We’re watching Blair Witch Project on VHS right now. The VCR and tapes take up a ton of space, and it looks like shit so why do you do it?

I just feel so much more cozy with a VHS on, plus sometimes my wifi just doesn’t work. I like to have a physical copy for nostalgia of movies I love. I like the cover art and design…Put it on display.

Am I interviewing you as Reese Salken the skateboarder, or Wolf Trap Road the musician?

Haha, can it only be one or the other!? I don’t know, Wolf Trap Road is just my music.

Well if you wanted to use this platform to promote your music what would you tell us about WTR?

There’s not much to it, it’s just stuff I like to make in my spare time so I don’t go crazy. I can’t just sit too much, I get too much in my head.

You’re not at the point where there’s like comments on the internet talking shit about your music?

No, not yet. I’m sure people see it and think, “What the fuck is this guy doing?” But I like that.

Before we talk about skating, I wanted to ask what interests you in masks and the creation of them?

I don’t know I’ve just always loved scary, fucked up masks since I was little. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and when I was young I legitimately thought I wanted to be a monster mask maker. I would get these plain masks and put clay and other shit on there, but quickly realized I needed like rubber and molds and shit. I’ve made a couple other bullshit ones out of foil and papier-mâché, but nothing special.

It’s funny, as humans sometimes we like to be scared.

Yeah, it’s fucked.

Where are you from? Somewhere in Virginia? Newport News? Richmond? Norfolk?

You’re close, you pretty much hit everything around it, but it, it’s Yorktown, VA.

What originally sparked your interest to skate as a kid?

As a kid I was just down to do whatever as most kids would be, so I would rollerblade, ride a bike, push around on a skateboard, whatever the kids in the neighborhood were doing.

So did you have a skateboard, where did you get it?

I did have some botched shitty toy store board that I would try to paint and make look legit, but yeah, I don’t know or remember where I got it. The first proper board I got was a Birdhouse Tony Hawk.

Kinda funny, you’re now getting Birdhouse boards and a Birdman was your first board?

Yes, consciously the first real board I picked out on my 10th birthday was a B-House.

Did you have kids to skate with at this juncture or were you going solo?

There were these kids, like classic bad ass kids, getting into trouble smashing people’s pumpkins on Halloween type kids. They would let me skate with them and then I realized this is like a whole lifestyle! Randomly the first magazine I got was a Transworld, when they did their weird all sequence issue and I actually thought the magazine was called “9 Frames Per Second,” but I saw how skateboarders dressed and their style, and I realized I just looked like a dorky little kid.

So was that kinda the definitive moment where you were like I want to be a skateboarder?

Yeah exactly, I was full in. I also played baseball at the time and it sucked, always just standing in the outfield. I played football too and I kinda fucked with that. I was puny, but I tried my little heart out. It was funny though because someone got hurt skating on the team and the coach was like “No skateboarding if you risk your performance on the field!” Haha liek it was the NFL or some shit! By the end of middle school I quit all that and started spending more time going to skateparks and shit.

Where are we currently at in Blair Witch Project?

Currently they’re losing their shit, they’re fully lost, and lost the map.

So what is Pseudo Visions…A lifestyle, video. frame of mind, a crew, or all of the above?

It was a crew, but for us it was like a revolution that our friend Grant Forbes started. He was the filmer but more so a visionary as he was really on it and ahead of his time. He filmed really well, always had ideas, and drove us anywhere. I spent the summer after senior year filming for his video “Shades Away.” Grant changed my life in multiple ways. I kinda had a bad attitude about skating, in the sense that I was overly concerned about progressing and getting sponsored. He was the one who single handedly made me realize not to worry about that shit and just have fun. Unfortunately Grant died way too soon in a car accident, but I truly believe he would’ve gone on to do great things.

That had to be hard to deal with especially at that age…

Yeah, at the time I was in my freshman year at Old Dominion University, which sucked, but the only cool thing about it was that I was closer to Grant, so we would link up to skate even more. So when there was the accident it just completely flipped my world upside down, my whole future revolved around Grant. We were talking about moving out west at the time, among other things.

What movie we watching next?

Dusk Till Dawn.

Sounds good I like that movie, so back to college. How far did you make it in college?

Haha, one semester. I just knew it wasn’t for me. And with my friend just passing away, I felt like I had to get out of the area and start fresh with a new chapter of life or whatever.

Were you getting hooked up for skating at all at this point?

Yeah, I was getting flowed from Dekline and Foundation, I sent my footage in and it kinda worked as they started sending me a couple boards a month.

Let the readers know, where we’re at in Dusk Till Dawn.

Quentin just got a hole shot in his hand and Clooney is pouring Jack Daniels on it. That’s the way to do it!

So anyway you’re basically a college dropout, and this is when you made the move to California? How did you survive?

I was working at an Italian restaurant for a bit before I headed out so I had some money saved up. Right when I came out here I got a job at Togo’s Sandwiches in Hollywood. I lasted one day. I didn’t have a car and was staying random places which would’ve made it almost impossible to get there. I was fired, I jsut never came back. Luckily the homie D-Mar, who I hardly knew at the time, let me live at his place for a while in Long Beach.

Obviously you couldn’t stay at D-Mar’s place forever, what’d you do after that?

Yeah, there were nights where I’d be working and wasn’t sure where I was going to sleep that night. It was Adam Mills, the Birdhouse TM and filmer that really put me up. I really don’t even know why, just a nice guy I guess. And then after that Blake Carpenter hooked it up for a while. Also, Rodent let me stay with him for a bit. Then I stayed with Kyle Walker, Ant Travis’ and Ed Duff’s place, the Lutherans’…Just a bunch of places for a few months at a time and then I’d move on. There was never any hard feelings as I knew my time was up at each spot. I appreciated the good run and would want to get out before I wore out my welcome too much anyways.

We’ve both agreed in the past that we talking about injuries, but you ended up getting hurt and going back to VA for a while, right?

Yeah, I fucked up my knee trying to switch frontboard this rail, so went back home to lay low for a bit, some physical reconstruction, along with some mental reconstruction as well. When I came back to Cali I still had a while until I could skate again, but it wasn’t a bad time as I think I grew quite a bit during that period. Blake was nice enough to let me stay with him agian, I was working at The Pike, and a sushi restaurant, along with going to the gym for rehab like ever day, so I was keeping busy.

Around this time you started getting Birdhouse stuff, how was that obtainable when you weren’t skating?

Well I was sitting on a bit of footage and considering I was out for a while, it jsut felt like the footage was getting kinda old and stale so I decided to be proactive and hit up Burnett from Thrasher with no expectations, and he was down to put it out on the site. I was already homies and skated with a lot of the dudes on Birdhouse, so they already kinda had my back, but I guess the TM at the time Jerome was hyped on that little bit of footage and it kinda just sealed the deal.

Filming for anything specific now?

Yeah, Birdhouse is going to be putting out a video entitled “Beautiful Mutants” in about a month, so most of my footage will go to that. Birdhouse put out “Saturdays” not too long ago, but everybody has been filming and has footage so it’s kind of like why not? That’s another cool thing about Birdhouse is the creative freedom we have right now. I’m just a flow guy but they’re pretty much letting me direct this video for the most part since it’ll be my first part with them or whatever. I made the music for the promo. Adam Mills and I just came up with a pretty stupid and simple concept where there’s little skits of me killing off a couple dudes on the team haha. It’s a trip though that I’m semi-putting together a video that I’m gonna be in with Tony Hawk.

It’s kind of trite but any shout outs?

For sure, pretty much everyone I’ve aforementioned during this discussion, plus any and everyone who has helped me out. My aunt Leslie, Stephen Mullen, my dad Neil, and Trent Hazelwood just to name a few.