Marking Their First Post COVID-19 Tour, Wild Child Comes to Santa Barbara

Marking their first post COVID-19 tour featuring the full band, acclaimed indie-folk band Wild Child makes a stop at SOhO as they gear up for Outside Lands in August.

After meeting on tour as backup musicians for a Denmark-based band called The Migrants, Alexander Beggins and Kelsey Wilson started writing music together. By the end of the tour, they had written what became their first record, Pillow Talk, and decided to record it. After the album was released in 2011, the band took off from there.

Part of the origin came from a photo of Beggins and Wilson at a park in the woods while they were on tour with The Migrants. They joked that the photo looked like a stock band image, and wondered what their band name would be.

They came up with the name Wild Child, and it stuck, as they continued to play and write music.

Beggins and Wilson have always written the band’s music, and will typically already have some tune or melody in mind. On their latest record, End of the World, they did a session with a mutual friend, John Calvin Abney. Since then, Abney has become the newest member of Wild Child.

“For this record, we just felt really comfortable with John,” said Beggins. “We did this thing, like some cover for our old label, and it just felt really natural.”

The three of them started writing music together, and would sit and hash out ideas until they had something that felt fairly complete. Then they would make a cassette tape recording, and once they had enough of those, would go into the studio and play it with the band.

By the time they were finishing up the tour for their fourth album, Expectations, in 2019, the band was burnt out. The members had started to explore other creative projects and didn’t know if they wanted to continue with Wild Child anymore.

Coincidently COVID-19 happened and forced the band to where they didn’t have to make any immediate decisions. They took a break and didn’t do anything for a year, and when they finally got back together, it felt new again.

“I guess we kind of forgot that our music meant something to a lot of people, especially during that time,” said Beggins. “That kind of was that kick that we needed to sit down and try and write some more songs.”

Since the band wasn’t on any kind of deadline, they were just doing it for fun. Eventually, they had enough songs for a record, and went in and recorded them — coming out with The End of the World.

Now the band is back touring and loving it. “I think a lot of people didn’t realize how much they’ve missed live music, including us,” said Beggins. “It’s just one of those things, when something gets taken from you, and you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.”

The band loves seeing and hearing about the joy and happiness that they’re able to bring into people’s lives with their music. “Everyone feeds off of each other’s joy,” said Beggins. “That’s the biggest takeaway that we hope people feel, is just the soundtrack to your life.”

Now out with five records and past the decade mark since the band first formed, Wild Child is looking forward to playing at Outside Lands in August. The band has never played at the festival before, but know that it’s going to be a lot of fun.

“It should be a really great show — we’re really looking forward to it,” said Beggins.

The band is also letting the ink dry on their plans for Europe. After taking a couple months off toward the holidays and playing a couple of shows here and there, they will be doing some globetrotting. Wild Child will be playing on June 24 at SOhO at 9 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here.