Nashville cult hero Webb Wilder sets fire to a staid country-music town by injecting his sharp-as-a-tack wit into careening and carousing roots rock. His current touring band the Nashvegans provide beefed-up blues-guitar licks and a super-tight backbeat on "About Time"--his first album in a decade. It's the perfect setting for this esoteric SOB to showcase his curious and humorous personality.
Webb Wilder, "The Last Of The Full Grown Men," is large enough for the big screen, hip enough to star in cult classic B movies, cool enough to hold down a high profile DJ position on XM Satellite Radio's cutting edge Cross Country channel, and tough enough to maintain a devoted worldwide fan base through a relentless never ending tour schedule. And happily Webb and Landslide Records have combined to produce an all new album, About Time, released on March 22. Helmed by noted producer/songwriter and longtime Wilder cohort, R.S. Field, About Time captures the full flavor of Wilder's raucous style, from his booming baritone vocal delivery to sizzling guitar licks to a tight, punchy rhythmic foundation. New originals by both Field and Wilder include a heart beatin' twanger, "I Just Had To Laugh," the British influenced "You Might Be Lonely For A Reason," a full fledged rock and roller, "Miss Missy From Old Hong Kong," the swinging personal memoir, "Battle Of The Bands," and a downright catchy little love song, "Tell The World." Cover tunes, as always shaded by the distinctive Webb Wilder style, remain true to this artist's reverence for great American music: Big Al Downing's "Down On The Farm" gets the album off to a breakneck start, and Webb's crack ensemble gives new life to, among others, Young Jessie's "Mary Lou" and Cliff Richards' "Move It." Recorded at Bucky Baxter's Three Trees Studio in White's Creek, TN, About Time features Wilder's current touring band, the Nashvegans: George Bradfute, guitar, Tom Comet, bass, and Jimmy Lester (Los Straitjackets) on drums. Guests include Baxter (Bob Dylan, Steve Earle) on pedal steel guitar, Steve Conn, keyboards, Dennis Taylor, sax, and Steve Herrman, trumpet. About Time represents the first all new Webb Wilder album since 1995, and it shows that the man has, without question, furthered his charismatic singing style while maintaining a strong group of musicians who are well schooled in cranking out Wilder's unique brand of foot stomping rock and roll music.