This just in...

Refuting claims that the upcoming album King Wilkie Presents: The Wilkie Family Singers was actually written and performed by the ever-evolving New York City-based stringband King Wilkie, members of the Wilkie family have begun circulating online, via myspace and message boards.

“Critics [laughing]…you know what they’re going to do to us, right?” says family patriarch J.R. Wilkie, Sr. “They’re gonna berate us! They’re going to kill us! But I don’t care. It’s funny, because I know it’s going to happen.”

Available April 28 via the newly-minted Casa Nueva imprint, King Wilkie Presents: The Wilkie Family Singers stars the supposedly fictional Wilkie family. Picking up a variety of instruments from chiming archtop guitars to wheezing brass under the direction of family music therapist Dr. Art, they present their haunting conversations, fantasies, and desires in song.

“This is the first time I’ve made any kind of document,” says Beaufort Wilkie. “My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out…I must be doing something right.”

The individual members of the Wilkie family circle have taken tentative steps into cyberspace via MySpace.com. To visit each family member's MySpace page, visit King Wilkie's homepage here.

On King Wilkie Presents: The Wilkie Family Singers, the Wilkie family may or may not be joined by guests David Bromberg, Robyn Hitchcock, John McEuen (Nitty Gritty Dirty Band), Sam Parton (The Be Good Tanyas), Peter Rowan, and Abigail Washburn.

“Ha ha ha…wasn’t that just magnificent? I thought it was getting a little dodgy in the middle part, but that finale...wow!” – Cousin Dusty

[All Wilkie family members are available for interviews via e-mail.]