Listening to Hear Me Out has become such a frequent ritual since its release that I couldn’t wait to catch up with Reignwolf frontman Jordan Cook – if it all happened to time out according to plan right after they opened for The Who in New York. I was trying to narrow down questions about his compelling songwriting, their shadowy blues-grunge sound, and the scorching performance that had just blown minds at Jones Beach. Awaiting the text telling me where to go, I figured the interview would take place in some unseen storage room or venue corridor. I never could have expected how scenic our meeting location would actually be. What ‘backstage’ meant at Jones Beach, in this instance, was an empty dock on the shimmering water, just out of view of the ebullient sold-out amphitheatre. The wind-battered waves softened most other sounds, reflecting an almost-full moon piercing the black sky. It was just a thin sliver away from being a perfect round circle. Surely that’s safer than a full moon in the presence of a wolf. Cook read my mind when he looked out at the ocean and said in his passionate voice, “This is really perfect…this is awesome. Jones Beach is pretty incredible.” I couldn’t help but think that ‘incredible’ seemed like an extreme descriptor for the beach; much more fitting for the Reignwolf show I’d just experienced.
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This pure-rock trio’s deft contributions collide in a way that’s intoxicating. Drummer Joseph Braley builds a snappy, intricate foundation further enriched by the nimble bass lines devised by S.J. Kardash. Sinking into their rhythms, Cook tears into his guitar strings with vicious precision, singing with a rugged yet sensitive timbre that shifts as often as his riffs. Even in the midst of all that action, there was one small detail of Reignwolf’s live show that we’d contemplated ever since they played Baby’s All Right: why does he shroud his pedals in thick black fabric? Why does he protect them with such care when the rest of the show is so wild and reckless? Is he hiding his gear in order to conceal how he creates his many unique tones? “There are a few reasons. This is actually how it started,” laughed Cook, “I’ll just tell you. There’s a certain fuzz pedal that I use, and any type of heat or temperature at all – it changes the sound. Actually, tonight it even did it, because we’re outside. In the daytime, it stopped working during our soundcheck; it turned off on me. And so I actually put it into a freezer today, and just before we were going out, I plugged it in and it was working, and I was like ‘Yes!’” He confirmed that this unnamed pedal helps to create a very specific sound that he’s seeking. “It does, it does, and that’s the thing: a friend of mine built it for me, and I’ve just always used it, and that’s what made me cover my stuff in the first place. It started out like that, and now it’s been going on so long that it’s just like – keep it going.”
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Cook doesn’t analyze his own work nearly as much as his fans do. He just lets the music happen and pushes forward tirelessly; onto the next performance, always. In his own words, “I write, and whatever comes out, I go with it.” That was especially clear when I mentioned there’s a recurring theme in his lyrics. “What are you hearing?” he demanded with a somewhat shocked laugh. I listed the references to water or drowning that appear in “Hardcore,” “Black and Red,” “Over & Over,” “Ritual,” and “Wolf River,” and Cook exclaimed, “Oh wow! Interesting; interesting. I don’t know! The city I was born in is the City of Bridges; Saskatoon [in Saskatchewan, Canada]. That might have something to do with it. Our city, in the middle of the city, is built up with a river in the middle.” He traced the city’s layout in the air with his fingertips. “It’s the most beautiful part of Saskatoon, I would say.” The way he drew out the word ‘beautiful’ somehow made the picture more vivid. “And to say exactly what’s going on: I actually have never analyzed it like that! But let’s see what the next album brings. It’s interesting you say that, ‘cause I’ve never actually picked up on that even myself.” We also discussed the symbolism of gold, an element that appears in both “Keeper” and “Fools Gold.” “True enough,” he replied, and I suggested that the two songs are connected. “That’s true,” said Cook. “They’re on the same record, too.”
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“They’re all special, but ‘Keeper’ will be our next single. We’re planning a video right after this tour, maybe sooner, maybe on this tour, I don’t even know! And that song is really close to me. Like really close. Truthfully, I have this thing about music where I want people to just take our songs, and take what they get from it. So I try not to say too much.” That’s a key piece of the puzzle if you’ve ever wondered why Reignwolf’s lyrics are always in first-person, addressing an unknown ‘you’ – in every song Reignwolf has released so far, according to my count. But the ‘you’ in “I Want You” can’t be the same ‘you’ he’s telling to shut up in “Alligator,” right? Cook cracked up a bit at that question. “There’s a couple ‘you’s…there’s a couple ‘you’s,” he repeated with an enigmatic grin. For the most part, much like his temperature-sensitive pedal, he continued to keep his song meanings under wraps. So I figured I’d try to coax out some details about any new music Reignwolf might be working on. “Actually, we’ve been jamming a lot during this tour and at soundcheck. There’s a song called ‘Monster’ we’ve kind of messed about with, and it’s been coming out. And there are one or two other things that are like already there, I would say. But to say exactly where it’s going – one day at a time. You know, after this tour, I’d betcha we get in and start smashing away at some new stuff. Hopefully not long, but I don’t know. I’m kind of like, whatever the music tells you to do, you do. I kind of feel like we’ve toured a lot on this record, kind of nonstop really, that we could either stop for a minute and take a break, or go. And I don’t really want to stop. Last time, we toured so much that I was like, ‘No, we need to back up for just one second to kind of catch our breath. I kind of feel the energy is now – use it. But you know, time will tell. And the music will tell too.”
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On the subject of touring with The Who, he spoke about the rock legends with stunned admiration. “I’ve got to share a really special one,” said Cook. “Today, we get here, and The Who – they’re sound checking. As soon as I walked in, I sat down right in the front, and Pete put out his arm and said, ‘Hey man!’” Cook held his hand out high and imitated Townshend’s enthusiastic wave. “And I was like, wow, we’ve come a long way. We’ve done like four shows, and at the start, we were all kind of nervous, and didn’t want to bug them and everything. And now he’s calling us out; talking to us every day on Instagram. And he was telling me about how he helped Jimi Hendrix with some of his rig, some of his equipment, and then I said, ‘Well, I play all my dad’s equipment from when I was younger.’ And he was like, ‘Oh! Tell me about your dad,’ and we started having this full-on conversation, like we’ve known each other for a long time. And I don’t know; it just meant so much to me. And also seeing Jones Beach like this, during the day, was just crazy. It was amazing. The Who – I think that everything they do is so epic. People love the rock moments with them, and I also really, really love the acoustic moments of The Who. And when I told Pete that today – that I actually wait for those moments where they’re acoustic, because it’s him and Daltrey together, just them two on stage – he couldn’t believe that I was sitting there going, ‘That’s my favorite part of the show!’ And I was like, ‘No, honestly, you on acoustic just blows my mind.’ But everyone knows him as like a rocker.”
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Cook then discussed how he gets inspired by sources outside of his genre as well. “For instance, we played Music Midtown yesterday, and we got to hang out in Atlanta after and just check out a bunch of bands and stuff. And as a songwriter, you always go to shows, and you get inspired even if it’s something that’s completely not what you do. And Lizzo, last night, I’ve got to say, wow. She just had the entire crowd, and it blew my mind, the way that she talked to people.” He added, “I’ll be honest, I slept two and a half hours last night, because we played in Atlanta and we came here. And it’s full-on; that’s like fourteen and a half hours or something. And we’re actually going back to Atlanta now, to go play with The Who in Atlanta,” he said with an ecstatic laugh. The fact that they were joining The Who on some of their Moving On! Tour dates was a dream come true for Reignwolf’s fans, and of course, the band themselves. “So we just came for this show, and I won’t lie, we just haven’t slept. So tonight, when I got onstage, I was a little frazzled, because earlier, my gear wasn’t working. And then I got up there and I was like, ‘I hope everything’s gonna work!’ And I was trying to twist the crowd a little bit tonight. It was one of those things where I think I was just in the moment and I ran with it. To be honest, I would say that’s the thing that’s really special about this band. We’re getting these opportunities where you’re out with The Who, and then you do the festival, and then you do the club show, and every energy feels so different from the other one. And how cool is that? It’s like no night is ever the same, and the songs don’t ever sound the same either. And that way, we also don’t get bored. We love them more because of it. They take on a new energy.”
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I convinced myself to wrap up our conversation so as not to miss The Who, but as we walked back, I had one more Reignwolf mystery to solve. “So, the kick drum.” Cook smiled. “The kick drum in the crowd – that probably started when I was in Seattle, starting Reignwolf in 2012, and I wasn’t really playing with anybody. I think was kind of just going for it.” He explained how he’d started taking over the full drum set too. “I actually got the opportunity, really luckily, right before the Reignwolf thing, to play with Ben Shepherd, who’s in Soundgarden, and Matt Chamberlain, who’s played with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. And they were the band I was out playing with, and they came to Canada and we ran out of songs, and that’s actually what started it. We jammed all night and people kept asking for more music, and we were like, ‘Fine, fine!’ And that’s what started me behind the drum kit. It’s because we didn’t have any music. I didn’t actually practice that. It was like, we didn’t have anything more to play, so I just kind of got up there and started fiddling and then went with it. So again, not something we do every night, but when we do,” he said happily, “especially in these events where people haven’t seen you before, I find that that’s a nice way to get connected.” The notion that a person could feel so connected to a huge crowd of strangers while playing two instruments at once says a lot about why Jordan Cook is a one-of-a-kind frontman. “We kind of just go for it as much as we can, and if people are into it, great, and if they’re not, well, that’s cool. We’ll just do us and hopefully people will show up. We’re going to Europe and lots of things are selling out, and I’m just so grateful for people showing up and caring, and to be getting these opportunities.”
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Article: Olivia Isenhart
Photos: Shayne Hanley
