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Wilder’s Wide Influences

Posted Mar 4, 2010 by Clarisa Gerlach

Updated Mar 4, 2010 at 05:07 PM

He’s been part of the roots rock scene for more than 20 years, but the British Invasion set Webb Wilder on his course.

“I was in fourth grade when The Beatles changed the world,” Wilder says by telephone from Nashville. “The Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, all those bands influenced me to think that eclecticism was cool. That was what separated the men from the boys.”

Wilder knows which side of that line he’s on. His detective alter ego – a character in short films and novels - is even known as “The Last of the Full Grown Men.”

He backs up that claim on his latest album, last year’s “More Like Me,” which cruises from rockin’ boogie to Brill building pop to swamp rock to sweet balladry without missing a beat.

“I loved the way those bands would honor the country, pop, ballads and blues,” Wilder says. “That did something for me.”

In what he calls “the age of the specialist,” that variety can be both a “blessing and a curse. But it’s all rock ‘n’ roll to me,” Wilder says.

Wilder began soaking up those sounds as a boy in Hattiesburg, Miss., then pursuing a music career, and satisfied his mother’s desire for him to go to college, by attending school first in Nashville and Austin, Texas.

In Nashville, “progressive country was the thing, and we started hearing a lot about Austin,” Wilder says. 

By the time he got to Texas, though, the capitol was in the throes of the blues wave that would produce Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Antone’s had replaced Armadillo World Headquarters as the hot spot.

“When I got there, the Pizza Hut marquee read, “Welcome Progressive Country Fans,”” Wilder remembers. “You know it’s over when it’s on the Pizza Hut marquee!”

Wilder would up back in Nashville and released his first independent album, “It Came From Nashville,” in 1986. He also began a relationship with filmmaker Steve Mims which produced smart, funny short films such as “Horror Hayride” and “Webb Wilder: Private Eye,” which cast Wilder as a Southern-fried Sam Spade.

The Webb Wilder Duo performs Friday, March 5 at Skipper’s Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road in Tampa. Southern Culture on the Skids headlines. Show time is 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 advance, $20 at the door. Call (813) 971-0666.