Out and proud English musician Patrick Wolf is traveling across the world to bring live performances to life for his loyal fans.
His first album, Lycanthropy, was released in 2003 and his latest, Crying the Neck, came out during Pride month of this year. Seven albums and five EPs, plus collaborations, have produced a massive catalogue to showcase on his legendary tours.
He left the spotlight for 10 years to work out his personal demons and become sober. During an interview with Windy City Times, he described his journey as “a reset full of gratitude and rebalancing of my ego” and now feels that he’s at the top of his game. This has led to a triumphant return to the stage and to Chicago at The Gman Tavern in the Wrigleyville area on Nov. 1.
Wolf gave a behind-the-scenes look at his life on tour the day of the concert, while he prepared for his special event.
Windy City Times: You are originally from London?
Patrick Wolf: I was born in Central London and I grew up in South London.
WCT: Are you currently stationed in London?
PW: I left five years ago for a small town called Ramsgate and I live on the outskirts by the sea. I live a very quiet, peaceful life. I have two cats and a garden.
WCT: How many instruments do you play?
PW: I stick to the string family, so the viola, violin, dulcimer, baritone and ukulele. I play the keyboards, organ and harpsichord, so only two families of instruments. I don’t do any woodwind or brass.
Once you crack the code, you can apply it to everything. It’s one source of language, kind of like Latin and it becomes easier to pick up other instruments.
WCT: Was being a musician in your DNA?
PW: My father was a jazz musician and my mother was a painter. I grew up with the DNA strain of both of them. I was encouraged to choose an instrument and I picked the violin. I studied as a composer and I was in the orchestra, as well as the choir at the Latin mass. I even sang for the pope at one point.
WCT: That must have been an honor.
PW: I was a high-profile choir boy and then my voice broke, so that ended my being a church diva. I missed the attention, so I had to fight my way back into music again and being onstage.
WCT: When did you start releasing your own music?
PW: My first album came out at age 19.
WCT: How does it feel looking back on that after so many records over the years?
PW: I feel protective and proud of that person. I was innocently stubborn and unwavering. I threw myself into the public eye without a care for how I would be perceived and I had no boundaries. There was no safety net and I was a very courageous 19-year-old.
WCT: Isn’t it funny how anxiety gets worse with age?
PW: Yes, I did bring my introvert self to the table, though and I played with being a character back then. It took about three albums to chip away at that and realize the truth is more interesting than the fiction.
WCT: Were you out of the closet back then?
PW: No journalist back then would dare to ask me about my sexuality because it was taboo to be a gay musician in a rock and roll world. It was just Elton John, Judas Priest and Rufus Wainwright in the distance somewhere.
People weren’t able to grill a 19-year-old on their sexuality, so I got away with it for a couple of albums until I was old enough for it to become fair game. I got to exist in a fairytale world as a producer and prodigy. It was an interesting place to be as a younger person and I was perceived as an eccentric or an outsider, but not as queer.
WCT: Do you like being described as queer now?
PW: I find it interesting. I use it as a language when people speak on it, but I would never use it in private because of the way I was brought up. Queer back then was a cultural alignment, not a gender or sexual alignment. That makes it hard to shake out of that. When I grew up, if you were gay, then you liked John Waters, but if you were queer, then you liked Kathleen Hanna in the riot grrrl movement. Queer was about lining up with a cultural identity and being punk.
I find language fascinating and sometimes we are all expressing the same thing with the words just shifted around.
WCT: How was it working with a past interviewee of mine,Zola Jesus, on the track “Limbo” on your Crying the Neck album?
PW: That came out of a long-term pen pal friend relationship. I knew the album was going to cover the idea of harvest and the end of summer. I pictured colors such as yellow and orange. It is the opposite of what gothic would be, but deep in the heart of the album the themes are death, loss and decay. I knew Zola would be perfect for it. I always like taking an artist out of their world and transporting them into another one.
I can’t imagine anyone else singing the song and it’s been hard to perform it live. I sound schizophrenic if I sing it alone and there are very few people who can sit in the power that she has. My accordion player and comes from a powerful, lesbian perspective and sings that song perfectly.
WCT: Do you write new music while out on the road?
PW: Sometimes, I have a four-album project ahead of me and I am ready to move on to my next work.
WCT: Is it like writing a novel with that big of a project?
PW: Yes. It is comforting to have a structure for the next five years.
WCT: Is there a musician that you would like to work with but haven’t yet?
PW: Collaboration has to happen organically, through fate and circumstances, like bumping into someone in an elevator. I hold a little bit of an intimidating presence in some people’s minds as the creator of my own world. Some may listen to my music and appreciate it, but they may be scared to knock on the door.
WCT: That doesn’t sound like a bad thing…
PW: [laughs] I am not complaining at all. I am my own little universe of ideas, sounds and concepts.
WCT: Describe your live show for our readers.
PW: I check in the morning of the show and get realistic abouthow I am feeling. Do I feel angry about something or dispossessed? Do I feel the mixture of melancholy and alienation? I think about how I can be of service to someone that night. I have no ability to switch off that emotion because it helps fuel me to get onstage. If I suppress anything at this point in my life, no one gets a good deal in terms of paying for a ticket.
I don’t write a set list. I choose the first song and then after years of knowing my songs by heart, they are ready to go from a list of a hundred. It is almost like a seance because I listen to what the room is giving me from the people there. It’s a very psychic, intuitive process. The whole point is to leave people better than I found them. It stops being about me when I start the first song. Being of service changed everything about my performance.
WCT: Do you like performing in intimate spaces like The Gman Tavern in Chicago?
PW: The venues give me whiplash because in some countries I will play to two thousand people and then I am playing to 40 people in Salt Lake City in the span of two weeks. I have to constantly put my ego aside and look at it as a service.
I played Vegas and it’s a city of extrovert magic. I decided not to use any microphones and I found an Elizabethan outfit. I went acoustic in a small, wooden room to give people the opposite portal into somewhere else. I am constantly adapting and will have different set lists.
WCT: Are these some of your outfits hanging here?
PW: Yes, I am making clothes for the show today. This is part of the manifestation process of what will happen tonight. I have no crew, so I will drive to the venue, set up and do a soundcheck. I put out the merchandise, then have one hour to be stage-ready. I have a two-hour show, then a one-hour meet and greet. I pack everything up and return to where I’m staying.
WCT: That sounds like a lot of work.
PW: It’s a ritual. There’s no time to stop or make mistakes.
WCT: What do you do to warm up your vocal cords?
PW: I have a little whistle that I put around my neck before I get in the car, so I can warm up my voice while I am driving. This tour was hard for the first three shows because I hadn’t driven in America and I only learned to drive two years ago.
WCT: This whistle device is new to me.
PW: It creates tension on your vocal cords to prepare you for the biggest notes. Someone invented this device in his garage in England and it’s been amazing.
WCT: Did learning how to sew come out of necessity for your costumes?
PW: No, I cut my teeth with a performance art family in London and the head of it was Leigh Bowery. He died the year before I arrived in the family when I was 14 years old.
Lady Bunny was in the collective and many drag queens. For a year, I learned about stage makeup, how to work with lighting in venues, how to hold a microphone and when to do a costume change.
It was my dream to run away with the circus and all I did was go into Zone 1 to be looked after by these people. I learned all of those things as a teenager and when I entered the music industry, I had to dial it down. The culture wasn’t ready for that amount of glamor and queerness.
WCT: What are you doing next on this tour?
PW: I have started a relationship with a wonderful booking agent out here and I have my three-year visa. This tour is rebuilding the audience that has stayed loyal and true over that 10-year break. Some of the audience never got to see me 10 years ago, so they are coming to my shows for the first time.
In January, I will be in my garden and in my studio working on my next album. I will close the era of this album in London with a string section. After that, I hope to come back to America very soon.
Patrick Wolf tours Canada and the United States from now until Nov. 19, 2025. Keep up with the artist at patrickwolf.com/en-us.