“It’s a long story” she says, with a smile, of how she ended up where she is today.
Alexis Wilkins speaks the truth and owns who she is with her unapologetic storytelling, cowboy-like leaning, and definitive pull from the past. She honors country tradition while adding relevance and current commentary. Arkansas-bred and Nashville-based singer/songwriter and commanding artist; Wilkins struck platinum with her debut single release garnering over 1,000,000 streams across key platforms. With this came accolades and endorsements from CMT, American Songwriter, Today in Nashville, and more.
She is no stranger to the big stage having shared it with such superstars as Chris Young, Joe Nichols, Sara Evans, Parmalee to name a few.
Her style beckons the past with a backbeat of 50s through the 70s sassy and driving vocals and melody driven tracks that will surely have the listener wanting to hit a saw-dusted dance floor or bring back the barn dance.
“Country music is here to stay” she says of the changing tides, the ebbs and flows of Nashville’s popularity shuffle, and disregard for temporary trend patterns. “I want people to hear truthful songs. These are real moments in my life and vignettes in time, and country music has always been the truth.”
She’s got quite the collection of vignettes to draw from too. Though music isn’t the family trade, her great-grandfather passed down a 1952 J45 Gibson and she hasn’t put it down since. Alexis learned the meaning of putting pen to paper when she was 6 years old. After reading an article about the devastation of the coal fires in Pennsylvania and learning that people do something they love to raise funds and awareness for something they believe in, she decided that she’d write her own song to help with the cause. Three years later, she made her first trip to Nashville and recorded that very same song, later to be used for The Nature Conservancy’s “Plant a Billion Project” to plant trees in the Atlantic Rainforest. This process solidified her decision to become an artist and make her many ideas a reality in song.
Fast forward, her advocacy of Veterans and Veteran causes is most important to her, working with organizations such as Warrior Rounds, Operation Standdown, Soldier’s Child, singing in the hospital with Musicians On Call and was selected for the honor of singing at memorial services for the VA. She pioneered the first live virtual performance program for Veteran patients and produced and delivered a nationwide 4th of July presentation to the VA hospitals via closed-circuit TV. She says of her work with Warrior Rounds that her retreat days, writing with Veterans, “are her favorite writing sessions.”
Alexis spent her early years living in Switzerland and England before she skipped over the pond with her family laying down roots in Arkansas. Recognizing her goals of making a name in Nashville, her family moved to Nashville where she quickly engaged in the music scene writing with numerous hit-songwriters, playing as many gigs as she could and enrolled at one of the nation’s top music business schools – Belmont University, but as a business and political science major where she graduated with honors. Maybe prolific, maybe just skill, but either way, she walked the prestigious Williams-Murray Writing Award, Economic Critical Thinking Award, and having been selected to be on the Ethics Debate Team.
Beyond her creative skills in music, she continues to grow her creative interests. In 2021 she launched American Westward, a lifestyle brand that focuses on the western lifestyle, outdoor living and more.
When Alexis isn’t in the studio or on the road, she’s hanging out with her family and dog, reading or collecting old books, writing articles, or working on her 1989 F-150 Lariat. Really though, she is a force to be reckoned with under the hood or on the stage, get ready to hear some new music, that is truly, for the first time, Alexis through and through.
