Wesley Pruitt Jr

The Wesley Pruitt Band plays Texas music with soul — blues and country with the gospel left in. The band headlined RangeFest 2026 at Serenade Range in Whitehouse, with Wesley Pruitt Jr. on guitar and vocals, Mike Mims on drums, and Chris Gipson on bass, working under a line Wesley has kept since he formed the band in 2001: one mind, one band, one goal. Wesley Pruitt Jr. got his records from two directions at once. His father played him B.B. King, Elmore James, Waylon Jennings and George Jones; his mother played him Mahalia Jackson and Shirley Caesar. The band has been arguing those two sides out on stage ever since — blues and country with the gospel left in. He started on drums, picked up a guitar on Christmas Day 1997, was working professionally by 1999, and in 2005 quit everything else to do it full time. Line'm Up put "Poor Man Blues" at No. 39 on the Texas charts with no label behind it, and Gypsy Soul followed in 2021. "The road has been very rough," he told the East Texas Weekend, "and I've learned so much along the way."