HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR026- LIKE WOLVES, s/t LP

Like Wolves were a Rochester band that were literally the next wave of kids to come up from a very crusty punk scene, and become a group that was still very punk at their heart, but took some cues from some other sources that made their sound something that I was very interested in.

I had met their singer, Ben, a number of times because I was frequently in Rochester for shows (it was only an hour away) and he was a very social person.  I wasn’t so sure if I liked Ben though.  He was this feral-looking dude who spent most shows sans shirt and getting incredibly rowdy like ALL the time.  His band Destrux played often and I’m quite sure at least one of my bands shared a bill or two with them, and I think I wasn’t really into them.  Whatever it was I felt like I had some weird, uninformed bias towards him.  There was no good reason.  Later on, I definitely changed my tune because he was an incredibly sweet fellow.

Their drummer, Max, had been the roadie for Achilles since basically the beginning of the band so I had a bit of familiarity with him.  But I wasn’t sure about the rest of the members or what their deal was.

So when Like Wolves began and friends started telling me about them I felt it was worth checking them out.  They played pretty frequently, and often with bands that I really liked.  I could tell immediately that they took a lot of cues from the early 2000’s Louisville scene- Coliseum, and especially Lords- which sort of made sense because a lot of Hex Records bands in the region took cues from those groups as well and those bands played around here a lot.  It was natural that sound rubbed off on younger bands in the area.  But early on I felt as if Like Wolves didn’t have a set direction and things sounded a little too messy for my ears.  I couldn’t quite grasp what they were going for, even though I knew where the influences were coming from.  They definitely had a shit ton of energy, which was good, but I couldn’t pick up what they were laying down.  Still, they formed friendships with Achilles and played together.  They also formed a kinship with Oak and Bone, whom I had released a record for and was preparing to do a full length for as well and they became brother bands, in a sense.  Soul Control took Like Wolves under their wing too, and took them all over the country on tour.  The Like Wolves guys hit me up about putting out a record for them, but I was hesitant.  I knew they worked hard, and they were a great live group.  But the music was still not quite connecting with me. 

By this point the band had a couple seven inches out and were beginning to come into their own.  Not long after Like Wolves did a split with Oak and Bone on a local label, which I helped put some artwork together for (their guitarist Adam handling the bulk of it) and it was those couple songs they had on there where it finally clicked with me.  They were incredibly strong and saw the band going in a more streamlined direction that made way more sense to me.  They asked again about releasing a record with me and I agreed at that point.

That Winter Like Wolves recorded their self-titled full length, their only LP, at Moresound in Syracuse with local sound guru Jocko.  To go with some of their Lords-esque Louisville-tinged punk/hardcore they added a bunch of Hot Snakes-type garage-y riffs and a dash of At the Drive-In styled post-hardcore.  It worked out really great and I felt the band came out of there with an excellent-sounding, well-rounded, solid album.  I was happy to put it out and could see the band really doing well off of the record.

They had some big plans of their own- to once again hit the road and tour the country.  However, not too long after the record came out some members of the band seemed to have had a change of heart and didn’t want to pursue the band as strongly as others.  They played around here and there on the record, but then sort of fizzled out, and that was essentially the end of Like Wolves.  A few years passed and they ended up playing shows every now and again.  In the meantime, most of them continue to play in the band Coming Down, which has a somewhat similar feel.  To get the whole story on the band, and the making of their self-titled record, I caught up with guitarist and all around great guy Phil Speed (that’s his real name) to discuss all things Like Wolves.

Talk a bit about growing up in the Rochester scene, how you got into punk, and what that time was like for you.

Oh man.  Well, I pretty much got into punk music because of Ben, the singer of Like Wolves.  I’ve known Ben, and his brother, since I was in kindergarten.  I hung out with him when I was younger, we lost touch for a little bit, and then when I started high school I caught back up with him and we were in the high school radio station together and he just showed me all these bands.  I was into heavy metal, like the big four metal bands, and I sort of stuck with that.  But he showed me stuff like NOFX, and Rancid, and Bad Religion, and all of that.  It kind of took off from there.  That was my intro to that.  My first band was with Ben and Jon Garwood, who was in Like Wolves originally.  That was my first band called The Hooligans.

(laughs) I can’t say I ever remember hearing about that one.

We actually played a show with xWitnessx one time, before any of us knew Rory (Van Grol, singer for xWitnessx, as well as Achilles, Soul Control, How We Are, and Coming Down).  We didn’t like each other.  We were a bunch of little assholes and wanted to fuck around.

So you were, in essence, hooligans.

Yeah, literally, little hooligans who didn’t drink, didn’t do anything bad, except probably vandalize things. (laughs)

How did Like Wolves form?

So Adam, the other guitar player of Like Wolves, and Jon (Garwood) were both in Destrux with Ben.  And when that band fizzled out me, Adam, and Jon Garwood, and the drummer of Destrux started a band called Whom They Destroy.  And that had the singer of Rational Animals in it.  We played around for about a year.  And then that fizzled out.  So then me, Adam, and Jon were like, ‘we don’t want to stop doing this, we want to keep playing together’.  So that’s when we found Max (Quatrocci, drummer), who was referred to us by Rory.  He was like, ‘I know a drummer, you should meet up with him’.  So we just jammed with him a couple times and it worked out.  We actually tried out singers too, which I had never done in another band.  We tried out this guy that Max knew, and then we tried out this guy Derek, and then we just thought that we ought to try out Ben, and that was it.  He was the guy. 

I’m also trying to think of how long Jon stayed in the band before we got Trevor (Amesmith, bassist on the LP).  I think it was two years.

Jon was on those first two seven inches.

Yeah, you’re right.  The split with Oak and Bone I believe Jon played on it, but Trevor’s name is on it.  We still make fun of Jon for that.

Ben was always a pretty wild frontman.  What’s one of the best Ben Strux stories you can remember?

The best one that I think anyone that knows him would agree is the best one was one time when Destrux played a show at X-Dreams Skate Park.  There was a section of the skate park that didn’t have a ceiling, not like the part where the shows were at.  So he climbed into that, and climbed through the scaffolding, and came through the ceiling where the show was, completely naked, as the band was starting (laughs).  He scared the shit out of everybody there, the ceiling tiles just falling down all over, and he just came right there.  That’s kind of him in a nutshell anyway, just surprising everyone.  He used to get naked a lot.  Not anymore.  He retired that.

That was feral Ben.  He dialed it back just a bit when Like Wolves started.  He got a haircut and started wearing a shirt.

He did.  There was a while where he didn’t like talking about naked Destrux Ben.  He’s over it now.  He will talk about it now.

But I think having him was essential.

Oh, he was essential in so many ways.  The people he knew, the networking, and dealing with the dumb stuff.  He and I were kind of the business-y guys in the band.  Adam was the creative side and helped with getting tours booked.  Everyone played their little part.

What was the early intent of the band, your influences, and who did the majority of the songwriting at the beginning?

I know that when we started jamming with Max we pretty much wanted to sound like Coliseum.  I wanted to basically just take “Goddamage” and cover it.  I wanted to play that kind of music every second.  I know Adam was extremely influenced by Black Cross, Hot Snakes, and Drive Like Jehu.  And Adam is the person who kind of turned me on to those bands.  Those are some of my favorite bands now.  So we always wanted to take bands that we were playing with, like Polar Bear Club and Election Day, and what they were doing, but being a little more edgy.  A little weirder.  But Adam was mostly the creative force with all of that.  He would come to practice with the riffs and we kind of threw it together from there.  Garwood always had good ideas, and Max kind of kept us within the  hardcore realm.  If we had a different drummer than Max I think we would have been a totally different band, and not in a good way.

The lineup changed a bit from the beginning of the band, up until the release of the LP.  Take me through that and how that affected the sound of the group.

Jon moved to Baltimore and then we thought about it and Trevor was really the only option at the time.  But he was the best option.  Besides Max we had all known each other for so long.  Trevor and I grew up on the same street.  And we were right down the street from Ben.  So we sort of wanted to keep that vibe going- that super good friends vibe, that is.

As far as the sound of the band, I think when Trevor joined up we had just put out the split with Oak and Bone.  The two songs from that split we from the recording we did for “Paths”, our second seven inch.  So we had just started writing our full length, which took us forever.  We had been playing songs off the LP for almost a year before we recorded any of them.  But Trevor filled in all the space.  He didn’t do anything better, or different, than Jon.  But he kind of just added an element to the band that I didn’t realize.  Like, if I grab a bass and try to play the parts that Trevor played on that record I can’t do it.  I literally have no idea what he played.  But the bass on that record is my favorite part of it.  And Max is so in the pocket on that record too.

It seemed that the biggest bonds you all formed with other bands were with Soul Control and Oak and Bone, and you all played together a lot.  How did that affect you all as a band, and did you learn anything from them?

Oh for sure.  To this day those are some of my favorite shows I’ve played, with both those bands.  I just call them friendship shows.  That’s especially what ended up happening with all those guys from Oak and Bone.  When I think of a band that we got super tight with it’s them.  We didn’t know any of them originally, but we just ended up being on a lot of the same shows together.  So we got to know them that way.  And then I ended up dating a girl from Syracuse, and she was friends with all of them, so I ended up hanging out with those guys a lot.  A lot.  We always had a good time playing with them.  If we ever played out of town we liked to play with them.

When I think of my favorite times with this band I often think of playing with Soul Control and Oak and Bone.

As far as what I learned… I think with the guys in Soul Control they were a little older and I thought those guys were so down to earth.  At the time I was so impressed that they were on Bridge 9 Records and they’re asking us to go on tour with them.  It was a huge deal to me.  I thought that they could have anyone playing with them, or opening for them, and they asked us to do it.  I thought they had great attitudes.  They never took themselves too seriously.  They were just so fun.

Honestly, if I learned anything from them it was to have as much fun as possible.  I mean, I’m pretty good at that, and the rest of the band was pretty good at that, but they just took it to another level.  For sure.

And they toured so hard for awhile.  Do you think you all would have toured as much as you did, or at all, if it weren’t for them?

I think we would have tried.  But I don’t think we would have had as good of a time.  The first couple tours we did were sort of self-booked.  And then the one we did with Soul Control out to Seattle for Rain Fest was pretty much all them.  And those shows were mostly pretty amazing.  They were the reason we got to play Rain Fest.   But yeah, I think we would still have toured, but it probably wouldn’t have been as ‘successful’ had we not gone with them.

When it came time to record the album you had changed your sound a bit and decided to go with Moresound to record in.  What was going on with the band at that time and how did you all come to some of those decisions for the direction of the band?

It was definitely very natural in the way that we took the new songs.  There’s four of them that we wrote in about a month and a half, and those are the last songs we wrote before recording.  But if I were to take the order of the songs on the LP and find the heaviest song, that would have probably been the first song we wrote for the record, and then “Obsolete Vernacular” would have been the last one we wrote for the LP.  It was a lot slower, and rhythmic, and it felt right.  Again, that was mostly Adam taking the reins on things.  I tend to write things very simple and straightforward, but Adam likes to take things in a little more math-y direction.

I think we spent four days recording, which is the most time I’ve ever spent recording.  I thought you were insanely generous with how much time we had.  Usually I’m like, ‘alright, get in, get out, record your six songs and get out of here!’  I’ve never been in a situation like that, musically, where I could go in and perfect things and add parts here and there.

Recording the LP over at Moresound Studio

I also think Jocko is very generous with his time as well.

Oh yeah.  And he was stoked on it!  He’d never heard us, he was really enjoying it.  And I remember, after the record was made, we played a show with Bane or something, and he came to see us.  It was probably the only time he ever saw us and he was really excited about it.  It was cool that he actually made it out and saw us.

After the record came out you all had some big plans for touring.  What happened between the record coming out and then the band pretty much stopping that changed things?

It was a lot of different factors.  Adam was thinking about going to school in New York and he was feeling creatively a bit stuck.  He kind of wanted to do his own thing, like make music on his own.  But the biggest thing, and it’s obviously not his fault, but Max had a heart issue.  He got strep throat and it somehow went into his heart!  He couldn’t play drums for something like 4 months.  He didn’t really want anyone knowing, and he didn’t want us feeling like we were blaming him in any way.  So he was in the hospital for a few weeks and when he got out he couldn’t touch a drum set, he couldn’t work, he couldn’t do anything physical, and it just happened at the worst possible time.  It just hit the brakes so hard and everyone was like, ‘uh-oh’.  We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to make this work.  And by the time he was able to play again it just felt too late.  Ben was kind of done.  Adam seemed like he was disinterested.  I remember that time and I thought we were going to tour.  We had a tour booked and we had to cancel it because of what happened to Max.  We had a weekend booked with Verse that we were going to do and that’s when I began to think that people were going to start noticing us.

If things had gone differently, and I don’t know how I would characterize ‘successful’, but I think if we had done what we planned we would have hit that next sort of level, whatever that might have been.

I remember that time playing a show with Black God, in an apartment, in downtown Rochester-

I remember that show too and they were starting a tour, and Rochester was the first date.  So they drove like 12 hours to play an apartment show to like 20 people and then had to turn around and go back to Louisville due to a family emergency.

Yeah!  And we had planned to hang with them all afterwards and then they just had to split.  And also at that show I recall we weren’t getting along all that well and then the thing with Black God happened, and it was just sort of a bummer feeling all around.  And then like a week later I remember people being like, ‘I’m not sure if this is going to work anymore.’  And that was a big bummer.  I was so proud of that record, and so happy with it, and was like ‘how could we not tour on this?’

Looking back at the LP is there anything you dislike about it, or would change?

No.  If anything, I might change a bit about the way it was recorded. I wanted to capture a little more the way we played live.  But really, other than that, nothing.  It was really the perfect scenario for all of us at the time.  It captured that moment in time of all of us doing this record.  We worked so hard on it.  It’s one of the best memories for me, musically.  We were practicing 3-4 times a week, writing songs, it was so fun.

Yet strangely enough, a couple years go by you guys played a few shows, very randomly too.

I think when we split up I thought that it was stupid and said we needed to play a show or something.  So we played a ‘last show’ and that was a blast.  It was like a huge party.

And then, about a year or two later, I think Soul Control was coming through, and they were worried about people not showing up, so they asked us to play.  So we did again.

And then, I think it was last summer, a band from around here put their record out and they jokingly asked us to play, and I said, ‘I don’t see why not, I’ll ask the guys’.

Sure, everyone still gets along right?

Oh yeah.  It’s four of my best friends, as well as Garwood.  It’s kind of like six members of Like Wolves.  And we were jamming, when we were getting ready for that show last year, and we wrote a song.  I wanted to pitch the idea of writing a few more songs and do things the way that Achilles does it- if we have time we’ll do it.  That was how it was originally.  Time’s scarce, especially these days.  But I’m always down, and everyone knows that.  I think everyone is down.  It’s just got to be the right time for everyone.

And most of you all still play together in Coming Down.  So, in a way, it’s sort of Like Wolves- the continuation.

Yeah, but it’s all Jon Garwood writing those songs.  He has this really great sense of melody, but still keeping it heavy and intense.  It’s funny to watch him write riffs.  I’ve known him for so long and I’m like, ‘where do you come up with this stuff?’  Rob Antonucci (Achilles) said it sounds like Rush.  He said, ‘you don’t sound like Rush, but your timing is like Rush’.  That’s an interesting cool compliment I’ve never heard before.

I don’t hear it, but if Rob is saying this then, ya know…

I think he may have been talking about one specific song.  But we all love playing and Coming Down is basically what it is to be 30-something and in a band.  Rory has kids.  Max just got married, I’m getting married soon.  We’re, sadly, sort of adults now.  We do it when we have time.  If anything, I like to be able to say that I’ve been playing with Max for over 10 years and with Jon for over 15 years.  I wouldn’t have it any other way, I’m just glad I can still play with them.

What’s the best thing about Like Wolves and what is the worst?

I think the best thing about Like Wolves, for me, was that we made every possible moment that we could be fun.  Any show we played, any practice, for 95% of the time we made asses out of ourselves and it was always about fun.  That was the number one thing to do.  So we definitely succeeded in that.

The worst thing was probably going back to what I said about timing.  If timing was different, if we had maybe decided to take a break and stop the gears rolling, just took six months off and then re-grouped I feel like we very well could still be a band right now and doing things.  We’ve all talked about that and have all agreed that we just should have sucked it up and stopped arguing about stupid shit and took a break.  But you don’t see a lot of bands do that.  They either just keep going and kill their longevity and they break up anyways, or they just break up sooner.

I tend to look up to Achilles and how they’re doing it.  It’s awesome.  They’re all still friends and they make it work when they can, and I wish we had gotten to do that.  But as long as I still get to see my friends I don’t really care in the long run.

And there you have it.  Like every one of these things here's your chance to get this record on the cheap.  It only came out on LP and digital.  So go HERE if you want that LP for $5, or the digital version for $4.  One week only.

As for the members current whereabouts- Phil, Jon, and Max play together in Coming Down, who will be releasing material through Hex later this year.  Trevor has been playing in Green Dreams for a few years.  Adam plays in a new band called Pomelo, and Ben has been at it with his hip-hop project Benny Beyond for quite awhile now.  About once in a blue moon they all get together and  play as Like Wolves for the fuck of it.