Wild Recluse Spreads Message of Self-Love and Exploration Through Multiple Mediums

On a warm April night, Petra’s is packed for “Sam on Someday,” a multi-act, genre-fluid jam launched by Sam Tayloe, founder and frontman of Charlotte folk rock band Time Sawyer. The talent onstage is prodigious — guitarist Justin Clyde Williams, drummer Tim Haney, bassist Kerry Brooks, piano player Jason Atkins (Greazy Keyz) and more.

Darian Parham, who performs as Wild Recluse, is the final act of the evening. She comes onstage, takes the mic confidently and launches into a rendition of Los Angeles funk-soul band Orgone’s “Who Knows Who.” What happens next is spellbinding.

With power, heat and soul, Parham unleashes notes that bend and climb, rising like a thermal before plunging like a stone into a gorge. It’s singing that shoots a frisson down the spine and caresses the heart. On a stage crowded with local luminaries, Wild Recluse shines like a supernova.

“She sings like nobody else,” Tayloe says of Parham. “I’m impressed by her ability to let the truth of what she’s feeling come through. Her choice of expression, what direction to take songs and when, her delivery and control — really sets it all up. She can do it all.”

Parham’s dazzling vocals are just one facet of her myriad talents. Among other accomplishments, the multi-disciplinarian artist has written and performed two EPs worth of material; contributed photography, collage and tapestry projects to local art exhibits; and produced and directed an experimental short film.

“I’ve been doing a mixture of different things,” Parham says. “To some people it seems like I’m noncommittal, but I just like to play.”

At the end of April, Parham will add to her growing list of accomplishments when she travels to New York with producer Milik Kashad to record a project paying tribute to one of her musical inspirations, Grammy Award-winning “Queen of Funk” Chaka Khan.

“I get to sing with some of the background singers that [Khan’s] performed with over the years,” Parham says. “I’m over the moon about it.”

Parham is also working with her mother Kimberly on a second film, currently in the planning stages. The documentary will center on her grandmother, Shirley Horton, who has always encouraged Parham to sing.

Parham grew up in Charlotte but spent most of her summers at her grandparent’s house in Morganton.

“Meemaw was like a second mom to me,” remembers Parham, who grew up singing at her grandparents’ church.

There was only one problem: Though Parham had developed into a talented vocalist at an early age, she hated singing in front of an audience, particularly at church. She recalls how her grandmother convinced her to take her place in the spotlight.

“She sat me down and said, ‘God gives all of us gifts,’ and if I didn’t use my gift, it would be taken from me,” Parham says. “That scared the living daylights out of me because I love to sing.”

Raised to believe that music was a wonderful hobby but not a sustainable career path, Parham attended UNC Charlotte, majoring in International Studies with a minor in Spanish.

From her college dorm room, Parham started singing hooks and making tags for producers and DJs on her laptop.

Before long she was collaborating with fellow student and up-and-coming MC Jah-Monte Ogbon, who went on to become one of the Queen City’s most prolific rappers. The two knew each other previously from attending J.M. Alexander Middle School together in Huntersville.

Realizing that her focus had shifted away from her studies, Parham dropped out of college in 2014 and pursued a life in music.

A thread of Black eroticism

In 2017, feeling restless and stifled with writing music and singing, Parham searched for another creative outlet. She found it in photography.

Her first project was a male nudity series,which spurred her to get a camera that shot on film, with a tactile look that continues to define her photographic work.

“Ideas that I couldn’t necessarily put into words, I could put it in an image,” she maintains.

That inaugural photography series introduced a thread of Black eroticism that winds through much of Parham’s subsequent work, including her short film, Owl Pussy, and her debut EP, Unruly. The four-track collection, produced by Yo Major (Jeremy Jones), dropped in 2018.

Parham’s singing and stream-of-consciousness songwriting on Unruly she credits to Mara Robin, an alter-ego she devised while living at “Wine and Roaches,” a west Charlotte house inhabited by young artists.

“It was a time of transformation for everyone who was living there,” Parham remembers. “There was this element of freedom but there was also a lot of emotional turmoil.”

Mara Robin was an introspective shadow self created to process the pain caused by romantic heartbreak and channel it into the music that would become Unruly, Parham maintains.

On the EP, funky sashaying bass and limpid distant jazz guitar licks propel the seductive and menacing song “Plucked Rose.”

“My name is Mara Robin/ I smear my lipstick on your consciousness…”

The tune was sparked by Parham’s then-boyfriend dumping her on the day her father went through surgery. The boyfriend invited Parham to Petra’s then broke up with her on the venue’s patio. She says she was angry and upset about the incident — with herself rather than the boyfriend.

“I would put the men in my life on a pedestal … and … believe whatever they told me,” Parham says. She began to realize that love did not need to be externalized through a romantic relationship. Instead, she came to see that love is internal and can best be expressed through self-love.

Parham unleashes the Owl and the Pussy

The song “owlpussy,” recorded in 2020, pointed the way ahead. The tune is inspired by one of Parham’s favorite films, the 1970 romantic comedy The Owl and the Pussycat, starring Barbara Streisand. Parham loves the film’s soundtrack, in particular the instrumental “Confrontation” by 1970s jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat and Tears that opens the movie.

Parham created a track by recording and chopping up samples of the tune. Next, she recorded a conversation she had with a friend, focusing on her friend’s statement, “Someone’s thoughts of what they want … They’re using you to translate it.”

She repeated the quote on the track and layered her wordless heavenly and harpy vocals over it.

Three other songs were recorded at the same time, including “Speaknadia,” where a recurring cycle of stately cut-up funk horns and the crackling pops of record on a turntable underpin sensuous vocals repeating: “Self love.”

Then, Parham set the songs aside — but “owlpussy” was not done with her.

After leaving the music she recorded in 2020 unreleased, Parham turned to shooting a photo series — nude portraits of women, most of whom were her friends. Intended to capture a sense of vulnerability, the blossomed into something much more intimate. As Parham started bringing her camcorder to the shoots, she recorded candid, soul-baring conversations about self-love, sexuality and what it means to be feminine.

The photo shoot turned into Parham’s experimental short film Owl Pussy, an exploration of femininity in all its multifaceted forms. Parham’s website describes the film as a “collage of connection and self-discovery [where women] reclaim love on their own terms, and break free of societal expectations.”

Owl Pussy screened on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, as part of the exhibit “[red]: Rated R,” which was curated by Parham’s friend and artist Dasia Hood. The immersive exhibition sprawled across a hallway gallery and four rooms at Lorem Ipsum Listening Bar in Plaza Midwood.

In the meantime, Parham returned to her unreleased music, releasing it as the Lemongrass Lady EP in August 2024. Here the music is credited to Parham’s current nom de plume Wild Recluse. She says she adopted the name because it speaks to the powerful creativity that emerges in solitude.

“Protecting my peace is how I tame the wildest parts of myself without shame,” Parham notes. “It’s in isolation that my ideas feel most unbridled and authentic.”

Parham uses Wild Recluse for all of her artistic media projects now — music, film, visual art and performance.

The EP takes its title from a nickname bestowed on Parham by her collaborator on the project, which stemmed from Parham’s love of the summery scent of lemongrass. She wishes to leave the collaborator on the project unnamed.

“Working [with him] was not the best collaborative situation,” she says. “It put me in this position where I didn’t want to work on music anymore. I felt defeated and empty, [and] releasing that project was a way for me to close that cycle of my life.”

A return to song

For a while, Parham immersed herself in her art, hosting and curating her Sensual Chaos: Erotic Collage Workshop, which is held monthly at Tip Top Daily Market.

“Individuals could come and explore their sensuality and how that ties into the creative process,” Parham says.

After each workshop, Parham noticed how much paper she was throwing away. Determined to find a way to recycle the waste, she taught herself how to make paper from the discarded scraps.

That was a short step from weaving a tapestry that is currently on display at Dark and Divine, a group exhibition curated by Hood that is currently showing at the McColl Center through May 24.

Parham dipped back into music to create a playlist for Hood’s show, a process she calls one of her love languages.

By that time, Parham had already returned to her first love: singing. In December 2024 she recorded a tribute to R&B and soul singer- songwriter Teena Marie, another one of Parham’s early inspirations, at Vocal Ink Production studio in east Charlotte.

She had also begun turning up at Tayloe’s Sam on Someday musical gatherings to belt out a tune or two.

“She’s an artist [using] many different mediums — collaging, paper making, short films [and] music,” Tayloe says. “She does a great job of letting her art speak and not being afraid to let it speak.”

Read more: Sam on Someday Showcases Charlotte’s Talented Singer/Songwriters

With the trip to New York coming up, where she will sing Chaka Khan’s songs with Khan’s collaborators, Parham ponders the impact made by her own art and music. She says she wants people to experience her music the way she immerses herself in the music she loves.

“[Music] puts you in a trance; it sends chills down your spine, and takes you into another world,” Parham says. “We live in a world where we’re always so busy; we’re always ripping and running; we’re always posting on the ’Gram,” she continues. “It’s okay to go into your own space, to rest, to feel how you’re feeling and be unapologetic and intelligent about it.”

Parham may be the first to admit that her art and music have had a huge impact on herself, leading her through emotional turmoil toward self love and trust in where the artistic process takes her. Through that journey she’s also become that rare artist whose talents seem limitless and almost as big as her restless curiosity.

Wild Recluse is fearless — and unafraid to catch the world in her web.