03/26/2026
🔥 Real country. No filter. No filler.
Kicking off Friday night the right way… please welcome Channing Wilson to the 2026 Metal Central Foothills Festival stage.
Channing Wilson will open the show on Friday, September 11, 2026.
Georgia-bred singer and songwriter Channing Wilson has built a career on honesty—unvarnished, clear-eyed, and rooted in the lived-in stories that define real country music. A writer’s writer with a knack for turning life’s bruises into something beautiful, Wilson has penned songs for major artists like Luke Combs (notably co-writing the No. 1 hit “She Got the Best of Me”) and earned the respect of legends including Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, and Guy Clark. Now, he’s stepping into a new era—one that extends from the writer’s room to television screens across America.
Having performed widely across the U.S., Wilson recently broke through to a national audience as a finalist on CBS’s The Road, executive-produced by Taylor Sheridan and Blake Shelton, where Wilson’s soulful grit and storytelling made him a standout. His music will also appear in upcoming episodes of Sheridan’s new CBS/Paramount+ series Marshals and Landman, introducing his voice to an even wider audience.
Before the cameras, Wilson carved out his place the old-school way: by writing great songs and singing them with conviction. His 2023 debut album, Dead Man, produced by eight-time Grammy winner Dave Cobb, captures the raw strength of his songwriting with a timeless, bare-bones sound. Recorded as the first project in Cobb’s Savannah studio, Dead Man features a top-tier band and echoes the spirit of classic country without ever feeling nostalgic. For Wilson, the intention was simple: “Just capture the song the way it should be.”
Channing has toured nationally and shared stages with respected country and Americana artists including Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, Robert Earl Keen, Craig Morgan, Riley Green, and Wheeler Walker Jr. He has also appeared on major festival lineups alongside acts such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Marshall Tucker Band, building a reputation as a powerful live performer with deep roots in traditional and Southern country music.
