Kevin Wolfe

I was born to the son of a son of a gun.  I’m not sure what that makes me.  Most of my family was born in Indian Territory before Oklahoma was a state.  The other part of my family came to Oklahoma in a rented boxcar for the oil boom in the early 1900s.  I grew up with history, unable to escape it.  It shapes my life and music in virtually every way.
 
I started playing piano when I was 5, picked up alto saxophone when I was 9, then graduated to electric guitar and songwriting when I was 14.  I was even naive enough to think I was good!  Rebelling from all the great Sun Records country music that I grew up with I turned to punk rock, Jamacian ska, and dub.  Playing in several bands throughout clubs in the Southeast got my chops in order.

While working on a degree in Marketing from NC State, I worked at Radical Records and Stubborn Records in NYC.  As they were both small labels, I was exposed to every aspect of the record label business.

After graduating NC State, I moved to NYC to work in the advertising business.  I honed my skills there and still use that knowledge on a daily basis.  After the economic downturn in post 9/11, I returned to the sunny South and settled back in Raleigh.  I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the apprenticeship program at Osceola Studios where I was able to work on projects such as the “Ladykillers” movie soundtrack with Little Brother as well as Velvet Revolver’s contribution to the “Fantastic Four” soundtrack.  I was also fortunate to be involved in 2 sessions with Roomful of Blues!

Since then I have been fronting an “outlaw country/insurgent country” band hailing from Raleigh called Hearts and Daggers.  We’ve been going strong for a decade.  We are in the thick of the alt-country movement and are constantly playing anywhere from small 50 person capacity honky tonks to 300 person capacity venues.  It ain’t easy, but it’s music.  It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep.