The Wildmans’ Album Release
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on July 17, 2025.
It was a hometown show for sister and brother Aila and Eli Wildman at The Floyd Country Store Saturday night, the place where their music started. “I first played the fiddle right up in that room,” Aila said, pointing from the stage during their 90-minute set. It was the second show of a tour for their new album, Longtime Friend, just released by New West Records and recorded in Woodstock NY. They had just come from a gig in Nashville.
Aila and Eli grew up living a country lifestyle on a homestead in Floyd County. Eli briefly attended Floyd’s Blue Mountain School and both were homeschooled throughout their school age years. “The structure of their homeschooling was music lessons,” recalled their mother, Deb Wildman, who was a member of the pre-Wildmans band called the Blackberries.
Deb, who plays upright bass, added that Aila and Eli’s college education in contemporary music and liberal arts at Berklee Music School in Boston MA has been an instrumental part in the progression of their careers, but they were playing bluegrass at festivals and winning awards at fiddler conventions well before that.
Aila began playing violin/fiddle at the age of five and performed bluegrass gigs by the time she was seven. By the age of eleven she was a member of the Roanoke Youth Symphony, and by fifteen she was among the youngest players to win the Best All Around Performer award at the famed Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention (2018) and first place in the Old Time Fiddle category.
Eli has been Playing guitar and mandolin since the age of seven. He won first place several years in a row for his mandolin playing at Appalachian State Old Time Fiddlers Convention and first place at the Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax.
Singer songwriter Dori Freeman opened for The Wildmans. Country Store co-owner Dylan Locke introduced the evenings fare by describing the featured musicians as “local super heroes of folk, traditional and original music.” He referred to Freeman as “one of the finest songwriters you’ll ever find,” and she proved him correct with her emotionally honest set of Appalachian Americana music.
Freeman, who has five critically acclaimed albums available, was accompanied by her husband Nick Falk on drums, banjo and back-up vocals. Falk, who produced Freeman’s latest albums, produced the Wildmans’ Longtime Friend album. Freeman and Falk reside in Galax.
The Wildmans’ Country Store concert featured a mix of originals and covers and traditional songs. Playing with the siblings were Max Hollenbeck on bass and Jack Davies on drums, both past fellow students at Berklee School of Music. Covers included songs by Emmylou Harris, Graham Parsons and Little Feat. Originals included the title song Longtime Friend, Sometimes, Desert Angel and Take Me.
“Shout out to Earl White who taught us a lot of these tunes,” Aila announced at one point. White is a mountain music fiddler, fiddle teacher and leader of The Earl White Stringband, as well as a baker and co-owner of Floyd’s Big Indian Farm Artisan Bakery.
Eli credited Doc Watson and Cream before breaking out into Sitting on Top of the World (a country blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon and first recorded in 1930) that both Watson and Cream recorded and which shows the variety of versions played and the variety of the Wildmans’ repertoire.
Their bluegrass foundations were evident but not front and center. Eli’s guitar solos complimented the arrangements and added an uplifting sense of instrumental improvisation to the songs. Aila’s smooth and soulful vocals were sometimes haunting and always mesmerizing. Her fiddle playing stirred emotions or a foot tapping urge to dance. There was a jig, a train song, a ballad and traditional renditions.
A striking Appalachian storytelling song about struggle, family bonds and resiliency reflected the mountain music traditions that the Wildmans embody. The song Autumn 1941 (by co-writers Roger Brown, former Berklee College of Music President, and Mark Simos, Berklee songwriting professor) began… I was a girl in the hills of Catawba County / Fall ’41, another war about to break / I’d been raised up from a star / By a mother with a gentle heart / Fifteen candles on my birthday cake. The Wildmans made the song their own.
After closing with a fun-loving and rousing encore of Little Feat’s Willing, the musicians signed albums and CDs for the night’s enthusiastic audience members. New York is next on the tour line. Check out The Wildmans webpage HERE. – Colleen Redman
