Photo Credit: Brittany Powers

Goodnight, Texas created the only “Of Wolf And Man” cover on The Metallica Blacklist project. Steffan Chirazi learns how the group’s sensational, stripped down, and utterly unique take on the song came to be.

I’m genuinely not sure whether  Avi Vinocur or  Patrick Dyer Wolf of  Goodnight, Texas are, what we would term in 2021, “modern musical pilgrims,” but what I do know is that they walk a strong line between bluegrass and Neil Young, bringing with them an itinerant air, warmth, wit, and wisdom beyond their years. Yet it would be too easy, not to mention lazy, to say that Goodnight, Texas has fashioned an Americana bluegrass take on “Of Wolf & Man” because clearly, it is much more than that. The vocal harmonization alone pushes it into a whole new classic quiet, eerie rock-meets-Young atmosphere, and overall you can smell the dawn mist and see a hint of lupine movement in the forest with every carefully crafted refrain. Avi, our friend and one-half of the founding Goodnight, Texas duo, along with songwriting partner, Patrick, sat down recently to explain how this smokey take was created.

Steffan Chirazi: I think first it’s pertinent to ask how you got invited to the project, and how you came to choose “Of Wolf and Man?”

Avi Vinocur: Marc Reiter, Blackened Recordings big wig (the band’s label), reached out to me because I guess the guys had been deciding on acts they wanted to be involved and my band got thrown into it. We could pick a song on the album, it wasn’t exclusive, multiple people were doing do multiple songs, but I asked Marc if there were any that were “underdone,” and he said there were a couple that hadn’t been done yet. And then, you know, anything with a wolf in it [Patrick chuckles – ED], plus I’ve liked that song too. I’ve seen them play that one live and it made sense to me. It’s a weird one to attack; it’s a very strange song. The recording of it, their version of it is really aggressive and in your face, and I thought it would be cool to do kind of a prettier, dark, brooding version of it which fits a “werewolf in the forest” kind of vibe.

SC: Let’s get to the meat of the song, and how Patrick felt it needed to be treated? How did you guys work through the balances of pulling it together?

Patrick Wolf: We were both psyched to do the song, and Avi had so much energy about doing it, he sent me a demo of a concept 24 hours after we decided we were gonna do it. It was a spellbinding bedroom demo, and I started thinking about what could be a good counterpoint and came up with this howling fuzz banjo part that soars over the top of this whole brooding, earthy thing that he had done. So we had this thing that was pulling in those two directions which was very different from the original, and at times was unrecognizable from the original, but still clinging to it in various key ways.


Photo Credit: Scott Padden

SC: How gothic do you think this song is? This is one of those songs that is deeply feral. And talk about approaching it as a piece of almost American folklore, or something.

 AV: I think at least for me, right away it conjures a scene in a movie, or like just this sort of forlorn forest at midnight kind of vibe. It’s such a good story, and their version is, like, anti-pretty. It’s not especially melodic, there’s certainly melancholy in it, but it’s more aggressive. And I felt like it would be cool to look at it from the forlorn side of the story and try to capture the cinematic-ness of the lyrics in music.

PW: I recently went to this wolf preserve out in western New Jersey called the Lakota Wolf Preserve. I took my four-year-old son, and the guy who has had this place for 25 years spoke for like 30 minutes just about how he raises these wolves and stuff. He just kept blowing my mind with facts. For example, there’s never been a recorded wolf attack in North America. They can smell you from a mile away, and they’re just out of there before you’re anywhere near them. And so people never get up close to a wolf, and any wolf that’s been in a movie is not a wolf. It’s a husky or some other kind of dog that looks like a wolf. And then at the end of this thing, he had them howl. There’re these wolves behind fences just 10 feet from you in all directions, and it was the most otherworldly thing that’s happened to me in recent memory. And you know, I’ve always had this thing for the animal because it’s my name. In popular imagination, the wolf is such a “fearsome, watch out for that” animal, “don’t go into the woods,” and there’s Little Red Riding Hood. And learning that that’s not exactly what’s true just made me think about the different ways we treated this same piece of lyrical content, looking at something from the underside and seeing what’s real about it.


Photo Credit: Brittany Powers

SC: When you listen to James singing that song, does it sound like a celebration of a side of him, or does it sound like he’s just talking about how wolves are viewed and so on and so forth?

 AV: Yeah. I think so. I hadn’t really considered it that way. Maybe this is sort of an expression of his “inner self” and seeking wildness. I hadn’t really thought of it as a representation of him, but I think there’s probably a lot of truth to that. I know he’s always really identified with the wolf. As a motif, it shows up on guitar headstocks and various things, and there’s all sorts of wolf series of stuff after The Black Album. Maybe it was one of those things that helped him describe something indescribable in him.

SC: One of the things I must go back to is your interpretation of this song, I think it really… you kinda turned it into this very supernatural, very, very creepy late-night American, gothic horror story. In the best possible way. Was that your intention?

 AV: I think so.

PW:I want to give some credit to Adam Nash in our band for doing some incredible string parts, a lot of which you can’t even really hear, and I wish we could hear them.

 AV: They kinda just float in there and create a fog in the forest…

PW:And didn’t he do, like, 10 tracks of it?

 AV: It might’ve been 14. I mean, he sent me all the stuff and we weren’t even thinking about strings on it. It was just like, “Can you send us a pedal steel part?” And he sent 15 tracks. It was one track of pedal steel and fourteen violin tracks. We put ’em in, and my initial reaction was, “I don’t know,” and then with the mix, it was just, “Oh, my God, yeah! This is really cool.” They just set the stage, sitting back in there. Everyone really put their own take on the parts, and I think it was a pretty collaborative thing. Scott [Padden – drums] and I were the only two in the band to actually get together in the same room. That was the first time we had each played music with another person in about a year at the time too, which was pretty surreal. So yeah, we got tested, he came over, we did the drums all at once and I did, like, a scratch vocal and mandolin track. In the process, he really designed the drum part to feel different than I had imagined it, in a heavier, deeper way. And then Adam’s parts were totally surreal; I love the pedal steel that he added, I think it’s really cool, just gives it a little bit of country. And Chris [Sugiura] playing bass, just sent that track over and it was just perfect.


Photo Credit: Betsy Osterberger

SC: So we had these collections, this very collaborative piece that had come together, and then it went to Giles Martin (Blacklist producer), and he put a bit of whip and polish on the track, right?

PW: Jesus, yeah. It turned out incredible. He elevated it to another level, probably the biggest, clearest, and nicest we’ve sounded. I enjoy listening to it. It fits.

SC: So I have to ask you both, did you have any communication with the writers of this song?

 AV: Yeah. Each of them texted me after hearing it. Lars sent me a very nice text message just being like, “Next level, bro.” And it was very cool, so I forwarded that to the band, and then James came up to me at work here and was like, “Dude, ‘Of Wolf and Man.’ Great. Fantastic.” So they’ve been really nice about it. Robert and Kirk too. 

SC: I think the truth is that you know, as pleasant as they are as chaps, they’re not in the spirit of throwing these things around as false platitudes. I mean they don’t say anything unless they mean it, right? So this is high praise indeed.

 AV: Yeah, I don’t think they would bring it up if they didn’t think it was actually worth a damn, so it’s very nice.

SC: And again, there is only one “Of Wolf and Man” on this project.

 AV: I didn’t know it would end up being that way. I kinda thought some other folks would maybe jump in and there might be two or so to do it. I hope people like it.

SC: I think people are going to love it indeed. And any final words you want to say about the project before we sign off on your part in it?

 AV: It’s an extreme honor to be part of this. I mean on another level. And to try to figure out how we could fit… It’s a song that ended up being one that I feel like we’re gonna be playing live. It’s a great song and it represents our sound in a way that I think our fans would like – and hopefully Metallica fans would like – so it’s a really incredible opportunity, I’m elated, and I hope it goes well.

WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR "OF WOLF AND MAN" BY GOODNIGHT, TEXAS