For those of you unfamiliar with Henry Wolfe, he’s a folk musician whose third album, Linda Vista, was released in April of last year. (He also happens to be Meryl Streep’s son.) On Jan. 19, Wolfe will be playing a show at the Mercury Lounge with He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister. The Eye’s Dan Merritt spoke with Wolfe about his inspiration and his songwriting.

You released your album Linda Vista this past April, and now you’re heading out on tour with He’s My Brother She’s My Sister. What has the experience been like for you putting the personal songs out in the public sphere?

They’re actually not very personal songs. I’m not very good at writing confessional, really personal, diaristic kinds of songs. I’d like to – I’d like to be better at that, but mostly I try to write about a situation from sort of an outside perspective. If there’s something that I did go through, I try to understand it from the outside.

Was your moving to LA solely a musical venture, or did this musical development coincide with a move to LA that was prompted by other reasons?

It’s kind of both. I was playing in a band in New York for four or five years called Bravo Silva and we released a record and it was very different. After our band broke up, I was ready to turn the page from that, but the music I’m making now is still very much pop-oriented. But I moved to LA personally because my band broke up and my rent got raised, and I was like “Fuck it. I’m going to do something different.” And I had some friends out here, so I packed up all of my stuff into a station wagon and drove across the country.

Your music is often deemed as “timeless” by critics. Would you agree with this? What does it mean to be called timeless in an age of constant change?

If I wanted to make music that was relevant to right now that sounded like the newest, coolest type of music, the trendiest kind of music, I think I would do a horrible job, because I’m not very good at anticipating trends. I think a lot of people make music with that in mind because they want their music to be relevant right now.

The music that I’m making, and have been making for the last five years is more concerned with classical pop songwriting where the songs are short and there’s kind of a lyrical hook that helps you remember them. My ideal is to get as good as I can writing traditional pop songs and then once I feel like I have gotten to the point when I feel like I can do that, then I’ll be able to branch out and widen the scope of what I do.

You mentioned how you hopped in your station wagon, and drove across the country, the image of the east-coaster headed west.  So I feel your music can be seen as an act of independence. Would you agree with that statement?

I would definitely not disagree with you. I’ve always been a little wary of trends. If this is a trend right now, it’s sort of the last thing I want to do because I know that it’s going to be dated. New York was dominated with what was cool. In a way there was a pressure to conform to that if you wanted to get noticed, which is kind of a paradox. It’s supposed to be about experimentation and doing something that’s not conforming. So when I moved to LA, it was really nice because the clubs that I would be playing would have bands that didn’t necessarily sound like each other but they were all friends, so it was okay. In New York, that was just something you didn’t do, playing with a band that didn’t sound like your band. It’s just a cool environment here in LA for musicians. You don’t have pressures on you from the outside.