Wild Child’s founding members Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins first met in 2009 while touring with a Danish act called The Migrant. Both call Texas home: Wilson, a classically-trained violinist who wrote her first songs under the wing of legendary country music outlaw Ray Wiley Hubbard, hails from the fabled bluegrass circles of Wimberly; and Beggins, a ukulele player from Houston, was finishing up at The University of Texas while on the that tour.
The way Wilson tells it, “We mainly got to know each other through what we called ‘backseat business school’: we just got our hands on a whole bunch of red wine and hit the books.” But when the two put the books aside and wrote their first song, the chemistry was undeniable. “We couldn’t stop writing music together,” Wilson laughs. “Before we knew it, backseat business school became the band.” The two rented out an unfurnished home studio in Austin to write and record 2010’s Pillow Talk.
As they built the record, they also built the band, calling in friends Carey McGraw to play drums and Sadie Wolfe to play cello. Wilson—almost impossibly, considering how naturally she commands her supple voice now—hadn’t sung a note for anyone before taking the lead for Wild Child.
More recently, the group shifted to a larger, more percussive style, adding Evan Magers on keys and Chris D’Annuzio on electric bass to swell their sound. And this year, they emerged from the studio after recording their second full-length album, The Runaround, with Grammy-nominated artist Ben Kweller as producer.