By ANDY GRAY

Staff writer

Black Wolf & the Thief’s debut release “The Pioneer” may have been more appropriately titled than they realized.

The husband-and-wife duo of Clay and Carolyn Colley was venturing into new territory with that album.

“I had always done recording at home, like every kid with a garage band,” keyboard player Clay Colley said. “That was our first experience in the studio with our own creative project. We went in with the songs half-written and we were working with two phenomenal musicians, but they were older than us and we took their word for everything … ‘The Pioneer,’ we’re still proud of it, but it sort of misrepresents who we are a little bit.”

The new CD, “The Darkness Around Us Is Deep,” is the sound of a band that knew exactly what it wanted, and Black Wolf & the Thief will celebrate its release with a free show Saturday at Modern Methods Brewing Company.

Part of the different approach was practical.

“Writing in the studio is very expensive,” lead singer Carolyn Colley said.

All but one of the songs was road tested, a regular part of the band’s live show for six months to a year before they went into the studio with their drummer, Brian Messina.

“It made the process go so much faster,” Clay Colley said. “We were a lot more assertive — ‘This is what we need on this one.’ That’s one of the lessons we learned. I wrote parts for people. I didn’t mess around with stuff. We had the vision we wanted and we got people who would make it happen.”

On “The Pioneer,” Carolyn wrote most of the lyrics while Clay created the melody and arrangements, but three of the seven tracks feature lyrics and music by Carolyn, including “Dark Thoughts.”

“I was taking a shower when all of the sudden the first couple lines came to me,” she said. “‘OK, I need to remember that.’ I don’t usually write melody, I usually just write words and give them to Clay, but these words came to me with a melody. I remember thinking I can’t lose this. My phone was on the counter, so I hit record and jumped back in. By the end of my shower, the bathroom floor is soaked but I had the song written.

“It’s about being sad, feeling crummy. The little things that cheer me up just weren’t working. Sometimes you feel like Eeyore with a big black rain cloud following you around. Even if I might seem fine to everybody else, this thing is haunting me. That’s what the song is about.”

The dark feelings of that song and others are reflected in the packaging.

“We like to collaborate with artists,” Carolyn said. “We collaborated with Aaron Chine on the first one. A friend from high school, Cameron Ulam, she has an Instagram page where she was doing what she called nightmare watercolor paintings. As the songs started coming together, we knew we wanted to connect with another artist and have them create what they felt from the songs. The songs were pretty dark, so we thought her dark-themed paintings would work. We sent her the tracks when they were finished or mostly finished and asked her to interpret the songs through art. That’s totally her.”

Another standout track on the track on the album is the opening song “Followers,” a commentary on our social-media-driven culture.

“All of us have our love-hate relationship with social media,” Clay said. “One thing that bothers me — and a lot of this is kind of the pot calling the kettle black. I do the things I’m frustrated about — is how we’re able to make ourselves appear any way we want on social media. I feel like we’ve always done that, the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing to create this perception you want people to have of you. But it’s easier now and so easy to get caught up in it … In the music and art community, it’s really weird. We can totally have this persona on our phones that’s not actually who we are.

The lyrics make that message clear but Clay, who has a bachelor’s degree in piano performance and a master’s degree in jazz composition from the Dana School of Music, complemented the message with the music.

“I geeked out a little bit on that song,” he said. “That song is actually one of the weirdest ones on the album harmonically. It’s in three different key areas. It’s super wacky. I on purpose constructed it to be like a pop song, a perfect pop song … The whole point is the song is like this perfect person on social media. ‘Oh, this is great,’ but if you look just a little deeper, ‘No, this is actually really weird and I don’t like this.'”

The band originally expected to release album last year, but COVID-19 pushed back those plans. However, one benefit of the pandemic is the new record includes some contributions from the band’s original drummer, Bryan Teeters. He left to move to Nashville and became the drum tech for country act Old Dominion. Teeters was furloughed when the pandemic kept that band from touring, and Old Dominion also let the lease expire on its rehearsal space, which was filled with analog recording equipment. Teeters was told he could use the space until the lease ended.

“He called me and said, ‘Do you need drums on anything at all? I sent him a bunch of song ideas but also two of the songs for the album,” Clay said. “He crushed them. It was pretty unbelievable. All he had was my piano scratch track for one of them. That’s a cool thing and something that would not have happened if it hadn’t been for COVID.”

For Saturday’s release show, Carolyn Colley, Clay Colley and Messina will be joined by Dave Traugh on bass, Nelson Crain as a second percussionist and John Anthony of The Vindys on guitar. Anthony plays the guitar solo on “Unrequited.”

Black Wolf & the Thief will open with “The Darkness Around Us Is Deep” played in its entirety, followed by a set of party music.

“We normally perform as a power trio, but for the performance of the album we really wanted it to be special,” Clay said. “We worked very hard to make it cohesive, and it deserves to be performed as its own suite of songs. It will be an experience for sure.”

If you go ….

WHAT: Black Wolf & the Thief CD release show with Candace Campana

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Modern Methods Brewing Company, 125 David Grohl Alley, Warren

HOW MUCH: Admission is free.

agray@tribtoday.com