Contributed by Sundilla
Sundilla welcomes Wes Collins to Auburn on March 18. Showtime at Pebble Hill is 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets are just $15 and can be found at Spicer’s Music, Ross House Coffee and online at sundillamusic.com; admission at the door is $20. Weather permitting, this will be an outdoor concert.
At age 44, Collins and his wife Anita made a pact to become writers: she started writing fiction and Collins penned his first song. A few years later, they were both multi-award-winners in their fields. (NOT included among those awards, but noteworthy in its own right, is the “Album of the Year” proclamation by The Sundilla Radio Hour for his 2018 release “Welcome to the Ether.”) Collins more than makes up for lost time with songs so dense with ideas that a first listen only scratches the surface. Come for a haunting melody and some intricate fingerpicking and stay for the wit and deep literary intelligence. There is always more to find in a Collins song.
“We first heard of Wes Collins when he sent us a CD in the hope that we would play some of his songs on The Sundilla Radio Hour” said Sundilla organizer Bailey Jones. “He got his wish; we played several cuts from that CD, and at the end of the year show host Kelly Walker and I both had it at the top of our Best Release of the Year list; I don’t think that had happened before, or since. Wes got in touch to thank us, that led to a conversation about booking a live concert, and I’m thrilled that that’s finally going to happen.
“I’m also glad that we can expect the next several Sundilla concerts to take place outside at Pebble Hill, weather permitting. As long as it’s not too cold or too rainy, expect an outdoor show.”
Collins has played shows from coast to coast including: The Blue Bird Cafe in Nashville, Tennessee; The Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas; the Cary Theater in Cary, North Carolina (opening for Dave Olney); and many more. He is a winner of the prestigious Grassy Hills New Folk Competition and a North Carolina Arts Council Songwriting Fellowship, and has been featured as a finalist in The Telluride Troubadour Contest in Telluride, Colorado; The Songwriter’s Serenade Competition in Moravia, Texas; and The Wildflower Performing Songwriter Contest in Dallas, Texas.
He credits many other singer/songwriters in his musical tent as inspiration, including Neil Finn, Gillian Welch, Bruce Cockburn and Patty Griffin, but Collins is well on his way to establishing his own voice as one we should value.
Collins is sure to be the latest in a long line of Sundilla performers who took the stage as an “unknown,” and left the stage as a new favorite to many in the Sundilla audience.
For more information, including videos, go to www.sundillamusic.com.