We'reWolves
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We'reWolves

Fort Worth, Texas, United States | SELF

Fort Worth, Texas, United States | SELF
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"Show Review- We'reWolves @ The Grotto- June 2012"


There have been many bands and adjectives since the last time I made my way over to The Grotto. But a triple bill of We’rewolves, The Phuss and Jefferson Colby presented so much goodness that resistance was futile. Three steps in the door, Forrest and Josh were introducing me to drummer Trey Alfaro, who would later give me a functional pen after mine crapped out. I’d go with “lent,” but I never gave it back.



Anticipation for We’rewolves was amped up further once I saw how excited the boys were to play on the bill with them. With little fanfare, they were unleashed, a lone wolf at their backs. The rock substance oozed, rising up from beneath the earth and floating down loosely from the clouds. Eventually, the entire room was caught in an electric writhing.



The keys spin the rough blues over a shade, giving the bounce more room to run. A touch of Prog-influence nestled underneath snarling Los Angeles guitar riffs, ghosts from the Sunset Strip. They burn hot as the melody diffuses across fuzzed-out effects. Only six months together and they’re already able to generate a foaming intensity with the flip of a switch.



Collin Cashman’s keyboards bear the structural weight such that Rob Hine’s lead counterpunches by bringing a swerving dynamic to the mix. With dreamier loop action, the ensemble drifts out into a psych wasteland, propelled by Riley Knight’s hearty vocals, all of it accompanied by sweetly picked runs.



The rushing build lunges towards a haunted blues tribute, with a sublime gospel feel. The organs generate an elegant texture with the calloused vocals burning from underneath. Echoes of House of the Rising Sun rings down an enchanted hallway of my memory.



With little effort, the jam is pushed back towards a spaced out mode, organs still driving the ship. With each minute of each song, one can hear the group evolving more and more into its own atmosphere. Stirring the pot, the wolves explode from a classic rock launching pad onto an alien landscape. The tune, a voodoo mudslapper, creeps up under the floorboards. Grappling with a flesh-and-bone inertia, the drive gives way to a menacing toe tapping.



Closing out the set, they rolled out a lovely song; evolved from a hypnotic opening reminiscent of something David Gavurin (The Sundays) might play. The progression grows heavier as the band leans in alongside Knight’s wild vocal. It was a good first taste for me from a band that will only continue to build on their strong feel for mood.



The Phuss and Jefferson Colby brought to the stage the potency I have come to expect from them both. The cadre of young women at Fleming’s feet kept giving me the stink eye for singing along, so I moved over to Forrest’s side of the stage. On the low end I noticed a major Phuss secret, the amp head for the bass has a knob for “BALLS.” The Jefferson Colby set opened with a neck-breaking improvisation that set the tone for the free-for-all style I’m learning to expect. A great set of bands start to finish, I drove home with my ears ringing and my windows open.
- Fort Live- Lyle Brooks


"Show Review- We'reWolves @ The Grotto- June 2012"


There have been many bands and adjectives since the last time I made my way over to The Grotto. But a triple bill of We’rewolves, The Phuss and Jefferson Colby presented so much goodness that resistance was futile. Three steps in the door, Forrest and Josh were introducing me to drummer Trey Alfaro, who would later give me a functional pen after mine crapped out. I’d go with “lent,” but I never gave it back.



Anticipation for We’rewolves was amped up further once I saw how excited the boys were to play on the bill with them. With little fanfare, they were unleashed, a lone wolf at their backs. The rock substance oozed, rising up from beneath the earth and floating down loosely from the clouds. Eventually, the entire room was caught in an electric writhing.



The keys spin the rough blues over a shade, giving the bounce more room to run. A touch of Prog-influence nestled underneath snarling Los Angeles guitar riffs, ghosts from the Sunset Strip. They burn hot as the melody diffuses across fuzzed-out effects. Only six months together and they’re already able to generate a foaming intensity with the flip of a switch.



Collin Cashman’s keyboards bear the structural weight such that Rob Hine’s lead counterpunches by bringing a swerving dynamic to the mix. With dreamier loop action, the ensemble drifts out into a psych wasteland, propelled by Riley Knight’s hearty vocals, all of it accompanied by sweetly picked runs.



The rushing build lunges towards a haunted blues tribute, with a sublime gospel feel. The organs generate an elegant texture with the calloused vocals burning from underneath. Echoes of House of the Rising Sun rings down an enchanted hallway of my memory.



With little effort, the jam is pushed back towards a spaced out mode, organs still driving the ship. With each minute of each song, one can hear the group evolving more and more into its own atmosphere. Stirring the pot, the wolves explode from a classic rock launching pad onto an alien landscape. The tune, a voodoo mudslapper, creeps up under the floorboards. Grappling with a flesh-and-bone inertia, the drive gives way to a menacing toe tapping.



Closing out the set, they rolled out a lovely song; evolved from a hypnotic opening reminiscent of something David Gavurin (The Sundays) might play. The progression grows heavier as the band leans in alongside Knight’s wild vocal. It was a good first taste for me from a band that will only continue to build on their strong feel for mood.



The Phuss and Jefferson Colby brought to the stage the potency I have come to expect from them both. The cadre of young women at Fleming’s feet kept giving me the stink eye for singing along, so I moved over to Forrest’s side of the stage. On the low end I noticed a major Phuss secret, the amp head for the bass has a knob for “BALLS.” The Jefferson Colby set opened with a neck-breaking improvisation that set the tone for the free-for-all style I’m learning to expect. A great set of bands start to finish, I drove home with my ears ringing and my windows open.
- Fort Live- Lyle Brooks


""Lycan Licks- We’rewolves mark their turf, one anthem at a time.""

A little over a year ago, in the thick of one of the hottest Texas summers in recent memory, three dudes squeezed into a spartan concrete cube south of I-20 and unleashed an arena-ready style of blues rock to an audience of exactly zero.

The sign outside the self-storage business promised climate control. But inside was maybe only a 20-degree respite from the 110-degree oven outside. Texas Christian University students Austin Adams (drums), Rob Hine (guitar), and Riley Knight (guitar/vocals) thumped and shook the choked rehearsal space. The players were caked in sweat but excited just enough to forget the oppressive heat.

Now all that sweat appears to be paying off.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve figured out our chemistry or anything,” said bassist Colin Cashman, who joined not long after that “show.” “We’re just now getting it figured out, how we write and everything.”

Hine glanced at his bandmates. “But does that ever really happen?” he asked.

Knight shrugged. “It’s whatever feels good to us,” he answered.

These days you might catch We’rewolves in the Fort only about once or twice a month, an intentionally thin live schedule designed to prevent overexposure. The cover songs from the shed days are gone. Now it’s just originals, swampy throwback stuff, the material the guys wrote once they finally coalesced as a foursome late last summer, not long after the storage-shed arrangement.

The We’rewolves look back now on their early setup with exactly the kind of fascination you would expect from a group of do-it-yourselfers. They talk about the 120-foot extension cord connecting their amps to the outlet at the end of the hallway.

Named Blank Generation at the time, the group rattled the cinder blocks until residents in a nearby apartment complex picked up their phones and grumbled to the authorities.

Soon one of the cops peering in chuckled at the unusual setup and explained he was in a band himself. The officer and the then-students talked equipment. They bantered music. They exchanged notes about jamming and getting the most out of the $130 per month they had to spend on a rehearsal space.

The cops left nothing but a warning and grins in their wake, but over time the noise complaints continued to pour in, eventually reaching the corporate offices of the otherwise accommodating storage facility, forcing Adams, Knight, and Hine to find another place to play. They landed in another cramped space in a rough West Arlington neighborhood, just in time for the addition of Cashman, a Tarrant County College student who hails from just about every municipality this side of the airport. Today they play in Cashman’s basement at least once a week, when they’re not making one of their elusive appearances at a local venue.

The band soon agreed on a name, one that, believe it or not, came to Adams in a dream. Right after the name came the original tunes, as the impromptu jam sessions became frequent meet-ups, which evolved into full-blown rehearsals. The sound began to take shape early this spring, and the band debuted its deceptively mature sound at the West Berry Block Party in March.

“Playing with guys from such a diverse background, you have to try to push your boundaries a little bit and do new things,” Hine said. “That’s part of what contributes to our sound, in a way. We are all forced out of our comfort zone from what we like and what we grew up on.”

Stylistically, We’rewolves come from four points on a familiar spectrum: blues, punk, metal, and classic rock. The result sounds something like Toadies grunge overlapped with Knight’s Layne Stanley-esque vocals seated in swampy melodies and indie hooks. In short, it all smacks so can’t-put-a-finger-on-it familiar.

“People ask us who we sound like, and it’s a hard question,” Adams said. “That’s like asking, ‘Who’s your favorite kid?’ ”

And We’rewolves’ songwriting method is uncompromisingly collaborative. Whereas some bands have one or two members who hatch the basic outline of a song before fleshing it out with the rest of the group, We’rewolves start with sideways glances and a few warm-up covers — “foreplay,” as Cashman calls it — before delving into the admittedly messy process of sculpting the noise into something that over time and with innumerable tweaks, finally takes the shape of a song you might find on the band’s nine-song debut EP. Which is still a work in progress, the guys say. They put it together just to get their name out.

“We don’t force a song,” Cashman said. “It just happens.”

We’rewolves’ plan is to keep playing live –– but not too much. Knight said, “I want people to think, ‘This is an event. This is We’rewolves. This is a show, and I want to go see this.’ It’s more like a rarity.”

The ultimate plan is to turn the EP, or at least several of its songs, into a more polished and marketable official debut showcasing the breadth of their sound.

But there doesn’t seem to be any sense of impending deadlines. We’ - Fort Worth Weekly- Matthew McGowan


Discography


"We'rewolves" May 2013

Recorded & produced by Jordan Richardson (Ben Harper, Epic Ruins, Son of Stan) & Steve Steward (Oil Boom, Epic Ruins, Vorvon) at Electric Barryland, mastered by Pete Lyman (The Mars Volta, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Matt & Kim) at Infrasonic Studios released May 2013

"We'rewolves 2012 Demo" July 2012

Recorded live, mixed, & mastered @ Red Star Recording Studios in July 2012 w/Nathan Parnell.

All songs written, performed, & recorded by We'rewolves.

Photos

Bio

Werewolves name emerged from a cloud of dreams. The quintet has forged a live show drawn from organic creativity. A remarkable transformation has evolved between drummer Austin Adams, guitarist/keyboardist (former Hanna Barbarian) Colin Cashman, the blues guitar of Rob Hine, and the lupine carnality of singer Riley Knight all being solidified by the addition of their newest member, Joe Cannariato on the bass guitar. They are a group of Texas boys who found themselves in the Petri dish of Fort Worths rock scene. Sharing stages across town with local luminaries such as Oil Boom, theyve also been called on to support road shows like the UKs Little Barrie.

Their self-titled debut swirls with lush production, wrapping blues logic in spacious clouds. Co-producer Steve Steward anchors bass amidst the wolves, conspiring with WizardVizion partner Jordan Richardson to design a pulsing sonic palette. Textures of Garage and Psych coat the rhythmic tensions Cashman and Steward derive, imbuing the energy with wild brilliance.

During the bands tenure, they have worked with splendid talent, including Jeff Dazey, the otherworldly Panther City saxophonist who adds a fried 70s street sound to songs like epic rocker Find My Way. Weaving a tapestry that integrates dreamy pop vibes with inky rhythms, the hard rock drive is folded into spaced-out diffusion.

The album indicates the earliest incantations of a longer saga, an auspicious debut from a band that joined Blackboxs roster of talent in August 2012. Their presence is being seen in the media, as they were nominated for the Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards for Rock Album of the Year and Best New Artist.

Band Members