2021 proved to be a chance for resurgence in Rī Wolf’s music career. After spending the last 14 years as a collegiate track and field coach in Texas and almost 9 years away from music, Rī Wolf is bursting back into the music scene with a Grass Roots Americana sound reminiscent of a West Texas Troubadour making his way back home.
Rī is returning with a sound that’s rooted
in great songwriting, unforgettable melodies and rugged authenticity. With an
acoustic guitar driven mix of country, soul, blues, and rock, Rī brings these
elements together for a unique, but familiar sound laced with stories true and
familiar to those who call Texas and the Great Plains home.
Alan Mercer: Ri, I heard you used to be a coach of some kind. What can you tell me about that?
Ri Wolf: I was. I got
into music in my early twenties. I was working with Cary Pierce of Jackopierce.
He produced one of my records. I was going around the country performing at
colleges, but ultimately at that time, it wasn’t paying the bills.
AM: A reality for
many musicians.
RW: I had always had
an interest in athletics. I had been an athlete my whole life and I thought
maybe the next step for me was to pursue a career in coaching. I decided to
finish my degree and I got a job offer at Texas A&M University as a
graduate assistant. I went out there and finished up my masters and soon after
I was hired as a head coach of the division 2 track & field program. This
is when I’m 28 years old. At that point I was still playing music sporadically.
It was more of a hobby than anything, so I went full force into coaching.
AM: How long did you
coach?
RW: Almost fifteen years.
AM: All this time
keeping music as a hobby?
RW: Actually, I let
it go completely. I stopped writing and stopped playing. I’m the type of person
who doesn’t like to do anything half-assed.
AM: OK, you want to
give all to whatever you are doing.
RW: Yes, I felt like I would be pulling away from my career, which I was doing really well at. We won a national title at West Texas A&M while I was there. Every once in awhile I would pull my guitar out and play some songs that I liked, but I wasn’t writing, and I had no intention of getting back into performing.
AM: Before you
decided to drop out of music had you been writing?
RW: Yes, I was writing
a lot.
AM: Are any of those
songs part of your repertoire today?
RW: Only one and I’m
looking to bring that song back on a live album I’m going to record here pretty
soon.
AM: So what happened
to get you focused on music again?
RW: Personally, I was
getting burned out on the way the politics of college athletics was working. To
be honest I really didn’t like the way coaches were being treated. I felt like
at the collegiate level we were becoming the middlemen. It was all about saving
face with student athletes, who have been given a lot of power. That’s great
for them, but the whole discipline aspect of it and coaching to develop young
men and women, for me it was much harder. My hands were tied, and I felt like we
weren’t getting a lot of help.
AM: I’m sure you
weren’t getting much help.
RW: I was coming to the end of my contract with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley down in South Texas near Mexico. We were five miles from the border. I was in my fourth year there and covid hit. The whole university shut down. So, we found ourselves at home wondering what to do and wondering what was going to happen. Because of covid I started dabbling in playing some of the Blues stuff that influenced me so long ago. I would post videos of my playing the guitar. I wasn’t writing or singing, just playing.
AM: What convinced you
to start singing again?
RW: I did an
interview with a sports podcast, and they knew my history with playing music,
so they asked me about it. They asked me to play a song on the show. I hadn’t
performed in years. One of my big influences was Bob Marley. He is a master of
melody.
AM: So are you.
RW: He has been my
staple for how the message doesn’t get across if the melody doesn’t stick. The
melody can carry your message. That’s the avenue to say here is how we connect.
Anyway, I decided to play ‘Redemption Song’ on this podcast. I have video of it
since it was live on air, so I looked back on it and watched it and thought to
myself, “Man, I need to do this again.” That was a turning point for my life. I
just started diving in. I was at home and not doing a lot so I started playing
the guitar six to eight hours a day. My wife would leave and go to the gym and
run some errands and when she returned home, I would still be in the same spot playing.
I felt like I had a newfound voice and a renewed sense of what I wanted to say
and do. I was feeling this gritty, bluesy, folky, country stuff that I had
grown up with, start to come out of me.
AM: I love that.
RW: A few months
after that interview, my wife came in and I was writing, I had started to write
again, and she said she thought I needed to do this and give it a shot.
AM: Did that give you
a boost of confidence?
RW: Oh, tremendously, it’s always a risk. This business is
tough. The thing is, I know who I am. I knew what this meant for me. It’s
something that I believed in. Her giving me the nod let me say let’s go for it.
South Texas didn’t shut down as much as the whole country did during covid, so
I found myself a little gig on South Padre Island once every other Friday.
There were tourists coming in every weekend, and I really started to sharpen
up. I was working out some of the new songs I was writing. I started getting
some popularity out there and developed a bit of a following and some
excitement.
AM: Why did you
decide to move to West Texas?
RW: We wanted to be closer to family, but also so I could pursue this career in music. I fell in love with West Texas. I love the solitude out there. I grew up in central Oklahoma.
AM: For being sparsely populated, the area sure does produce a lot of talented people.
RW: It’s not easy to
live under the harsh conditions out there, but the people are resilient. It’s a great place to be.
AM: When did you
start releasing songs?
RW: I started releasing
songs in 2021. I was just recording in my bathroom. I had a crappy little mic.
I didn’t really know where to go because it was the middle of covid. I couldn’t
find a studio that fit what I wanted to do so I decided to do it myself. I’d
been around enough producers to know how it works and the engineering aspect of
it. I started putting songs out on my own and got into a music community on
Twitter. I came across some great artists and I thought why don’t we collab on
some songs.
AM: You do have some
nice collaborations.
RW: Yeah, I would
send them a demo and say let’s do this. They would do the work in the studio
wherever they were at, and I would do my work at home. In a round about way, we
put together this project from distances apart. I found all these new avenues
to get music out.
AM: What made you experiment
with different musical genres?
RW: I did that on
purpose because I know where I come from. I grew up listening to a lot of Soul music
and add to that a lot of Blues and old time Country and Bluegrass music. That
comes from my grandparents. I was pushing myself into different spots.
AM: It all sounds natural,
never contrived.
RW: No, it all felt
true. I just wanted to see what stuck.
AM: Which genres have
stuck?
RW: I would say it’s
Americana, but I bring a little bit of a different twist to it. I feel like a
lot of my Soul and Blues background pushes into the stuff I do. Although it’s
labeled Americana and a lot of my writing is geared that way, I always find
Soul and Blues rolling into what I’m doing.
AM: I love your cover
of the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone’.
RW: I recorded that
one live in my family room.
AM: It’s the same as
your video.
RW: Yes, I just took
the audio from the video and mastered it. I thought it was raw and it’s what I
did during covid just to get it out there.
AM: You probably aren’t
real big on doing covers since you write such good music.
RW: No, you are
exactly right. I’m glad you noticed that. A lot of people who don’t know my
music only want to hear covers. They don’t understand the extensive background
and how hard I’ve worked at writing my own songs. When they do sit down and
listen and hear my stories they start to understand.
AM: You also covered
the old chestnut, ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ and you do a great job with that one
too.
RW: I’ve always been a
Frank Sinatra fan. Willie Nelson kind of came from that background. There’s
just something about Frank Sinatra and his voice and demeanor that I’ve always
admired. When I play live, I like to do cover songs as tributes to artists that
I’ve pulled a lot from. I just started messing around with it and I realized I
really love that song. My daughter was singing it with me as well. I felt like
if I could sing the song my way, I would do it justice.
AM: Those covers let me know you could interpret other songwriters’
music.
RW: I did a jazz
collaboration with a great piano player out of New York titled ‘Cinnamon Morning’.
Her name is Charu Suri.
AM: I love that song.
It’s so beautiful.
RW: I wrote the song
with her in mind. I had this soulful music, and it is about when I spent some
time in Albuquerque. I knew she would be perfect for this song. It’s not really
the genre I’m known for, but I thought we could make something special.
AM: I hope you
continue to record some unexpected gems because they really shine.
RW: That’s the beauty
of being an independent artist. People ask me if I want to be signed to a
label, but to be honest with you, I really like making my own music. I like
having the control. I’m producing everything.
AM: I know you have a
new album out now. ‘Randall County Reverb’ just came out. Do you have plans for
recording anything else right now?
RW: I want to do a
live acoustic album. I’m going to take some of my old songs and record them
live acoustically. I also have quite a few new songs that I’m going to put together.
I want to keep it real simple. It’s something I’ve never done, but I think it
would give folks a different perspective about the stuff I do.
AM: You are in an
enviable position as an artist.
RW: I’m a true
believer that life imitates art. Art is a direct reflection of how you live.
The focus is never about what music I’m going to put out, it’s about the way I’m
going to live. The question is, am I living right?
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