An Interview With
wreath of hogs frontman,
andrew rolfsen

Wreath of Hogs is four parts talent fronted by a visionary poet named Andrew Rolfsen. A band that is very much in love with the Chicago scene, Wreath of Hogs time in front of music-goers might be limited, but that hasn’t stopped them from being creative, putting out an EP (They’re Not Paintings, May 2019) and full-length (Green House, Green Couch, Sep 2020). We had a chance to talk with frontman, Andrew Rolfsen and pick his brain about the band, COVID, and art as he sees it.

We love the Chicago music scene. Tell us about how Wreath of Hogs started?

Andrew: And we love the Chicago music scene, too! I had very little interaction with it before this band. So when we started it felt like going to a new school where everyone already knew each other and laughed and ran circles while we stayed planted at the door.

But the invites came quickly and we are very thankful for that. I tell the band origin story a few different ways. One is the morning I sat at some nameless coffee shop in Kansas City right before moving back to Chicago, etching what I wanted to accomplish here into my mind. I knew I had to start this band. Another is when I met Matthew Walter, he was the first person I jammed the earliest ideas with in friend’s basements, that was the winter of 2017. Think of the band as embryonic at that point; unaware but hungry as hell and unseen. And since then we went through a few different lineups until June of 2019 when CJ [Weber] and I reconnected.

That’s when things really started to fall into place and for the first time I felt confident in the band’s future. He and I played in a post-hardcore band years before. We speak to each other musically so well, I knew he would understand what I envisioned for Wreath of Hogs. So CJ and I wrote Green House, Green Couch over that year, recorded it and then found Jeehye [Ham] and Patrick [Lawlor]. So really another way to tell the origin is to start the day Jeehye came to her first practice. Our identity seems to bend every now and again. To me, we’re still starting.

With your EP and first full length now out, what new material has the band been working on? 

Writing after those two releases is completely new territory that I grapple with every day. With the first album I had years of ideas collected in my joint sockets that just needed cracked. They all came rushing out. It didn’t feel for a second like there was a decision to be made. This was the feeling, this was what I needed to say, this was how I was going to say it and I needed to say it now or I wouldn’t be able to move forward.

So with the loosening of those aches, along with new bandmates, the writing process for our next album is something we’re all learning together as we go. And we’re having to do it without live performances which is where you really come to understand your sound and each other. Our first few rehearsals after tracking the EP were time dedicated to experimentation [and] repetitive jamming of an idea. Play for an hour, come out of it and say, “Okay CJ I liked when you did this, Jeehye this note works well here, Andrew you’re singing out of tune,” and so on.

What we all naturally settled into though for this winter and the remainder of a quarantine is to pass demos back and forth online then come together for secluded weekend rehearsals out in the hills. Work out the dynamics in lengthy sessions opposed to rehearsing twice a week. I’ve always relied on those long jam sessions to help me understand what a song wants to be but I’m learning to love this slow walk again. 

What I’m most excited about for our new stuff though is using more electronic percussion, paying more attention to arrangements and instrumentation, Patrick introducing some synthesizer and making the sound more rhythmic and open, less guitar-driven. Along with my ‘90s [and] ‘00s rock influences, I’ve always really loved acts like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, [and] the first Radiohead that touched me was Kid A. Hearing “Idioteque” was like being laid out on a table and injected with new red blood cells.

So it’s exciting to continue to develop our voice with those tools. What I love about “Change is Easy”, and what is one of the reasons we rushed to release it so soon after the record, is that it gives a clearer look at where we’re going and what’s in our hearts, really, more than what can be presumed from the record alone. Recording these first two releases was like following a map, then starting with songs like “No National Parks” and “Holograms”, we began to follow the scent of something living, no one knew how they would turn out. So we’re working on impulse and intuition now, open to anything, motivating each other, keeping each other honest and performing at our best.

Let’s talk about venues for a sec. What are the most memorable shows you’ve played around the city? 

We really haven’t had much opportunity to play! The band had a few shows in the summer of 2019, then we went into recording and haven’t seen a stage since. So I’m afraid I don’t have many relevant stories.

But of the few we have played I think the most memorable is a tie between Empty Bottle and Sleeping Village. Getting a show booked at Empty Bottle feels like getting your first chest hair. Everyone you love has been on that stage, the room is absolutely saturated with years of sound and people. It’s just a joy to play there and I’m flattered we were able to so early in our existence.

Then you have Sleeping Village, which was cool because it felt as new as we were. It was a stage that met us halfway, so to speak. This was a show I remember writing about after I got home because I could feel the walls listening back to us. The room was so new, everyone was waking up. Ask me again in two years and I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, this show in Santa Fe was wild, some hawks found their way in through the back door and just sat on our guitar amps it was all-out mystic.”

Like pretty much everyone else during COVID, we have a sourdough starter and are making our own kombucha. What – outside of music – is keeping you busy these days? Any COVID-induced hobbies?

I just poured off some kombucha that smelled ready for bottling this morning, added lemon juice and ginger. Cheers! I have gotten into some new things lately but I don’t think it’s accurate to attribute them to a quarantine. My daily [routine] didn’t really change all that much with the onset of COVID. I’ve always preferred to be alone and stopped going to bars casually years ago.

After the initial wave of nerves and establishing new norms settled, I remember saying to myself, “Okay, now everyone else will learn what it’s like to be an introvert.” Jeehye is from South Korea, so I’m steadily learning Korean so she and I can talk more. Another new interest, and maybe this one is COVID-induced and I just don’t want to admit it, is film. For the first time I’m getting into movies. My film knowledge is really slim. For 15 years it was all music and poetry, [and] some painters.

So, wading into the ocean of another album I felt drawn to a different art form for relief and ideas. I think all artists, actors, sculptors, dancers, whatever, are all touched by the same muses. It’s individual experience and circumstances that filter the exchange. And film and acting is what inspires me to contribute now. A scene or acting performance will ignite some dormant cell in my middle and I’ll take that excitement to a song.

Talking about movies now, I’m realizing that the last two songs on the album reference movies, The Virgin Suicides and the one Marcus said he was writing. I guess these things get a hold of us before we understand what’s happening.

What can we give Wreath of Hogs fans to look for from you guys in the coming months? 

Wreath of Hogs will likely be hiding out in the hills, slowing writing and getting to know ourselves. We would of course be eager to pack up and get on stage somewhere if that becomes possible soon. Maybe we will find our way into another live stream, who knows. Until then, it’s four people in a room whispering a secret to each other. 

I am however, in the early stages of a project I’m very excited about. I’ll be working on a cover album of Lungfish songs. I’ve sat on the idea for a few years and now feels like the right time, so long as Dischord and the band permits it! And their fans, too for that matter. It’s really a very intimidating task but I feel compelled to do it and hope to do the songs justice.

At my first show under Wreath of Hogs actually, an acoustic set at Sub-T Downstairs before I had any bandmates, I played “Time is a Weapon of Time”. So until we can have shows again, just know we’re out here looking.