Wilt knows how to put on a great show. The band has seen nothing but success since releasing their gritty debut single “Gwen” back in 2022. Their personal, hard-hitting lyrics touch the hearts of all those listening.
It was a beautiful day in San Luis Obispo when I saw them live for the first time at Shabang. This may have been their first festival performance, but their recent 27-show tour seasoned them up for this event. Lead singer Chelsea Rifkin’s voice was powerful, hitting notes that some of us in the audience could only dream of hitting all while dancing around the stage. Playing off each other seamlessly, Wilt’s main stage performance was filled with passion and vigor.
Learn more about “your favorite band you’ve never heard of” by reading our interview. A gallery of their performance is below.
Congrats on your first festival! How do you feel?
Chelsea Rifkin: We’re super excited. I think it’s been a dream of all of ours for a long time to play music festivals because we’ve all grown up attending a bunch of them. And Shebang makes a cool one specifically because we grew up in LA so we’ve had a bunch of friends who have come here for years. It’s really exciting to finally get to play here. We’re super excited. We’re also super excited to listen to the other acts.
Which artist are you most excited to see?
Chelsea Rifkin: It’s all different.
Wilt: *at the same time* Thundercat! Peach Pit, George Clanton will be a fun one.
Andrew Perrea: I’ve seen Thundercat a couple of times, but it’s super surreal to be playing on the same lineup as him.
I read in an interview that there was pressure at your Bardot show last year because of the industry professionals that were attending. Do you feel that same pressure winning over today’s audience? Or do you just feel pretty relaxed?
Chelsea Rifkin: I think it’s a very, very different feeling. We’re all just excited. And we know that as long as we go up there and have fun, that’s all we can ask for.
Jake Shpiner: We just played 27 shows in the last two months, and that Bardot show was our first legit show.
Aaron Liebman: We played such a good show at the Bardot. That school night show, we were all on point. And there is something about that added pressure that I think really helps us step up to the plate. So not a bad thing.
Chelsea Rifkin: Today’s a good one because we’re super excited. We’re excited to party after with our friends.
What was it like seeing fans dancing along to your songs for the first time?
Chelsea Rifkin: Honestly fucking insane. I never thought I was a very good lyricist. Or that like my lyrics were all that memorable. I thought we were just good musicians as a whole, but some people actually know the words and come up to me after telling me the words mean something to them. Taking the time out of their day to learn our music is so surreal and so crazy. I couldn’t ask for anything more. It’s the best feeling, especially when we just open for bands, and at a lot of shows you’re playing, not everyone knows who we are. But there’s always at least one person in the audience singing every word and that definitely brought the energy up and like kept us going.
Aaron Liebman: Our top song is “Moved Along”. A lot of people know that song and watching the crowd try to do the “la la la la la la la” was so funny. Chelsea’s a great singer. And that’s not the easiest song in the world to sing. Watching the crowd do that was really, really funny.
Chelsea Rifkin: Also watching people sing the words to songs that we haven’t even like put out yet. The diehard wilters. That was pretty insane to me. We started playing this unreleased song called “Bundy” on tour and I think someone posted it to our Discord or something and suddenly everyone knew the words.
You all had your own different experiences, being part of bands, and working solo. How does it feel working together to create new songs?
Jake Shpiner: I would say the process has been different every time. Some of the earliest songs Chelsea wrote and brought to the band. And then we started getting into the groove of me and Chelsea meeting up. I would have an instrumental and she would write over it, but that hasn’t been the case for all of them. A lot of them were like Aaron would flesh out a full song, and then Chelsea would write to it. I think we’re still evolving and figuring out what the creative process is really like for us. And trying to more and more get together as a band.
Aaron Liebman: Songs always turn out better if we play them live first. We’ll figure out an arrangement a month into playing a song. Like, oh, we should have done that on the record. Let’s try to get ahead of that next time. And that’s what we’re looking forward to on this album.
Dan Bermudez: We’re working on that song we just brought up “Bundy”. We did that the whole tour. Every night I was thinking, what could I do differently?
