The Wild Feathers will be playing at Bonnaroo 2014. I’ve been trying to figure out where they are from… Nashville, LA, Texas… all those places are mentioned in their bio, and the sounds of the areas come out in the music.
Out in the wilds of the Texas country, as you scan the radio dials and eventually give up to switch to the a.m. band (yeah, my car is old) you find these great stations that play music you’ve never heard elsewhere. Strange sounds of rock-n-roll and steel guitars and voices like Willie’s mix around in some off the wall genre that you can’t put any sort of label on. Eventually, you get out of range and when you’re back in Tennessee, or Chicago or wherever, you go searching for the music you were hearing because it stuck to you and you want more, but it’s just not anywhere to be found.
The Wild Feathers are one of the bands I would expect to find on those stations, and I’d be scouring the net to find them if it hadn’t been for the fact they were listed on the Bonnaroo line-up. What a great find!
Raging electrics and grungy folk sounds, burning steel guitar, beautiful vocal harmonies and just enough weirdness make every tune thoroughly enjoyable. East meets West, and the South comes along to settle a peace between them that can’t be denied as Real American Music!
Yep, at Middle Tennessee Music, we are excited about Bonnaroo, but even more excited by the music. This writer will not be missing the Wild Feathers’ show, you better be there, too!
For their 2013 debut, The Wild Feathers, the band enlisted Jay Joyce (Cage the Elephant, the Wallflowers, Emmylou Harris) as producer, who encouraged the band to tap into their innate sense of harmony and true rock & roll sound. Their days in his Nashville studio were full and tiring (“like we’d been waterskiing and drinking beer in the sun all day,” says Ricky, “but so inspiring”), recording most tracks live, one at a time. “It was kind of like the old days with Elvis at RCA,” says Joel, “recording one song per day, really living in each one.”
The resulting record is a display of four unique talents effortlessly unified: bluesy, hard rock tunes like “Backwoods Company” live effortlessly next to harmonic stunners like “Hard Wind” and slow, folky love songs like “Tall Boots.” “When Rick Danko (of The Band) would sing harmonies, it was like he was singing lead,” says Ricky. “That’s what we try to do.” And it shows. Songs like “Left My Woman,” allow Ricky, Joel and Taylor to sing a few solo bars each in the opening, before joining with Preston on the chorus. Visually, they are united, too – playing shows standing in a line straight across the stage, as one.
