by Jake Espinoza. Photgraphy by Andrew Roles. Live shot by Gabe Gurrolla
1 Peter 1:6–7
6 So be truly glad.* There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
“I’m 29, but I’m an old 29,” said Braille, real name Bryan Winchester.
He’s been through a lot these past five years, but through his faith in God he has remained positive and optimistic throughout it all.
“I’m not worried about tomorrow, tomorrow can worry about me” – A quote off his upcoming album Native Lungs.
In 2006, his daughter was born with complications. She survived and is healthy, but the complications ended up being extremely expensive and handed his young family a super-sized debt. Fast forward a couple of years, Braille managed to get all of his debt paid off just in time to go through a difficult and publicly addressed divorce.
After the divorce, Braille bounced around from place to place with his daughter. Sleeping on floors and couches while on tour is never an ideal situation, but they made it work.
Braille is now remarried and living in a much more stable environment. In the beginning stages of his tour promoting Native Lungs, he has a hernia. The 50 million other Americans living without health insurance understand the severity of this situation best.
“I can’t get the surgery until October because I have so many shows booked, but I stopped booking past October because I need like three to six weeks to recover.” He continued, “And the second I’m done with my surgery I have to go to Australia. Which is gonna be a little wild…We tried to set up a group rate thing through Kaiser with Humble Beast, but still to cover my family it would have been like $750 a month. Insurance is rough. I’m going to probably have to pay for the surgery out of pocket…It’s super challenging. Health insurance is something you need to get locked in when you are young and just keep. It just gets more expensive as you get older.”
His faith in God never lets him get down on himself though. He understands that through faith and hard work tomorrow will take care of itself.
“Even as an artist I feel very comfortable…but life always changes at the same time. It’s not like I have to rap, but right now rap is what makes it work. I don’t see a way that I can be more effective with my time right now—on a lot of levels.”
Native Lungs will be available for download free at www.humblebeast.com this Tuesday, August 30th.