Nine songs into his current album, “Hell Paso,” Koe Wetzel inserts a 56-second interlude where he raises a toast to people who like the album, drinks to those who hate it, and then concludes with a big kiss-off to those who think he is a disgrace to the genre.
“Yeah, people get (angry) whenever you tell them that we’re country and then they listen to our stuff,” Wetzel acknowledged.
That commentary, which is best taken tongue-in-cheek, is in character for Wetzel, who makes no secret about his rowdy ways and no apologies if his hard-hitting music doesn’t fit someone’s idea of what qualifies as country.
And with “Hell Paso,” he’s made his hardest rocking and edgiest album yet — to the point where even Wetzel might agree with those who consider it a rock album.
The thing is, Wetzel doesn’t go into his albums pursuing a predetermined sound or style.
“I didn’t go into (‘Hell Paso’) thinking it was going to be a rock record,” he said. “We just went into it knowing we wanted to do something different than what we had done before. I think that was kind of what pushed it to be as edgy as it was and more edgy than what we had done before.”
On Thursday, Wetzel brings his edgy brand of music to The Broadmoor World Arena, where he will be joined by Pecos & The Rooftops and Dylan Wheeler.
A native of Pittsburgh in east Texas, Wetzel, 30, began his music career after an ankle injury sidelined him from playing football at Tarleton State University, and he dropped out of college. He quickly gained traction as he started blending rock and country with touches of hip-hop, rap and punk to create a distinctive sound.
Within 18 months of playing concerts multiple nights each week around Texas and Oklahoma, Wetzel’s shows were starting to sell out, while by 2020 his three albums — “Out On Parole” (2015) “Noise Complaint” (2016) and “Harold Saul High” (2019) — had generated combined sales of 200,000 copies and 500 million streams.
Still, Wetzel felt he needed the resources of a major record label in order to achieve true national and international popularity and signed with Columbia Records. He titled his 2020 debut album for the label “Sellout” as a cheeky response to fans who thought he would soften his sound and bad-boy image to fit into the mainstream country world.
That hasn’t happened, and Wetzel’s popularity has continued to grow, to the point that his tours now take him predominantly into arenas, amphitheaters and prime slots at festivals. His show, which he said will feature upward of seven songs from “Hell Paso” to go with a selection of material from previous albums, have scaled to suit these venues.
“The production, man, it’s pretty insane,” Wetzel said. “We’ve never done anything quite like this before. Last year, we brought in a lot of pyro and a bunch of stuff like that. Now it’s kind of doubled on everything we did last year.”
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