Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Colyer.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The band got started with George and a couple of other friends in Naples, Florida, under the moniker My Girl My Whiskey & Me. I (Kelly) was added to the band around 2012 and, after marrying in December of 2013, we moved to Greenville, SC to continue as a duo. This was the point where we began to focus on what kind of music we wanted to write and create. Over the next couple of years we found a few other musicians to fill out the sound, including Robert Gowan (Wasted Wine) on violin, Josh Riley on bass and Vilai Harrington (VH and the Hamptones) on banjo. In 2017 our debut album, In The Ground, was released with Other Southern, and we embarked on a tour of all 50 states in one year called 50 in 52. Being on the road for so long made us eager to return and plant roots back in SC. We began working on new music, had a baby, and in 2021 we changed the name of the band to Wilder Things Than Us. Today we still perform in the South East region and are planning a few releases this year!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We’ve definitely had some obstacles along the way. The one that persists is the lack of funding. Having 2 kids makes it difficult to get anything done. I have a 3 year old yelling at me as I try to get this done haha. When we finished the tour of all 50 states we could either keep touring our favorite spots and grow as a nationally touring act or we could start a family and stay local. We decided on the latter, and we’re so glad we did. But, of course, it limits our ability to spend time making music, networking, touring, etc.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We call our music Progressive Bluegrass, and what we mean by that is that we use Bluegrass instrumentation and definitely touch on Bluegrass, but we’re heavily influenced by many genres. What I’ve noticed about all the bands that fit into this category is that we all sound different, so it’s hard to point to a band and say ‘we sound like that’. But we really enjoy playing a varied set and our audiences most often comment that they were surprised by our song choices and our overall sound. We aim to surprise and delight.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Something I’ve brought up more recently that typically surprises people is that I (Kelly) am partially deaf in both ears. I got through life with lip reading and other such techniques, but missed quite a bit of conversation and movie context, never having my ears checked until I was 29. I’m now a hearing aid user, but before that mixing sound for shows was heavily focused on replacing the frequencies I needed most.
Fun facts about George are that he roasts coffee and had listened to every episode of Radiolab.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://WilderThingsThanUs.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/wilderthingsthanus
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/wilderthingsthanus
