Guest Spotlight: Wes Hampton

Finding Your Place and Being Present

For more than two decades, Wes Hampton has stood on stages around the world as a member of one of gospel music’s most celebrated groups.

As a tenor with the Grammy Award-winning Gaither Vocal Band, Hampton has recorded more than 25 albums with the group and performed as part of the enormously popular Gaither Homecoming concerts and videos. Since joining the Vocal Band in 2005, he has been part of a remarkable run of Grammy and Dove Award recognition, international tours and performances at some of the world’s most prestigious venues.

Hampton himself has received eight Grammy nominations and won with the group for its album Lovin’ Life. He has also built a solo career, releasing projects including A Man Like Me, Out on a Limb, Hymns and Stubborn Hope.

It’s an impressive career for someone who once wanted absolutely nothing to do with a stage.

“When I was a kid, you couldn’t have paid me to get in front of an audience,” Hampton tells Roy Ice during his visit to Lifestyle. “I was just terrified, very introverted, did not want to be on stage.”

In fact, he admits he’s still an introvert.

So how did that kid become a Grammy-winning singer?

When the Calling Comes Before the Opportunity

Hampton always loved music. With encouragement from his parents and his youth pastor, he gradually began singing and discovered both a gift and a passion for it.

But when it came time to choose a career, practicality won. He began college as a pre-med student, planning to become a doctor. Two years later, he realized medicine wasn’t where he belonged and changed direction, eventually earning a degree in psychology with a minor in music.

Still, a music career didn’t suddenly appear.

For years Hampton worked in church ministry while believing there was something more ahead. He even tried calling churches and offering to come sing for free.

Nobody called him back.

On Lifestyle, Hampton talks candidly with Roy about that period of waiting and the surprising lesson he believes he needed to learn before the opportunity he had been hoping for finally arrived.

And when it came, it came in a very big way.

An Audition He Would Never Forget

A mutual friend got Hampton’s music into the hands of Bill Gaither, beginning a seven-week audition process for the Gaither Vocal Band.

His final audition?

Singing with the group at Billy Graham’s final crusade in New York City before an audience of approximately 200,000 people.

A week later, Gaither called and invited Hampton to join the group. It was 2005.

Years later, Hampton would experience another meaningful connection to Graham when the Gaither Vocal Band sang at the evangelist’s 2018 memorial service. Hampton describes the opportunity to honor someone whose ministry had touched millions as one of the highlights of his career.

Finding His Own Place

Getting the job didn’t mean Hampton immediately felt as though he belonged.

He had stepped into a group known for extraordinary voices, including powerhouse tenor David Phelps. Hampton admits he wondered whether he could measure up.

What he eventually discovered was that he didn’t need to.

During his conversation with Roy, Hampton shares how Bill Gaither’s approach to bringing out the individual strengths of each singer helped him stop trying to fill someone else’s shoes and begin recognizing what he uniquely brought to the group.

It’s a lesson that reaches well beyond music.

There’s More Than Music on the Menu

There is another Wes Hampton that audiences may not know quite as well.

He loves to cook.

Hampton has turned that passion into a series of self-published cookbooks called Wescipes, along with cooking demonstrations that reveal a very different side of the Grammy-winning singer.

Naturally, Roy couldn’t let that particular talent go untested.

Hampton trades the microphone for the kitchen during his Lifestyle appearance, with his wife, Andrea, joining the fun. But between the cooking and laughter, the conversation also offers a glimpse into Hampton’s life away from the stage and the realities of balancing more than two decades of touring with raising four sons.

What Matters Most

After more than 20 years of concerts, recordings, awards and travel, Roy asks Hampton a simple question: When people someday look back at his life, what does he hope they’ll say mattered most?

His answer has nothing to do with music.

“I hope people would say that I was consistent,” Hampton says.

It opens a conversation about family, relationships and something Hampton has come to value more as his sons have grown older: being fully present for the life happening right now.

In his conversation on Lifestyle with Roy Ice, Hampton shares the story behind an extraordinary career, including the years of waiting before the Gaither Vocal Band, the doubts that followed even after success arrived, life on and off the road, and what he has learned about recognizing what matters most.

Watch Wes Hampton’s full conversation on Lifestyle with Roy Ice and discover the story behind the voice.