Plans for recording the album that became Sledding had been in place for quite some time by January of 2026 when the inaugural session had to be immediately postponed due to the fires ripping through Los Angeles. Ben Davis & his family evacuated to San Diego and Bridget Kearney, having already flown into record, ended up heading down there to hole up with Ben, where amidst the unknown and chaotic present tense they managed to work on a song together. A song that ended up on Sledding, but it’s not the one you think. And isn’t that just the way it can be, the beauty that can be blurred in the darkness but refuses to be crushed. The power of relationships that stretch beyond small talk about what you watched the night before or how hot or not it has been lately. The power of secret languages and musical maneuvers committed with a nod of a head and a telepathic glance. The journey for Will, Ben and Bridget to become BB WISELY has been anything but quick, and that’s why the music is so lived in, why the harmony is so well-earned. 

Time for the name game. In the time since the whole of BB WISELY first met at New England Conservatory in Boston, the individuals have made a lot of magic messes on stage and on record. Benjamin Lazar Davis as a co-leader of the collective Cuddle Magic, and a slew of creative contributions to artists like Monica Martin, Joan as Police Woman, Anais Mitchell, Kimbra & Luke Temple to name a few. To name some more, Will Graefe has worked with Mike D, Maya Hawke, Arooj Aftab, Sam Wilkes recently, and along with Davis played and composed with Okkervil River. Bridget Kearney is a founding member and bassist for Lake Street Dive and contributed to records from Charlotte Cornfield & Ed Sheeran and this wildly varied list paints a picture of three flexible superheroes who possess the gift to rise to an occasion and worm out of a pickle with melody and harmony that feels significant and specific to what they themselves can create. It’s why they continue to work in a sinking ship of an industry. It’s why the good ones still might win. 

The existence of BB WISELY as a band is proof of that. Because there’s no good reason to keep at it in this manner, when everyone is busy as hell on their own paths. But there is a Great reason to keep at it if you’re part of the secret club, the privileged few who have felt the zap of wonder that can come from actually finding your people and feeling your powers multiplied in each other’s presence. And on SLEDDING the listener is allowed into the secret club. If there is a password, might as well make it song one side one: COME ALIVE.

Sparse but committed guitar accents. Fingers snapping. Bridget sings. This is a support system in action. With BB WISELY, pretense is shredded, relationships running decades long (successful by the sheer fact that they still are relationships) allowing for an ego free pursuit of adventure and discovery. These songs can begin with a common convention and then right turn right turn left turn parallel park into a new stratum. Surprise is at a premium in our present day music economy and damn it’s nice to let SLEDDING throw you for a loop. Or two. Or ten. And these loops can be gentle. And these loops can be reverent. The unauthorized new shape of a guitar tone. The shock of a three part vocal harmony across the stereo space that basks in the differences these three very different voices own. Perhaps one of the tricks in the BB WISELY bag is that they celebrate the trio’s individual definitions of self and allow what happens when those atoms collide to be exposed. 

This is a standing room performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.

By the middle of SLEDDING we’ve heard songs featuring lead vocals from Kearney, Davis and Graefe as confident front-persons as well as piles of line blurring between them on instruments and voices. You could guess which songs were started by who and who brought what in when 

but you’d most likely be wrong, and there’s something vaguely revolutionary about that mask. There’s no one way a BB WISELY song comes together. All approaches are on the table, all the powers of production and deconstruction combine with an avalanche of results that are both compelling and just really quite catchy. 

There is the lyrical honesty of “EATON CANYON FIRE SONG,” a rare piece of music that tells the listener what it’s fully about even before the first bar begins. But the spoiler doesn’t keep you from feeling the feelings of the composer deeply. Quite the opposite, it primes you for it, and gives you the chance to stare at the title while you listen and maybe think what the fuck or maybe sing along. 

There is the classic cosmic love complication of “CONCEALED CARRY,” where the lyrics are far less explicit but still conveying the perspective and journey of the singer. But as Will Graefe sings the chorus “I don’t wanna hold you down / I just wanna follow you around” Kearney & Davis sing along, and this lone writer’s song is not so lonely, for a few choruses at least. 

On “FIVE STARS” Bridget Kearney swings huge, and an initially clean narrative about a cab to the airport grows more evolved and beautiful as the song marches forward. You might get to the very end of the propulsive track before realizing you never heard a full fledged drum beat. Just this ancient thudding, allowing for this Brian Eno-y Stephen Drozd-y wordless backing vocal to worm its way around the song. 

So What Took So Long? The lives of the trio have in fact stayed intertwined over the many years since they all met. But sometimes things do just take the time that they take. 

In order for this record to be as strong as it is, Bridget, Will and Ben all have had to become who they are at the rate the Earth spins. There’s logistics of course and we know that scheduling a get together with old friends can sometimes feel like it takes two years to lock in a ninety minute drink at a bar. Then sometimes, when you finally do get together to record your record, wildfires

break out across the city and you’re forced to postpone again and again. Perhaps that becomes a song. Perhaps more time leads to more discovery. 

So SLEDDING is a celebration. It’s a celebration of private communions and secret languages. It’s a celebration of decades of pure friendship and a commitment to always embracing a sense of wonder. Maybe we can take that lesson away and shoot it into all of our friendships that we want to hold onto twenty years from now. Everyone doesn’t have to be in a band. Almost no one is. Thank goodness BB WISELY are.