Last week I sat down for a short interview with Alex Brown Church (pictured above), who’s solo project Sea Wolf recently released it’s debut LP Leaves in the River on Dangerbird Records. In it we get the skinny on the band’s origins, the Silverlake scene, his connection with Seattle and his take on the-word-’wolf’-as-a-part-of-the-band-name craze. They’re embarking on a nationwide tour this week which will see them at Chop Suey this Friday, October 5, which is tomorrow. I can’t recommend this show enough. We’ve gone to a few shows and been very impressed.

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Josh (J): I first wanted to talk about your seemingly continuous tour schedule you’ve had for the last few months since SXSW in March and then the release of your first EP it seems like you have been touring nationally quiet a bit. Before opening for Silversun Pickups had you done any national touring as Sea Wolf or had it been purely a local thing?      

Alex Brown Church (ABC): No it was totally local. The first time we left California was for South by Southwest. I guess we just started this year doing national stuff.

J: But Sea Wolf has been a project that’s been banging around for some time now?

ABC: Yeah I started Sea Wolf in 2003. And we only did a couple shows here and there. It was just me, and just I had some friends, whoever was available, play with me every time. Eventually i got sick of, you know… I was kinda looking at getting people together, but really not that so much as everybody had to write their own parts for the songs, so finally I just decided I had to write… I had to write a lot more songs because I didn’t have a whole lot of songs at the beginning… So I just started to write and start recording so I had stuff all ready for people to play when they played with me. That came about in 2004-2005 that I started to record.

J: It looks like your upcoming tour will be your third cross country trek in the last six months. How does the touring lifestyle suit you?

ABC: I don’t know… personally I’m not a huge fan of touring, but just cause I’ve done it enough, it’s not exciting anymore. It’s just a lot of time spent in the van. And you see the same places. But the shows will be fun, I’m excited about the shows. That’s the good part. I’m also excited because it’s Autumn. Being out there on the East Coast and stuff, you know, and the leaves and the weather. I’m excited for that.

J: How many miles have you put on the touring van so far this year?

ABC: (Laughs) Shit. I don’t know actually. I just got it in the beginning of the year. So before SXSW. At least like… I don’t’ know. I wanna say 15000 or maybe 20000 miles already. I don’t know.

J: You mentioned going out on the East Coast and things being beautiful out there. Themes and visions of nature are pervasive in your lyrics. As a person you’re inspired by nature?

ABC: Yes, very much so. I grew up in the country, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada’s until I was eight, and so I had developed a strong appreciation for nature growing up. And even after that when we moved to Berkeley, we would go camping, and do outdoorsy… skiing, camping and traveling.

J: Do any camping while your touring at all or do you guys like to stay comfortable?

ABC: I’ve done it before but we haven’t had a chance to on this last tour. It’s hard and you kinda have to plan for it and so we haven’t planned for it. And other thing with the band doesn’t necessarily have camping stuff, and even though I could totally camp somewhere, not everyone has a tent or a sleeping bag or whatever.

J: You mentioned you had a lot of support from friends in the initial stages of Sea Wolf. And you’re sort of associated with the Ship Collective and I read Brian and John (sic) from Silversun Pickups moonlighted as members of Sea Wolf for a time. How important is having that support group around …

ABC: Brian and Joe, not John.

J: I’m sorry.

ABC: I’d would say it’s really important. I feel like the part the of reason that the bands that are a part of that are successful or are becoming successful… Earlimart, Great Northern is starting to do pretty well, Silversun of course are huge now… I think that having that kind of support network, and just sort of talking about our friends when we’re out there, it has helped us. It’s given people more of a reason to pay attention to other bands that are friends with us. So I would say it’s pretty important.

And especially at the beginning, because those were the guys that were in Sea Wolf and playing at those shows, and I couldn’t ever have done that if I hadn’t known all of those musicians. And now the whole group is people that I’ve met over the course of time. These of course are members that aren’t in other Ship bands because I can’t use members of other Ship bands because their not available all the time. But it was definitely important especially at the beginning.

J: Any cameo appearances from friends on the new record?

ABC: Yeah, there’s no vocal cameo’s you know, but a lot of people are playing on the record. My friend Patrick Park who is one of my best friends. He’s kind of a solo guy. I had a bunch of Irving members play on the record. Tanya Hayden, she’s one of the Hayden sisters. She played cello on a lot of the songs. And Scott McPherson who’s a drummer, who was Elliot Smith’s drummer, played on a bunch of songs. Yeah so there is a lot of people who came from other groups and were friends just from playing in other bands.

J: You’ve talked a bit about the bands that are in that East LA scene. It seems like many of those groups are starting to gain a lot of recognition, and it seems it’s own scene within a scene, an incubator if you will. What do you attribute the thriving nature of the scene to?

ABC: Just the fact that it’s a neighborhood and it feels like a neighborhood. LA is so big and spread out. It’s smaller you know, and it’s a neighborhood, it’s a community. You see these people out at the local bar or the coffee shop or whatever. Your going to go down, and there’s so-and-so from that band and say ‘Hi,’ or you just play with them at Spaceland or something.

There is a sense of a community over in Silver Lake. It centers around Silver Lake cause that’s where the Spaceland and the Echo are. I actually live in Glassell Park which is actually, well, about five minutes away, sort of between Silver Lake and Eagle Rock. But I think that’s probably it. I think the people that move over there have a certain aesthetic, or lean a certain way, you know musically. More of an indie, maybe indie rock sensibility or something. As opposed to the Hollywood more main-stream sound, I think people over there in Silverlake are striving to do something different. So, I think it helps make it stand out too in LA.

J: Does the unnatural nature of LA sort of bother you at times, considering it seems like your inspiration is all about nature?

ABC: Yeah, but you know what? It’s funny, because where I live, the view from my house is the Angeles National Forest and the mountains right there. I live right by the mountains. I live in the east, north east part of Los Angeles, it’s very hilly, and there are hills and basically those mountains there. I think it’s the San Gabriels, I’m not sure what they’re called. So that’s right there, that’s what I’m staring at, these big mountains, and so it’s not that really far away from where I live. And not only that, I can drive like an hour and be there and go skiing a couple of hours away, or be in the desert. Or you know, go up to the high Sierra’s in like four hours and get to see the Sequoia’s. Which are all things I do a lot. I like to go camping and go up there. And sort of… escape. So I would say being in LA actually lends itself to that sort of natural stuff. Especially where I live, the part of the town that I live in, because it kind of surrounds you.

J: Since you’ve been to Seattle a few times in the last few months, do you have you found any favorite Seattle spots that you’ll be visiting again? Any coffee shops or anything like that?

ABC: We’ll, I love, there’s the Lighthouse. I think it’s the Lighthouse Cafe over kinda near Fremont. That place, the coffee there is super good. Phil, Phil Ek, when I was up … I’ve spent a lot of time in Seattle… it’s where I recorded the record. My father is from Seattle and my mom has a couple of uncles that live up there so I spent a lot of time in Seattle as I grew up as a kid and stuff. So the city is very familiar to me but that place was new. Phil, every morning, he picked me up, I stayed with one of my moms friend’s on a houseboat under the Fremont Bridge when I was recording, and Phil would pick me up on the way to the studio every day and we would stop at the Lighthouse and get Americanos, which is just the best thing! Now every time I’m in Seattle I have to go there. (Laughs)

J: That’s what Seattle is all about. Gettin’ the coffee.

ABC: Totally, totally.

J: Sea Wolf as a band name has been around for a while. Aren’t you just pissed that suddenly Wolf became the band name word of the year recently. Clearly you have a sense of humor given your myspace influence sheet.

ABC: Yeah definitely. Especially around two years ago I was pissed because it was even more prevalent then, I almost feel like now it’s sort of old news.

I was definitely pissed then, and I was not pissed-angry at anybody, but I was kinda bummed me out, because I felt like… I knew Sea Wolf was taking a long time developing and so by the time Sea Wolf came out I didn’t want people to say ‘Oh, another wolf band.’ or even worse, ‘a wolf band but two years after all the wolf bands,’ so… I think I started that thing on the myspace page a couple of years ago, I don’t know, when ever I started the myspace thing.

And I actually wasn’t sure whether I should keep the name. But eventually I just decided that ultimately the music should just lead the charge, the name actually is very significant for me and it holds a lot of meaning, and I wasn’t jumping on a bandwagon or anything when I picked the name. So I felt like it would be selling out … not selling out, but weak to change it. I thought ‘Fuck it! I’m going to keep the name. It’s me. It’s the band’ you know. And hopefully after the first EP comes out maybe people will make judgements. But then people will have heard Sea Wolf and from then on out it wouldn’t really matter.

J: We’ll that’s my fifteen minutes. Thanks for talking with me.

ABC: Alright. We’ll thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

J: We really enjoy your record, and maybe we’ll be seeing you next Friday I guess, huh?

ABC: Yeah totally. I’m excited. Are the leaves changing up there yet?

J: Yeah, the leaves have just started changing. Fall fell on us like a ton of bricks last week.

ABC: When I was recording there, which was October 2005, which was the first time I went up to record a fill, it was amazingly beautiful! And I felt like it was totally appropriate for this record. I’m actually in Montreal right now and the leaves are totally changing, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be how it was going to be in Seattle.

J: The weather is still nice and mild, but it definitely feels like fall. 

ABC: Awesome.

J: Well, have a great day.

ABC: Bye.