Getting those first breaks in the music biz is tough for any new band with ambitions. For Americana roots outfit the Wilders, the chances seemed especially limited, as their Missouri/Kansas, base is far from the action in traditional music-industry centres. Soon after forming 10 years ago, the four musicians decided they needed to take a radical approach to attracting attention.
"We used to go to country and bluegrass festivals and conferences
- though we weren't scheduled to play,
"
says singer and guitarist Ike Sheldon. "We'd be, like, in a big hotel
lobby with regular jams going on, and we'd set up in the middle and wait for a
moment of silence, then just go for it - start going crazy, jumping around and
playing real loud. It was kind of a punk thing: raise a ruckus and see what
happens. It won us a big festival gig and got us noticed by an agent.
"
Today, the Wilders are one of the most acclaimed old-timey alt-country acts in
the U.S., with four albums under their belt. The members haven't lost their
punkish go-for-it flair; their recently released disc, Someone's Got to Pay
,
starts out with a frenetic folk-thrasher, "Wild Old Nory
".
The Wilders also like contrasts. The second track, "Broken Down Gambler
",
is an impeccably picked and bowed old-time reel, followed by a short piano
instrumental, "(An Old Murder Ballad Come to Life)
",
that's played almost painfully slowly.
Someone's Got to Pay
is built around a real-life theme supplied by
the band's banjo, dobro, and mandolin player Phil Wade. "Two years ago,
Phil sat on the jury of a first-degree murder trial,
" Sheldon says.
"It was very intense. As the story unfolded, he felt like ‘Hmm... This sounds so familiar,' and realized it was all the old murder ballads he'd heard, such as ‘Knoxville Girl' and ‘Pretty Polly'.
"The culprit was a 23-year-old guy whose wife had left him. He
decided that if he couldn't have her, nobody else would. He e-mailed his friends
and her friends saying, ‘I'm going to kill her and then kill myself,' and shot her
seven times-then took off, without completing the pact before the cops reached him.
He was sentenced to life without parole.
"
Wade was moved to write a song about the crime and his trial experience.
The Wilders didn't know how to deal with the nine-minute piece until they went
into the studio to make Someone's Got to Pay
.
"We decided to tape a section of the song at the end of every day, without thinking about it much beforehand,
"
Sheldon recalls. "Everybody grabbed whatever instrument they wanted and
we goofed around for 10 to 15 minutes before recording live. We thought it would
be a good idea to hang the whole album on that one song. It seemed like the other
compositions were telling parts of the story, in a way-speaking about love, loss,
and a degree of craziness.
"
That number, originally titled "Sitting on a Jury
", is
split up into five separate tracks, each with a different subtitle, not to mention
tempo and feel.
"The whole album has a lot of stylistic variety,
" says
Sheldon. "That's where we are right now. We love country and old-time
and that kind of music, and I think we've all put in our apprenticeship learning
the nuts and bolts of it.
"
The Wilders play St. James Hall on Friday (May 30)