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Bryan Andrew Wilson

Singer, songwriter, and Christian preacher Bryan Andrew Wilson grew up in Danville, Illinois surrounded by music and religion. He was the grandson of Tommie Davis, who played gospel with the great B.B. King, and his mother had been a singer with an R&B band, but it was gospel he heard most, in all sorts of sectarian variations, as the family attended the various Baptist, Apostolic, and other churches the area offered. Wilson absorbed it all, and was a stirring traditional gospel singer by the time he was a teen, when he began recording a series of traditional gospel albums for Malaco Records, recordings that eventually earned him Dove and Stellar awards for the Bryan's Songs album in 1996. But Wilson chose to walk away from the gospel music business to attend Claflin University in Columbia, South Carolina, where he earned a degree in religion and philosophy, and followed it up with a year of divinity study at Princeton Theological Seminary. It was while he was at Claflin that Wilson discovered contemporary Christian music and realized that there were a lot of different ways to the river when it came to ministering with music. He picked up his career again, developing a bright, upbeat gospel style that blended old-school R&B and soul, surf music, alternative rock elements, and plenty of funk and Caribbean rhythms, a kind of beach music approach to praise & worship. Wilson and his manager bankrolled a debut album, A Second Coming, in the new style in 2008, which was received with some acclaim. Wilson also continued his own ministry, becoming the pastor of the House of United Believers in Danville, IL. His fifth solo album, The One Percent, appeared in 2014 and included the Billboard Top 15 Gospel Airplay chart hit "Turning Away."

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