Meet Justin Wilder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Wilder.

Hi Justin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started writing nearly 15 years ago with a small, gritty group of songwriters. Our songs were terrible but a lot of us had an unexplainable desire to just keep writing. As the years passed one songwriter broke though and her song “Surrounded/Battles” was up for song of the year at the Dove Awards.

We had a saying in our circle – “When one breaks out, many break through.” I can point back to that song that gave me a totally different confidence to hit the gas pedal and go for it. If my good friend could do it, I could do it too.

I can’t say what someone else would have done, but I made the decision to win a Grammy within 7 years. I started with the end in mind and realized if I was going to write a song good enough to win a Grammy, I estimated it would probably take me 10,000 hours of writing to perfect my craft. I committed to writing for 4 hours a day which is 1,460 hours a year and that is almost 7 years exactly to hit 10,000 hours.

I wrote roughly 65 songs the first year, 120 songs the second year, and 150 songs the 3rd year. All the meanwhile I should probably mention I was and am still working full time. I began to realize the more I write, the faster I write and easier it becomes to write. It’s just like a muscle you can grow and make stronger.

At this point in the story, I should mention my journey to Country music actually happened by accident. I was still writing Christian music when my wife and I went to Dallas to adopt a baby. As chance would have it, the mom changed her mind as we were leaving the hospital and instead of being back in Denver with a newborn, our friends got us an Airbnb in Mexico all summer to get away. I bought a little Ed Sheeran backpack guitar and we hopped on a plane.

I took a break from writing Christian music and started writing pop music. By the time we got back to Denver at the end of the summer, I think I had been binge watching so much Ted Lasso that I started to have a little southern draw just like him. One August afternoon I grabbed my guitar and headed out to my deck to write. I kept singing this chorus over and over and tried to make it bend towards pop it just sounded like Country. I laughed at myself (literally) and thought, “I don’t really listen to Country.”

So I put the idea of what Country should sound like and I just wrote what felt most natural to me and didn’t force it one way or another. Regardless of its genre, I started to get an itch and one morning I threw out an idea to my wife. “What if I went to Nashville for a month just to see what would happen?” She said she loved the idea and that I should go for it. So I did…

I packed a bag, grabbed my guitar, gave her the biggest hug and kiss and promised I would be back. With that, I jumped on I-70 East and drove across the Country to Tennessee. I remember at the time I only knew one person in the entire music industry and he worked for Curb Records on the Christian side. It might have been the 2nd or 3rd night there that I went to see a guy I follow online play a writers round at the Tin Roof in Nashville. As luck would have it, the one person I knew in the music industry walked in and we literally bumped into each other. It couldn’t have been more than a 5 minute conversation before he got a text message that one of his artists got sick and had to cancel their writing session the next day.

He just stared at his phone for a few seconds before he looked at me and said, “You wanna fill in? It’s with Tedd T – he’s a legendary producer.” Now, this is that moment that I believe inevitably happens in everyone’s life. I felt like life had set me up and I was prepared for it so I said “Yes.” If I wasn’t prepared for it, I probably still would have said yes. But something happened that next day that changed the course of my life forever til this day.

I arrived at the studio by 10am. I almost couldn’t turn the door handle as imposter syndrome set in so hard that I thought I was going to throw up. I even wondered if this whole coming to Nashville experiment was a subconscience effort to reinforce to myself that I don’t have what it takes and this would surely send me back home with my bags packed.

We swapped stories how we got to this point and I mentioned that I had about 50 Country song starts in my back pocket. He asked me to play a few. I pulled out my guitar and played a few and he asked again, “You’ve got 50 of these?” I slowly answered him….”Yes sir. I might actually have more.” He asked me to play a few more ideas and so I did. He looked at me and said, “You might be sitting on some hits.” Heck, I’d never been sitting in this position before. I had been chasing this worship writing thing for over a decade.

Fast forward….

9 hours later in the studio he said to me, “Let’s stop for the day.” He turned his start of the art swivel chair around and looked at me and says, “I think your life is about to change. We should record an entire catalog of your Country songs and we can pitch them to the biggest names out there.” Then he just asked how often I could come back to Nashville.

I began to travel to Nashville about every other month, writing and recording with Tedd, writing and recording with anyone who had a pulse. Had my first moment strike that made me feel like I was on the right track when a song I wrote with an artist named Sarah Lake got picked up by CMT.

It wasn’t long after that I got a call from Tedd. “I think we might be sitting on multiple top 40 hits and…”

The pause seemed to last an eternity. I had just been taking all of this one day a time, one week at a time, one month at a time.”

“I think you should be the one to release them.”

Man, I was not expecting that. “I’m a no name guy from Denver” I tried telling him. I don’t own Country boots or drive a truck or any of that stuff. Country music will hate me!” “They will,” he said. “But then they’ll love you.”

We are set to release our first of 5 singles “BRONCO” September 20th.

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?
Out of every 99 doors that close, 1 opens. Then the whole cycle happens again. A really good friend of mine said he was going to send my music to one of his clients that …let’s just say without naming names, he does just fine in the music industry. He just wanted to get some feedback from him and what he said has kept me going to this day.

He read me his text out loud. “Your friend is clearly talented. And so is everyone here in Nashville. The only difference I have seen from those that make it and those that don’t is how many ‘no’s’ they can push through and keep on going.

I nodded and said, “well, that’s just what I’m gonna do then.”

“No” is so common in Nashville that it’s been officially coined “The Nashville No.” It simply means –

“No you’re not good enough.”
“No you don’t have what it takes.”
“No, you don’t have the right look.”
No, No, No, No.”

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I think the one thing that makes me different is that I don’t have a “Country” background that most Country artists do so I feel like I don’t do a lot of the stereotypical things they do and sing about. So most of my stuff really has to do with kissing the city life goodbye and getting back to the good life – all those times that really meant something and you never wanted them to stop.

How do you think about luck?
As I shared in the opening question, I think hard work prepares us for those moments of luck. My friends are probably tired of hearing me say, “What are the chances?” I feel like I live in this world where the chance of what just happens seems impossible. For example, I just flew in one of my best friends from Nashville to Denver to cook for a private dinner. I was sharing the story with my friends in family how me and my wife met because of him. In fact, and then I laughed, I wouldn’t have met my wife had UPS not have lost his coffee in the mail 15 years ago. It’s a true story. So I’m no longer quick to get mad when something doesn’t appear to go my way in the moment.

Contact Info:

• Website: justinwildermusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwildermusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justinwildermusic/

Image Credits
Nick Kupin https://www.instagram.com/nickiscutelol/