by admin | Apr 5, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Tell me about your stage set up, is it always changing?
Stephen Wilson Jr.: “Yeah, I like crafts. I go to Michael’s a lot. Visuals are everything to me. I write very visually, and I see things. And I just kind of make them as I see them. My momma did that. She’s very crafty herself. So I’m really just kind channeling her energy in that way, because it’s all kind of handmade and all what do you call it, DIY, and on purpose, intentionally, DIY. But yeah, so yeah, they’re all a mixture of kind of.”
by admin | Mar 30, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Tell me about your band..
Stephen Wilson Jr.: “Well, there are three of my best buds, and two of them I’ve been playing music with for a long time. They’re all gifts from God, gifts with a capital G. They’re way better than me, and I’m very grateful and lucky to have them around. We have a steel player, a bass player who also plays harmonica, and then an incredible drummer. And they’re all incredible. They make me sound a lot better, and most importantly, they’re my best friends, and I like just hanging out with them, so… ”
by admin | Mar 1, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Is your writing process usually with a guitar?
Stephen Wilson Jr.: “It’s usually a guitar, because this is the easiest one to find laying around. It’s hard to find a piano laying around, but I do write on piano just to kind of get myself out of that head sometimes, that head space of being a guitar player. But yeah, sometimes I write the music months after the song’s written. The song’s not any less written than it was. It just hasn’t been put to music yet. So yeah, I got several fully completed songs in my phone that I’ve yet to put the music. They’re just kind of waiting, marinating, I guess.”
by admin | Feb 15, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Tell me about writing “Gary”..
Stephen Wilson Jr.: “I wrote it by myself. I wrote in the car that day. I always write my lyrics first, and so I wrote the chorus right there, just driving. It was almost more like a freestyle kind of beat poet. Just stream of consciousness. Debbie just kind of showed up because every Gary I know is kind of associated with a Debbie. They kind of come from the same yearbook, And so, yeah, all those. Those names just kind of started showing up in everything about, you know, I didn’t really try to think about the song at all. I wasn’t trying to make words rhyme. I was just trying to paint the picture of a Gary and that kind of small town. Gary and Debbie characters or characters, if you will, that are I think omnipresent in all these small towns all over the world. It’s not just an American theme. It’s a global one. Gary’s are global.”
