Stephen Wilson, Jr. wins main event fight to rock stardom at Nashville's EXIT/IN
Stephen Wilson, Jr. -- best-regarded of late for "s?n of dad," a 2023-released double album honoring his father's legacy bearing an indie emo rock sound he describes as "Death Cab for Country" -- almost cried four times while playing for two hours at downtown Nashville's EXIT/IN on a frigid, 6-degree Friday night.
The math continues to add up for seasoned veteran Big Loud-signed performer Wilson's hiding in plain sight surge from a BMG-signed songwriter, guitarist for and husband of former Sixpence None The Richer ("Kiss Me," among many) lead singer Leigh Nash and Fender-favored indie post-punk band AutoVaughn to the next iconoclastic leader of country's rock revival.
Stephen Wilson, Jr. has led a myriad of lives
Wilson's skill at summoning the spirits pop culture freed three decades ago from the sadness haunting Nirvana's demise -- via 1994's sextet of irony-driven and unexpected breakout grunge rock and pop-punk acts (Beck, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Weezer ) -- is described by some as prodigiously superhuman.
To the self-effacing Wilson, the only thing about him that could be described as superhuman is that he's probably best compared not to Weezer lead singer Rivers Cuomo -- but to a cat.
In the four decades he's lived on Earth, he's likely lived eight separate lives -- including four years in the 2010s as a Middle Tennessee State University-educated product development scientist at a Mars pet food laboratory.
His last of nine lives unexpectedly arrived five years ago when his father, Stephen Wilson, Sr., unexpectedly died before a medical procedure.
Wilson, the elder, was an Irish-American, Seymour, Indiana-based, divorced single father of two, who, alongside being an "outgoing athlete with a big personality," was an auto body repairman and Golden Gloves champion middleweight boxer with faith strengthened by the Pentecostal church.
There are no fewer than 20 churches within a 20-mile radius of downtown Seymour, a city of 20,000 people in Southern Indiana.
Seymour's what Wilson described onstage as a "hillbilly" town equidistant to Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky and Indianapolis, Indiana, where making niceties with the spiritual husks of people surviving having demons freshly excised from their souls is a frequent Sunday afternoon activity at the storefront liquor store or Walmart parking lot.
That perspective makes Wilson's song "patches" (about what he calls "the scars, scratches, and holes in our lives"), in which he opens with "I got a hole in my drywall / A hole in my heart / A hole in the wall dive bar where I like to park my ass on a barstool listenin' to Jones / My needle and thread is a song with some strong," feel differently when being strained through his tenor in front of a capacity crowd mouthing the words and bellowing the chorus back at the stage.
Boxing's rigors unexpectedly set a foundation for surprising success
"The attrition involved with being knocked down and not giving up for 15 rounds is comparable to surviving the music business," says Wilson to the Tennessean in a conversation 36 hours before he takes the stage at the EXIT/IN.
"I'll experience more failure and rejection in a week than most people experience in a lifetime."
Onstage, Wilson wears a baseball cap with Our Lady of Guadalupe on it. The image is associated with the miracles that define the formation of the Mexican Catholic Church.
He says it reminds him to "believe in things that he can't explain and have faith."
That notion continues a lineage in Wilson's life.
As a Golden Gloves champion boxer, his father taught him to be a counterpuncher first.
"My dad taught me how to duck before he taught me how to punch," Wilson says.
"One of my first skill sets was learning how not to get my nose broken five times like my father did. I learned how to be defensive from day one."
He's fought imposter syndrome through hard-earned success in boxing, science, and music.
Only when his hand is raised after some blood, sweat and tears have been shed does he know that he's won and belongs.
"In all walks of life, I'm typically content with being a humble, behind-the-scenes type of guy -- [therefore] multiple parts of my life were not supposed to happen," says Wilson, awestruck and laughing.
In that laugh, it's clear that he's been struck by a cold rush of memories recalling pet food product testing, now being a married stepfather of his own son, a recent co-write with chart-topping country icon and Big Loud Texas label co-founder Miranda Lambert, or preparing for 2024 touring dates with HARDY -- among many parts of a life surprisingly lived.
Wilson's surge is a part of expanding Nashville's pop dominance
"Deep down inside, I'm a songwriter who remembers that being a good scientist requires keeping track of my data and hypotheses," says Wilson.
His Music City claim to fame came not from chasing success as a guitarist, while AutoVaughn was a 2010s Nashville rock band pursuing standards of success set by the Drive-By Truckers and Kings of Leon.
Instead, it's as a BMG-signed songwriter with somewhere in the range of 2,000 meticulously chronicled songs under his belt -- including cuts for Trace Adkins, Tim McGraw, Old Dominion and Caitlyn Smith -- where his stardom rose.
Nashville's vaunted veterans took notice and he was already a quietly-growing album-cut provider. By 2019, a pair of solo cuts he finally self-released following his father's death -- "The Devil" and "Year To Be Young 1994" roused interest from any person driving around Nashville listening to alt-pop favored station Lightning 100 -- that included, among many, Lambert, plus now Big Loud Records-affiliated vice president of A&R Nate Yetton.
Yetton's work includes years behind the scenes with Americana duo The Civil Wars and time spent at Capital Christian Music Group.
Via ears like Yetton's luring acts like rootsy rocker Charles Wesley Godwin and emo-folkie Zandi Holup to the label, the money Big Loud's earned from the recent multiple-diamond level equivalent sales of success for artists including ERNEST, HARDY and Morgan Wallen is being spent in an unexpectedly expansive manner.
"Nate's an invaluable asset to the growth of Big Loud and is the perfect person to bring our process to genres that we haven't' yet explored," stated Big Loud co-founder and CEO Seth England upon Yetton joining the label in Oct. 2022.
Breaking down songs to their 'metaphysical and psychological mechanisms'
"Because I'm trained as a scientist, I'll never stop doing the equivalent of field research to find new songs," says Wilson.
"I'm conversing with human beings and searching for the nuggets of truth borne of ideas that aren't contrived or manipulated by something I've said beforehand."
It's not from a rock icon like Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, but rather a lesson he learned from studying Nashville legend and Songwriters Hall of Famer Harlan Howard (Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Piecs," once had 15 of his songs in the country Top 40 simultaneously) that Wilson learned how to channel "field research" into intrigue arousing or chart-topping material.
"Harlan would often check his [metaphorical] traps -- a couple of bar haunts he frequented. Comparatively, I'm not in bars as much, but ever since I heard Tim McGraw's 'Don't Take The Girl' when I was on a school bus at 12 years old, I've been a song scientist of sorts, fascinated by breaking down a song to its metaphysical and psychological mechanisms."
To wit, his 2023 "Year End" list-beloved "Father's S?n" is a knockout blow delivered in just under a round and a half.
"Yeah, I left town just to get out of his shadow / and he'd send me a twenty just to get back on that saddle / I put up a good fight, but I didn't win the battle / I guess the tree don't grow very far from the apple...You wanna change my name, gotta drain my blood / God damn, I am my father's son / I am my father's son."
"Even though I'm still making sense of [the place where my career has arrived], I'm here for it. Actually, ever since my dad died, the person I was until that point died with him and my world turned upside down. Getting onstage and performing in front of giant crowds? It's hilarious."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Stephen Wilson, Jr. wins main event fight to rock stardom at EXIT/IN
