Noah Rauchwerk is Wormy
Wormy by Darryl Rahn
Singer-Songwriter-Drummer Noah Rauchwerk is swimming in Shark River as Wormy. Shark River singles “Cocaine Bear,” “27 Days” and “Give Up” precede “I Hate You,” a song he wrote “about conflicting feelings of jealousy and love for your successful friends,” he admits. “I wrote it in a patch when Nick [Carpenter of Medium Build] and I had grown apart and I missed him a lot but also wanted to be in his shoes. Nick and I made this music video as a nod to one of my favorite books and movies, Stephen King’s Misery. Everything you’re watching is completely true and actually happened.”
Wormy drums for touring artists Samia, Willow Avalon and Renny Conti. His life is chopped up between long drives, crowded venues and strange hotels, months-long nationwide tours and sporadic meandering visits back to his Holmdel hometown in Monmouth County where he waits to leave again. “This discomfort with impermanence come to a head on his second album which finds him grappling with the splintered friendships, shattered relationships and stagnating uncertainty produced by a life in constant motion,” according to his camp. “The album asks many of the questions that haunt people as they grow shakily into adulthood. Will my friend ever call me back? What’s the difference between building a life and just living a life?”
When he tries to explain himself, he sounds like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. “I’m home and I’m away from home and every time I promise myself when I’m home, I’ll finally do this or when I’m back on tour, I’ll finally do that.” It could drive a guy crazy! He dresses up his fears in self-deprecating humor. The title may be a real place but it’s also a metaphor for feeling unsafe in a supposedly safe place.
Shark River is, indeed, a river in eastern New Jersey that rises in Monmouth County and flows southeast for 11.7 miles continuing through Neptune and Wall Township before spilling into an inlet that feeds into an estuary, making it, ultimately, into the Atlantic between Belmar and Avon-by-the-Sea. “I remember hearing this story as a kid,” he explains, “where a shark got into a river in New Jersey, and it always terrified me because when you go into a creek, the one thing you’re thinking is `at least there are no sharks in here.’ In other words, you go back to a familiar place and feel like it’s gonna solve your problems, but your problems follow you. Sometimes all you can do is reckon with it, say ok, now I understand this about myself and next time I approach this, it’s going to be in a positive way. Next time, I’ll get it right.”