Alicia Jones and Stephen Wilson Jr. Take Europe

Braving the wind and cold at the Cliffs of Moher.

Thank you to former SOURCE Nashville President Alicia Lanier Jones for this special blog about her overseas tour with management client Stephen Wilson Jr. this past summer.

Stephen has been cultivating a fan base in the UK and Europe longer than he has been touring as a solo artist in the U.S. Brothers Osborne were kind enough to take him over as support on a UK tour way back in 2022. He jokes that there was absolutely no good reason for them to take him over to open for them, but that’s just the kind of guys they are. They saw something in Stephen that, even now, he sometimes doesn’t see in himself. Since then, he’s been touring overseas with Drake White, The Cadillac Three, and Joss Stone, and eventually started headlining his own sold-out shows in 2024.

I had never been overseas with him, mostly because of the added cost of international travel, but also because, especially in the beginning, they toured with a very lean crew to keep expenses down. I don’t think artists always realize just how expensive it can be to tour in the UK and Europe, or how important it is to start building those markets early. Otherwise, you can find yourself selling out 4,000-seat venues in the U.S. while essentially starting from scratch building a fan base overseas. Stephen has been incredibly smart and deliberate about investing in international touring from the beginning.

This time, I decided to head over with the band and crew for a quick one-week trip that included a new Live Nation festival called State Fayre, and a headlining stop in Dublin at Trinity College. We still try to stay lean and mean, and be mindful of costs, so when I’m at shows I make myself useful and jump in to help the tour manager wherever I can.

It was a wonderful trip, aside from the heatwave the UK was experiencing while we were there. We even had a couple of rare days off, and I booked a bus trip out to the Cliffs of Moher to “visit” my cousin Devan, who passed away in 2024 and whose ashes are there. It made an already memorable trip especially meaningful.

He’ll be headed back at the end of October for a full run of headline shows and I am working on finding a block of shows that I can pop over for.

Our band, crew, UTA agent and some friends from the Kings of Leon camp at Trinity College in Dublin.

Having a laugh side-stage with our amazing Tour Manager Sten Brooks.

In London with Stephen, his wife Leigh Nash, drummer Julian Dorio and steel player Scotty Murray.