Jamie Lin Wilson - CD Release

If Jamie Wilson tells you something, you can absolutely guarantee it's exactly what she feels. She's not concerned with your feelings if they come at the expense of her honesty. That's not to say she's ungracious or rude, just direct and unflinchingly true.

Wilson sang around the house growing up (when no one else was around the house, that is), but didn't start playing music and writing songs until she was a college sophomore at Texas A&M. "My cousin and I went to go see the Dixie Chicks in Houston during their Fly tour. There was a part in the show where the other girls went off and Natalie stayed on stage and played 'Cold Day in July' on guitar by herself. I was watching her and I told my cousin, 'I just need a guitar; I could do that. I'm musical enough.'," Jamie remembers.

Later that month, Jamie's cousin and mother went in together to buy Jamie her first guitar as a Christmas gift. She first learned to play by printing out lyrics to songs and learning the chords by ear. Wilson quickly learned every song on both Dixie Chicks records, all of Phil Pritchett's Heritage Way album, and all of the tunes on Bruce Robison's Long Way Home From Anywhere. She wrote her first song a couple of months later and was in a band, the Sidehill Gougers, within six months of receiving that first guitar.

"We would have practice every Tuesday at Shane's [Shane Walker, Sidehill Gougers founding member] house, and nobody, except for Shane, knew what they were doing. I could barely even play guitar and Shane had me playing banjo too," Jamie recalls. It didn't take long for the band to get up to speed, and within a year they had released their first CD, Runaway Scrape, with Walker and Wilson sharing the vocals and splitting the songwriting duties. The Gougers (after dropping "Sidehill") would go on to release an EP and another full-length record before musical and personal differences resulted in the band parting ways over the course of 2009. As the Gougers were winding down, Wilson found a side project - originally envisioned as a one-time only performance - taking off.

Early each January, thousands of Texans cross the Red River and make the trek up the Rockies to enjoy MusicFest - five days of Texas music, friendship, and skiing (not to mention hundreds of gallons of Jaegermeister). A staple of recent MusicFests has been a tribute to a Texas artist, with many of the festival's performers doing a song or two of the featured songwriter. In 2009, the artist honored was Kevin Welch. The star of the tribute show was Wilson's new group, the Trishas.

Liz Foster, then of the husband and wife duet Liz & Lincoln, is credited with putting the group together to play two songs for the tribute. A natural for the band was Kevin Welch's daughter Savannah. Foster also enlisted another member of a male-female duo - Kelley Mickwee of Jed and Kelley. Jamie Wilson was the last one to join.

They originally dubbed themselves the Fat Trishas (in jest, each one of these girls could stand a second slice of pie) before shortening the name to the Trishas. The group was the buzz of the five-day festival and before they realized it, this one-night only group was offered gigs that none of its members had been able to score in years of trying with their other efforts. Wilson sums it up. "I guess it's easier to have four chicks in a band than one." The instant attention allowed the group to bypass the usual due-paying three hour gigs. Instead they play 50 minute slots at festivals and high-profile opening sets, and focus on making those 50 minutes as tight as possible. "Having four girls in the band might get people out to see us once," Wilson explains, "but they're not coming back unless the music is really good."

They've also been invited to record backing vocals on songs for artists such as Ray Wylie Hubbard and Raul Malo. They secured management and a booking agent in late 2009, but still approach things with a side project mindset, giving them the freedom to turn down offers that they would have jumped at in the past.

The band plans to ramp up their opportunities and their profile even more by recording a debut album early in 2010. Many producers have already expressed interest in working with the group on the record, but no concrete decisions have been made as the girls finish rounding the material for the sessions into shape.

In January the Trishas returned to the place where their career started one short year ago. They were one of seven female acts playing at MusicFest, which had 38 acts overall. Close to 20% is an impressive number of females for a Texas Music festival; even more impressive though is the fact that Jamie Wilson represents almost half of those acts. Along with performing in the Trishas, Jamie also has a set with Johnny and the Footlights, a county classics cover band that she fronts along with Jason Eady, and one set for an artist she rarely appears as - Jamie Wilson.

After years of only being identified by the band she played with, Wilson has recorded her first solo record, Dirty Blonde Hair, an EP which will be released in early 2010. "I was in a band almost as soon as I got a guitar. Then before the Gougers were even done, this thing with the Trishas was taking off. I wanted to at least get some of my own music out there. Something that's just me," Wilson states. The EP combines the best elements of Wilson's work with the Gougers and the Trishas, but just a touch more - according to Wilson - "Creepy. It seems that death seeps into all of my songs in one way or another."

"The River", the first song on Dirty Blonde Hair, sets the tone, with baritone guitar, banjo, electric guitar, and squeeze box creating the setting for Wilson's rich and distinctive vocals. "Dusty Shoes" showcases Wilson at her lyrical best, singing to a flawed lover: "I'm not the trusting kind, I'm not the answer / I'm not the one to fix your kind of cancer / but I'll do anything that you ask of me / if it'll ease your pain, ease your lonely". "Little Too Rough" sounds like a triple-A hit waiting to happen, and on the title track Wilson combines a waltz and back-masked electric guitar to heartbreaking effect. The biggest hook of the record lands in the chorus of the relentlessly toe-tapping "Ordinary People". The EP concludes with an epic version (7 minutes) of "Whistling", a song that is a Trishas staple and is virtually assured to appear on their full-length record as well, albeit with a far different arrangement. In just six songs, Wilson presents a complete portrait of an artist, leaving none of the colors in her palette unused.

In addition to releasing the EP and recording a full-length album with the Trishas, Jamie has another big project on her plate for 2010 - she and husband Roy are expecting their first child in June of 2010. A near-obsessive planner (She presented Roy with an elaborate travel plan for her gigs along with a detailed list of who could help care for the baby in each city where Wilson has regular gigs. Roy listened patiently before responding, "You know this baby is going to have a dad, right?"), Jamie has scheduled all of her 2010 to fit around the time she'll need to take off. "We're recording in April or May, my baby's due in late June, we can do all of the artwork and publicity through the summer, and then try to release the record in September." Wilson plans to hit the road with the band in support of the record immediately after the release, bringing along a merch person/nanny in tow.

Even if the reality of 2010 doesn't match her exacting plan for it, Wilson will make it through fueled by the excitement over the possibilities the year promises. An excitement unmatched since she had that realization over nine years ago that playing and writing songs was something she could do.

-Michael Devers