About Henry Wolfe
In era of dwindling attention spans, it is something of a shock to discover a musician who doesn’t want to shock, who doesn’t want to drive a dagger into the heart of modern music for fifteen megabytes of fame, who simply wants to write beautiful, timeless songs. But that’s precisely what you hear when you listen to Henry Wolfe’s refreshingly tasteful new album Linda Vista. A loose, dressed down affair, it captures the sound of real people in a room, playing together in real time. In making the record, Wolfe and producers Nico Aglietti and Aaron Older (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes) abided by the approach used to make their favorite classic albums: get out of the way and let the songs and performances speak for themselves. The result is an assuredly understated full-length debut. Inspired by the past, and informed by the present, the tunes on Linda Vista have a swing, a swagger and, most of all, a soul.
The making of Linda Vista began back in the winter of 2007, when Wolfe (born Henry Wolfe Gummer) packed his possessions into an old station wagon and drove from New York to Los Angeles. As a going-away present, a friend gave him two records—Paul McCartney’s Ram and Harry Nilsson’s Nilsson Sings Newman—that would become guiding lights in his new journey as a songwriter. In L.A., he settled into a hillside bungalow in Laurel Canyon, down the street from where John Lennon spent the lost weekend. There, surrounded by jasmine and eucalyptus and howling coyotes, Wolfe began writing songs like “Someone Else,” a gentle rocker about life changes, and the pleading, slow-trotting break-up song “Stop the Train,” an early demo of which was featured in the 2009 film Julie & Julia. At once playful and earnest, Wolfe’s music is an intoxicating brew: direct, unadorned language chased with sweet melodies that are sophisticated yet hummable. “If you’re listening on the go, I would suggest a sunset drive in the Santa Monica Mountains,” says Henry. “If you’re listening at home, I would pair this music with a tumbler of single-malt Scotch and an easy chair.”
A perennially laid-back person, it’s no wonder Wolfe was so inspired by the chilled-out L.A. music scene. He’d done most of his growing up on the East Coast, and though his grandfather spent his free time writing hundreds of songs, he is the only musician in his immediate family. Not that they’re lacking for talent. His mother, Meryl Streep, has a beautiful singing voice, and his father, Don Gummer, is a sculptor and a painter. Two of his three sisters, Mamie and Grace Gummer are also actors. A self-taught musician, Wolfe began writing songs compulsively after receiving a guitar for his 14th birthday. High school and college were filled with rock band gigs, and after settling in New York City, Wolfe started and fronted the New York-based indie rock group Bravo Silva. In 2005 the band self-released an eponymous LP, which they’d recorded in the basement of a windowless first floor apartment in Brooklyn. Despite favorable reviews popping up everywhere from taste-making music blogs to The New York Times, Bravo Silva disbanded within a year of the album’s release. “I found myself with the unique opportunity to expand my horizons as a songwriter,” Wolfe recalls. “I no longer had to write songs that fit into a mold. I was free to move, literally and artistically.”
Out West, Wolfe got to work developing his chops as a solo act, mostly by teaching himself jazz standards, which he still does, obsessively. He began playing regularly at a Japanese-run piano lounge downtown, inviting friends to join for boozy late-night jam sessions that ended when the proprietor commandeered the microphone to serenade the crowd. The musical sophistication and lyrical simplicity of those old songs began to affect Wolfe’s own songwriting. “I wanted to write songs that had more in common with the music my grandfather listened to when he was my age. There is something almost quotidian about the language of those songs. They have clear messages that are uncomplicated, easy to understand, and yet really profound. Many of the old standards were written for musicals. They were meant to be sung by other people. It’s about putting yourself in the mind of a character, telling a story.” he says. “At the same time, if the lyrics of the old songs are general on purpose, the melodies and chord progressions are often incredibly specific and elegant. I want to combine that tradition of songwriting with the immediate, visceral energy of rock & roll. Kind of like Sir Paul does.” In this regard, Wolfe’s artistic DNA is handed down from his parents in equal measure. Following in his mother’s footsteps, he writes in character, exploring the comedy and heartbreak of human relationships through song. Like his father he is a builder, sculpting graceful, lyrical structures to withstand the test of time.
Wolfe’s first solo release, The Blue House EP was a collection of modern, guitar-driven folk songs co-produced and recorded by Malachi DeLorenzo (Langhorne Slim). In 2009 Wolfe also recorded an album of songs penned by Portland-based writer and satirist Peter Field. Entitled Wolfe Sings Field, the album’s distinctive instrumentation features arrangements for harp and string quartet by the Los Angeles composer Oliwa. Paired with Wolfe’s hushed renditions of Field’s darkly comic story-songs, the resulting genre might best be described as “gothic-baroque-folk.” Meanwhile, it took him three years to make Linda Vista, a pace that, back East, may have been too slow, but in L.A., seemed just right, especially given the task at hand. “I’m trying to make indelible pop music, or my version of it,” Wolfe says. “While many contemporary groups form their identity around a sound, for better or worse, I hang my hat on my songs.”
