Stephen Wilson Jr. has released new single ‘Preacher’s Kid’, the follow-up to ‘Gary’, which currently sits inside the Top 40 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, and announced a run of UK headline dates for October.
The Indiana-born, Nashville-based songwriter has built a reputation for genre-spanning writing that leans as much on rock as on country, a thread running back to his early days as a lead guitarist in an indie rock band. ‘Preacher’s Kid’ is rooted in his own upbringing, drawing on small town religion, speaking in tongues and a youth pastor preaching impending Armageddon. “Based on a true story,” he says of the track, framing a small town as a world within a world.
The single arrives off the back of a strong year. Wilson Jr. recently won his first ACM Award for Visual Media of the Year for the video to ‘Cuckoo’, and his ‘Gary’ clip, directed with longtime collaborator Tim Cofield, starred Gary Sinise of Forrest Gump and Apollo 13. His acclaimed 2023 debut double album søn of dad, dedicated to his late father, remains the cornerstone of a fast rising career that has taken in performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Later with Jools Holland and a CMA Award nomination for New Artist of the Year.
Wilson Jr. sits closer to Americana than our usual fare, but the rock instincts underneath his writing make him an easy artist to recommend to open-eared readers. His Gary The Torch Tour reaches the UK in October, taking in Belfast’s SSE Arena on 15 October, two Glasgow nights at the O2 Academy on 19 and 20 October, London’s O2 Academy Brixton on 22 October, Bristol’s The Prospect Building on 23 October and Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse on 25 October. Before then he plays State Fayre in Chelmsford on 26 June.
‘Preacher’s Kid’ is out now.
