Picture a multiple-generation Southern family sitting on the front porch of its Hattiesburg, Miss., home. The men are smoking cigarettes or cigars, the women are fixing cornbread and the kids are lying on their bellies in the living room playing with the dog on the carpet.  

It’s the 1960s and Webb Wilder sits in front of the TV with stars in his eyes, watching what he calls “the golden age of television.”  

Five decades later, Wilder is a guitar-toting cowboy on his way to Athens for the first time in 20 years. He’s seen and done more things than he could have ever imagined as a child raised in the “rich Afro-Celtic culture of the Deep South.” He’s made a handful of indie films, including one that starred River Phoenix and Sandra Bullock, he’s done voice-overs and a DJ stint with XM Radio, he’s traveled the world playing music and drinking thousands of cups of coffee along the way.

Athens, I’d like to introduce you to the world-famous Webb Wilder. He’s got the deep-throated singing style natural only to those who have a close relationship with cigarettes, whiskey, hound dogs or a genetic predisposition toward bullfrogs. He’s a lover of walks, “South Park,” guitars, DVDs and crime fiction novels. He inherits his deep voice from the men-folk in the Wilder family tree and claims the only smoking he’s ever done has been secondhand. On his web site, he claims he is among “the last of the full-grown men.”  

“The ‘full-grown man’ thing is hard to explain,” said Wilder in an e-mail interview.

“I’m a big guy, physically. All my heroes were small for the most part. They were usually cowboys, singing cowboys and British rock stars. Nonetheless, there’s something kinda cool about these guys who really looked liked adults who were so ahead of their time as innovators of the stuff I dig: Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters, Paul Brulison (Johnny Burnette & The Rock and Roll Trio) and others,” Wilder said.

These names may be less familiar to the modern musical connoisseur, as Wilder is certainly from a different era and a distant land. Like any great man in history, though, he is able to adapt to different times and different environments as they face him.

Before the whole music thing got going, Wilder partook in a variety of careers, including, but not limited to, furniture sales, furniture delivery, women’s shoe sales and advertising. At some point amidst all of the selling, Wilder learned how to sell himself as an actor.

“I really got my start in acting with ‘Webb Wilder: Private Eye, The Saucer’s Reign’ in 1981,” said Wilder, who states that acting “definitely has a kinship with a lot of the music I like!”  

Wilder’s most recent film is “Scattergun,” produced by R.S. Field, Steve Mims and Wilder himself (all of whom worked together in “Horror Hayride”).

Wilder enjoys acting and the work he does with voice-overs, but claims that he “just loves rockin’ best!”

Influenced by all aspects of the South, his family and musicians of another generation, Wilder is certainly full-grown these days. Older than the majority of musicians cluttering the airwaves and serving the music of a different period, Wilder finds himself facing new challenges all of the time.

“The number of gigs per year has certainly varied since March of 1985 when we started,” said Wilder, “but we’ve never quit playing live.”

Wilder’s trip to Athens on Friday will celebrate the re-release of his out-of-print 1987 album, “It came from Nashville.”

“Through a series of circumstances I had come to actually own the rights to all the master recordings of that album. A fan, Jim Thomas, put me back in touch with Michael Rothschild who had put it out the first time in 1987,” said Wilder.

“We agreed it needed to be made available and re-mastered it. The first time it came out on CD, mastering techniques for the digital medium were in their infancy. We included some good live previously unreleased recordings, made it 12 d6 louder, better EQ and … there you go,” he said.

The last time Wilder played a show in Athens, his favorite local band was GuadalCanal Diary, a jangle-pop group that disbanded in 1989.

“I played in Athens the night before the live ‘It came from Nashville’ recordings at the Exit/In in Nashville in 1986. Since then, I’ve been too busy but I’ve wanted to come back,” said Wilder.

He plans on playing songs off of all his albums at the Melting Point Friday night.  

Wilder promised that he and his band would “rock like hell,” which begs the question: which guy is Wilder in the country western? Is he the hero or the villain?  

With his stature and his vocals, I’d have to go with the latter, but everyone knows that the villains are always funner to watch anyhow. They seem to be a bit larger than life, perhaps more “full grown” than all of those fresh-faced, clean-cut “heroes.”