Opening with perfectly captured breezy acoustic guitar playing; Shadwick Wilde brings us “Easy Rider”, the lead single off his new album. Though the instrumentation and songwriting feel heavily drawn from a more traditional approach to Americana, the production and vocal styling feels more akin to more modern pop sensible acts like Bahamas. Wilde’s voice is smooth and personable with a natural warble and an effortless ability to take to falsetto notes to great effect. The poetry here paints a sweet and sentimental portrait of a southern romance, “Now and then, I’ll find a back road/ We can park in the shade of an old oak tree/ Along some field of sweet tobacco/ Just like the place where you married me.”
“A lot of my songs start in the van. As a touring musician, I spend more time driving than anything else. So I turn it into a kind of meditation: deep breaths through the nose feel the wheel in my hands, the weight of the body shifting; hear the engine, the hum of the highway, the wheels underneath; smell of burning fuel in the air, conscious of everything within and without, eyes open wide …Sometimes, this opens up a little space for a song like ‘Easy Rider, the first song from ‘Forever Home,” says Wilde.
