When rock ‘n’ roll band The Yowl first debuted in 2011 with a single titled “My Baby Does Drugs,” no one knew just where the group would go.
Bassist Heath Lanyon, vocalist Bobby Wofford, guitarist Eli Southard, and drummer Matt Long had known each other for several years prior to forming the band, and despite only hearing a few demos and hardly practicing at all, they decided to get up on stage and play a show. Lead vocalist Wofford says those early experiences of finding the band's sound and learning to play together were like “walking a tightrope.” “In the very beginning, it was real loose and real raw,” says Southard. “It’s just kind of always been that way, and so we just leaned into that.”
The band released their debut single independently, then produced an EP with Jeff Cobb’s Trouble in River City Records before moving to Wayne Kramer’s record label, Industrial Amusement. From the beginning, the band’s journey has been anything but predictable, but helpful figures like Cobb and Kramer have guided them forward.
The band released their newest LP, Rock-n-Roll, Babies!, with Sioux Records in 2021. The two-sided, "turmoil-filled, fuzzed out, bloodletting ceremony" offers listeners newer garage-psych tracks on its A-side and revisits older tracks from the band and a collaboration with New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain on the B-side. The record can be purchased for $20 on Sioux Guitars website and PayPal. And now, over a year after the initial release, The Yowl are finally ready to celebrate it with an album release show at Off Broadway on July 16.
COURTESY OF THE YOWL
The opportunity to host an album release party for the LP is a long time coming. The band's initial plans were derailed by a series of complicated health issues. Long experienced bad headaches for a few years prior to the release of the 2021 album. After he discovered an odd growth on his forehead, doctors found a baseball-sized tumor in his brain that would require surgery.
“It was kind of a big deal,” he says of the experience. “I’m still recovering from it in some ways, but it definitely put a halt on our record release.”
Not long after Long’s diagnosis, it was discovered that Wofford was suffering from a throat infection that would last more than a year, yet another blow to the band’s record release plans. Despite the challenges, the band was only interested in doing the show if they could do it together.
Long describes that commitment as a special moment for the band: “I told [Wofford], I said, ‘I’ve got some guys in mind that could actually do the show. They could do it service. And he said, ‘This is the band. If you can’t do it, I don’t want to do it.’”
This weekend, The Yowl will finally get the chance to celebrate together. Local blues-rockers The Hamilton Band will open the show before The Yowl head onstage for a set that will feature a medley of both new and old tracks.The night’s festivities will also include a vinyl flea market, where attendees can bring their stacks of records to swap and sell, and a DJ spinning garage rock throughout the night.
Doors for the Rock ‘n’ Roll, Babies! album release party will open at 7 p.m. Advance tickets can be purchased through Off Broadway’s website for $10, and tickets will be available at the door for $14.
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