the hum / By Bob Doran

Whild in the Streets

(June 14, 2007) Whild Peach guitarist David Whild wasn’t quite sure what the band was doing in Bozeman, Mont. “We’re further and further from home everyday,” he said when I called him at a Bozeman motel. Home is Atlanta, Ga., and has been since Whild and his musical partner Peach moved there from Dallas in 1994. “The thing we did in Dallas, we were called Deep Elem, it was an original thing with our own songs, just totally alternative anything. At that time there was nobody doing what we was doing and we ran into a lot of resistance, people who didn’t understand a black band playing this alternative rock funk kind of thing. It was funky, but didn’t fit any certain category.”

Whatever it was, someone at Capital Records liked it and the label brought the band to Georgia — unfortunately the deal went south before there was a record in the can. “They had some changes, staff shakeups,” said Whild, “so we got out of our deal, but we stayed in Atlanta.”

Whild Peach

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The timing was right. While West Coast and East Coast hip hop factions still ruled, the dirty south was on the rise and Atlanta was at the heart of things, with producers cranking out hits. “We started playing around town and evolved more toward hip hop, and people started asking us to do sessions and that kind of thing. That’s how we hooked up with Organized Noize and The Dungeon Family, then Goodie Mob and Outkast. We ended up playing on their records, writing with them and singing and touring. Once Outkast started going on tours and doing all these TV shows and going around the world, that took up two years at least, so we didn’t do anything as Whild Peach for a while.”

Whild and Peach worked with André Benjamin (aka Dre) and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton of Outkast from their second album on, a whirlwind period that culminated in the 2004 double-disc, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below , which sold five million copies and became the first rap album to win a Grammy as Album of the Year. It also marked a transition point for Outkast.

“Once Speakerboxxx/ Love Below came out Dre didn’t really want to tour,” said Whild, “so we had to do our own thing. That’s when we started gigging again. And here we are out on the road.”

The road brings Whild Peach to Eureka this Thursday, June 14, to play some “slunkymusic” at Red Fox Tavern. If soul/funk/rock is what you’re into, you should check it.

The second year of Jazz In June At Benbow Inn begins this weekend. In some ways it’s a direct descendent of something called the Rites of Spring Jazz Festival, put together almost three decades ago by the Backwoods Jazz Association, a group of SoHum jazz fans and players. That evolved into Jazz on the Lake, a big event at Benbow that fell by the wayside a few years back.

“Last year the idea came back. John Porter asked about seeing Jazz on the Lake revived,” said Jim Wilde , who works by day as accountant for the Benbow Inn and plays jazz guitar at nights, at least when there’s somewhere to play. Needless to say, Jazz on the Lake was good for business at Benbow. Plans were hatched, and a major headliner was lined up, then the Backwoods Jazz folks got cold feet. No one was ready to put up the required cash. Instead, Wilde explained, “We decided to do music on the patio instead.” It went well and this year it’s back, with two almost solid weeks in June and more to come in August.

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