Author/pianist Dave Wild has played jazz for decades, with those mostly anonymous local heroes who keep the flame burning out beyond the big city limits. There have been Dave Wild Trios in various locales over the years, backing Jimmy Borges and Ethel Azama at J.B.'s in Honolulu, doing Sundays at Ann Arbor's Bird of Paradise, squeezed beside the kitchen at the Café San Juan Bistro in Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico. The current expanded edition, one of the best, circulates through Central Texas with Wild, on piano (and occasionally soprano saxophone) joined by bassist/guitarist Jeff Horton or bassist Tramm Kelly, drummer Charles Burleson, and saxophonist Greg Bashara. In performance the quartet mines the idiom's riches, from the classics of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Bill Evans through today's acoustic masterpieces, with a distinctive approach shaped by Wild's arrangements and many original compositions.

Dave's background is set out on the About Dave page. Bassist Horton, also a skilled guitarist, taught guitar at McLennan Community College and currently performs (as a bassist) with a number of central Texas symphony orchestras, while Burleson, a computer systems administrator, studied at Cal State Northridge with legendary percussionist Jerry Steinholtz and has had wide experience in many forms of jazz and commercial music both in Waco and in California. Bashara, a graduate of the Baylor University, is active in central Texas in a wide variety of contexts.  Kelly, another Baylor grad, is active in various groups, including the Waco Symphony Orchestra.   The trio (and quartet) has performed in Waco at Six Shooter Junction and Barry's Coffee Company, in Temple at Barry's Coffee House, and at Austin's Elephant Room. They were featured in a Texas Music Café broadcast in October 1998 and as part of the Jazz at the Playhouse series in March 1999. The four played at Waco's Hemingway's Watering Hole before it moved to its current location in The Marketplace on Bosque, and several times in the courtyard outside the current club. And a special edition of the quartet, with ringers Eric Marienthal on alto sax, Ken Wild on bass, and Jeremy Brown on drums played The Elephant Room in Austin on March 24 2004...