We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Black Wolf & the Thief a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Black Wolf & the Thief, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

To date, our most meaningful project would be our sophomore album, The Darkness Around Us is Deep. We released this album last December, about nine years into our career, and so far it has been the truest representation of our sound, our personalities, and our creative landscape. In contrast to our first album (The Pioneer), all of the songs were songs we had workshopped as a group in live shows for about two years before recording them. A mentor of mine once told me that in a band, each member’s level of musicianship was unimportant; there was simply something magical about playing the same song over and over and over again. And he was right. By the time we hit the studio with all of those songs, we had really figured out exactly how we wanted them to sound…they felt like old friends instead of new acquaintances, which was kind of the vibe when we recorded our first album. Another really cool aspect of Darkness is that it really introduces our lead singer, Carolyn, as the primary songwriter of the group. Three of the seven songs on that album are written by Carolyn, and since the release of that album, every single we’ve put out has been hers as well. It feels to us like Darkness sort of set the course we’ve been on for a little over a year now. Back in 2019, when we released The Pioneer, we had visions of being this Bon Iver-esque singer-songwriter group. We don’t have guitars in our band, so it was pretty natural for us to fall into a more mellow genre. But writing and releasing Darkness really gave us a harder edge that I think people know us for now. Really I think what it is is that for The Pioneer, we were still nervous. We were a new group, trying to find our thing, still kind of hypnotized by what we were told was good music and all that, so we compromised a lot, individually and as a group. But on Darkness we really just let our weird out and did whatever we wanted, a trend we’ve continued since its release. And it has helped us greatly, I feel like we’ve gotten more attention in the past year than we did for the nine years leading up to now.

Black Wolf & the Thief, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Black Wolf & the Thief is a keyboard-based power trio proudly based in Warren, Ohio. We pride ourselves on sounding not at all like whatever it was you thought when you read the words “keyboard-based power trio.” The band was started by keyboardist Clay Colley and vocalist Carolyn Colley (before they got married) in 2014. We’re just two creatives inspired by bands like the Doors, Bon Iver, MGMT, and Animal Collective to write unique original music, and that desire has kept us going since then through many different iterations of this group. Currently we have our best iteration yet, with four members: Carolyn Colley on lead vocals, Clay Colley on keyboards, Brian Messina on drums, and Nelson Crain on auxiliary percussion.
To date, we have released three studio albums, 1 EP, and many singles. Our sound has changed a good deal since we started, but the musical language we have right now feels pretty authentic to us.
Music exists because of the “poverty of language,” as some have said, so to describe our sound is difficult thing to do. We use a lot of electronic elements (ie synthesizers, spoken word samples, etc.); I tend to play chords that are referred to as “jazzy”; Carolyn has a powerhouse of a voice that reigns sovereign over every one of our tracks, and our drummer is like a louder, funkier Charlie Watts. Despite being guitar-less, we are actually a pretty heavy band, which surprises many people hte first time they see us live. The best description would funky, hard-hitting, synth-driven (R&B inspired?) rock (?) or something like that.
Lyrically, we cover the board…like so many, we have songs about love & heartbreak, but also songs about struggles with depression & anxiety, the grasp that social media has on our lives, and how much being broke all the time sucks. Much like the musical side of things, we are a band that is all about authenticity, so we pretty much always just write what we’re feeling at the time.
We divide our time pretty equally between recording new original music and performing. Both are equally important. Recording & writing is great because we believe in the importance of continually creating. There’s a danger in settling into one old idea or project for too long. Life is constantly changing and moving forward, so we try to do the same with our music without questioning the direction we’re being called in.
Performing is amazing though because we have an opportunity to really connect with our audiences and take them on a journey with us. And when we play live, we really think about it as a journey. Each live show is a unique experience..we don’t really like taking breaks so we’ve found ways to seamlessly transition through most of our sets so that the music never stops. A live show should be like a magic spell, and each time there’s an awkward silence or too much talking, the spell is broken a little bit. We try to prevent that from happening and really make each set we perform one amazing ride from the beginning to the end. Creating that kind of atmosphere at shows can be really powerful. Music is obviously a very potent drug for most people, and I’ve had some of my biggest life realizations at a great live show because of the space the artist created in the moment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Our entire journey has been one of resilience. We have been a band for ten years, and our position from the beginning has been one of no artistic compromise. We spent a short time as a cover band and quickly decided that that was not our path, and that we needed to stick to our original music. But in northeast Ohio, that is not an easy call to make. Only a handful of venues are open to an all-original band, and then when that all-original band is playing an instrumental with spoken word samples from the moon landing in 1969, that “handful” drops to like, two. We don’t have a specific story, but we have played countless shows to two or three people, especially in the first half of our career. Anyone who performs knows how hard that can be. But what we have found is that there is an audience out there for our thing! It just sometimes takes a long time to find those people, and you can’t find them unless you just keep going.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I mean, I think everyone is creative. There are non-creatives, ie: those who have decided not to make a creative path their occupation (“creative path,” which we tend to associate only with like art & music & dance etc, even though engineering & programming and all those kinds of things are super creative fields). But one struggle I do think some people have with understanding a more like creative (Bohemian?) lifestyle or journey is whether or not it’s important. Anyone can see that figuring out a new heart surgery that saves millions of people is important, but painting a really great painting is also important. And that’s something that I think all creatives struggle with, this question of purpose. Why pursue something so hard if it’s just like an extra thing? Just fluff? Art & music education in schools has along been the target of budget cuts because they’re viewed as “extra,” “not essential.” It’s hard for many to see how important literature is, how important music is, because we take it for granted. But art is like a catalog of human experience, and without it, even those who think it’s just fluff would be miserable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bwt-music.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/bwtmusic?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bwtmusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@blackwolfthethief2941

Image Credits
Christie Hayes took all of these photographs.