From the front lines at Standing Rock to the archaic streets of Jerusalem, the Sahel Desert to Carnegie Hall, music has been the source of strength for Billy Wylder. The band features Avi Salloway (Bombino/​Hey Mama/Avi & Celia) joined by an inspired cast of singular artists who have performed across five continents including concerts at the Coachella, Newport Folk Festival, New Orleans Jazz Fest, Montreal Jazz Fest, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center. From 2013–16, Salloway toured the globe with Bombino, the Tuareg guitar hero from Niger, Africa. While on the journey and since returning, Salloway wrote the material on the band’s new album, Strike the Match (Sand & Gold Records, released 9.7.18).

Salloway has been bringing these songs to life with the Wylder Family, a group of dear friends and musical kindred spirits. In between shows, the band spent ten days recording at Eyeland Studio in the Columbus Theatre, home of The Low Anthem. The music weaves together American folk and rock with sensibilities from the Sahara Desert: think Andrew Bird meets Ali Farka Toure, Pete Seeger and Talking Heads. Strike the Match expands on American musical traditions, building a bridge to their African roots and coloring the songs with experimental art-rock textures: gilded string lines, synthesizers, and angular guitars. Mother Earth is at its center, surrounded by stories of love, conflict, change and dreams.

Salloway shares, “This album is a reflection of the world we’ve been born into, one filled with supernatural beauty and incomprehensible struggle. My social and environmental activism work has taken me to territories that have been colonized and occupied in the Middle East, North and West Africa, the South Pacific and Standing Rock, here at home. I have experienced the creative spirit rise up in the face of darkness and adversity and it is the most life-affirming feeling I have witnessed. This record has become the artifact at the intersection of these moving events in my life.”

On Strike the Match, Billy Wylder grapples with some of the most pressing questions of our time. How can we reorient ourselves to nature as a source of strength for resistance to the forces that seek to destroy and profit from it? How can we use music to move beyond capitalism and nationalism to a global society for the benefit of the earth and all living beings? How can we reconcile our painful history with hope and optimism for the future? The album calls the listener to engage with these questions and illuminates the path towards participating in the creation of a more just and sustainable world.

The band is named after Salloway’s grandmother, Wilma Billie Hotaling. She was a prolific painter, author, musician, and educator. Billie wrote Count the Stars Through the Cracks, a harrowing historical fiction novel about a young brother and sister’s escape from the Antebellum South along the Underground Railroad. Billie’s writing was raw and fearless and her book delivered a powerful narrative about America’s hard truths and the long journey to freedom. “My grandma Billie led by example, showing me what creativity looks like and how critical art can be as a form of love and resistance. She is part of me and part of the Wylder family,” Salloway reflects.

Avi Salloway vocals, guitar, harmonica
Rob Flax violin, synthesizers, vocals
Krista Speroni bass, vocals
Zamar Odongo drums, vocals

Photo by Nate Wieselquist

. . .

Alisa Amador’s music is a synthesis of the many styles she’s voraciously absorbed: rock, jazz, funk and alternative folk, all wrapped in the spirit of the Latin music she grew up with. With a sound that NPR calls “a pitch-perfect rendition of my wildest dreams,” her soulful singing, poetically incisive lyrics, and syncopated rhythms are likely to make you cry, laugh and dance all within one set.

• Billy Wylder is more sonically adventurous than other bands of its ilk, anchored as it is in groove and texture. WBUR ART-ery
• When listening to Strike the Match, it’s apparent just how much Salloway has matured as a musician and political thinker. “Fourth of July” is a tightly composed rumination on what it means to be an American, the good and the bad, that rides a riff that’s one part Zeppelin and one part early 2000s garage rock revival. A sense of mystery and majesty. No Depression
• The sonically adventurous roots rock band loops urgent calls to action into its propulsive, hypnotic songs. WBUR
• A spiritual cousin to Paul Simon’s Graceland. Seven Days

• Billy Wylder’s

• Website | Video | Interview

• Alisa Amador’s

• Website | Video | Interview