Pittsburg native Koe Wetzel a rising country star – and still a hometown boy at heart

Published 10:45 pm Thursday, July 24, 2025

Koe Wetzel has made a career for himself as a “rowdy rabble-rousing outlaw,” in the words of his manager, Jeb Hurt. Perhaps no performance is ingrained in the minds of the country singer’s fans quite like his 2019 show at the Great Texas Balloon Race in Longview.

More than 12,000 people came to see Wetzel perform at the annual festival, and the show he put on was just what his fans expected: loud, vulgar and unruly.

The issue, however, is that festival organizers said they asked Wetzel to put on a family-friendly show. But Hurt said that’s not the case; such an expectation was never communicated beforehand, he said.

Festival organizers issued a public apology after the festival, saying many show-goers were offended. Wetzel fired back by sharing the organization’s statement on Facebook and adding a comment to it: “Thank you Longview, Texas for setting the highest attendance record at the Great Texas Balloon Race!”

Wetzel’s performance, the fallout from it and his response to it became a defining moment in his career, Hurt said.

“That’s our claim to fame, man, is Longview,” Hurt told the News-Journal.

For almost a decade, the East Texas native has been wooing crowds with songs about drugs and alcohol, having hard breakups and his infamous 2016 arrest for public intoxication.

But there is more to Wetzel than what fans might gather from his music.

What does Wetzel want people to know about him? When the News-Journal posed that question, he replied: “I don’t really like talking about myself all that much. So, maybe that’s a question for somebody else to answer.”

His manager, for one, says this: “Hate to burst your balloon – Koe Wetzel’s actually a pretty good guy.”

A hometown star

On a cold January day, a camo-clad group of men walked into the Pittsburg Hot Links restaurant in downtown Pittsburg to eat a bit of legendary East Texas cuisine after wrapping up a morning of hunting.

Nobody in the crowd looked like a rising country musician, but Pittsburg Mayor David Abernathy knew better. Over a bowl of warm chili and a few hot links, Abernathy whispered to a reporter that one of the men was on his way to being a country star – and his name is Koe Wetzel.

Since Wetzel’s “Noise Complaint” album was released in 2016, he’s signed a deal with Columbia Records, earned high marks on the charts, performed for growing crowds and brushed shoulders (even breaking a shoulder) with Hardy, Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen and Parker McCollum.

His roots can be traced back to Yellow Bush, a little settlement outside of Pittsburg. That’s where his family’s from and a place Wetzel still feels a connection to: As part of his expanding musical enterprise, he has named about 17 different LLCs something to do with Yellow Bush, Hurt said.

It’s easier to tell folks he’s from Pittsburg, though. Yellow Bush has no schools, stores or restaurants. Wetzel graduated from Pittsburg High School, where he played football.

Wetzel still comes back to Camp County to hunt, see his family and spend time at his lake house. And goodness knows he eats his fill at the hot link restaurant almost any day he’s home. (Normally, he’ll order six hot links and a junior bacon cheeseburger. If he’s really hungry, he’ll add two more links. “And you gotta get some jalapeno cornbread,” he said.)

“I feel like I’m still the kid that was running up and down the bleachers at the football game and running up and down the aisles of the auditorium when my mom was up there singing on stage,” Wetzel said. “Everybody back home, they don’t treat me any different, and that’s why I love coming back home.”

Pittsburg folks seem to feel the same way. In the back shop at the hot link restaurant, Sabin Warrick carries on the manufacturing processes for the little sausage-like creations that Pittsburg natives love. He remembers watching Wetzel play football and baseball, and he was a natural at both, Warrick said.

“What I remember him for, mostly, is how good a kid he was,” Warrick said. “Everybody loved him. And then how he played – he played with real intensity.”

Still a family man

Chad Pearson knows just how hard Wetzel plays on and off the field. Pearson, the city of Pittsburg’s utilities director, is about four years older than his cousin Wetzel, who is 33. They grew up a couple of miles apart, and they consider each other brothers. They spent their youth hanging out at their grandparents’ houses, fishing in ponds and playing sports.

“We were all pretty well behaved,” he said.

That begs the question: What happened to Koe?

“Well, Koe has always been Koe,” Pearson said. “People ask me, ‘Has he changed?’ And he has not changed one bit. He’s always been the one that if, he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it wholeheartedly, and if it’s something that he believes in – whether it be to some right or wrong – he’s going to do it.”

That’s what Wetzel has done with his musical career, which Pearson has watched from its infancy. He remembers Wetzel performing on stage at some kind of festival in town when he was 6 or 7 years old.

“He had to have one of his buddies up there with him because he was just so terrified,” Pearson said. “I can remember him playing the VFW hall in Daingerfield for 15 people.”

The story is much different now: “You go to him opening up for Morgan Wallen at AT&T Stadium for 65,000, 75,000 people. It’s very shocking because, at the end of the day, I still see him as Koe, grew up in Yellow Bush outside of Pittsburg. Now, it’s hard for him to go out in public without getting his picture taken.

“He has just really worked his butt off and got to where he is now.”

Wetzel didn’t come from a wealthy family by any means, though he’s changed his fortunes and shared them. He’s made several donations to the school, and he’s offered to help his family when they needed it.

Pearson’s son was born with a heart defect, and the family racked up millions in medical bills treating him. Wetzel offered to help pay the bills: “’If you need it, let me know,’” Pearson said Wetzel told him.

“That kind of showed me what he was about right then, and that was seven years ago, before he’s gotten to where he is now,” Pearson said. “He has told us all from the beginning that he’s not just doing it for him. He’s doing it for us.”

People might draw their conclusions about Wetzel based on his vulgar language and talk of drugs and alcohol in his songs, Pearson said. But he’d give someone the shirt off his back, and he’s still a family man.

“He wants to be home. He wants to be around us,” Pearson said. “He hasn’t got too big for us. … That will never happen because that’s just not who he is.”

Wetzel hasn’t gotten too big for East Texas, either, it seems. Wetzel told the News-Journal he’d like to have a show or music festival in this area in the coming years.

He also has founded a new program to help young East Texans pursue musical careers. The Koe’s Kids foundation, which will launch in the coming weeks, will provide music camp scholarships to students in East Texas who want to get into the field but don’t have the means, said Hurt, Wetzel’s manager.

Giving back to his community is something Wetzel is glad to do, he said.

“It’s cool to be able to take care of friends and family whenever you can,” Wetzel said. “I’m still just the same cat that grew up in Pittsburg, Texas. Not a whole lot’s changed, but I’m very blessed to be able to be in this position.”

The term “Koe’s Kids” has another meaning now: On May 23, his girlfriend, Bailey Fisher, gave birth to their daughter, Woods Madison Wetzel.

Koe Wetzel performs during a concert. (Contributed photo/Trevor Lamb for Motion Theory Media)

‘I’ll never forget about East Texas’

Wetzel’s music is hard to classify. He’s generally considered to be a country artist. But he doesn’t confine himself to a category. He has called his music hillbilly punk rock or garage country.

“We had to list it ‘country’ because we didn’t have anywhere else to put it whenever we uploaded it to the internet,” Wetzel said. “But I don’t think it’s really country. I don’t think I’ve put out a full-on country record yet.

“I don’t think it’s something that you can describe. And it’s kind of how I’ve always wanted it to be.”

His music is something else he’s always wanted it to be: helpful to people, he said. His songs extol the heartache of breakups and bad habits, and his raw lyrics and brash vocals combine to express relatable pain, sorrow and frustration.

“I get messages all the time with people saying, somehow, my music changed their life or saved their life or whatever it is,” Wetzel said. “And I’m thinking, if my music can help somebody in some way, I wouldn’t feel right to kind of leave it behind.”

As for the adult language in his songs, “it’s just me being me,” he said.

“I don’t feel like I should have to act a certain way on stage just because I’m in front of everybody,” he said. “Who I am is who I am. If they don’t like it, then I truly apologize. But I’m not going to act a certain way just to please somebody else.”

He acted just like himself in Longview at the balloon festival, for better or worse. That became a viral moment for him, Hurt said. (Wetzel can and will do family-friendly shows if that’s communicated to him beforehand, Hurt said.)

Six years later, Wetzel is significantly more popular than he was then, and Hurt said he’s become more of a leader of his band and crew, a better songwriter and a better musician. His success is attributable, in part, to people’s perception of who he is, cemented by performances such as the one here.

Wetzel said he’s trying to keep his head down and see where his future takes him. And East Texas will be a part of it.

“It’s been really cool to be from East Texas and come up and get to experience all the things that I have,” he said. “But you know, I’ll never forget about East Texas. I hope they don’t forget about me.”

And one other thing: “There’s no place like East Texas, especially Pittsburg Hot Links,” he said.