On Thursday night (March 13), Billboard’s The Stage at SXSW kicked off in Austin with a fiery set by Texas’s own Koe Wetzel, who is fresh off a five-week No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with “High Road” with Jessie Murph.
Murph may have been absent from the stage at Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park, but that was the only thing missing from Wetzel’s 17-song set that stretched back to 2016’s Noise Complaint. After playing “Fuss & Fight” from that set, Wetzel shook his head and good-naturedly declared, “We’re taking you back to 2016 with that song. God-d-am, we’re getting old.”
But the audience loved the old stuff as much as the new songs, raising their beers in the air and turning his signature song, “February. 28, 2016— about getting arrested for drunk driving— into a group singalong with Wetzel, who was swilling straight from a tequila bottle, content to let the crowd do the heavy lifting, especially on one of his most famous lines, “Who is sober enough to take me to Taco Bell?”
His songs hit so hard because they are about the messy stuff that real life is made up of: the complicated relationships, the battles with substances, the inner voices that fill our heads. Areas that other singer songwriters may shy away from Wetzel goes toward like a firefighter heading into a burning building. In Austin, the crowd loved him for it.
Below are five highlights from the evening.
(Coming up at Billboard’s The Stage at SXSW is música Mexicana band Grupo Frontera tonight (March 14) and electronic music superstar John Summit, Saturday (March 15)
Wetzel hit the stage with “9 Lives,” the rowdy title track to his current Columbia album, and by his second song, the jangly “April Showers,” he had already hit his vocal stride. Wetzel sounds great on records, but his voice is meant for live shows where his full-throated powerful voice really shone, holding long notes on tunes like “Forever” and “Damn Near Normal,” and going from silky smooth to a feral growl, while always staying tuneful.
Wetzel has been playing live for more than a dozen years and has a certain level of expertise only time can bring. He’s not a flashy performer so much as a commanding one who’s learned what works for him in front of an audience. He doesn’t jump around or move that much on stage and leaves the pyrotechnics to the actual flashpots that went off after several songs. Instead, he and his tight five-piece band delivered a sturdy, tight performance. The experience also shows in his songcraft, whether on the woozy, nihilistic “Drunk Driving,” the hard charging “Twister” or haunting “Sweet Dreams”
Wetzel may be expanding his country audience now thanks to the success of “High Road,” but he’s no stranger to Billboard’s rock and alternative charts and it’s the rock influence that made his performance such a high-octane one. He loves Nirvana as much as outlaws Willie and Waylon and Red Dirt cowboys Cross Canadian Ragweed and they all come together in his music for something new. There are touches of Weezer and even Blink-182 in guitar-driven “Creeps,” Smashing Pumpkins in “Something to Talk About” and Audioslave in “Fuss & Fight.”
Ashley Cooke had the crowd waving their arms along from the first notes of “Getting Into,” which provides a roadmap for her prospective partner and set the tone for her appealing pop-country six-song set that also included the upbeat “I Almost Do,” the sweet “Never Til Now” (on record a duet with Brett Young), the delightful “F Word,” which she debuted a few weeks ago at Country Radio Seminar”; “All I Forgot, her new duet with Joe Jonas, and the lyrically clever “Your Place,” which reached No. 2 on Country Airplay. Cooke matched her strong vocals with a pleasing confidence that is sure only to grow.
Austin native George Birge opened the evening riding high on such recent breakthrough hits as “Mind on You,” which soared to No. 2 on the Country Airplay chart and “Cowboy Songs,” his first chart topper from last year, written about “chasing my wife across every dive bar on Sixth Street,” he said. Birge’s delight at playing in front of a hometown crowd was infectious, as he even gave a shout out to his family members, including his baby sister, in the audience. His set also included current single, the romantic “It Won’t Be Long” and his fun mash-up/show staple of Gavin DeGraw’s “I Don’t Want to Be” and Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe,” which made his own.