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.”
by admin | Feb 6, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Any cool celebrity fans that have reached out to come to a show?
Stephen Wilson Jr: “Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of actors that have showed up to shows. Paul Rudd’s come to several of our shows, and that’s wild. He’s such a sweetheart, and we’ve gotten to become friends. And yeah, Tom Hanks has been at one of my shows, and Rita Wilson, and they’re so sweet. And we’ve become friends, and there’s also a You know, a lot of artists of all genres and… Just kind of reached out and been like, hey, I’m this person. Michael Buble reached out to me the other day about a song, you know, about the music. And, you just get these random texts from people that you don’t think are real. Like, is this spam? This is a scammer or something. And no, it’s like, no, seriously, this is Michael Buble really digging the record. And I’m like, okay, this is not real. Tom Holland came to our show in London. He was so sweet and stuck around and we got to meet and chat and And it’s just cool to kind of see how music is kind of affecting everybody in all their art forms.”
by admin | Feb 2, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: Tell me about your background
Stephen Wilson Jr.: Yeah, well I moved to Nashville to be a scientist. I studied microbiology and chemistry and then worked in micro labs and food science labs and played in indie bands at the same time. I was like an indie rocker kid, but also wearing a lab coat by day and indie rock clubs by night. And I was a bit of a weirdo amongst the scientific community and I’m. I’m a bit of a weirdo amongst the music community, so… Yeah, so that was. That was my first kind of big profession, because I went to school for five years and got a degree. But science was something I was always fascinated with as a young kid. I was out in the woods. I had all these notebooks of science notebooks that I created myself and filled out myself. It was real sad. My dad was really worried. That’s why he got me a guitar for my 16th birthday. I was a real quiet kid and doing that, and we were boxers. So I grew up in boxing gyms, and the only sport I was really ever good at was boxing. Like team sports, I liked, but I didn’t love them. And I hated letting other people down. And with boxing, you just let yourself down, and I didn’t mind that at all. And so that was a… That was a sport for me because it was just one on one. So I fought my first fight when I was seven years old and fought through my childhood and then did all the Golden Glove stuff when I in college. Yeah, it gets a lot crazier when you start fighting men, when you’re a man, too, and you start fightin’ men. When you’re young boy, it’s intense, but it’s kind of hilarious to watch seven-year-olds go out there and beat the hell out of each other. But when they’re 17, it is a totally different story. And it’s, yeah, it was one of the greatest things my dad ever did for me was teach me how to box, teach me on a fight, because that. He set a bar so high for me from a pressure cookers standpoint. So yeah, like he, if the pressure cooker is set to 11, like he showed me how that I could withstand 11. And then some maybe other high pressure moments become closer to eights and nines and helps you kind of keep everything in perspective. So that’s why, you know, even in and out of the ring, it’s such an effective tool for your mind. Imagination.
by admin | Jan 25, 2026 | Stephen Wilson Jr., Toolkits
Question: How does it feel to be on country radio?
Stephen Wilson Jr.: “Oh, it’s an honor. I’ve been listening to country radio my whole life. So hearing a song that came from the way in which it did and hearing that story kind of live on country radio. Because country radio, to me, that really affected me were there were story songs. And those stories really grabbed me early on. So this song, Gary, is a story. It’s a story about a. A guy named Gary, or Minnie Gary, he’s metaphorically. And so to have any contribution to the fabric that is country radio and to be part of the soundtrack of lives, going to work, going home, it’s a real honor to be a part of the fabric of our society, because I feel like country music is the mini threads that hold us all together and and kind of unite us as well. And yeah, it’s something I’ve, I guess, you know, never really thought would happen. My dreams outdreamed me a long time ago. And some of my favorite artists, like John Mellencamp, he was on the radio all the time and he wrote these incredible story songs. But, you know I always thought if he could do it, maybe I could too.”
