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Being asked to sing the National Anthem is one of a performer’s greatest honors. Agreeing to it, however, is the biggest risk. That didn’t scare off Stephen Wilson Jr., who delivered an understated but hypnotic version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 2025 NFL Draft on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Dressed in a black hip-length coat and bolo tie, but leaving his signature Our Lady of Guadalupe hat behind for the gravity of the occasion, the Seymour, Indiana, native offered a deep-voiced reading of the National Anthem while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Wilson began the performance by playing the song’s familiar melody on his guitar before wrapping the anthem in baritone vocal notes. Only when it came time for the infamously difficult crescendo — “O’er the land of the free/and the home of the brave” —did Wilson deviate from his slow and steady course.
Wilson is an expert at reinventing well-known songs. His version of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” went viral back in November, and he often weaves in Nirvana covers during his live performances, teeing them up by teasing the melody of “All Apologies” in his own song “Year to Be Young 1994.”
“I’m very much an indie-rock kid at heart,” Wilson, who used to be the lead guitarist in a band called AutoVaughn that toured with Cage the Elephant and Portugal. The Man, told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “But I’m a country songwriter. I write songs from a rural perspective and a blue-collar perspective.”
Currently on tour, Wilson will perform at MerleFest 2025 in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, tonight, and open for Hardy on his Jim Bob World Tour this summer.
