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The Ghost Wolves, Low Fat Getting High at The Rock Shop!


The Ghost Wolves
The Ghost Wolves are a face melting, skull smashin' rock & roll duo based out of Austin, TX, featuring guitarist Carley Wolf and drummer Jonathan Konya. They play a mash up of juke joint spook blues and 60's garage rock thrash, with a dash of old school rockabilly and glam. Drawing heavily from the likes of Ronnie Dawson, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Presley, R.L. Burnside, The Flat Duo Jets, Wanda Jackson, The Cramps, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, and Alan Lomax, their sound has best been described as a "blues/rock explosion." The duo started in 2010 as a side project between musicians very busy with other bands, but quickly developed into something much more time consuming.

The name of the band came from an experience the pair had in late 2009, during a visit to Carley's family ranch in the Texas Hill Country. Her family raises animals on their land, among them a pack of arctic and timber wolf hybrids. The eldest of the pack, a 140 pound grizzled old wolfdog named Ice, passed away that year, at the age of 15. "We were visiting the ranch a few weeks after his death," Carley remembers, "We were out at dusk as the stars were appearing in the sky, and suddenly, we both felt a very distinct change in the air. It was as if a storm was approaching or a cold front moving in. Soon after that, a very thick, low lying fog settled in on us and the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. We headed for the house as it got dark, and I happened to glance up towards the treeline just beyond the horse barn, near where we bury our animals when they die. And for just a second, I saw Ice's figure moving through the mist. He was walking with several other wolves who I recognized as other animals my family had owned and had died through the years. I turned to tell Jonny, and when we looked back, they had vanished. When we got back inside the house, the rest of the pack started howling in chorus, and we knew that they had seen the spirits too."

A few months later, they were brainstorming name ideas for their new band, and The Ghost Wolves came up as a choice. "We both share a deep interest in the lives of our ancestors, many of whom were also musicians." Jonathan explains. "And we feel a powerful draw toward the great American musical traditions, past and present. Delta blues, Appalachian, Folk, early Rock and Roll - we've buried most of the people who first brought us these styles. But now, others have been born to continue it for them, and take the music to places of their own. We find great beauty and endless inspiration in this. Their music haunts us, smiles upon us, and propels us forward as a band."

About the members:
Carley was raised in the Texas hill country, less than a mile down the road from the famed western ghost town and music mecca of Luckenbach, TX. She has been playing and writing music since the age of 14 ,and is a gifted multi-instrumentalist, regularly performing on the mandolin, upright bass, drums, and guitar. As a teenager, she fronted a rockabilly band as Carley Darlynn, garnering a loyal fan base in the Texas music scene. In her adult years, she has toured internationally with several bands, including The Crooked Jades and rock-a-billy sensation Johnny Falstaff, with whom she played the upright bass. As a solo artist, she has released two of her own records, and in 2007 she traveled through Mexico and produced a documentary about her family's robust musical heritage entitled "Music Through the Blood Line."

Jonathan moved to Austin, TX from New Orleans in 2007, after studying for two years with New Orleans drumming guru Johnny Vidacovich, whom he cites as his one of his biggest inspirations as a drummer. As a performer, Jonathan was an original member of The Belleville Outfit, an Americana-roots band from Austin, touring and recording with them for four years, until the band broke up in early 2011. He has also worked with guitarist Greg Ginn of legendary hardcore punk band Black Flag, country guit-steel virtuoso Junior Brown, fiddler and songwriter Warren Hood, and east Austin blues-shack-rockers The Happen-Ins, among many other bands in the rock, blues and country world. After spending his time behind the drums for most of his musical life, Jonathan started writing and singing, and the band now co-writes most of it's material. "I was so lucky to be playing drums for all of these incredible songwriters, people who had been honing that craft for years and really knew how to weave a great song," he explains, "I wanted to learn that art myself."

"...The boy and girl began to play music, creating a great noise that shook the leaves off the trees and loosened the rocks in the ground. Then, late that night, a fog rolled in rather mysteriously. And when the moon was high and full in the sky, the spirit animals appeared out of the mist. And the most beautiful of them all were the great white GHOST WOLVES."

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