King Wilkie Transcript

January 26, 2008

Announcer: You’ve been listening to “Sound Authors” where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about “Sound Authors” and Dr. Kent’s guests, visit soundauthors.com. Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to “Sound Authors”. It’s a beautiful sunny Friday in New York.My next guest is Reid Burgess of the band, King Wilkie. They have a beautiful, soulful brand of bluegrass, and their newest album is absolutely stunning. Welcome to the show.

Reid Burgess: Hey, Dr. Kent. Thanks for having me.

Kent: I’m a good friend of Nick Reeb, your fiddle player.

Reid: I did not know that.

Kent: Yeah, and he actually did some recording on a project of mine in New York. You can tell him hello.

Reid: Oh wow, yeah, that’s right. He used to live up here. I’m up here now. Actually, I’m in New York.

Kent: Fantastic. Well, are you guys on tour right now or what’s going on?

Reid: No, there’s not a lot happening. We’ve got a couple of warm up shows in New York City in March. Then after that we’ll start touring and we’ll continue on and off through the end of the year.

Kent: Well, the new album is stunning. It’s a new sound for you all. I’ve followed your music obviously because of Nick and because he makes me proud. He played fiddle with a little band I was in in college, and that was fun, but this is a whole new level. The songs are beautiful, and the sound is new. Tell me a little bit about what you guys worked on this last year.

Reid: Well, we were finishing off the record and we’re already on to the new one which I’m glad. These things can take a long time, and then by the time it’s finished you’re really ready to move on.

Kent: [laughs] So you’re ready for the next project?

Reid: But I like our latest record because it took a lot of chances. Like you said before, we kind of had our roots in bluegrass music, but this one kind of went in some very odd places. I liked that we didn’t repeat ourselves.As far as doing a second album, I think it would be impossible for any band to get the same kind of frantic love or excitement about doing a second record than they did with their first one.But I think with the new one we kind of avoided all that drudgery by just making another record that seemed so new and so different that it almost was like making our first record.

Kent: So let’s listen to a little bit of “Savannah”. It’s a beautiful track.[music]

Kent: That’s a little bit of “Savannah” from King Wilkie’s newest album. It’s a beautiful track. Who wrote that one?

Reid: Myself and Johnny; he’s the guy singing on it.

Kent: You’ve been a team for quite a while. Tell me how that started.

Reid: Well, it goes pretty far back. We met and the initial band was kind of started at Kenyon College in Ohio. Then we got further and further into the roots of bluegrass music and decided that we should really immerse ourselves and move down to Virginia.It was kind of this romantic idea where we’d be learning from the elders - the old, original guys, who all seemed to be living down there. We ended up getting in pretty deep and not a lot of sleep the next five years.Knee deep in bluegrass and I don’t know, at this point with the latest record, we’re kind of… I think we’ve always been fans of diverse musical styles. Though I guess it’s just anyone who’s got an iPod today pretty much listening to anything. So we were fans of early bluegrass and early country and folk, but also regular rock and roll stuff.

Kent: I can hear the sounds of old time music in there, which is really nice.

Reid: Yeah, well that’s Nick. Nick’s gotten real deep in the old time. There’s a wealth of amazing American music that’s traditional. It’s an amazing hybrid of European and African elements coming together that’s uniquely American. But our band - all that gets filtered through us and the approach and the filter has expanded. So whether we’re songwriting or digging into older music, hopefully it’s still something that’s creative and comes out.

Kent: Well, I really think that the music is new, and there’s a small number of musicians out there that I hear this kind of beautiful sounds coming out of. You know, Old Crow Medicine Show, Gillian Welch.

Reid: There’s tons. There’s a lot of people doing really creative stuff.

Kent: And this is definitely in there among them. We’ll come check out kingwilkie.com; that’s got all of your new stuff up on there. The album is available everywhere, I assume?

Reid: All over, yes.

Kent: All over. And you guys are going to be supporting it coming up in a couple months?

Reid: Yeah. Well, we toured through this fall, up through the last fall. We’ll start touring again this spring, and we’ll be out all summer hopefully.

Kent: So let’s listen to a little bit of “Wrecking Ball” on the way out here.[music]

Kent: Well, thank you so much to Reid Burgess of King Wilkie. That’s beautiful music, “Savannah” and “Wrecking Ball” off their brand new album. Go check them out kingwilkie.com.Thank you also to my guests today, Reid Burgess of King Wilkie as I said; Dr. Paul Mullen talking to us about literacy; Jarret J. Krosoczka with his awesome “Punk Farm Animals” and Grampa Mike up at the beginning.Thank you also to the World Talk Radio folks, especially Anthony Farabay, the chief engineer. Everybody have a safe week and I’ll see you soon.[music]

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