Photo courtesy of Wilder Adkins.
Mountain Brook resident Wilder Adkins is a folk musician who has performed in New York, Washington, D.C., Scotland and the Sundance Film Festival.
Like most musicians, Wilder Adkins found his love of music while young.
“I was always pretty musical growing up,” Adkins said. “I would always come up with silly songs and parodies, but I got more serious about it in high school.”
His father was in a band while Adkins was growing up, and when he came to Birmingham from Marietta, Georgia, for college, his guitar came with him. Adkins, who moved to Mountain Brook about a year ago, released his first album in 2009.
“I was always kind of working on music,” Adkins said. “It’s just a passion that I couldn’t really let go of.”
Adkins found his musical voice in folk and Americana songs, with many of his lyrics focusing on faith, nature, love and friendships.
“For some reason, folk music and a kind of Appalachian music connected with me growing up. In America, there’s so many cultures, and it’s hard to say sometimes, ‘This is who I am, and this is where I come from,’ because we all have so many countries and ethnicities in our background,” Adkins said. “[I love] the passion that’s in those old folk songs and bluegrass music, too.”
Adkins has released several albums, including an album of free online hymns, which significantly helped to build up his audience, and most recently “Hope & Sorrow” in spring 2016. He has to balance his musical career with family life — including his wife, Whitney, and infant son, August — but Adkins said he also finds inspiration from his family.
“In a way, having a baby makes you get serious about whatever your work is,” Adkins said.
In addition to local venues such as Saturn, Iron City and WorkPlay, Adkins’ music has taken him to a few national stages. He won the NewSong Music performance and songwriting competition in December 2016, which gave Adkins not only the chance to perform as a finalist at the Lincoln Center in New York, but also an invitation to take the stage at Sundance Film Festival in January. Adkins also performed at the ASCAP Foundation’s showcase for emerging artists at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., recently.
“At both events, I got a great response and got to meet some folks who enjoyed the music,” Adkins said.
He also had the opportunity in 2016 to play as part of a folk concert in Scotland, which was his first performance outside the U.S.
“It’s almost like being on vacation at the same time as you’re working because you get to visit these places,” Adkins said.
In 2017, Adkins said he’s planning to release another album of hymns in the summer and an album of original work in the fall. Learn more about his music at wilderadkins.com or wilderadkins.bandcamp.com.
