One of the newcomers at this year’s Rison in the Fall Festival, Matt Wilkerson of the band Last Call, joined in on the latest episode of the Free Range Conversations podcast. Wilkerson, a White Hall resident, joins host Douglas Boultinghouse, who is the director of the festival, and festival founder and podcast co-host Roy Phillips. Rison Shine President Celeste Beatty fills in for host Britt Talent in this week’s episode as a special guest. Listeners learn that it was a text message from Beatty to Boultinghouse that brought the rising local talent to this year’s festival. Beatty was scrolling Facebook and came across a video of 22-year-old Wilkerson singing at a Pine Bluff laundromat and sent it to Boultinghouse suggesting they track him down. That viral video has since garnered over 20 thousand views. Wilkerson first got the music bug when his father, also a musician, pulled him up on stage at the age of two during a concert at the Pine Bluff Convention Center. “I was obsessed with the drums,” he says. “That’s where it started.” At the age of 13, just before his father passed away, he was gifted a guitar and has been playing ever since. Wilkerson draws his inspiration from the sounds of artists like Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, but even ventures outside of classic country music to play a little rock from Nirvana and The Eagles, and even current acts like Luke Combs and Cody Johnson.

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