Photo Credit: Mia Kirby

We’ve all been where Sea Wolf has been. Working on something and then looking at it, not feeling it and tossing it aside. Every creative mind has done it and Sea Wolf certainly won’t be the last, but like many, Sea Wolf was able to build something out of some of the discarded pieces and start anew. The result being the March 2020 release, ‘Through a Dark Wood.’ We talked about breaks taken, bookstore shelf placements, and more in this back and forth between LA-based minds.

Kendra: When you’ve been away for six years are you more nervous about where you are creatively or where the music industry is because a lot can change and shift in that time?

Sea Wolf: Not so much creatively, I feel good about that, but certainly there’s the question of a loss of momentum and the challenges of starting things back up again with a music industry landscape that has changed in many ways. I will say I haven’t been on the moon all this time, I’ve been around, so I’ve moved forward with the times as well in terms of taste and how I consume music. So I’m not so much nervous about missing the boat on how things have changed, as just keeping my fingers crossed that people will respond to the music enough to continue to be able to do this for a living. Which is how it is for every album.

Kendra: Some time ago you started to work on new material and tossed it to the side because you just weren’t feeling it. Did you happen to go back to any of that music or any lyrics from those discarded songs and rejuvenate them for ‘Through a Dark Wood?’

Sea Wolf: Well, three of the songs did end up on the album, and I revisited the instrumentation for those songs later, but the songs themselves remained the same. The rest of the songs I wrote from scratch and didn’t pull from anything I’d done before. When I started writing again after tossing aside the first batch of songs, I wanted to start fresh and come at things from a completely new place. So that meant not pulling from anything written earlier.

Kendra: Being an LA-based artist, we’re going to go local with this next one. If ‘Through a Dark Wood’ was reimagined as a book, what section in The Last Bookstore would it be placed in?

Sea Wolf: Comics & Graphic Novels is the joke answer because I do sort of lean toward that sort of visual entertainment in song form with Sea Wolf, but Literature Collections could also work, though it sounds pretentious to say so.

Kendra: “Fear Of Failure,” is the lead single off the new record and probably the one most of us hear ourselves in because the number one reason we don’t try is well, you said it best. Being a musician, you have to be able to take bigger risks than people in regular, everyday careers. How did you personally get over that fear of failing or are you still working on it?

Sea Wolf: Still working on it. The areas where I think I’ve been able to move through that fear are ones that I’ve felt especially motivated to do – where I would regret not trying more than I would regret trying and failing. Being a musician and all that that entails, for example. But I’m sure there are plenty of other little things I’d like to do, but don’t, due to that fear, and I’m just not aware of it.

Kendra: The video for “Fear Of Failure” showcases such vulnerability, very stripped down and to the point. Was there any other direction you thought of taking this or was this the clear path from the start?

Sea Wolf: A few ideas were tossed around, including this one, and this one always just felt right to me. I think it allowed the lyrics of the song to inhabit the video without being muddled by any visual narrative or complicated concept. Also, it was the first song I’d put out in several years, and the first time anybody’d see me in a while, and I put myself out there in a vulnerable and open way in this song and the record, so it made sense to sort of come back with a video that revealed me in this way too.