your best are different at every stage. You do a gig, it’s great, or it’s not – and then boom – it evaporates into thin air as soon as the show is over. You leave it all behind you and go to the next town. If you were a killer last night, tonight you might not be, and you have to learn to accept that fact and then fight like mad to win against it. You must trick yourself into never relying on yesterday’s victory because it will trip you today.
In the same way, you have to learn to let go of your failures very quickly and move on. If we had a bad show, we might say what went wrong, try not to beat ourselves up, and then leave. We’ve had “success” – big label releases, film/TV placements, big opening tours, the occasional pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow but we try not to “enjoy” it too much. Maybe one day, we will look back at it all and go, “Wow – what a success that was!” But for now, we’re just eyes ahead, looking down the road in front of us, stoked to see what’s around the bend.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theghostwolves.com/
- Instagram: instagram.com/theghostwolves
- Youtube: youtube.com/theghostwolves
Image Credits
David Brendan Hall, Jacqueline Badeaux, Angela Betancourt, Johan Vipper, Jeff Pitcher, Giles Clement
