- 17 hours ago
Audacy 'LAUNCH' artist Stephen Wilson Jr. continues to make a unique mark on Country music, with the help of his song, “Gary.” He recently stopped by our Audacy Sound Space in Detroit for a special performance of the song.
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MusicTranscript
00:06One, two, three
00:14Gary these days been lying in his bed made
00:20Working on the same car, going on a decade
00:27Scribbles on drunk now don't draw attention
00:33Never really noticed but now that I mention it
00:39Ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
00:43Born with a cigarette glued to their face
00:46Fixing about anything a hammer can't handle
00:49Saving all the money cause a Gary don't gamble
00:52Ain't a lot of girls going by Debbie anymore
00:56They got the same nicotine pouring out their pours
00:59Time leaves town but the minute hand stays
01:04There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
01:16Gary these days been worried about the bad news
01:22There ain't a lot of teenagers filling up the church pews
01:29Burnin' bushlights, don't talk to his brother
01:35Do people even still say grace before supper?
01:38There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
01:42Born with a cigarette glued to their face
01:45Fixing about anything a hammer can't handle
01:48Saving all the money cause a Gary don't gamble
01:51Ain't a lot of girls going by Debbie anymore
01:54But they got the same nicotine pouring out their pours
01:58Time leaves town but the minute hand stays
02:03There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
02:08There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
02:24Takes it out for a spinnin' for a sweet man
02:28Takes it out for a spinnin' for a sweet man
02:33He believes in God but he believes in little black countries
02:39On a stone on his day
02:56I had a weird suspicion with the light out on the front porch
03:03Hard medication pours down where the drain pours
03:09He holds his left arm while his parakeet prays
03:18Has anybody seen much of Gary these days?
03:26Has anybody seen much of Gary these days?
03:30He believes in little black countries
03:36No, no, no, no
03:40They ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days
03:48Yeah
03:49Yeah
03:52Yeah
03:53Yeah
03:55Yeah
03:57Yeah
03:58Yeah
03:58Yeah
03:58Yeah
03:58Yeah
03:59Yeah
03:59Yeah
03:59Yeah
03:59Yeah
04:45Thank you very much.
04:49Oh, boy.
04:51My goodness.
04:54Stephen Wilson Jr., come on, make some noise.
04:58Here you go, buddy.
04:58I'm going to have you use this one here.
05:01Thank you, Rob.
05:01Oh, my God.
05:05You're probably the only artist that leaves me speechless when I see you
05:08because I don't think there's an artist who could stand here by themselves
05:13in a small room like this with a handful of people
05:15and make it sound like you're on the biggest stage in the world.
05:20Thank you very much.
05:21And I was nerding out over the gear because I'm like,
05:23I want to know how you make it sound like there's a full band behind you,
05:26but you're like, I'm a scientist, and I will never tell.
05:28Well, this was one of my questions.
05:30I wanted to know, as a scientist, do you feel like some of your music
05:33can be experimental, or are you experimenting that way with sounds?
05:39Is that the same approach?
05:40Yeah, I jokingly call myself a song scientist,
05:44but it's not really a joke because it's true.
05:48But, yeah, I'm constantly tinkering with things.
05:51I have my own little kind of sonic lab,
05:53and this is just kind of one of the inventions through many trials and errors,
05:59many experiments gone wrong.
06:02Or gone right?
06:03Mostly wrong.
06:06But I have a small pebble of success that I have
06:10is loosely balancing on top of a mountain of failure.
06:16And this is just one of my small pebbles.
06:20So when you were performing at the CMA Awards recently,
06:24a huge moment as well, and we were in the crowd
06:27and felt the same that we did just now,
06:29does that make you nervous then with this equipment
06:31because you're saying at any moment it could go wrong?
06:36So what is that feeling like when you're on the CMA stage
06:38performing in front of millions of people watching at home as well?
06:42It kind of sucks.
06:44But at the same time, I like flying close to the sun.
06:49Willie Nelson, I saw him play at the Ryman
06:51when I first moved to Nashville,
06:53and he played a gut string through an amp,
06:56and everything he did was a gamble.
06:58Like, every solo he took was like, he was,
07:02it reminded me of like, you know when you see them 18-wheelers
07:05driving around the sides of those mountains,
07:07and they're like, they're just barely getting it around.
07:09It seemed like he was like,
07:11and just barely hanging on the edge of the cliff,
07:14he'd always get it right back on the road.
07:17And I was like, that's the way I want to approach music.
07:20I don't really want to do it safely.
07:22I mean, I quit my job as a scientist
07:25that had tons of security.
07:27I mean, I'm not really historically known
07:30for making, like, safe decisions,
07:32so I'm kind of an idiot.
07:35It kind of makes it more fun, I think, a little bit.
07:37I got a good friend of mine that said,
07:40if you're not living on the edge,
07:41you're taking up too much space.
07:42Oh, I like that.
07:43Might be a good song lyric.
07:45Oh, jeez.
07:45Here we go.
07:46I'm just saying.
07:48Make a note of it.
07:49I like that.
07:50Recently, you got to talk to one of my heroes,
07:53mainly because it's radio,
07:54but Howard Stern, I saw that,
07:56and I was like, oh, my God, like, I'm dying.
07:58And he seemed to, like, he fell in love with you,
08:01as we all have.
08:02He was so great and so lovely and kind
08:05and gracious to have me on his show.
08:07And, yeah, what an interviewer, too.
08:10I mean, it's just really wild
08:11to have Howard Stern in your cans.
08:13And it's like, you know,
08:14I've been listening to him my whole life,
08:17but when he's actually, like, talking to you,
08:20it's, like, it's pretty...
08:21Is it surreal?
08:22Pretty surreal.
08:23Are you like, where am I right now?
08:24What is happening?
08:25Yeah.
08:25And when we got done with the interview,
08:27he called me on the phone
08:28just to kind of recap and talk more.
08:30And it was even more surreal.
08:32I was like, I can't believe it's in tune.
08:35Yes.
08:35It is.
08:37This is not a joke.
08:39But what does he say to you?
08:40And, like, just,
08:41what is he more asking you about
08:43in that conversation?
08:46Oh, we just, you know,
08:47we talked so much about personal stuff.
08:49And, you know,
08:50we talked a lot about music and arts.
08:53And we're both, you know,
08:55he's a big fan of art.
08:57Not just musical art.
08:58All kinds of art.
09:00Painting and everything.
09:02And I think, you know,
09:03he's really found that art is the answer.
09:07And we talked a lot about that
09:09in a lot of ways.
09:10And we talked a lot about
09:11just personal things.
09:13Parents, all that stuff.
09:15It was a great conversation
09:16to have at LaGuardia Airport.
09:20I just walked through TSA
09:22and I get a call from Howard Snar
09:24and I'm like,
09:25oh my God, hello.
09:28You're truly living
09:29the rock star lifestyle now.
09:30Yeah, it was surreal.
09:31But one of the greatest,
09:33greatest experiences I've had.
09:35Let's talk about Gary a little bit more.
09:38You know, obviously you just heard the song.
09:40And the whole point is, you know,
09:43Gary's the hardworking, blue-collar guy.
09:45You know, I feel like being from Detroit,
09:48that is kind of the definition of Detroit.
09:51It's hardworking, blue-collar, grit.
09:54So I think we probably have a lot of Gary's
09:57in the metro Detroit area,
09:58but they're fading, aren't they?
10:00Yeah, I mean, yeah, I bet you they're...
10:03Detroit is very Gary.
10:05It has to be.
10:07You know, yeah, I kind of had this epiphany.
10:12I was driving by a billboard, actually,
10:15in Tennessee,
10:16and I saw this memorial billboard
10:20for a young boy named Gary.
10:22Gary, and he couldn't have been
10:24in maybe high school,
10:25and it was just tragic
10:27because he perhaps perished on that highway.
10:30And I could just see the pain
10:32wrapped up in the whole thing.
10:36And I just couldn't help but say out loud
10:38because it was a young boy named Gary.
10:40There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days.
10:42And the song just kind of wrote itself
10:44from that point.
10:47So, and then I had, you know,
10:49as I was writing the song,
10:50I started thinking about
10:52because it was really more
10:52of a subconscious expression
10:54of my upbringing.
10:55I grew up in a body shop,
10:57and I grew up, you know,
10:59with a bunch of Garys
11:00and a town full of Garys
11:02that, you know, that were fixers,
11:03not because God just gave them
11:06this inclination for fixing things
11:09or mechanical inclinations.
11:11It's because the world was broken around them,
11:14and they had to be fixers.
11:16You know, they kind of rose to the occasion
11:18and became Garys by nature.
11:22And I started kind of viewing them
11:24because I'm a scientist.
11:25Like, I kind of started looking at them
11:27as a perhaps an endangered species,
11:30like a subspecies, a human.
11:33I call him Garys Mechanicus.
11:35That's his Latin name.
11:39But yeah, you know,
11:40you start viewing it that way.
11:42And I kind of started, you know,
11:43back to the scientific breakdown.
11:45And a lot of it, you know,
11:47and then Debbie kind of showed up
11:48as another subconscious half of that as well.
11:52And yeah, the song kind of just wrote itself.
11:56But yeah, we are definitely running out of our Garys
12:00because I ask for Garys every show,
12:02and there's usually only maybe one or two.
12:04But last night in Cleveland, Ohio,
12:07we had a 10-year-old Gary,
12:08and he was a Gare breed, as I call him.
12:12He was a Gare breed, yeah.
12:13Yeah, I feel like next year, this time,
12:16the name Gary will be,
12:17you know where they list all the famous baby names?
12:20Like, these are the most popular names of 2026.
12:23Gary's going to be in there,
12:24so it's going to be okay.
12:25I hope so.
12:26Yeah.
12:27Rocksteady's going to name his baby Gary.
12:28We still haven't decided on our,
12:30we got a baby due in June,
12:31and we still haven't agreed on a name yet.
12:33Come on, someone's got a Gary the torch.
12:35I mean, it may be us.
12:38You got to talk my wife into it first, though.
12:40Okay.
12:41You might have to do some.
12:42You're going to put that song on repeat.
12:43She'll get it.
12:44Well, we want to do a little meet and greet now,
12:47and so we'll head you over there.
12:49Okay.
12:50We love talking to you, though.
12:51We can talk to you forever.
12:51Also, just one more quick comment.
12:53I don't really think this is a question.
12:54Oh, yeah, that's right.
12:55Oh, yeah, we love this.
12:55But I saw,
12:56I think you're the only person
12:57who ever thought of doing this.
12:59I just cracked up when I saw the video.
13:00He's playing a show.
13:01I don't know where it was,
13:02but it looked like a pretty big arena or something,
13:05or venue,
13:06and you obviously got your wireless rig set up with your guitar,
13:09so you walked all the way to the back of the arena
13:11and walked into the bathroom at the venue while you're playing.
13:15Did you all see that?
13:16You loved it, didn't you?
13:18And he's like,
13:18I'm just going into the bathroom
13:19to make sure no one's doing drugs at this show.
13:21I just thought,
13:22you're the only person who would ever think of that.
13:24I just cracked up when I saw it,
13:25so just kudos to you on that idea.
13:27Oh, well, thank you.
13:28I'm just trying to be a good Gare officer.
13:31You know, Gary's just Gary.
13:34I thought maybe tonight we can time it out
13:35where when you bust into the stall,
13:37I'll be sitting there.
13:38I'll be sitting there.
13:39All right.
13:40At the film where...
13:41Yeah, I'll be looking for you.
13:42Might be too much information.
13:45All right.
13:45Well, give it up one more time for Stephen Wilson Jr.
13:49Thank you all.
13:49Let's get you over here to say hi and get a pic as well.
13:52Thank you so much for being here with us, man.
13:53We appreciate you so much.
13:55We appreciate you so much.
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