I was born in Alexandria, Louisiana to a Baptist minister named Jerry and his wife Carolyn, a choir director whose name means “Song of Joy”. They homeschooled me and my three siblings and taught us how to sing in harmony together. I sometimes joke and say I was singing before I could even form a full sentence, but it may actually be true. We traveled from church to church all throughout the mid-south and didn’t stay in one place for too long as the ministry can be an unstable line of work, not unlike the music business. We got by on very little and lived in church parsonages until my dad got a job at an established church in Memphis, Tennessee. By that time, I was a teenager and had begun to write my first songs. I would take my guitar downtown and sing at the Union Mission in the summertime. My parents knew I was going to the shelter to sing and volunteer in the food line. But what they didn’t know at the time was that I was busking down by Beale Street afterwards.

Memphis taught me the blues, gospel, and folk. It’s where I learned to channel pain through music, finding catharsis while navigating personal struggles with my faith, identity, and sense of melancholy.

I left for college on a scholarship in a gospel choir, but struggled in class and dropped out to go fishing in Alaska for a season. After bouncing around for a few years, gigging and taking whatever work I could get, I eventually ran out of money and moved back home to work as a janitor at my dad’s church while finishing my degree. In the summer of 2018 I was discovered by a talent recruiter for American Idol and ended up making it to the top 6. That experience changed the trajectory of my life significantly. I emerged with full ownership of my publishing and masters, and went on the record 5 albums in the next 5 years.

My music has taken me around the country and even overseas. I’m currently living about an hour east of Nashville and hard at work on my next record, which signifies a return to my folk blues roots. The lead single and title track, “Peacock & The Wolf Dog,” is based on a true story of a dog attack I survived at age four. It serves as the start of my own personal mythology, an archetypal struggle between nature and grace, and a forensic account of the experiences that made me who I am today.