“Living in other people’s songs has been cathartic for me,” is how singer-songwriter Alexa Wildish begins to explain the impulse behind her new covers EP, After Love, released today on all streaming platforms. It’s an exploration of the wide-ranging sensibility of a classic American songwriter-singer, one that delves deeply into American music via Wildish’s sparking covers of tunes by Fleetwood Mac, Sonny Curtis and Ron Hellard, Cher, Billie Eilish, and Tom Petty. Add in Wildish’s take on Brandi Carlile’s “This Time Tomrorrow” and After Love stands tall as a nuanced look at the mutability of great songs.
“There’s a bit of, ‘I’m not responsible for these lyrics,’” Wildish continues. She’s speaking to Live for Live Music from her current home in Lyons, Colorado, a small—and typically Colorado-Front-Range-beautiful—town near Boulder. “In singing cover songs, it’s very important to feel connected to them. At first I was hesitant to do [Fleetwood Mac’s’] ‘Songbird’ but we tackled it in a way that felt authentic to me.”
Wildish, who turns 36 in October, is a practitioner of the art of covering pop tunes whose affinity for what you might call an “alternate Great American Songbook” seems natural. She was born in Los Angeles County, California and grew up in nearby Orange County. Beginning voice lessons when she was seven, Wildish studied at the Orange County School of the Arts and majored in musical theater at North Carolina’s Elon University, where she studied mandolin and developed a taste for Americana music.
She took inspiration from Americana artists like The Wailin’ Jennys and Nickel Creek, but she went down a more conventional route after graduating from Elon in 2010, when she began working on a cruise ship, singing standards from the world of musical theater. After stints in Portland and New York, she settled in Colorado and began planning what would be her first EP, 2020’s Alexa Wildish. The eponymous record found Wildish working with Hawktail guitarist Jordan Tice and singer Ruth Moody, herself a member of The Wailin’ Jennys.
Produced by Dan Knobler and Russell Durham, Alexa Wildish showed off the singer-songwriter’s range as a writer and singer. With pedal steel courtesy of Midland’s Philip Sterk, the EP established Wildish as an up-and-coming Americana artist.
NBC singing competition show The Voice had asked Wildish to audition in 2019, but the connection for her wasn’t quite there yet. After she released her debut self-titled record, Wildish was ready to make her move on The Voice, and joined the show as a contestant in 2023. She made it to the playoff stage of the show, and the experience—she sang Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird” and impressed the show’s celebrity judges—certainly informs After Love.
On the new EP, Wildish’s covers of Billie Eilish’s “everything i wanted” and Curtis and Hellard’s “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” tell the story of her love affair with American music. She had performed “everything i wanted” on The Voice in 2023 with Lennon VanderDoes during the Voice Battles segment of the show. Meanwhile, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain “, perhaps best known through Keith Whitley’s magisterial 1988 version, is a stone country standard that Wildish remakes as pop country. It’s squarely in the tradition of country-meets-pop—Curtis wrote classics like “I Fought the Law” and “Walk Right Back”, the latter of which went on to be co-opted by the likes of The Everly Brothers and Harry Nilsson. Wildish comes to country naturally, she explains: “I’m actually a big fan of country music. I’ve been a big fan of classic country for a long time, and I’m also a big fan of Dolly Parton.”
After Love benefits from the careful production of Russell Durham and exquisite playing by guitarist Harrison Whitford and drummer-percussionist John Fatum.
Now ensconced in Lyons—at least for the time being—Wildish will mark the release of After Love with an October 4th show at Denver, CO’s Swallow Hill Music featuring singer-songwriter Courtney Hartman and special guests including multi-instrumentalist and producer Russell Durham and fellow The Voice alumnus, Lennon VanderDoes. It’s set to be a full-band show that will, no doubt, do justice to Wildish’s love of pop music, writ large.
Find tickets for Alexa Wildish’s After Love release show in Denver here. Listen to the full EP on the platform of your choice here or stream it via the Spotify player below. For more on Alexa Wildish, visit her website.
Alexa Wildish – After Love – Full EP
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