Tell us about how this project got started?

Sons Of Luther was originally a family motorcycle club from back in the 70’s – My grandpa’s name is Luther and then my dad and his brothers, who all rode motorcycles started the small “club”. When I moved back to Western NY in late 2015, I immediately started playing bass and synth with The Leones while I was working on finishing my own material under the moniker “Wren Williams” . When I was getting ready to release the album “Venom & Sugar”, my cousins Amos, Cal, and Emmett Werner jumped on as my backing band. We naturally decided on resurrecting the Sons Of Luther name. Since then we’ve gone through some line-up changes for some extenuating circumstances, but Amos is back with us this year and we’re the most solid we’ve ever felt.

Were you anywhere before Buffalo?

We’re not really even currently in Buffalo… Two of us are in Batavia, one of us is in Geneseo, and I live just outside of Rochester. We rehearse and record at our studio loft space in Batavia NY – However, the majority of our musician friends and band network are in Buffalo. So, we’ve been primarily playing there. 2020 was supposed to be our year for branching out into the Rochester scene… but that’s a bit up in the air given our current pandemic situation. Before Western New York, my wife and I were in Brooklyn and then Jersey City for nearly a decade and likewise our guitar player/ recording engineer / studio owner, John Bohn, was in Nashville working on grammy nominated records. We’re very lucky to all be back in the area and utilizing the lower cost of rent to have a space to make the kind of records we want to make. John played with me in my high school punk band Joey Vicious. He’s a personal hero of mine and I count my lucky stars every day that we happen to be back in the same locale and making music together again.

How is everyone holding up during this time?

We’re all doing fine as we’re social distancing – enjoying our friend’s live streams – bummed and missing each other, but happy to be healthy and with our families and the necessary provisions – doing our best to keep busy and keep productive with writing and producing.

What is the biggest lesson we can learn from this experience?

How to quickly adapt to the new landscape. It seems as though musicians should’ve been taking better advantage of live streaming for a while. It’s certainly not going anywhere, even once this pandemic calm down. It doesn’t replace the magic of a live show experience but it’s holding us over for now. This new environment will continue to perpetually evolve, this particular adjustment is the most dramatic we’ve ever seen in the music world, but we’re all seeming to adjust accordingly. It’s been heartening to see the local community come together with something like “Band Together Buffalo”

Photo by Zach M Anderson

How do you balance music with jobs, partners, children, etc?

That’s the trick isn’t it? Time management for a fulfilling and well rounded life is tough – but eventually you just have to draw the line on what you want to accomplish and figure out how to fit it into your life. I don’t have a lot of other hobbies – I don’t know how people devote hours to video games – it must be a nice escape but it’s not for me, it applies my OCD in a negative way where I get sucked in for hours on end, and then i have nothing to show for it and I feel awful. Ultimately, find yourself a partner who respects and supports your ambitions and allows you the space you need to create.  3/4 of our band members are dads and it’s a testament to our families for helping us carve out time to do what we love. We’re very fortunate that our jobs and overall lifestyles are conducive to us being able to work collectively on the band.

Anyone you’ve collaborated with recently?

We recently put out a track called “Kill Your Darlings” which features a chord progression and melody from BKPR (Elias Vanson) and Medusa on main vocals. It’s a very 90’s trip-hop almost Portishead vibe. It was a hard left turn for us as we expand our sound from the standard four piece guitar rock structure and start to branch out further into more electronic sounds and an over all “post-genre” attitude. Both artists were a pleasure to work with and proved to me that collaboration can yield some incredible results. Looking forward to collaborating more with other artists in the future.

Are you working on anything new / specific at the moment?

Our live show is in tip top shape at the moment and we were starting to gain some momentum with booking more shows and expanding our geographical presence. Hopefully, the things we were booking for this spring and summer will start to come back on line and we can resume our plan. Everything is in this weird holding pattern at the moment. Other than that we’re using this isolated down time to write and work on new music. Definitely excited for the new palette of sounds and textures that we’re working with as we’re collaborating more and finding new ways of getting our art out there. thank you for the opportunity to reach more people.

*Interview with Wren Werner

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