Josiah Wolf, like his younger brother and WHY? bandmate Yoni, has never been able to escape the call of music. His father, a Cincinnati rabbi, taught him drums at the age of 9, so that curly-haired kid could provide the backbeat for worship service. Later, he’d dabble in darker arts (i.e. grunge) and fall in love with the hard bop of Thelonious Monk on his way to the University Of Cincinnati’s music conservatory.

In college, the Wolf boys made fast friends with then-unknowns like Doseone and Odd Nosdam, inspiring a crucial wave of genre-smearing, psychedelic rap projects that found Josiah keeping time live, or recording drum loops. The formative Greenthink experiments eventually led to the legendary cLOUDDEAD trio, and Josiah coproducing the group’s “JimmyBreeze” 10-inch. Soon, Yoni would relocate to California to help establish Anticon, while Josiah headed east to infiltrate New York’s jazz scene.

Between working Monday night gigs in Greenwich Village and providing 5 a.m. room service at a nearby hotel, Josiah was getting by but feeling restless. In 2002, he joined Yoni’s freshly formed Reaching Quiet band on tour. That album collaboration between Yoni and Nosdam – had impacted him profoundly, and he’d begun recording. It hadn’t previously occurred to Josiah to write or sing, but Yoni’s outsider M.O. spurred him on, resulting in 2003’s lo-fi and long out-of-print The Josiah EP. Inspired, he moved out west to become an integral part of WHY?’s rebirth as a full band.