"Blues" is Patricia Wilder's self-described music style - "real" music
about "real" people, living real. Wilder's musical foundation is rooted in jazz,
rock, R&B, blues and gospel. She began playing the guitar as a teen after her
mother encouraged her to develop an interest in any instrument besides the
one she was pursuing - drums. Because music was prevalent in her household,
she was able to recognize and develop her strong passion for music. Her earliest
musical influences came from Wes Montgomery and Taj Mahal. As a friend
of the family, Taj Mahal provided the ultimate inspiration in her childhood - it was
from him that she received her first guitar.
As her confidence grew in her guitar playing ability, she ventured into singing.
Wilder says her guitar playing and singing were both outlets for self-expression.
She truly enjoys performing as an expression of universal communication, and
desires her audience to feel, hear and see all she is communicating through her
music. Described as "one of the most exciting blues guitarist/vocalists to come
out of the bay area in a long time" by Lee Hildebrand of the San Francisco Bay
Guardian, (see the article below)Wilder has shared her talent with many great
musicians, such as Linda Tillary, John Lee Hooker, Jr., Angela Bofill and many
others. When performing, it is Wilder's ambition to feel the electricity and energy
exchanged between herself and the audience. When you hear it you too will be
energized and completely captivated by the unique funk rhythms of her CDs,
"Eugene" and "Lay Down Daddy".
Patricia Wilder Interview for the
San Francisco Bay Guardian
by Lee Hildebrand
Patricia Wilder cuts a striking image with
a black Stratocaster strapped over the
shoulders of her sapphire satin suit. Her
blonde locks pulled tightly to the back of
her head-yet she stood on stage rather
stiffly at the beginning of her March 18
performance at Biscuits & Blues in San
Francisco. Perhaps she was nervous,
which is understandable. Wilder had been
playing around town as a sideperson with
various blues and funk bands since she
was in junior high school, but at age 47
she was finally stepping out on her own
doing her own thing, with her own band
and her own songs and this was the
second gig of her solo career and her first
as a headliner.
Whatever butterflies might have been
present quickly disappeared. Soon, Wilder
was moving her shoulders in time to her
biting, rhythmically assertive guitar lines.
Later, she stepped off the stage and
strutted into the crowd, hunched in a
gunslinger stance as she played brittle
shards of fast-fingered blue notes with
a pick.
Wilder knows how to shake her moneymaker,
as Elmore James used to put it. She's aIso
a commanding soul-blues vocalist with a
husky contralto that she uses to alternately
tough and tender effect, and a strikingly
accomplished guitar stylist. She has a
percussive touch that suggests a Texas
upbringing, although she's a San Francisco
native. Striking a string simultaneously with
her pick and the tip of her index finger, she
at times creates a snapping effect reminiscent
of Johnny “Guitar" Watson and Albert Collins,
but her approach is subtler than those of the
two late guitar-slingers. Miss Your Groove,
the strongest track on her debut CD, Sweet
Love, even finds her playing Wes Montgomery-
like octaves.
Wilder's distinctive style is in some ways
the result of her highly eclectic listening habits
as a child growing up in San Francisco. "I was
hearing a lot of jazz,"she recalls. "I was totally
into Stan Getz. My mom was playing Chick
Corea and Wes Montgomery at home, but my
feeling was more with the funk. I was totally
into Parliament-Funkadelic and Rufus and Chaka
Khan back in the day. The Soul Train thing was
happening and James Brown.
A lot of my [rhythm guitar) patterns came from
that area. And I kinda liked disco a lot." She studied
classical piano and clarinet and, at age II. began
experimenting with a plastic guitar her mother had
bought at Woolworth's.
Soon she was participating in freeform jazz jam
sessions on clarinet and plastic guitar with a bassist
friend of her mother's and Eddie Moore. the legendary
jazz drummer noted for his associations with saxophonists
Stanley Turrentine and Dewey Redman, and at her Texas
born grandmother's house.
Wilder played her first blues, with grandma blowing
harmonica. “The blues is gonna be your meal ticket,"
her grandmother would tell her When she was in
Junior high school. Wilder graduated from toy guitar
to a real one courtesy of TaJ Mahal. Her mom was
dating the bluesman, and he gave Patricia one of his
electric guitars and a Fender Bassman amp "It's was
so big," she says of the guitar. "It was a copy of, like,
a George Benson guitar. It was fat and wide and by
me being a little gir!, it was so heavy for me." Taj also
taught her the song Ain't Whistlin' Dixie.
Wilder's ear!iest guitarist influence was Larry White,
whom she'd known since junior high and who later
toured as a member of the Whispers' backup band.
"Larry was a very funky guitar player," she recalls,
"but he would not teach me nothing because I was
a girL"
She spent much of the past 30 some years working
as a guitar player in a series of funk, rock, and blues
bands around the Ba}' Area. Her first blues gig was
with veteran San Francisco tenor saxophonist Bobbie
Webb. Later blues associations included stints with
keyboardlst Billy Dunn and singers Curtis Lawson and
Zakiya Hooker, one night with Jimmy McCracklin, and
two months with Luther Tucker, who taught her how
to play16th note trills on the guitar's high string. It
wasn't until she started working with Dunn five years
ago that Wilder began singing in public. "Being a female
guitarist I think that was enough for them." she explains.
"If they wanted me to go up front, I could do that, but I
was O.K. just being in the back."
Wilder's vocal influences are as wide ranging as her guitar
influences, She cites Koko Taylor, Tina Turner, Esther
Phillips, and '70s funk singer (and Miles Davis ex-spouse)
Betty Davis as favorites. "And I do love me some Stevie
Ray Vaughan' she adds. "I love the man's voice, Bob
Dylan was another one I really enjoyed listening to."
Over the past two decades Wilder made several attempts
at recording, but none reached fruition. "I wasn't satisfied
with the sound or it never got finished," she explains.
"There was always some type of black cloud going on,
I was trying to get something going" she adds.
I kept believing in myself and my original music. I refused
to stop. It's my passion, I just couldn't let that go.”
