A personal message from D.S. Wilson
Hello, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking time to check out my music!
I would like to tell you a little bit about myself and my musical journey.
First, my mission is to leverage the power of music to unite ALL people.
In my life, music has been an extremely powerful influence, and has afforded me many, many wonderful opportunities and friendships. I absolutely cannot imagine my life without music! I hope that my music can bring people together, whether it’s playing in the background at a family event or performing for a crowd at a live performance.
I started playing piano and saxophone in elementary school. Throughout the rest of my school days up until college, I continued to take piano and jazz saxophone lessons and played in the school jazz bands.
Then I went off to college at NC State where I ended up being on their Division I swim team as a competitive diver, so most of my energy was directed at athletics and school. I did manage to take some music theory classes as electives and I continued to play my saxophone recreationally. I also took up the guitar because my roommate was an excellent blues guitar player and we’d sit around and jam in our dorm room.
Then, in my junior year of college, I met some guys who had a rock band. I instantly knew I “wanted to be a rock star”. I joined the band and we ended up playing together on and off for nearly 20 years, played lots of shows throughout North and South Carolina, and recorded a lot of our original music. There are many funny stories of our misadventures together, but too many to tell about here!
After the band days ended, I spent some time playing in a variety band at weddings and other festivals and events. I also tried my hand at recording my first solo album, which was more in the singer-songwriter genre. Honestly, it was pretty bad, so I never released it, although there are a few tracks posted on this website.
I then had about a 10-year stretch where I stopped recording, and I didn’t play my saxophones very much, although I played keyboards regularly in the church band and took jazz piano lessons.
In 2017, my wife told me she was tired of seeing all my instruments and studio equipment gathering dust and she encouraged me to go back to my jazz roots and start writing and recording jazz.
Thankfully, I listened to her wisdom and at the very end of 2018, I released my first independent solo jazz album entitled “Stella Rose”. The album ended up getting featured on some music blogs and several Spotify playlists, so I was encouraged to continue.
In late 2019, I performed a house concert – my first time ever performing by myself (without a band). I performed several of the songs from the Stella Rose album to a crowd of about 30 people. Talk about being nervous!
Then, as everyone knows, COVID happened just a few months later. Given that we were essentially quarantined as a society, I wrote and recorded my second album “Saxuality” in about 10 months, from late January to November of 2020.
With my two completed CDs in hand, in early 2021 I started to get some live performances at some local restaurants and other charity and private events. I formally released the “Saxuality” album in May of 2021 and started marketing singles from the album. One of the singles was picked up by a Spotify Editorial Playlist and several of the songs started getting added to other smooth jazz playlists on Spotify. I ended up performing about 25 times throughout 2021 as the COVID restrictions lifted and clubs and restaurants opened back up.
Also, throughout 2021, I started working on recording new material for a third album. In January of 2022, I released the song “Skyline”. It caught the attention of SmoothJazz.com and after some conversations with them, I decided to work with them to promote my music. In April of 2022, they helped me with the release of the next single entitled “Life with You” that ended up briefly breaking into the Top 100 on both the SmoothJazz.com and RadioWave Top 100 charts.
In May of 2022, I took a vacation on a Dave Koz Jazz Cruise and was able to meet Dave Koz plus several other amazing musicians, including Adam Hawley. After returning from the cruise, Adam Hawley and I began working on additional material for the upcoming third album. The first song that we completed together was “Leave it to the Gods” which was released in July, 2022. Thanks to Adam Hawley’s amazing production assistance, within 3 weeks of its release, “Leave it to the Gods moved up to #66 on the SmoothJazz.com Top 100 chart.
Fast-forward to the end of 2023 and the “Skyline” album ended up at #22 on SmoothJazz.com’s Annual Top 100 Album Chart.
I’m currently completing work on another new album entitled “Metamorphosis” with producers Jeff Carruthers and Steve Oliver, with the first single “Pocket Change” hitting the airwaves on Jan 5th, 2024.
Again, I wish to sincerely thank you for your support. It is a pleasure and a blessing to be able to create and release music in these times. Music is meant to be shared, so I’m hopeful that you’ll enjoy the songs from my catalog.
God bless,
D.S. Wilson