I really hope you were able to make WHY?’s show at Fountain Square on Friday. The concert, part of Fountain Square’s Indie Summer Series, was totally free of charge. On top of that, WHY? killed. And in a way, it was a homecoming show. WHY? emcee Yoni Wolf grew up in the Cincinnati area. It was here that he first started making hip-hop beats using ancient equipment he discovered in his parents’ Messianic Jewish synagogue. After performing with a number of abstract hip-hop artists, including the seminal cLOUDDEAD, Wolf formed WHY? after moving to Oakland, California, eventually adding his brother Josiah Wolf and keyboardist Doug McDiarmid to the lineup, as well as a rotating cast of touring musicians.

Hours before the show on Friday, I had the chance to talk with Yoni Wolf about WHY’s music and future plans. Sitting next to him in the lobby of the Westin Hotel, across the street from Fountain Square, I immediately understood how Wolf is able to rally so many artists and musicians around his work both in and out of WHY? He exudes passion and exuberance for the creative process; his eyes light up whenever he talks about writing and recording music. With all his accomplishments as a musician and emcee, as well as his refreshingly positive attitude, Wolf is a great example of the kind of artist Cincinnati can produce.

Each Note Secure: I understand that this was your first date of the tour. I also hear that you grew up in the Cincinnati area. Is it still special coming back here to play?

Yoni Wolf: Yeah! We still have friends and family here.

ENS: Is WHY? still based out of Oakland?

YW: No, the band is scattered at this point – one of them is in Seattle, my brother lives in Xenia, two live in Minneapolis, one lives in Denton Texas, and I just float around. I’m mostly in Oakland, but for the month of May I lived in Yellow Springs, for the month of December I was in Florida […]I don’t have a house.

ENS: Your last album, Eskimo Snow was the most “indie rock” and least “hip-hop” sounding thing WHY? has done so far. What led to that? Do you think things will keep going in that direction?

YW: You get different ideas for how you want different records to sound. Every time you make a record, you have a vision for it, and the vision always changes. But you work towards the sound you have in your head. I would not say that’s an indication of direction necessarily. I would just say that it’s what the album sounds like. Each album sounds unique, and we try not to get stagnant and stay in one rut or sound. I expect the next one to sound different than any of the other ones.

ENS: Many of your lyrics sound very personal. Do you get a lot of fan response based on people identifying with the themes of your songs?

YW: I do. I get a lot of emails and Facebook messages saying, “Thanks, you really got me through some hard times.” It’s great.

ENS: A lot of your songs have strong sexual elements, especially songs like “Good Friday,” and “The Hollows,” and on your last record, “January Twenty-Something.” What purpose does sex serve in your songwriting? Is it there for shock? Is it there for honesty?

YW: I definitely try to be honest about things. I think that things that you feel shame about, especially, are things that are good to talk about. Because what is that shame for? Why is that shame there? The best way to squash it is to just put it out into the air.

ENS: Do you think your Messianic Jewish upbringing had any sway on what you would eventually put out with WHY?

YW: I never really thought about sending a message with my music or having a statement or anything like that…I do think that the way I grew up affected everything about me. Growing up Messianic Jewish definitely affected my sexual behavior and shame about that stuff. Not that I would be necessarily healthy in that area if I hadn’t grown up that way – I don’t know.

ENS: WHY?’s sound has changed a lot from the bedroom-recorded-sounding Oaklandazulasylum to the very lush-sounding Eskimo Snow. However, your records all seem in keeping with a similar sonic aesthetic of off-kilter beats and distinctive instrumentation. Have you been after the same sound throughout WHY’s career?

YW: I guess it changes for every record, but my brother just brought this up actually. I was just talking about the next record – when I think about it I get excited – we were on a plane a few days ago and I said, “Oh! I want it to sound like this and this and this…” and he’s like, “Yeah, that’s what you said before the last record, and the one before that, and the one before that!”

So I guess I always want the same thing, it’s just never achieved. It’s approximately achieved in different ways every time. I keep thinking I’ll get it, but it hasn’t happened yet. Certain songs on Alopecia got the closest to the sound I had in my head… like “By Torpedo or Crohn’s” or “Good Friday,” in a way, or the beginning of “Song of the Sad Assassin.” We’ll see what happens on the next record.

ENS: A lot of you beats sound unconventially-created. For example, the driving beat on “The Vowels, Pt.2” off Alopecia sounds like a metal chain. Is this a sound you constructed by chopping up and arranging samples, or do you go find things to make these sounds with?

YW: Well, there’s no samples in Eskimo Snow at all… and the only real sample on Alopecia is those weird guy talking samples… that’s actually Will Oldham from a movie. But that chain sound you hear is actually a huge motorcycle chain that my brother was playing live.

ENS: So you were actually micing the sound of a chain hitting the ground?

YW: Yeah, we just recorded the sound of him dropping that chain on a concrete floor in time. We didn’t chop it up or anything.

When we first started working on demos for [Alopecia], I had all kinds of ideas like, “Instead of using this snare sound let’s use the sound of a chain.” And we all wanted to do it, but you get into the studio and there are tons of drums. You get … I don’t want to say lazy, but you fall into patterns. You have very nice instruments … like you have a very nice snare that sounds amazing, so you say “let’s just use that.” Whereas, for the chain, we actually had to go to a warehouse and ask these guys who work on motorcycles if they could pull a chain off.

ENS: I feel like I hear snippets of your song and beats around different places. For example, I’ve heard “This American Life” on NPR use pieces of you music multiple times. How does all this happen?

YW: I actually hooked that up! I’m a huge fan. I got a fan email from this lady. She didn’t say anything about who she was or how she got my email, I think she might have gotten it from a friend of mine, but then at the end she wrote her name and then underneath it, “Music Production Coordinator, This American Life.”

I shit my pants! I wrote her back immediately and was like, “Are you who this says you are?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I said, “I’m sending you some shit, you don’t have pay us anything, just do whatever you want with it!” She sent me back a glossy 5×7 signed by Ira Glass [laughs].

Those who didn’t get a chance to see WHY? at Fountain Square will have a chance to catch them at this year’s Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, which runs July 16th through the 18th.

-interview by John Crowell @terriblesounds