Americana Idol
Webb Wilder, Nashville’s wildest, weirdest export, is actually kind of normal. Kind of.
by Mark Sanders
The John McMurry side of Webb Wilder—that is, the guy he is when not onstage—emerged the other day over the phone as he complained about going to the dentist. Whether it was teeth-cleaning day or a full-on root canal appointment is beside the point: just knowing that the fabled musician, actor and all-around Nashville legend is getting his chompers prodded is confirmation enough that Wilder’s just like the rest of us mortals.
Kind of tough to imagine, considering the cultish fan base that’s assembled around Wilder, who’s been promoting his live DVD, Tough it Out, and recording his next album, the seventh in 20-plus years in the music business. On his six albums, one compilation and six films—in which Wilder’s private detective-redneck-beatnik persona is in full bloom—and in appearances on Politically Incorrect and the short-lived Pat Sajak Show, Wilder seems superhuman.
Given the wealth of fan commentary on the Hattiesburg, Miss., native (“Best thing since biscuits and gravy,” one remarks on Wilder’s website), and listening to what the self-professed “Last of the Full-Grown Men” has said about himself (“[I am] the idol of idle youth, the smile on a baby’s face just before he spits up,” he proclaims on a bulletin board), you might imagine him to have an ironclad ego and titanium-alloy teeth—the kind that don’t require visits to the dentist’s office. Musically, critics place Wilder alongside Jason & the Scorchers and The X-Rays in Nashville’s homespun rock pantheon. (Factoid: Wilder appears on the former Scorcher frontman’s new disc, Rockin’ in the Forest With Farmer Jason.) Perhaps it’s because, aside from his odd lyrics and song titles—chief among them, “TCB Yodel #9,” whose lyrics warn, “If you don’t think Elvis was No. 1, you’re full of No. 2,”—Wilder’s music is as kitschy and catchy as the trademark fedora and retro specs he wears on stage. His style owes as much to The Beatles as it does Porter Wagoner, and he’s possibly the only guy in Nashville whose sound reminds listeners of Dick Dale and Conway Twitty within the space of a single song. He has a deep Mississippi accent that cuts through psychedelic power chords, singing with the kind of charisma that makes listeners want to buy whatever he’s selling. One of a kind? Hell, this guy is a rock music Sasquatch. Only, he’s real.
But for all the deification, self-proclaimed and otherwise, Wilder in person is shy and self-deprecating. “I used to think that because I’m so chatty, I’m an extrovert,” Wilder says in his baritone twang. “On the other hand, I don’t like to go to parties, I don’t really join things. I’m sort of a closet introvert who talks a lot.”
Tom Petty’s the same way, Wilder says. Full of fire on stage, but otherwise a wallflower. Wilder’s been listening to Petty a lot lately and, similar dispositions aside, this comes as no surprise: the British invasion influenced both artists heavily, and their best albums arguably came out during Americana’s uncool days of the late ’80s and early ’90s (for Wilder, It Came from Nashville; for Petty, Wildflowers).
Wilder stays plenty busy these days, maintaining his website, playing gigs, occasionally acting. (His new film Scattergun has been described as “another helping of Southern-fried surrealism.”) Asked how he handles the head-spinning workload, Wilder describes his TCB work ethic thusly: “I feel like I have an axe in my head, being a songwriter and having to tell the band what time we’re meeting.”
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