Alexis Wilkins: Guns, Music, and Freedom: Alexis Wilkins Unfiltered | DSH #1450

Issue and some might even call it, and this is where people started to get irritated, is it's kind of a feminist issue.

If you can protect yourself as a woman, why wouldn't you want to advocate for that?

You know, advocating against guns is kind of an anti-feminism thing.

It's kind of racist.

You know, to say that people can't have access to the Second Amendment unilaterally is pretty terrible.

Okay, guys, at Student Action Summit, it's going to be a fun event here with Alexis Wilkins, who is singing the anthem today.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, happy to be here.

You excited to do that?

I am.

It's probably one of the bigger crowds for you, right?

It's turning point crowds are always so fun because you sing the anthem for them and they're actually genuinely excited about what it means.

So

it's pretty great.

It's interesting that you're an artist and into politics at the same time.

Usually the artists avoid that.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I joke that it all happened as an accident, but that's, you know, country music.

I started writing and didn't really realize that it could be a career and just ended up pursuing it.

And then you end up on tour and suddenly you look around and you go, oh, I'm doing this full time.

That's fun.

And then the political thing happened because

it was just at a really heightened time.

It was in, you know, kind of the range from 2018 to 2020.

And I was in college from 2016 anyway, was business and political science, was going to a private Christian university and kind of thought that that would protect me from, you know, some of of the things that were going on in universities and that wasn't the case i was spare a long story short short i was given an f in a political class just by a teacher that didn't like me or what i believed and i wasn't even that vocal it was just clear that i wasn't being indoctrinated wow and so between that and having to fight that and um going through that process and wanting to help other people that I knew were also probably going through that with that process.

And then also that music was very left-leaning.

We were encouraged to either be silent or to endorse, you know, the other candidate.

And I was even told at one point, you know, you need to take the American flag out of your Instagram bio.

Wow.

Like things that trivial.

And I work a lot with veterans organizations.

I was told that, you know, you need to dial that back a little bit.

And so for the American flag, the flag under which we all live.

in this country and veterans causes which should not be partisan and they are very close to my heart.

My grandfather served in the Korean War, and I have a lot of family in the military.

It means a lot to me.

The sacrifice is huge, and I recognize that.

It just wasn't an option.

So I ended up leaning into it instead of stepping away from it as a country artist.

Well done.

Yeah, similar story for me.

I grew up in Jersey and kind of avoided politics my whole life.

But then when I got to Rutgers, like college, I was like, wow, this is really like liberal.

Like, I don't know how they're teaching this to everyone and just didn't vibe with me, you know?

Yeah.

And now looking at all these universities, I think, what, 90% of them are liberal?

Yeah.

Something like that.

Same with the music industry.

Yeah.

So it's like, damn, we're, we're really a minority out here.

It's true.

It's true.

And country music is, you know, people think it's the safe haven of conservatism and it's only marginally better than pop.

It's still the same labels.

It's still the same, you know, kind of grandfathered and executives.

So you don't get a lot of reprieve.

You at least get the audience with you, which is, I think, the big part and why I'm so passionately, passionate about connecting directly with the audience because that's that's ultimately who goes, yes, I like your patriotism and I will still read your papers and watch your show and listen to your music.

Respect.

Yeah, it's tough being independent, though, right?

Without a label.

You know, sometimes, but with social media and with some of the connectivity that's happened in the past few years, as you can probably understand too, you have a relationship directly with people who consume your media instead of having to go through a middleman or being told when you can release music.

You know, if if something happens, you're inspired, you write a song about it.

You know, hypothetically, you can just put that out.

You don't have to ask anyone.

Whereas a label, if you say something that they don't like or do something that they don't like,

depending on who's in management and that label,

they can shut you down and they can shelve you and ultimately control what you put out.

So that's true.

It's tough being independent, but it's also

there's freedom in it as well.

Yeah, it's you got to kind of pick if you want freedom or if you want to be signed to someone, be told.

Similar with podcasts, actually.

Really?

Yeah.

So like you start a podcast wanting freedom, I think, but then you get to a certain point where

you start signing to organizations and then you kind of lose that freedom

over time.

So I would say it's a little similar, but music industry is definitely more controlling.

I'd say, yeah.

I had Mike Posner on and he said he got shelved for three years.

He couldn't drop any songs.

Poor guy.

Three years.

That's crazy.

And all you want to do is create music, right?

Yeah.

Put it out there.

Especially with his journey or what I've heard of it.

I can imagine.

so that's hard and you hear a lot of horror stories with labels yeah so something needs to change it's bad especially in the rap industry i don't know about country but you know like i said country is a little bit of a safe haven in some ways but from the label executive side you're still going to the same exact labels so you're still getting some of that la influx you're still getting executives that have been there for years upon years upon years and you know it's it's

when you're unwilling to compromise with what you're saying and what you're representing and then you're also unwilling to compromise, especially like just got to say it as a female in the music industry, you go into rooms that you feel as though you would be farther if you did things that were expected from you.

And it's, it's, you can feel it, you know, and you don't make those sacrifices.

You don't bend the knee.

You stay true to who you are.

And you can, you can definitely sense it interpersonally as well.

And it's honestly, it's fascinating, especially when it's not even on the table.

It's just very interesting to feel the dynamic in that way.

But do you incorporate a a lot of political stuff into your music?

I do some.

I do very just pro-America, pro-patriotism.

I have a song called Stand that's honoring veterans.

I have a song called Country Back that basically just said, especially last year, I want my country back.

And that was a thing all throughout campaign season.

And so the rest of my music is regular country music, but where I can tie in, you know, pro-values, pro-patriotism,

really just pro-music that you can listen to in the car with your kids.

You know, I feel like even country radio starts to get a little dicey, which is fine, but it was always something that you could just throw on and feel good about.

And so I'd like to keep that.

Nice.

Country back.

I bet that one crushed when Biden was president.

You know what?

It was, it was hard because people were so like passionate about it.

And I felt bad because I was right there with them.

But it was, there was an element that was really fun to go in crowds.

I was touring with Aaron Lewis last year.

I'm touring again with Aaron this year.

And I wonder that that tour starts this weekend.

And I wonder how different it's going to be singing it this weekend versus the tour last year.

Yeah, I wonder if people will be as passionate about it, right?

Yeah, you know.

So, any crazy tour stories?

You've probably been all over the country.

Maybe I know you've lived in some other countries too.

Yeah, you've been all over.

And the U.S.

is still my favorite.

Now, I was born in Massachusetts, didn't live there very long,

moved to England and then Switzerland.

My dad's job took us all over back to the States, straight to Arkansas again for his job and then um

california for a brief minute my grandparents lived there and then tennessee so just kind of all over the place and then with tour um it's fun because you get to see the little towns in between the big cities you get to see like really what america is made of and not that i needed a change in my perspective and i wouldn't even call it a change but it just really enlightens you to see you know the small main streets that have shut down because of economic choices you know how cold towns work work and how the general stores didn't pay people in money, but paid them in store credit worked when those shut down.

Like you kind of hear these stories from the underbelly of America and it's,

it gives you a whole new perspective on what matters and how all that needs to be fixed, really.

That's important, right?

Because they call DC a bubble.

Yeah.

Because they're making all these laws, but they're not on the streets like you are witnessing what daily people are going through, right?

Yeah.

So that's really important perspective.

You had a clash with moms demand action.

What happened with that?

So with moms demand action, I feel like who hasn't had a little bit of a clash with mom's demand action in the 2A space?

I work a lot in Second Amendment advocacy, and I'm on the NRA board and just honored to work on all that stuff with them.

Mom's Demand Action just kind of, they have so much money from Bloomberg, like by the hundred of million.

And so they just send their people everywhere.

And it's not to take away from the original thought of people who wanted to protect their kids but it's not that it's funded by big companies that just don't want second amendment to stay uninfringed honestly and so um Really, just they don't like anyone who's standing up and creating attention for the Second Amendment and explaining things in a common sense way and saying, you know, hey, you don't, you don't have to be someone who loves guns and has them everywhere, but you can be someone who understands that it's a responsibility, it's a personal responsibility issue.

And some might even call it, and this is where people started to get irritated, is it's kind of a feminist issue.

If you can protect yourself as a woman, why wouldn't you want to advocate for that?

You know, advocating against guns is kind of a anti-feminism thing.

It's kind of racist.

You know, to say that people can't have access to the Second Amendment unilaterally is pretty terrible.

So that's where they they didn't, they don't like common sense.

And so that's where we are.

Guns do level the playing field you know can't deny that exactly if you could change any gun law in america would you change any or would you just keep it as is

you know it's interesting it's so um obviously the constitution is federal and i believe that it should be unilateral of course it is a state thing as well and so i think that case by case and state by state, it's so individual, the different issues, you know, we have problem states that I think deserve an influx of attention and, you know, bodies going in there.

There are people going to do those work on and finding the minutiae and the small wording that changes someone's rights and turns a law-abiding citizen into a criminal just because they defended themselves.

They find the nuance.

And so those are really the laws that I have problems with are ones that are confusing for your average American citizen or American gun owner to understand what their rights are.

But it's really in general because federally, I believe that the Second Amendment should be unilateral.

Yeah, I'm the same way.

Like depending on the state, if you're in Cali, if they break break in your house, but they turn around and you shoot them, you get in trouble or which is crazy.

Not nuts.

Like they literally broke in your house.

They're causing harm.

They're probably having a weapon themselves and you can't shoot them if they turn around.

Exactly.

You know, and I've heard so many stories firsthand from women who

have had a gun in the house, have been able to defend themselves, and it's been life-saving.

It's completely saved their lives, caused them to protect themselves from bodily harm, all these horrible things.

And the fact that in certain states that the law would actually be turned on them is just mind-blowing to me.

Yeah.

Like it shouldn't even be a thought that you could get in trouble in your own house.

No.

Like you should just be reacting, you know.

Right.

Someone breaks in.

There's really not a debate there, but nuts to me.

Cali's going through their issues right now.

They are.

They just got hit with the Title VI lawsuit.

Oh, man.

They are.

That's a big one.

It's huge.

You know, I think it's finally, what do they call it, finding out time with kind of owning up for all the things that have been going on for the last, I'd say four years, but it's been longer for California.

I mean, I feel like even left-leaning Californians hate Gavin Newsom.

So he really,

really has some issues to resolve over there out west.

His ratings dropped a lot from his podcast, I heard, which is so interesting.

I think he thought from the Trump campaign that that would be just a whole slam dunk.

And it

has not been.

Well, it worked for the right.

So I could see why he tried it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Podcast crushed it for Republicans.

But yeah, it did not work for for him.

No.

And he made the first move on Trump.

He sued him first.

So he's kind of just getting what he asked for, I guess.

Yeah, it is what it is.

We'll see what happens.

Absolutely.

How did you and Cash Patel meet?

We met in Nashville at a friend's house at a

I feel like it was a true social or rumble, like some kind of event that we were going to.

It's one of those funny things where I wasn't even going to go.

And, you know, those things that you end up going to that you weren't going to go to.

And And we met, that was almost three years ago now.

And that was, that was kind of that.

Wow.

That's dope.

Yeah.

Do you agree with him on politically wise on most things?

Yeah.

No,

we're definitely aligned.

Like, even though his position now,

it's pretty politically agnostic, which is a good thing for America and for the government.

Ultimately, that's the best way to do it.

You can definitely tell from before.

From before that, that we definitely agree on things.

Was that a huge life change when he took the position?

I thought it was crazy, right?

Yeah.

You can't really prepare, honestly, for something like that too.

Yeah.

How do you really prep?

Yeah, I saw, he was on some podcast.

I forget which one.

He said the house got swatted, like his own house, and he's the head of the FBI.

It's just like crazy to me that stuff like that happens, right?

Yeah, it's wild.

It's really wild.

I can't believe that.

Well,

thanks for coming on.

Good luck with the anthem today.

Anything else you want to close off with here?

No.

Anything else?

I'm good.

No, we're good.

We'll link your socials below.

Good luck with your upcoming tour as well.

We'll put that in the video.

Thank you so much.

Check her out, guys.

Thanks for watching.

Hope you have a good one.