SPOTLIGHT: Wild Ponies on Finding Luck, Love, and a Creative Community

EDITOR’S NOTE: Wild Ponies are No Depression’s Spotlight band for August 2024. Learn more about them and their new album, Dreamers, coming Aug. 23 on No Evil Records, in our interview. And watch them perform “Breathe” from the album just for ND readers in this video.

We’ve made our way as artists in this folk/Americana world for nearly 20 years. It hasn’t been conventional or easy. We’ve hustled and scraped and pieced things together to make ends meet. We’ve played legendary rooms we could only dream of when we first started out. We’ve played tiny corner stages in far-flung towns you’ve probably never heard of. We’ve had a room full of French and German folks dancing and screaming our lyrics back to us as loud as they could. We’ve played north of the Arctic Circle and in song circles around campfires in the Great Smoky Mountains. None of this is to brag, it’s just that we’ve been lucky enough to make it work, and sometimes I still can’t believe it.

It’s a hard and beautiful life. There’s so much beauty in the people we’ve come to know. The community of friends that come in and out of our lives, sometimes with years between the meetings, yet we pick up as if we had just been sitting around the fire sipping bourbon days before. It’s remarkable, really. We have always said that we make better friends than fans, and that’s only partially a joke. We’ve built a beautiful family. A house full of more love than we’d ever known was possible. Three parents and two tiny humans under one roof in East Nashville. Stardust and rainbows that we worked so hard to bring into our home. But even with all the work, the shots, the doctors appointments, meetings with lawyers, and countless trips to the courthouse, luck still had the final say. Here they are, here they’ll always be. There’s nothing we’re more grateful for.

Our children are learning from an early age that families are made, not just born. A chosen family of hundreds spread across the globe that River and Iris affectionately refer to as aunts and uncles and cousins. An extended family of thousands that connect to us and each other through stories, songs, melodies, and truth. There’s nothing we love more than seeing this family connect with each other in the wild. Friends from Austin meeting up with our St. Louis crew. Kansas City spending a weekend at a festival with our Napa and Nashville families. We’ve never been the kind of artists that have separated ourselves from the folks who listen to our music or come see us play. We share our lives openly and invite our community to do the same. We write songs together. Visit and share stories. Take each other soup when we’re sick. If we could we’d invite everyone up on stage with us just to share in what we’ve been so lucky to experience.

Luck is a funny thing. Growing up, I remember being gathered at the farm in Galax, playing songs in the shed behind the house, and my grandfather, Papa Goose, describing us as the luckiest family in the world. Giving luck the credit seemed to be a way that he could be both proud and humble at the same time. We’ve carried on that tradition because it’s true. Our 2 ½-year-old son exclaims, “I’m so lucky!” or “That’s so lucky!” several times a day. Whether it’s seeing a trash truck, a rainbow, or meeting a friend on our nightly “jam walk” around the neighborhood, he is the first to remind us just how lucky we are to be in that moment — and he’s not wrong. We ARE so lucky. Lucky to be connected to such an amazing community. Lucky to know the stories behind our most favorite songs because those songs were written by some of our best friends. Other artists and dreamers who, like us, have whispered, worked, and screamed to bring new dreams to the light.

Wild Ponies (photo by Laura Schneider)

Our lives as artists are changing. We’re welcoming the change, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t nervous about it too. For the last two decades, we’ve made our living on the road, touring vigorously, playing upwards of 150 dates some years. Moving forward, our road-running time will be more intentional. Not because it has to be, but because we want it to be. Home has taken on a new meaning, and has a much stronger draw than it used to. The gravity of Little Blue Truck at bedtime is powerful. The early morning dance parties beckon us all. The value of time is calculated differently now. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t artists, and it doesn’t mean that we’ve lost our drive. We’re actually more driven than ever. We know the value of art over the course of a lifetime. We want our children to grow up seeing us cultivate opportunities to make art, share art, and experience art under our own roof, in our greater community, and alongside all of our chosen family members far and wide.

One thing we’ve realized in this period of time we’ll refer to as The Great Transformation is that the last 20 years weren’t spent building just a career, we were building a life. A full, gorgeous, messy, complicated, and adventurous life. “Our life is an adventure!”, we declare almost daily — and you don’t often know how adventures are really going to go. You’ve gotta be ready to shift, and jump, and roll, and skin your knees. You’ve gotta jump back up, get creative, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and look for the magic. You’ve gotta pause for the beauty even when you’re in a hurry. Eat the strawberries. Be present for a life that is whole and holds love. Make art that sees and is seen for the truth it is meant to uncover.

We’re still in it for the people. Our little family and our grand family spread across the miles. We still believe that every human is creative, and we will continue to make it our mission to help people recognize that in themselves. We want to support that community in any way we can. We’ll meet our Patreon community for creativity groups, we’ll show up to rural communities to lead workshops, we’ll read the poems and listen to the songs that folks send us. It’s a beautiful thing, this sharing of creative spirit. There’s really nothing else like it. And we feel it all around us. It’s seeing a friend buy a guitar, picking it up daily, and hearing the joy that it’s bringing to her life. It’s a haiku shared at the merch table, because the fan was inspired by the 365 haiku poems Telisha wrote daily for our daughter’s first year of life. It’s receiving a note from another foster parent who saw her own family in our song “Love You Right Now.” 

It’s SO lucky to share art in this world. To savor the human experience. To throw open the shutters and let our vulnerability bring us together. To honor beauty. To be here today by way of grit, bound by gratitude … and graced with just enough luck.