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Real creative header, I know...

Several things to tell y'all today.

Nate was real glad to get home after IBMA to spend more time with GG and Melissa... he really missed both his girls while we were gone and was such a proud papa, showing everyone pictures and beaming a lot.

IBMA, by the way, was a great success. We worked our butts off, playing late night showcases almost every night, and then there was Fan Fest. A great many of those people had not ever heard of us until that show. They were probably wondering, who are these Wilders and why are they playing right before Rhonda Vincent? Hopefully we gave them the answers in that set. We did great.

It was almost strange playing at 1 pm after all those late night showtimes, though, and let me tell you that we sure do prefer a sound system rather than yelling and overplaying in a hotel room suite! Those can be real fun and we do know how to project, but it takes a toll. I lost my voice by the end of the week (had just enough left to sing at Fan Fest), but it was probably from talking more than singing. You know, I tend to do a lot of the talking, whenever I get a chance, and I'm not just talking about on stage!

There were a lot of folks to talk to -- always the business contacts at IBMA, and other musicians, etc. etc. I think we have secured ourselves a good place in that organization. In fact, I truly believe we wouldn't be where we are without IBMA. That's where we met Mary, our agent extraordinaire, and that's where festival promoters from Telluride/Rockygrass, Grey Fox, Wintergrass, and more, first saw us play (in those hotel rooms, past years). Many of those promoters still came to see us play showcases, and that's a great feeling to know that they want to keep up with us. We also had some time spent with the man who is going to get our new CD out to radio stations everywhere... our first publicist, Al Moss. He's a fantastic fellow, been in the biz for a long time, lives in Nashville now, and is probably even as I write this telling yet another biz person about us. He's a real go-getter -- we met him at Merlefest, and boy are we lucky.

It was great to see our Larryfest friends again, and we did get a chance to play their showcase room too. And, they have sound. (Thanks Howie!) Boy, is that a great thing. We look forward to seeing y'all in December!

A personal highlight for me took place on Friday night. I was having a high-energy big time party jam in a hotel room with some old time musician friends, and was taken aside by a mutual musician friend who whispered in my ear, "we're going to be playing in the room across the hall with Hazel Dickens. And you need to come." O-Kay! I played a couple more tunes with my friends, and excused myself, trying to be cool about it since it was brought to me in secret. I went over there and met Ms. Dickens (if you don't know who she is, let me just say -- THE singer's singer; songwriter; pioneering bluegrass lady; folk music superstar -- AND, she plays electric bass!), and played there for about an hour. It was a small jam and of highest quality and I was lucky to sit next to Ms. Dickens to hear her most powerful voice so close up. Wow. As I readied myself to leave (this was the night before our 1 pm Fan Fest play, and it was going on 3 am by now), Hazel leaned in to me and said, "you really perked this jam up. We were kinda heading down, and you came in, and just perked things up." Wow.

The next night I was at a party and in walks Hazel... when she saw me, she said, "there's My Fiddler!" Wow!! I gave her a copy of Throw Down and I sure hope she likes it and we cross paths again. She's just a regular gal, but I've never seen a singer give themselves to a song more fully than she does. Again, wow.

OK... is that a nice nugget for y'all?

Here's the other thing to let you know about. It's called MySpace and it appears to be the thing that everyone is doing. I found out about it during IBMA when some friends of mine in a new band (The Sidewinders -- old time goodness, y'all, including David Bass, the fiddler from Freight Hoppers) gave me a card with their myspace url on it. Well, it looks like every band we know and so many more we don't are on this thing. So, this weekend I started setting up a page, and it's amazing how fast people are finding us! You can join for free, and it's another place where I can add more Wilders content, cheaper and quicker than on our main site.

our myspace place

You can get lost on this thing, there are so many people out there. But it's already turned me on to a couple new bands. Just thought y'all would want to know about this, being that y'all are the best fans we got!

That brings us back around to this moment and I've got to get ready to do laundry so I have clean things to wear in Florida this weekend. That should be pretty cool, our first Florida fest! So, until I get the bug to do another wordy scatterbrained post... take care all.