by Sydney Salk (@sydney.salk)
When he’s not making music, Harry Wohl works at a bookstore. He arrives at this interview with a big bag of books to sell on the streets of Upper Manhattan, mostly classics, with a few oddball picks here and there. When asked what sort of literature he gravitates to, Wohl says, “I’m all about something if it grabs you. I have trouble just like everybody else, like, actually sticking to something.” This also extends to his creative practice, but in this instance, it only makes his output stronger.
The Uranium Club guitarist/vocalist has never stayed in one place for too long, physically or creatively. For as long as his oddball punk outfit has had its cult following, he’s also been making work as Harry Sings!, a solo project of shimmering folky experimentalism. Initially distributed through the medium of home-recordings on YouTube, Harry Sings! saw its first physical release with The Schoolhaus Recordings in 2024.
Now, as the inaugural release from Philadelphia label Blushing Grinning, Wohl has gathered songs from his stay at a Woodstock artists colony in 2023 on Christie's Toybox, named after an Oklahoma sex shop.
What makes Christie's Toybox different than your last solo album?
Harry Wohl: I think the first thing that comes to mind is it's all me. In the past, I've made stuff mainly by myself and then with a few collaborators. But this album, besides two really small things and some of the final editing stuff, was just me.
Since it’s all you, how many different instruments are you playing, and how did you learn them all?
Harry Wohl: Guitar, drums, bass, piano, vocals, synthesizer, and then kind of an audio collage. I've been playing since I was pretty young. But I played drums first and then learned piano only in the last five years, and bass is pretty connected to guitar. Combining it all is hard, and that's taken me a lot of time, actually putting all the pieces together, and they're not being that much smoke and mirrors. It's really riding on the song.
My bandmate Ian [Stemper] pointed out where he was like, it's cool 'cause it really sounds like you arranged songs, it could be three people playing it. I'd say that's a successful aspect of it.
You said there were minor collaborations?
Harry Wohl: My brother played drums on one of the songs. My girlfriend at the time sang backup on one song, and then this guy, Matt Castor, who mastered the album, kind of helped me edit it down and helped me with the order.
But otherwise, do you prefer the solo process, or is it just something different than your other projects?
Harry Wohl: I don't know if I prefer it. I think it's just like a necessity because recording is such a time-intensive thing. It feels very much like a studio practice, like an art project. I like collaborating with other people, I think maybe better, but recording is so time-intensive that, because it's me, I feel like I can really sign on for doing like a 12 or 14-hour day.
I just got interested in recording, so I'm treating myself like the Guinea pig and doing different experiments. I've always recorded at home. I have a studio in New Jersey in my parents' basement, so I record there now and record other bands and stuff too. I'll spend four days in New York and then go back to New Jersey for four days, and vice versa.
But am I right that this album wasn’t recorded there, right?
Harry Wohl: Yeah, the recording process was all done in one shot in Woodstock, New York. It's like an art residency me and my girlfriend at the time applied together. It's called Bird Cliff. It's a sick program; you get housing, and it's five months long. But there's also shorter ones, like three weeks. You can apply for a grant through the residency, which we got.
It made me kind of be like, art is awesome, and I just want to keep doing this. I was mainly just doing my own thing, going on walks and stuff, too.
Was all the nature inspiring?
Harry Wohl: Yeah, for sure. I think it was just relaxing, and it's so pretty, and even compared to New Jersey. It's like twice as relaxing. I think when you have a lot of time. Obviously, you're gonna do other stuff too, like you're gonna watch TV and cook and hang out, but eventually, when there's not that much else going on, there's a lot you can get done in a short five months. It was cool to not worry so much about it and deal with the editing later.
In your process, what comes first? Is it the words, is it the music?
Harry Wohl: There's a lot of writing the music while I'm recording. There's songs on the album that I wrote a long time ago and had kind of piecemealed together, but I don't know what comes first. It's usually like, try to write something to record it. A lot of the time, I'll do something that I can't really play live, and I have to think of lyrics on the spot to record it. I have to get more into just writing songs and then recording them as fully finished pieces. 'Cause I think that would save a lot of time and make it a lot easier.
Do you have any rules that you set for yourself when you're writing?
Harry Wohl: Probably, I have them, but I don't know that I have them. I think it's song-based. Although I kind of tried to get away from that a little bit. I think on this album, cause I was at the residency, I had so much time, there'd be times where I just wanted to make something, and I'd be like, I'll deal with vocals later. Sometimes that worked out, and it was cool. But other times it just didn't really fit. I think I just try to do the best performance possible. So that ends up just being where all the time goes in.
Just playing it again?
Harry Wohl: And again! As perfect as it can be because I do analog recording. So that can take like 30, 40 takes or something. If I were playing shows all the time, then I could nail it in like one or two takes. But again, I'm writing and recording at the same time, so it's like I'll have an idea and I'll do a couple more takes like that. Or sometimes, a first take is the best take.
What’s your approach to playing live, then?
Harry Wohl: Kind of all over the place. Playing live has been one of those weird things I haven't been able to figure out really. But I want to go on tour in the fall, and I basically just play with an acoustic guitar and play songs, which to me isn't really that...
Because the album's not really like that.
Harry Wohl: Yeah. So I don't know. That's the only way I've been able to do it. I've been really hesitant to try to create a band that plays the songs on the album, it doesn't feel like that type of project. I play in a punk band, so personally, I don't like watching other people perform this type of music. So, I have some ideas about bringing visual elements into playing live, like for the tour in the fall, which I think could change it a little bit.
What's it like to make quiet music when you're also a punk?
Harry Wohl: It's just, it's a different thing. I think studio recording it's just a completely different energy than what it's like to play live shows. Live shows to me are all about energy and engaging with the audience, and it's all a kind of a cathartic release, Dionysian experience, or something.
To play soft music. I think it just suits better for the studio. I mean, loud music in the studio is great too, but I tend to feel more at home with, like, acoustic instruments and some kind of easier on the ears too.
Do you wanna talk about the single and how you chose it?
Harry Wohl: It's the first song, “Match Stick Crater Cerebellum.” I didn't choose it for the single. It was kind of a double thing with John (of Blushing Grinning) and my brother. Cause my brother made a music video for the song, he was in charge of like framing and choreographing the video, editing, all that stuff.
I think people gravitate towards that song. I don't think it's even necessarily catchy, but I feel like it's kind of an interesting structure.
But when it comes to the packaging of the album, you did all the art. What's that process like?
Harry Wohl: I've done the art for a lot of my other releases. And just kind of went for it. It's like a relief, basically a stencil that I made in real size, and then we edited it down to fit the format. So I cut out the image, the negative of the image, and then spray painted it, and then pulled all the tape and had the relief of it. I like the way it turned out.
I'm curious to ask about your other project that you're working on, Aswan Dam.
Harry Wohl: So that's kind of a recording project, too, but it's with my friend Gus. He lives in New Jersey, and we've collaborated a lot. We were in a band in high school together and wrote like half the songs on The Schoolhouse Recordings. In terms of recording, I really wanted to record punk music. So it's a little bit of that, 75% of the songs he wrote, but then I would help him, arrange them, and do vocals and stuff. The album's all done.
I think we've been having difficulty figuring out where we fit in terms of the music scene and stuff, because it is punk, but it's not hardcore. And some of it is pretty soft, but it's heavy live. But, recording that was a lot, so I think I'm kind of just taking a deep breath from doing it.
What are your plans for the future of Harry Sings!?
Harry Wohl: I'm gonna try to do this tour in the fall, cause we're gonna have the records and do the release. We're gonna do one in New York on August 7th and one in Philadelphia on August 8th. It's gonna be cool that it'll be a little bit more accessible now that it’s on vinyl.