J. Wilms: Buteco EAV

Ace session player J. Wilms is performing two local shows in January to promote a third solo album titled The Fighter. “If you search me around the internet, you might find anything from crazy free jazz stuff to classical compositions to some more straight-ahead jazz stuff,” Wilms says in an interview with The Sharp Notes. “This is a departure from all of it.” He calls the songs on new the record “stripped down, simple and honest,” and adds, “I was just trying to make a really straightforward record that could hopefully speak to some people that were going through some stuff.”

An Atlanta-based multi-instrumentalist, Wilms has worked with Beyonce, Chico Hamilton, Bebel Gilberto, TV on the Radio, and Run the Jewels, for whom he created a string and brass arrangement for the song “A Few Words for the Firing Squad.” He played bass in the touring band behind the musical Fela!, appearing alongside Patti LaBelle and Fela Kuti’s son Femi Anikulapo-Kuti, as well as plucking the same instrument for ABC’s The Gong Show; Wilms also was a guitarist for the orchestra in Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music on HBO.

Much of this work was undertaken in New York City, where he lived for years until the pandemic soured him on the place. In an email to Creative Loafing, Wilms writes the situation “was really getting grim. A couple of people died in our building and we were in a neighborhood where they had refrigerated tractor trailer trucks with bodies near the local hospital; my daughter didn’t leave the house for two months.” He and his family’s return to the south was crucial in spurring his creativity. “Taking long walks in the relative quiet of the suburbs of Atlanta really helped me write and formulate all the songs on this record,” he notes.

Wilms is now in the midst of a project with Torbitt Schwartz, a.k.a. Little Shalimar. “A lot of people know him from co-producing Run the Jewels, but he has done tons of other stuff and is an extremely versatile producer, musician, and engineer,” Wilms explains. The music they’re making is described as “a kind of modern version of krautrock instrumentals — very stoney, long-form jams.” On top of that, it’s the tenth anniversary of Wilms’ first outing as a band leader — with a jazz record called Diamond People which he is mixing, remastering, and re-releasing. “I also have a companion record to The Fighter about a third of the way in the can and plan on having that done by the summer.” — Kevin C. Madigan