Journal & Topics Media Group

‘Wolf Rd’ Crafts An Ode To Des Plaines

Local Band Premieres First EP This Saturday In Chicago

Members of Des Plaines band Wolf Rd: Nick Hoffmann (back left), Devin Stone (back right), Chris Hoffmann (front left) and Geoffrey Duckmann (front right).

“Nowhere Around You”, a new EP set to release Friday (Nov. 22) by local band Wolf Rd, is dripping in Des Plaines.

From the name of the band, to the title of their single, “Oakton” to its members — which includes three Des Plaines natives — the city has influenced just about every aspect of Wolf Rd’s work.

“Des Plaines is definitely a big part of our identity,” said 24-year-old lead singer Chris Hoffmann, a student at Chicago-Kent College of Law, during a chat Wednesday (Nov. 13) with the Journal & Topics. “The memories that made us who were are are here.”

Wolf Rd, stylized the way it appears on Des Plaines street signs for the band’s name, became a “uniting theme” for the band members. It references frequent turns on to the road from Hoffmann’s neighborhood as well as one of his favorite album covers featuring a road lined with wolves.

Growing up in Des Plaines, Hoffmann attended St. Emily School in Mount Prospect and graduated from Maine West High School. When he was around 12 years old, he became interested in music.

“I really fell head first into it,” he told the Journal.

Eventually his interest in guitar began to eclipse his interest in video games, and his younger brother, 20-year-old brother Nick and Wolf Rd’s drummer, followed suit.

“He’s a natural,” said Hoffmann of his younger brother. “He’s been good at drums for as long as I can remember.”

The two would practice together, and by the time Hoffmann was in college, they were playing in a cover band that focused on pop-punk songs by bands such as Green Day, Sum 41 and Fallout Boy. Around that time, they began playing with Wolf Rd guitarist Geoffrey Duckmann, age 23, who grew up just around the corner from the Hoffmann’s Callen Lane home.

When they decided to form their own band to perform original music, Devin Stone, age 25, joined as a bass player.

The Hoffmann family home (which was a finalist in this year’s Des Plaines Curb Appeal contest) is so important to the band that it became the setting for their “Oakton” music video.

“We looked at other places but nothing else really fit,” said Hoffmann, though he admitted it was a massive undertaking to move his parents’ china out of the dining room to set up their equipment. “The song is so suburbs-oriented.”

Apart from the band rattling the china cabinets on Callen Lane, the video includes footage of a young man smashing picture frames with a baseball bat in a Des Plaines park.

According to Hoffmann, the song is “about the feelings you have when a long-term relationship ends, when you thought you were in love,” and moving on when you thought something was going to be your future. He said it represents the lighter side of Wolf Rd’s spectrum, influenced by the pop-punk bands they used to cover when he was in college.

“Winthrop”, the band’s other single from “Nowhere Around You” represents the darker side of the band, which borrows more influence from metalcore bands such as Pierce the Veil. Like “Oakton” it is inspired by a street, Winthrop Avenue, where both Hoffmann brothers have lived in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago while attending Loyola University.

“It’s a pretty angry song about being around toxic friends and toxic friend groups and removing yourself from those people,” Hoffmann said.

Overall, the EP explores the “angsty” feelings of the “in-between zone” of life in your early 20s, he added.

After about a year perfecting their six-track debut, the band will play their first live show starting at 5:30 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 23) at Uptown Cafe, 5010 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago. Featuring opening bands Authentic Pines, Young Douglas and The Homecoming, the show is open to all ages.

“We wanted to make it right and make our content really good,” said Hoffmann of the project. “We love every second of it.”

Wolf Rd’s “Nowhere Around You” will also be available on most streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music.

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