Tal Wilkenfeld is an Australian bassist, singer and songwriter. While playing at a club in New York in 2006, Wilkenfeld met some members of the Allman Brothers Band. She credits Oteil Burbridge and Derek Trucks with encouraging her to join them at the Beacon Theatre, her first time on a large stage. The jam was about 40 minutes long; Wilkenfeld sent a recording of the performance to Jeff Beck when she auditioned for his band. In 2006, months after performing as a guest with the Allman Brothers Band, Wilkenfeld recorded her debut album, Transformation, in only two days. Wilkenfeld composed, produced, arranged and played bass on seven songs with Wayne Krantz, Geoffrey Keezer, saxophonist Seamus Blake and Keith Carlock.
In 2008, Wilkenfeld received a phone call from Prince. She was surprised that his first words to her were, “Do you like the drum rolls of Jack DeJohnette?” Prince had Wilkenfeld attend parties at his Los Angeles home. Sometimes he and his band played and she was the only other person there. Months later, Prince called Wilkenfeld from Minneapolis and said that he wanted to put together a trio with her; he asked Wilkenfeld to find a drummer for the act. Chris Coleman was selected. Also in 2008, Wilkenfeld was voted “The Year’s Most Exciting New Player” in a Bass Player magazine readers’ choice poll. In 2013, Wilkenfeld was awarded the Bass Player magazine’s “Young Gun Award”.
In 2009, Wilkenfeld toured Australia and Japan with Jeff Beck. In October 2009, Wilkenfeld reunited with Jeff Beck at Madison Square Garden for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary two-night concert. On 19 May 2012, Wilkenfeld accompanied Beck and Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live. In 2013, she joined alt-country singer-songwriter Ryan Adams as a collaborator on his studio album, Ryan Adams (2014). She contributed to two tracks on the Toto album Toto XIV, and co-wrote a song called “Running Whiskey” with ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. “Running Whiskey” was released in 2016 by Supersonic Blues Machine.
Wilkenfeld is a bandleader of her own bands in which she sings, plays bass, and plays guitar. In earlier work, she was backed by musicians such as Wayne Krantz and Vinnie Colaiuta. She opened for the Who on the North American leg of The Who Hits 50! tour in 2016. In 2016, she released a single entitled “Corner Painter” featuring Blake Mills and Benmont Tench. Also in 2016, Rolling Stone said that Wilkenfeld was “working on new music that sees her evolving from an instrumental prodigy into a formidable singer-songwriter.”
On 15 March 2019, Wilkenfeld released her vocal debut album Love Remains, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseeker charts on the first week of its release. Love Remains has been highly praised by the press and was featured in Rolling Stone, Relix, Paste, Billboard, and Forbes. Rolling Stone described her vocal debut as having “ten dense, riff-heavy tracks with brazen, introspective lyrics—prove her songwriting abilities.” Wilkenfeld has also been a guest on popular podcasts, including WTF with Marc Maron, and Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast. In December 2018, Wilkenfeld released a song entitled “Under the Sun”. In 2019, Billboard magazine premiered her new single “Killing Me”.
