Let it All Burn

On a late-spring morning in St. Francisville so glorious that one almost forgets the national shitmare unfolding before us, Will Wesley scrutinized me across the table at Birdman Coffee. Dressed in black, with dark hair cascading from under his leather hat, he gave off the slightly-menacing vibe of a rock and roll bandolero—at least until he started speaking in his earnest, calibrated cadences. The longer our conversation ran, the more animated he became. These have been hard times for performing artists—even an audience of one is precious, and not to be squandered.

For the past four months, the thirty-five-year old Wesley has not allowed the vaporization of live performance opportunities to slow him down. He’s spent the time recording his soon-to-drop double album, entitled Both Sides of the Tracks, making and releasing videos, and relentlessly working social media. The first half of the album is in the can and scheduled for release in late August (the second half of the album is scheduled for a January release). In July, Wesley even performed a sold out, socially-distanced concert at the Delta Music Museum Arcade Theater in Ferriday, alongside bluesmen Kern Pratt and Johnny Riley. Wesley promoted the show by traveling and personally making home deliveries of tickets to attendees living as far away as Arkansas and Florida. He has also played a handful of carefully selected club dates from Natchez to Gonzalez amidst the fluctuations of COVID-19 spikes, all adhering to various social distancing guidelines. Under the best of conditions, relentless self-promotion is a difficult proposition. But in the midst of a career-stifling pandemic, it is another Sisyphean climb altogether. Still, Wesley has persisted.

[Read more on the local music scene from Tom Scarborough: "What's Next?: The Story of Maggie Brown]

Born in Baker, Louisiana in 1985, music found Will Wesley early by way of his father’s guitar. “My dad was adamant about me learning all styles,” said Wesley. “He didn’t want me to just be a blues guy. He told me, ‘Son, be a student of music. Study it all. Go see country. Go see jazz. Because music is all the same thing, just said in a different language.’” Regardless, as a young player, the blues captivated Wesley the most. “I loved the bare-knuckled truth of it. As a kid I’d listen to Albert King, B.B. King, Freddie King—getting into the Stax records and all these people I was inspired by. Playing the blues was all I wanted to do.”

Though Wesley did not grow up in the church, gospel music also made its impression upon him. “Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, and so many others I admire came straight out of the church—I’ve always been inspired by gospel music.” Stevie Ray Vaughan and Junior Brown were also musical avatars for him. Wesley cited Austin-based Brown’s musical eclecticism––a synthesis of country, blues, rock, bluegrass, and western swing–––as a defining element of his own musical signature.

Wesley made his professional debut at fifteen, playing in the Cody Teal Band, led by Terry Seals. “Luckily, I could always grow a beard because I wasn’t old enough to get into the clubs. I’d go into these clubs, man, fifteen years old. I’m not going to lie to you—it was the lowest of the low—prostitutes, bikers, gang members—and I’m playing blues for these guys. But I have to say those experiences taught me how to handle myself in the clubs, and in the street—what to say, and what not to say. Keep your mouth shut or get shot—maybe get shot anyway. Shut up and play. It was a hell of an education.”

After playing with Seals for a couple of years, Wesley immersed himself in the Baton Rouge live music scene, at one point holding a spot in seven bands at the same time. Wesley then hired on with Baton Rouge bluesman, Larry Garner. Garner, who won the International Blues Challenge in 1988, gave Wesley his first experience going on the road. “We would go from New York to St. Louis to Chicago. Seeing how the blues was received in these different environments. . . In Louisiana, everyone plays the blues, but going up north, everyone was enthralled by it. The experience with Larry made me want to see the world.”

A Will Wesley song has more hooks than a charter fishing boat—in it one can hear elements ranging from Tom Petty to early Eagles, to Gram Parsons-era Byrds. One of Wesley’s soon-to-be released songs, “Attitude,” is a case in point. The opening guitar lick is vintage Waylon Jennings, before Wesley and his band—Phil Chandler on bass and Seth Jones on drums—crash into some Petty-style chordage. 

That opportunity came when Wesley’s path crossed that of Mississippi-born bluesman, Grady Champion another winner of the International Blues Challenge (2010). Remembered Wesley, “I met Grady on a music video shoot we were doing. I walked in and there’s Grady sitting in his pajamas. He had heard me playing guitar, and he said, ’Damn, boy, I gotta get you in the band!’ So I auditioned for him, and I wrote out some chord charts, and he was impressed enough to hire me as his music director.”

As part of Champion’s band, Wesley toured Europe for the first time. “One of the greatest moments in my life was when Grady called me and told me we were going to Switzerland to play a blues festival in Lucerne,” he said. “The Swiss people love American blues music, but it was so different playing for such a quiet audience. They wouldn’t even clap until the song was fully over. It was intimidating. I remember looking at Grady—and I was scared to death because these people weren’t making a sound—and he just kind of eased over to me with his harmonica and he said, ’Just keep playing, boy.’ When we got done with the song, these people were standing up, clapping louder than I’d ever heard. It was an incredibly moving experience.”

It’s almost axiomatic that if you want to play the blues, you’re going to have to do some suffering to earn the privilege. Baton Rouge’s flood of 2016  laid Will Wesley low and almost derailed his career. Living in Denham Springs where the flooding was most devastating, all of Wesley’s personal possessions, including his musical equipment, were destroyed. At this personal nadir, the people of Natchez, Mississippi came to Wesley’s rescue. “I was so devastated,” he said. “I already had a great fan base in Natchez. Right about that time I got a phone call from the Under-the-Hill Saloon, asking me to come play a gig there. I told them my playing days were done for a while, that I had lost everything.” In short order, Wesley’s Natchez fans and the Saloon raised enough money for the musician to replace his equipment, and he kept the booking. “For the people of Natchez to believe in me that much and to put me back out there . . .,” visibly moved, he told me, “My love for them only grows.”

Wesley’s deep grounding in diverse musical forms is readily apparent in the music he crafts today. A Will Wesley song has more hooks than a charter fishing boat—in it one can hear elements ranging from Tom Petty to early Eagles, to Gram Parsons-era Byrds. One of Wesley’s soon-to-be released songs, “Attitude,” is a case in point. The opening guitar lick is vintage Waylon Jennings, before Wesley and his band—Phil Chandler on bass and Seth Jones on drums—crash into some Petty-style chordage. Throw in a nod to Guns N’ Roses on the chorus, and the final result is a relentless, untreatable earworm that will have you endlessly singing the refrain until your spouse files for divorce. It’s a potent admixture that is winning Wesley new fans and a growing regional presence.

[Read about another Baton Rouge musician, Jodi James, in this profile from our January 2020 issue.]

At this moment, for Wesley—like the rest of us—the future is a cypher. After recently signing a promotional deal with ProMotions LLC, he is holding out hope for a 2021 tour throughout the Southeast and beyond, including dates in Italy and Brazil. In addition, Wesley has recently learned that Endless Blues Records has picked a song he co-wrote with Phil Chandler, his bassist and producer, for distribution throughout the US and Europe. Entitled “A New Kind of Blues,” the song also features Greenville, Mississippi guitar-burner, Kern Pratt. Chandler described it as, “… a song that confronts the isolation of the pandemic as the everyday normal is put on hold.” Wesley added, “The bottom-line message of the tune is that this is the same old blues the world has always endured, but it’s in a new disguise.” An accompanying tour of France in 2021 in support of the release may also be in the works.

In the meantime, Wesley will write even more music. He and Chandler will co-produce Grady Champion’s next album. He will reach out and connect with every new fan he can. As the interview wound down, Wesley reflected: “A year and a half ago I had my heart smashed into a million pieces. I experienced personal betrayal and the theft of my music by someone I trusted. But to me pain is a journey. As time passes, you begin to appreciate the growth that can come out of that pain. This song on the new album, ‘Let It All Burn,’ it’s really about letting go of all the pain. Writing the tracks for this album was like one big therapy session.”

Meaningful, durable art is not usually created from a place of safety and comfort. For whatever reason, the words, images and music that inspire are often pulled from some of the darkest, most toxic spaces within the human psyche. In musical terms, one need only to listen to Billie Holiday or Amy Winehouse, or put “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” on the turntable to hear the truth of this. Will Wesley has been to this place, and he is determined that from coal he will make diamonds. With songs like “Let It All Burn,” Wesley serves notice that there is no challenge too great—not even a global pandemic—to stay him from creating something from it, and coming out on the other side. Blue times usher in blue spirits usher in blue notes—a journey to catharsis and, eventually, relief. 

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