Wilbur: The Power of Three.

Text and images by Jessie Fox from Here’s My Chance.

Three guys, three friends and three music lovers. A standing bass, an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar. The power of three seeps into the inevitable creation of the band Wilbur.

But who or what is Wilbur?

It’s not to say that they had an identity crisis but after playing under random names for each show in their hometown, the bandmates decided they needed a regular name. Wilbur became the default, the new fabric of their identity.

“Wilbur came out of nowhere,” Kieran Kriss says with a laugh. “I think Simon (Tangney) threw it out one day. He went through this period where he just liked different names and things, like Frankenstein.”

The band started when Kriss, Tangney and Matt Bevilacqua were around 16 and growing up in Long Island. They used to play “really shitty emo music” together. Growing up within a five-block radius of one another made it simple for these three to get together and vibe but as they got older, distance became a problem.

“We kind of scattered,” Kriss, 23, adds. “Simon was in Alaska, Matt was in DC and I was in California.”

They all wound up in Philadelphia and the rest has been history.

They try to represent themselves in an honest way and their music has been that continuous lever.

“I think that we bind to the notion that if you’re honest and you try to represent yourself in a genuine way within your music,” Tangney, 22, notes, “that goes a long way in terms of producing a decent product, something that you can show people.”

Give them a time and place and their melodies will make your heart dance. Their three-piece setup allows them to make music wherever the opportunity presents itself.

“The three-piece is part of this idea of a strip down mentality where we could literally pick up and play pretty much anywhere, you know?” Tangney shares. “The idea is to have a sort of sound that is extremely transferable from an audio setting to a live setting and having there be no gap in between them.”

The young band also relates to the idea of immediacy and illustrates music in a way that focuses on lucid but relevant growing points in life.

“We are trying to write music that grabs, holds and keeps your interest,” Tangney says. “We are trying to maintain a give and take within the creative process. No one really ends up carrying the brunt and everyone can put themselves into it.”

As friends and as musicians, the most important aspect that Wilbur wants to portray is a true identity, one that encompasses the band and its array of personalities. They want to do good for themselves and then being able to do good for others.

When asked what they want to achieve, almost in unison, the three answer, “We want to write good songs.”

“We don’t want to be superfluous at all,” Bevilacqua says. “If we lose your attention for a second then we haven’t done our job. We put a lot of ourselves into what we do but we don’t want to create an ego. We don’t want to solo for too long or repeat something for too long. We say what we have to say. Its just us. We don’t want to be too serious and we don’t want to be too blasé either

Wilbur is currently working on releasing an album and has done a few recordings by Max Morgan at SoundButter Audio. Almost every Tuesday they can reliably be found at Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar in South Philly.