BAINBRIDGE – “PSYCHEDELIC TROUBADOUR FOLK ROCK” is how Heather Wolf and her band, the Low Hanging Fruit, describe their music.
Last month, Heather released her first LP, “Midnight Hour” and spent the last couple weeks opening for UK-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Cosmo Sheldrake on his West Coast tour – L.A. to Vancouver, B.C. After leaving the company she co-founded, Iggy’s Alive & Cultured, on Bainbridge Island, Heather got honest with herself about what she wanted. She decided to give herself one year to focus completely on her music.
“I had this feeling of a wide-open life,” Heather said. “My story was now unwritten. Everything felt like it had been blown away after leaving my company, community, and fifteen-year marriage. I’d already lost so much, there wasn’t much more to lose.” She decided to give herself permission to follow the wild calling of music, telling herself not to worry about whether it was a wise decision or if it was going to work out. That year, she released her first EP of folk songs on Mountain Dulcimer, multiple music videos, and performed in festivals around North America and Europe, including gigs in Spain, Israel, Croatia, NYC, New Orleans, and the PNW.
“I had to suspend my disbelief,” she said. “I think that’s a really key thing when we decide to let ourselves grow into the unknown.”
After that first year, she formed the folk rock band, Wild Revival, with Nik Kemmer, releasing their EP, April’s Fool, in 2021. In 2024, she cofounded the experimental electro-folk synth-pop project, Witch Pop, with Raqa Down. Heather was encouraged to make a solo album at that point, but it felt daunting and overwhelming, she said. When Cosmo invited her to open for this tour, she knew she needed to make an album. “Because I had the tour coming, I had a deadline and a purpose,” she said. “It forced me, in the best way possible, to respect and value myself as an artist.” That confidence, she says, was key. But being an independent artist is hard. The courage must come from within yourself before anyone in the industry will take you seriously. Her song, “Wolf Woman,” featured on the debut album, captures this idea in its lyrics: “…It’s time you believe you’ve got the right to be.”
In the music industry, few artists get ‘seen,’ and even fewer artists are considered to have ‘made it.’ In turn, this means many incredible artists remain undiscovered.
But Heather said, “Recognition has nothing to do with our value as artists. Recognition is a bonus, and one we appreciate, of course, but that’s not why we do it. We do it out of love. When I studied in India, I experienced traditional temple music being made as an offering to the divine. Humans are the secondary audience – no one claps between songs. When I sing and play music, ultimately it is an offering to the greater forces of life of which humans are a part. Through this process, I feel that creating the art is success in and of itself.”
Many of the songs off the album Heather wrote many years ago, and are some of her first songs. “In the Tall Grass” is one such song, co-written with her friend and bandmate, Hale May. The song is a beautiful ode to a wise & spirited old orchard gone back to wildness. In many of her songs, references to the Pacific Northwest, especially the Salish Sea, come to life. “I realized last night as I was playing [on the waterfront in Seattle] that I often use the sea as a metaphor for my sensuous experience of being alive.”
Some of Heather’s early influences include Nina Simone and Richard and Mimi Fariña. She loves how Richard and Mimi took folk traditionals and rewrote the lyrics to fit the times. “That’s what makes folk music folk music,” Heather said. “It’s of the people; it’s of the commons, it’s ours to make anew all the time.”
“There is no one author in many traditional folk songs and tales. It comes from the collective and has a life of its own. It goes from the many into the singular when you become the channel for that song or story. Folk music reminds us that everyone has the right to sing and make music. Whether we are professionals or not, song belongs to us, like the birds. It is for us to make our own, as part of our lives.”
That collective and community mindset was evident last month at Heather’s Seattle shows. She invited the audience to say hello to the people around us and embrace our loved ones, which she says was inspired by seeing A Tribe Called Quest.
She begins her concert and album with an invocation, “Spiraling in, time disappears, spiraling mind, unwind time…” gathering us for the musical journey we would embark on together. “I like calling in intentional forms of consciousness, and facilitating ceremonies, spaces where we can go into the magic that already exists all around us. We are all here in mutual love for the music. These are like homies that you haven’t met yet. We can all be in this collective, ecstatic experience of music together. Togetherness is our greatest strength to get us through these times.” // KEELY RIGGS
CHECK OUT VIDEOS FROM THE Seattle Show and the West Coast Tour w/ Cosmo Sheldrake, and more at heatherwolf.love
