Interview: Sofia Wolfson and the Art of Adulting

Growing up with a guitar in her hands since she was six, Sofia Wolfson’s intimate and soulful folk songs capture the confusion and beauty of being a young adult.

Written by Claire Hardwick
Photo courtesy of Sofia Wolfson

Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you start playing music?

I grew up in a really musical family –– my Dad is a musician, so there were always guitars around the house. I took my first baby steps to him playing me “Norwegian Wood” on the guitar! I started taking guitar lessons when I was six, and I fell in love with it. I almost immediately started learning and playing my own covers of things. I’d play Jenny Lewis covers, but I’d play them not knowing what the songs were about, like one of my favorite songs to perform was “Carpetbaggers,” which was about prostitutes. The songs got more serious by middle school. I started playing gigs in ninth grade, and I played pretty much monthly in high school.

What were some of the artists that you listened to growing up? And which ones do you feel like are still influencing you today?

I grew up listening to The Beatles and Tom Petty and a lot of classics, but my biggest influence was The Band –– I was obsessed with them when I was younger. My “baby movie” that I watched every single day was “The Last Waltz,” which is the Martin Scorsese-directed final concert of The Band. There was a whole summer when I made my parents call me Emmylou for Emmylou Harris, and I didn’t answer to Sofia. So, yeah, that was probably the biggest influence on me –– listening to the music but also getting to see live performers on stage so early.

Songwriting-wise, Joni Mitchell was an influence. She kind of just got me interested in talking about feelings, so Blue, even though that’s a stereotypical answer, it was a huge inspiration for me. I also listened to a variety of things because my dad has really great eclectic music taste and would make these mix CDs. Everything from The Beatles to Tom Petty to early Kanye, it was just the biggest variety that you could ever imagine, so I definitely feel like I grew up with a musical education of learning the importance of listening to a lot of different things instead of pigeon-holing yourself into one genre.

How did growing up in LA influence your musical style and songwriting?

I got to meet a lot of musicians really young and kind of form a little community of other high schoolers that were doing the same thing — people like Charlie Hickey. We all started playing shows really young. Obviously, everyone will say there’s always a sense of competition amongst people that can be overwhelming. But I think what’s really important is that there is so much art and culture in LA. It’s so easy to find your little niche thing. With Charlie and some others, we kind of found our own little singer-songwriter alternative crew, which was really awesome.

Another good thing about growing up in LA is that there’s so much going on all the time, so I just grew up getting to go to so many concerts and getting to experience so many different insane musical things. Also, not that it was easy to get a gig, but there were just more resources to get started because there were so many venues. Not that all of them would take a fourteen-year-old, but some of them did, which was really helpful and supportive. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I loved growing up there. It’s my home, so I’m really thankful for all the culture I had growing up.

What has been your songwriting process as an artist? How has it progressed from your first album to your more recent EPs?

I usually start with words. It’s very hard for me to sit down at the piano or at the guitar and say “I’m gonna write a song today” and just start plucking something out. The words usually come when I’m walking to class, when I’m driving, when I’m sitting in a boring lecture –– I’ll just think of something, and I’ll jot it down. And then, later, I’ll sit down at the guitar and pluck out what I think should go along with it. The reverse of that is some songs, like “Nothing’s Real,” start with a guitar part that I played with for a little while. I wasn’t sure if it should just be an instrumental, or if it should have words with it.

There’s a song called “Older and Changing” off the album I released when I was 16, which is so funny. My dad always jokes that I should sell it to a menopause commercial even though I was 14.

Could you talk a little bit about the process on working on your most recent EP Adulting? I know Marshall Vore (collaborator and drummer for Phoebe Bridgers) produced it –– what was that experience like?

Marshall and I started working together a couple of years ago when he produced a couple of songs for me on the EP Side Effects. We stayed in touch and knew we wanted to do a longer project. I always have an idea of certain songs I wanna do, but I also really like working with Marshall, because he’ll kind of pull out certain songs that I would’ve never even thought about, and they become something new. I collected a ton of songs that I had written since the last EP and dug up some older ones. We just sat and listened to demos of everything and talked about them. It’s really easy as a songwriter to keep writing and then realize, “Oh, I just wrote three songs in open D that all kind of sound the same.”

The recording process is super loose and fun –– I feel really lucky. We work with a lot of cool musicians. We all play the song together and talk about the groove and where certain things should go.I feel really thankful to the musicians that play with me.

What is most exciting to you about being a musician right now?

I’m super inspired by all these women that are playing music and getting their music heard. It’s just a super inspiring time where I feel like women are dominating the genres I play in and beyond. People like Margaret Glaspy and Madison Cunningham and Adrienne Lenker from Big Thief, who are all very talented guitarists, proving that you don’t just have to be a pretty face standing there and singing, that you can have something to say and be an incredible musician as well. That makes me want to play guitar better and learn more about music itself.

To clarify, women have always been in music and have been very dominating and incredible. But, it just seems like we’re in this time right now where people are getting a lot more credit for their work. Even when I’m down about music, I can listen to these women and remember that something incredible is happening.

Interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.

Listen to Sofia Wolfson’s album Adulting here.