Photo by Soda Gardocki
Audio By Carbonatix
The pluses and minuses of being in a one-man band are pretty cut and dry for Lone Wolf.
“The pluses are you get all the money; you’re not fighting for creative control; there’s no egos involved; you can change songs on the spot. When you play music, you can go longer, shorter, or change the key,” he tells New Times. “The negatives are you have to unload and load equipment by yourself. And when you go on tour, you’re doing all the driving yourself.”
Born Bruno Esposito, Lone Wolf came to Miami by way of Peru from Italian parents when he was still in diapers.
“I lived in West Kendall near the Everglades,” he says.
At the tender age of 11, his mom bought him a five-dollar harmonica, a much more affordable option than what he really wanted: a guitar. While hanging out at Peaches Records & Tapes in the 1980s, he spotted a cassette by bluesman Jimmy Reed.
“He was playing a harmonica and guitar at the same time. I didn’t have the money, so I five-finger discounted it,” Esposito says.
He loved the blues at a young age, but consistent with his shoplifting origin story, he found himself drawn to punk rock as a teenager. “I was in that ’90s Churchill’s punk scene,” he adds. “I played bass for Los Humaniacs. In 2002, I was in the psychobilly band, playing upright bass for the Van Orsdels.”
After a while, an antsy Esposito moved around, spending time in places like Atlanta and Costa Rica. Eventually, he found himself in Titusville along Florida’s Space Coast, working for Gold Tone, an instrument manufacturer, making banjos. It was around that time that Lone Wolf came to be.
“I was looking for people to play music with and couldn’t find anyone,” he explains. “I realized my hand on the banjo was making a percussive sound. I started thinking if I connected my feet to a bass drum, I could play the banjo with my hands at the same time. Then I added a hi-hat, then a snare drum, and I keep adding to this day.”
Lone Wolf has an old-timey sound, partly because of the primitive analog instrumentation but mostly due to his gravelly voice, which sounds a bit like Tom Waits with a Miami accent. He credits his unique voice to “smoking a lot of cigarettes and drinking lots of whiskey.”
Locals can next witness what a diet of tobacco and alcohol yields when Lone Wolf plays at Magic 13 Brewing’s Crawfish Boil on Sunday, April 30.
“They have me on early at 1 p.m. I’ll have my full rig, and I’ll play an hour set of original songs with a few renditions of old blues and Appalachian banjo songs,” he notes.
While Esposito has studied the works of other one-man bands, naming Hasil Adkins, Bloodshot Bill, and Reverend Deadeye as influences, his biggest inspiration comes from his home turf of the Everglades.
“I’m always thinking of swamp ideas,” he says. “I might make my slide guitar imitate a mosquito or have my voice sound like a frog or an alligator growl. I’ll go fishing, and every time songs come out of it.”
While in Titusville, he also became fascinated by Florida’s cracker culture.
“In Central Florida, I learned about all these crackers, these descendants of Spaniards, the first Europeans to settle in Florida,” Esposito says. “They brought oranges and cattle, and these crackers are real cowboys. They’re experts with whips, and they can make their whips crack like gunshots. I try to bring that into my music too.”
The good thing is if he finds another unlikely influence to bring into Lone Wolf, he won’t have to hold a band meeting to discuss it.
Crawfish Boil. With Lone Wolf OMB, Rebel Love, Taylor David & the Outsiders, and the Collectives. 11 a.m. Sunday, April 30, at Magic 13 Brewing, 340 NE 61st St., Miami; magic13brewing.com. Admission is free with RSVP via eventbrite.com.
