I gotta admit, as a 44-year old, it’s kinda mind-blowing to think about an 11-year old listening to Dan Deacon. Whenever I see people in their early teens at Pitchfork Festival, I wonder if I should feel bad that they’re being exposed to cool music from the jump and missing out on formative experiences of being into shitty radio rock.

WOLF: I definitely just spent too much of high school on Wikipedia and Discogs and stuff like that. So I would say I’m an abnormal case in that regard.

I have to ask how someone who was listening to Baltimore noise rock as a pre-teen ended up making kinda pop-punk, kinda ska, kinda emo concept albums a decade later. The opposite trajectory usually happens.

WOLF: I can tell you exactly what the trajectory was. I generally grew up around ska, so I understood what it was and how it worked. But I was really into the indie noise stuff when I was super young, and then I started getting really into DC punk like Fugazi, and they were my favorite band for a really, really long time. And then I discovered Rites Of Spring because I was obsessed with Fugazi, and then I found out that people called that music “emo.” And so I’m like, okay, cool, I’m gonna listen to Sunny Day Real Estate and they’re kind of awesome. And then maybe My Chemical Romance – which I said was really bad when I was young – is probably pretty good, and then I listened to them. And so in that very linear trajectory, I discovered music at 19 years old that I should have been listening to when I was 12. And when I found Bomb The Music Industry!, that was honestly from being obsessed with Prince Daddy [And The Hyena], who we played with two days ago. That was like the fun stuff from when I liked Ponytail, they’re doing all the crazy indulgent stuff but they’re also making ska.

There’s a rich history of “Damn, my friends are starting families and having stable jobs, while I’ve dedicated my life to this pop-punk band” concept records, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard that expressed by someone who’s 20 years old. What are your peers doing at this age that inspired you to think, “I’ve wasted my life”?

WOLF: Uh…you know, they can, like, talk to people at a party. I can’t hang out right now, I’m dubbing cassette tapes that I’m going to bring to school and then people are going to be like, “That’s stupid.” I’ll be like, “Yeah, no, maybe you’re actually kind of right.” I was always kind of “music business brain,” not in like I’m trying to make money, but just kind of, “I gotta order blank cassette tapes right now so that I can get them for this band by this day.” And I wasn’t sitting around playing video games like I should have been.

What was your sales pitch to bands as a 15-year old label head?

WOLF: I would tell people I really liked them, that I was willing to spend $100 to make a bunch of records for them and not ask for money back.

That’s not the most sustainable business model, but I’m sure there are moments that made you think, “Yeah, it’s worth it anyway.”

WOLF: My first band, Dakota Condition, was noise rock, and looking back on it, you could definitely tell that we recorded it and mixed it when we were 15. But it sounds really, really mature in retrospect, because our music now is a lot more childish. And then our guitarist, Max, has a solo project called Really Really, and I put out a record for him that I was just blown away by. And it felt very, very satisfying to hold a piece of music where I’m like, “This is really great and literally nobody’s heard it.” I factually know nobody’s heard it because it’s not out yet. That was something that was really fulfilling for me. I don’t like doing it anymore because it’s a lot of work, but that’s what really got me into thinking DIY was really cool with my own sense of satisfaction.

With your background in self-recording and running a label, has it been difficult to hand over the reins for production and promotion with Stay Golden?

WOLF: I’ve always had a very, very hard time when there’s something about my band that I’m not in full control over. [Counter Intuitive Records] is doing a really, really excellent job, but we don’t have a manager right now. The idea of a manager freaks me out, because I’ve always wanted to have the interactions with people. I’ve always wanted to be the person doing merch so that if somebody comes up and is like, “I only have $10,” I can be the person to sell them a shirt and not like have one of my bandmates be like, “Uh, what should I do?” or say no. But they’ve been doing a really excellent job with publicity and posting about things and telling me things I need to do. I’ve still not updated our Apple Music page, but I wouldn’t have known I had to do that because I don’t use Apple Music.

Was there an intention from the beginning to make the “big, conceptual second album” a la The Monitor or Cosmic Thrill Seekers, or is that just how the songs presented themselves?

WOLF: I definitely wrote the single “Stay Golden” with the idea of, “There’s also going to be an album called that, and this is going to be the title track, and this is going to be the first song.” But I didn’t really have a scope of how big or how small the concept would be. There were definitely points along the way where I was like, “Oh, this is going to be a straight-up rock opera.” And I’m really glad I didn’t do that.

What were some of the rock opera ideas that didn’t make the cut?

WOLF: There was gonna be a deluxe version of the album that had every single indulgent thing we wanted to do. This was before I finished writing it, it was going to be multiple hours long with lots of interlude tracks where this troll would come up to you with stampering sounds, like, “I’m the Gold Troll!” This would be like the really stupid version that nobody would listen to. There was also going to be a big band version of “Stay Golden” that was all MIDI and the intro had spoken word on it. Because there’s a James Brown song that I think is called “World,” maybe I’m wrong, but it’s like a huge instrumental where one of the members of his band’s like, “James Brown, world of music,” and tells the story of the band.

So I gotta ask, Vacation, Cosmic Thrill Seekers, or The Monitor – which is your favorite concept album?

WOLF: Oh, it’s definitely Vacation — I can point to multiple parts of the record where I very deliberately was like, “I want to do this thing.” Particularly pacing, so the B side is kind of modeled after it. Between Vacation and The Monitor it’s like, really fucking close. But it is Vacation.