- 6 months ago
Wyatt Flores, the 23-year-old rising star from Stillwater, Oklahoma, joins Sid Evans on Biscuits & Jam to talk about his journey from backyard campfire songs to the Grand Ole Opry. He opens up about his working-class roots, the making of his debut album Welcome to the Plains, and the personal stories behind his honest songwriting. Plus, he shares thoughts on mental health, moving back home, and his love for breakfast burritos.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Wyatt Flores, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.
00:03Well, thanks for having me.
00:04Where am I reaching you right now?
00:05Right now, I'm in Nashville.
00:07This is your hometown now, right?
00:10Negative.
00:11I lived here for two years, and I was like, I'm going to get out of here.
00:15Oh, you're back in Oklahoma?
00:17Oh, yeah.
00:18That's been a good move for you to be back home?
00:20You know, there just came a point where I was like, we're renting a house for so much money.
00:26That's 30 minutes out of town, and it's too much money, especially when the landlords won't fix the black mold problem.
00:33And I was like, I could afford two houses back home in Oklahoma for the price that I'm paying for this one that's just awful.
00:41Yeah.
00:42But I guess you're still spending a good amount of time in Nashville.
00:46Oh, yeah.
00:46I still come back here a lot, but I enjoy visiting more than I do living here.
00:50Was that two years a good education for you, just kind of getting the lay of the land and meeting everybody you've got to meet and all that?
00:59Yeah.
01:00So basically, when I moved in, I would have been living in an apartment.
01:04And at the time, it was a two-bedroom apartment.
01:08But my one manager stayed in that room and then, well, ended up going a different route.
01:14But my soon-to-be manager and my guitar player and I were all sharing one room on Air Master's for about 10 months, I want to say.
01:22And then a whole bunch of us moved into a bigger house and then ended up getting, well, ended up going a different route.
01:30And from that point, ended up being homeless for about three weeks, hopping couches, and then found a place down there.
01:36And what is that?
01:39Goodlitzville.
01:40Yeah.
01:40Up there.
01:41Talk to me about what your setup is now back home in Oklahoma.
01:46I'm still building Barn Dominium currently.
01:50And it's a working progress.
01:53The upstairs is coming along just fine, fixing to do the downstairs now.
01:58And I don't know.
01:59It feels good to finally have something to call my own, if that makes sense.
02:03Because I really had never lived in a nice place, I guess, if that makes sense.
02:07I've moved so many times in my life, five or seven times that I've moved into different places.
02:13And I was like, I've got to have something to just call my own.
02:16You're ready to settle down a little bit.
02:18A little bit, yeah.
02:20We got really good at moving things in and out of places, though.
02:23I thought about starting up a business if the music failed.
02:26Yeah.
02:27Well, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
02:31I'm hoping not.
02:31Knock, knock wood.
02:34So, Wyatt, you grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, or kind of right outside of town.
02:42Is that right?
02:43Yep.
02:43Yeah.
02:44Stillwater, Oklahoma, born and raised.
02:46So, you've written songs about it.
02:48And you seem to have an interesting relationship with it in some ways.
02:55Give me a little education about Stillwater.
02:57Tell me about, you know, for someone who has not been there, tell me a little bit about the town.
03:02I believe the population is about 50,000.
03:05And it's a college town, and that college town is currently booming like most.
03:09But it has this small town feel to it, but then it's not too hard.
03:14Like, it's turning into a city more and more, which it is, but it's not too hard to get out of it, if that makes sense.
03:21Like, it just turns to countryside pretty quickly.
03:23And I always like that dynamic of that town, of just being like, yeah, they're in the center.
03:29It's got all the city things and all the shopping malls and stuff like that, but it's so easy to leave town.
03:36It's 10 minutes outside of town in any direction.
03:39It just turns to country.
03:40And you grew up kind of more in the country on a ranch?
03:44Yes, sir.
03:46So, paint me a picture of that place.
03:51And, you know, when you're kind of driving down the driveway, you know, what does it look like?
03:56What does the land look like?
03:58And the house, you know, driving up to the house?
04:01Well, usually you've got a whole bunch of dogs running down the driveway when you pull in.
04:07It's kind of a long driveway.
04:09It's not one of those short ones where you just park a car right in the front.
04:12Got to go a ways.
04:13And then it's got a couple barns on there, tractor that I haven't seen run in forever.
04:22Then there's a whole bunch of metal and stuff because my dad's a welder,
04:25so there's just a whole bunch of scrap metal in case we ever want to start up another project.
04:30Yeah.
04:30Mom and dad's house on one side and then barn on the other.
04:37Technically, there's three ponds, but two of them are cereal lagoons,
04:40and then you've got one main pond and a tree line that runs in the back.
04:44That's the scene.
04:47So, Wyatt, did you grow up with a lot of family around?
04:51I mean, you know, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents?
04:57Kind of.
04:57Yeah.
04:58My grandparents lived four hours away on one side of the family,
05:01and then the other side of the family was 15 hours down there in San Benito, Texas.
05:06Okay.
05:06Until we brought them up because they started losing their minds to dementia.
05:11And I think I probably was in the fifth grade when me and my dad took a stock trailer down there and moved all their stuff up to Stillwater so we could kind of take care of them.
05:19And then, which is where I get songs like Forget Your Voice of just being a kid and watching them forget who you are.
05:29And that's just a strange experience.
05:33And I learned quite a bit of Spanish, more than I ever did in a classroom, but it's kind of a – it's all falling away.
05:39You know, don't use it, and then all of a sudden you lose it.
05:42But then my aunts and uncles and stuff, they all live down in like OKC and Tuttle, and my grandma still lives out there in the panhandle, and we're kind of dispersed.
05:51Not too much family living there in Stillwater.
05:55Would you guys get together for a big family gathering every now and then, maybe around the holidays?
06:00Oh, especially the holidays.
06:02That's definitely when we get everyone together, and either that or – shoot, they'll just come up to the house, see that, or we'll go down to Choctaw.
06:09And we do our best, but everyone's – goodness, we're all busy.
06:14And then nowadays I'm getting to see more of my older cousins.
06:16And just two weeks ago they came down to – where were we?
06:21St. Petersburg, Florida.
06:23And we all spent the weekend there after I played one of my shows, and my uncle lives down there in Fort Myers area.
06:29And so, yeah, I've been getting to see them a lot more.
06:32But, you know, Tracy, she's got kids now, and watching them grow up is crazy.
06:37Just – goodness, they –
06:41How fast it happens.
06:41Time is flying.
06:42Yeah.
06:42Yeah.
06:43I don't like it.
06:46Well, and you're only, what, 23, 24?
06:52Yeah, 23.
06:53So, yeah, you've lived a lot of lives for 23, haven't you?
06:59It feels like it, yeah.
07:00I feel like every single time I get a haircut, it's like another cutoff of another life.
07:05Well, so when y'all have these gatherings, is there music involved?
07:14It seems like – I mean, your dad's a musician, and it seems like there would be – you've got a lot of music in your family.
07:21Is that a big part of it?
07:23Not like we would, because my uncle's the one that taught me how to play guitar, and then my dad was really the one that tried to teach me strumming patterns.
07:33And then he taught me how to play drums, of course, since he was a drummer.
07:36But on the Mexican side of the family, yeah, there's more music involved, and we'd sit around, and I'd just play songs for them and stuff.
07:43But really where the group gatherings of music started was pretty much my childhood.
07:50I was lucky enough to have a great childhood of all these families would come together, and we'd all take off and go out to the lake.
07:58We all had fifth-wheel bumper pool campers, and then we'd all have boats.
08:03Yeah, so all of us kids would just make a whole bunch of forts at whatever lake we were at, out of hammocks and tarps and everything like that.
08:10And we all had bikes, and then late at night was really where I got the love for music, was watching my dad, Stephen Cooper, and Kelly Green, and Scott Lester,
08:24all sitting around campfires, drinking whiskey, telling stories that may or may not have been true, and singing cowboy songs.
08:32And that's all I wanted to do.
08:34It used to just be fun sitting there, and then I was like, I really want to try and figure out what they're doing.
08:39And so I'd ask questions here and there, and then I'd just sit there and watch what their hands are doing on the fretboard until I could figure out what was going on.
08:48And that's really how I learned.
08:51And that was kind of the environment that I grew up in.
08:54Summertime is my favorite just because of how much time we spent at different lakes camp, and that was the highlight of my childhood.
09:03And when it comes to music, I mean, you really kind of jumped right into this sort of, I don't know, kind of old-time music or more country music.
09:20I mean, you didn't grow up listening to like Van Halen or something.
09:24I could have, but I usually skipped it.
09:29It's not that it ain't bad.
09:31It just wasn't for my ears, if that makes sense.
09:34But yeah, I grew up listening to a lot of songs.
09:37Oh, good Lord.
09:38My music taste is kind of all over the place just because even growing up inside the household, my mom was huge on 90s country.
09:46She's probably George Strait's number one fan.
09:49Oh, is that right?
09:50And then, oh, yeah, I mean, CD after CD after CD.
09:55And maybe it's just because I got a little burnout on it from having to go to school with mom.
10:00But I was like, can we listen to something else maybe?
10:03And then my dad, he was huge on blues.
10:06It was all blues.
10:08So it was a lot of classic rock and Stevie Ray and Good Lord.
10:14What's the other one?
10:15Joe Bonamassa was one of his big ones.
10:17But a lot of my influences kind of came from Los Lonely Boys.
10:22I got that first album of theirs and had it on my dad's iPod.
10:27And I listened to that entire thing and huge influences there.
10:29And then my sister was really the one that kind of kept me up to speed with Red Dirt and more of the rap and the pop and stuff like that.
10:39Because she was four years older than me.
10:41So, you know, she had more control over the aux cord than I did.
10:44Yeah, yeah, I guess so.
10:47I wanted to ask you about the Red Dirt scene.
10:53You know, it's not something that I'm super familiar with.
10:58But it seems like, you know, there's definitely this really deep music culture that comes out of Oklahoma.
11:05And it's very distinctive.
11:07And, you know, I think of I think of groups, probably more recent groups like maybe Turnpike Troubadours.
11:14But I know it goes back much further than that.
11:17Tell me a little bit about that scene and kind of what what the what impact it had on you.
11:23Shoot.
11:23It had every piece of impact on me.
11:25And, you know, especially Kelly and Scott, the ones I was talking about sitting around the fires.
11:30Well, they're they're part of the Great Divide band.
11:33So my dad was in the scene, but he never came up with it, I guess.
11:38And one of the bands, he had plenty of bands that he played in, but mostly just being with them.
11:43And then the Great Divide formed back in college days and took off.
11:48But that entire Texas music scene, Red Dirt, it all started there in Stillwater.
11:55And, you know, you have the greats like Jimmy LaFay and Tom Skinner that were really the grandfathers of it all.
12:01And and then it just started taking off.
12:03And and definitely in the 90s is where it really started to shine in the early 2000s.
12:07And, you know, a lot of those bands ended up breaking up.
12:11And, of course, Crossgate and Ragweed and Great Divide, they both had reunions to where they're coming back.
12:16But a lot of it was just the songwriters that would come into town.
12:20And it wasn't so much about the actual bands and everything until, you know, they started forming up and started taking taking off and traveling.
12:29But it's it's the storytelling that goes on inside of inside of Red Dirt, which is why you hear, you know, Turnpike Troubadours.
12:41You talk about them.
12:43They're some of the best songwriters today, in my opinion.
12:47And and truthfully honest, I think in Red Dirt history, they're the king of it.
12:54Yeah.
12:54The storytelling, I just don't find it anywhere else, if that makes sense, because it's got this mix of of this rock and roll mixed with country kind of honky tonk.
13:03And then you also have the folk aspect of it all.
13:06And really, that's kind of where it started, was just mixing the two of folk and and this weird grunge era.
13:14And yeah, it's a it's a hodgepodge in its own way, if that makes sense.
13:19Do you think there's a sense of pride in that in the community there?
13:24I mean, do you really feel like people, you know, they love that that heritage?
13:31Yes, there is.
13:34And there's also been times in my life where I thought that the scene was starting to die off there for a second.
13:40But it's it's well alive.
13:41I mean, considering the fact that Ragweed and Turnpike and Stoney, Jason Bolin and Great Divide just played four sold out shows at Boone Picking Stadium to 186,000 people.
13:55I'd say it's well alive.
13:56Yeah, that's for sure.
13:58That's amazing.
13:58Wyatt, I've got to ask you a little bit about food and just, you know, kind of what you grew up with.
14:05We always talk about that a little bit on this podcast.
14:08And I'm just wondering, what was some of the food you grew up with and who was doing the cooking or the one that, you know, especially that that really stands out to you?
14:16I got to give a lot of thanks to my parents because we didn't have like we had plenty.
14:23But we weren't ever, you know, we weren't rich by no means, if that makes sense.
14:31I talk a lot about my parents just because I've watched them through the years of building what they have and and starting from absolutely nothing.
14:39And so I love it when I get to talk about this just because I feel bad for anyone that hasn't had this upbringing because my mom would get done working and she's still working.
14:51And we'd all get home.
14:55All of us kids would go to school.
14:57We'd come back home.
14:58She'd get there and and it was immediately doing all the chores.
15:02Me and my sister all had well, we both had show cattle.
15:05So we were working in the barns with them and then we'd come inside, start doing homework.
15:09Mom's already starting on cooking.
15:11And and dad, he'd get home around six, he'd go feed cows out there and then he'd come back in and and he'd walk in, usually shake our heads or whatever at the dinner table while we're doing homework and and come in and start cooking with my mom.
15:25And I always love that that they cook together.
15:27But, you know, the meals vary since we, you know, we have our own beef.
15:32It was a whole lot of steaks and burgers and stews.
15:36But my favorite thing was always on the weekends because we'd all be there in the mornings and we'd all have breakfast burritos was like my favorite thing still to this day.
15:46Just them to cook in that flour tortillas.
15:49And then you get well, we had plenty of friends with a whole bunch of chickens.
15:53So way better in store bought.
15:55And then what we have in Oklahoma is called blue and gold sausage and bacon as well.
15:59But that's if you ever get the chance, blue and gold sausage better than Jimmy's whatever does.
16:06I don't even know the names of other sausages because it doesn't matter.
16:09Blue and gold is the way.
16:11And you mix all that together with some hash browns, peel some potatoes, throw it inside of a breakfast burrito and real nice.
16:20Oh, you can't go wrong.
16:21Some cheese.
16:22Can't go wrong.
16:22Best way to start a morning.
16:24Talk to me about the Mexican influence.
16:27My mom's carne asada.
16:28She learned it from my, well, my mom's white, dad's Mexican and Spanish.
16:34And so she was able to learn some of my grandma's recipes on my dad's side.
16:40And yeah, we had quite a bit of Mexican food, but at the same time, we didn't always get into it, if that makes sense.
16:49It wasn't too often where we'd do that just because my mom mostly learned all the recipes from her mom.
16:57And my mom can cook and my dad can too because my dad was coming back to his college days when he had nothing.
17:06Him and his brother, they both lived inside of a little trailer that still sits on the property.
17:11I don't even want to know what's living in it now.
17:13So I've looked in it one time and I was like, I'm not stepping foot.
17:17But they sold beans and, well, they'd make bean burritos and all sorts of food and they'd sell it.
17:23And that's how they were paying for college because everyone else was eating Whataburger and whatnot.
17:29And they didn't have the money to do so, but people wanted their stuff.
17:32So they were like, we'll sell it to you.
17:33And they were selling food out the back of it.
17:35But I don't know.
17:37It's been a while since we've really gotten into Mexican food at the house.
17:42Now that I'm thinking about it, it's been a while.
17:44But usually when we come home, everyone wants to come over and it's just easier to make cheeseburgers and call it a day.
17:51And what about on your dad's side?
17:53What about your dad's mom?
17:55Grandma Ophelia.
17:57So like the way his upbringing was there's five kids and you didn't wait around.
18:03You didn't wait around to eat.
18:04They'd all be cooking together too.
18:06But the way he described it was there's a peck and order and you better hurry up and start eating because everyone else will eat before you if you don't hurry.
18:16And I think that's why my dad eats so fast.
18:19He'll be the first one done.
18:20But I think that's just because of his upbringing, just having to fight since he was the youngest at the table.
18:28And yeah, grandma would hand make flour tortillas and they'd eat beans and rice all the time.
18:36That was their bread and butter because that's what they could afford for all them kids.
18:41Yeah.
18:41Yeah.
18:42Well, that sounds pretty good to me.
18:44Your dad is a musician and was a big influence on you.
18:54Was that something that came out of a musical family on his side or did he really kind of strike out on his own?
19:03From the stories that I've heard, basically it was my grandpa teaching my uncle how to play guitar.
19:09And then when my dad was a kid, he just beat on everything.
19:12He'd beat on all the pots and pans.
19:14And then finally one day, my grandpa took him to get a drum kit.
19:17And he's been playing in bars since he was 12.
19:21Wow.
19:22If not younger.
19:23Yeah.
19:23My dad's got an interesting life.
19:26I need to put him on the podcast and start asking him questions because there's so much that I don't even know.
19:31You do.
19:33I know quite a bit.
19:35But goodness.
19:36Yeah.
19:36He's been playing in bars since he was 12.
19:38He's been working construction since he was 14.
19:42But really what happened was he got really good at drums, but he was also a fantastic football player.
19:48And he had scholarships to even go to OU and stuff like that.
19:52But he ended up getting a scholarship to Panhandle State, full ride.
19:56And he ended up going and trying out for Reba McIntyre's Brothers Band.
20:01He ended up getting the part.
20:03But he was like, I didn't think I was going to get it.
20:05I just wanted to come and try it out.
20:06And he said, I think I'm going to go for a full ride scholarship.
20:10And thank God he did because I don't think he would have ever met my mom and I would never be born.
20:15But, you know, he always told me in college, they'll take your money at whatever age.
20:22They love taking money.
20:23So it came a lot easier for me to come home and tell them that I was dropping out just because I watched how he, you know, he always wanted to go and play.
20:33And he even had a time period where he wasn't, there was a layoff coming.
20:37And him and mom even talked about moving out to Nashville so he could become a studio drummer because that's really what he wanted to do.
20:43And his friends got laid off.
20:45He ended up not.
20:46And he stayed right there with mom.
20:49But it doesn't, you know, I still see it of him wanting to live out that dream.
20:54And it's crazy because nowadays all of his buddies that he played with, they all sit there and they go, you're living our dream now.
21:02And one of his bass players, Joe, who got me my first ever electric Strat and a whole bunch of music gear.
21:10With that, I don't think I'd be here.
21:11But we were talking to him one night.
21:14He's from Ocarchi, Oklahoma.
21:15I think I seen him there.
21:17And he goes, I finally realized that we did everything that we did, bringing you up on stage when you were a kid and everything like that.
21:23So that way you could go on and live out the dream.
21:26And that, oh, man, hearing that, that'll stop you right in your tracks.
21:32But, yeah, dad, he lived out his dream of everything that he has with mom.
21:40But it made it so much easier for me to come home and be like, I'm going to do it.
21:44I'm just going to go for it.
21:46I'm going to drop out.
21:47I'm going to figure it out.
21:48And watching them to be so supportive of it all is really great because there was a time period where he was like threatening me.
21:55He's like, if you don't go to college, learn blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
21:58And I was like, oh, and I was like, well, I'm already, I already made my decision.
22:03I just haven't told you yet.
22:06Good Lord.
22:08Do you, how do you communicate with your dad when it comes to music?
22:13Well, usually when we finally get to hang out with each other, we'll just sit there and we'll just listen to music and then just start talking.
22:23And then we'll talk for a good solid four hours until the better end of the night starts ending.
22:29And we'll just either talk about songs and he'll ask questions and then I'll ask questions.
22:35And we just kind of go back and forth and either dissect something or just appreciate how good the music is or whatever we're listening to.
22:44And then when I bring him new stuff, I just sit there and sing it for him and see what he thinks.
22:48And then when I bring home studio stuff and we'll just sit down and listen, he'll just be like, so what's going on here?
22:56What was the decision here?
22:58And just, I don't know, I enjoy it so much when me and him get to finally sit down and just talk music.
23:04Because that's how it all started was him playing drums and we built like this stage out with all this stuff.
23:10And he'd always make me sing with my back against him.
23:13And I think that's the only thing that prepared me for when I actually started going out and playing shows and then started playing with bands and stuff like that was all the practice that we did when I was in high school and junior high of having a shit PA and trying to make a dream come to life.
23:33But I didn't realize that he was trying to set me up for success by doing so.
23:37You talked about, you know, maybe having him on your podcast at some point.
23:43And, you know, I realized as I was getting ready for this interview that I'm talking to a professional here, you know, that you've got you got your own podcast and you have for a while.
23:53And I've listened to some of them and it's it's it's super fun and, you know, kind of laid back.
23:59And and I'm wondering what that's been like for you as a kind of as an outlet.
24:05But, you know, have you enjoyed having that having those conversations that, you know, you might not otherwise have?
24:16Yeah.
24:17Starting your own podcast is way different than being a part of a podcast is what I've had to find out, because that is way different when I got to come up with the questions.
24:26And, yeah, some of them were just purely just fun, having a good time, like having Hohner and getting to talk to Aaron Raitier just went all over the place.
24:36But for some of them, it was very educational for myself.
24:39Definitely having Josh Kreschmer come up and talk and and and then especially one of my heroes, Mike McClure from the Great Divide Band.
24:47It was is one of those things where it was like I finally get to, like, ask these questions that I've wanted to ask my entire life.
24:53But in every setting, it's usually, you know, they're fixing to go on stage and that's not a good time to talk.
24:59And then they get done playing and that's not really a good time to talk either.
25:02And to finally sit down and kind of talk about music with them and it just kind of opened my eyes being on the other side of things, changed my perspective.
25:11And I really enjoyed doing the podcast.
25:14I'm sure we're going to start that thing back up before too long.
25:17But it was kind of just a test experiment because I kept saying, one of these days I'm going to do a podcast.
25:23And then it happened.
25:24And I was like, well, now we know because I don't know.
25:28I'm trying to do as many things in my life that I can and try and I believe that life is full of experiences and and and that we need to have them.
25:36And and I'm very grateful that I got to start my own podcast because we tried a couple of hodgepodge times of and they're they're a little raunchy.
25:46I'm looking at one of my managers because he was even a host on it at one point.
25:50There are some fun ones and I hope you ramp it up again.
25:54Yeah, I got to get my dad on there for sure.
25:57You definitely do.
25:59So, Wyatt, you've been you've been pretty open about some of your struggles with mental health.
26:07And, you know, obviously, this is something that millions of people deal with and in different ways.
26:13And I'm wondering what you hear from your fans when when it comes to mental health, when you have a chance to interact with them, because I would guess that there are lots and lots of people who have, you know, seen what you've been through, who've heard it in your music.
26:37And it's got to be resonating with with a lot of your fans and in a very real way.
26:45But it's been still trying to figure that out, because when I first openly talked about it, like I wrote Please Don't Go, recorded it like two months later.
26:57And then we put it out.
27:00But even my manager at that time, he didn't even know what the song was fully about until I said, hey, no, this is actually what I'm talking about in this song.
27:09And and then I finally was vocal about it on social media.
27:12The song popped off and I just kept being vocal about it.
27:16I don't think I've ever had a problem with sharing how I feel.
27:20And but I didn't realize what door that would open on the other side of things.
27:25And and I kept talking about mental health and mental health and trying to help others.
27:30And I was I was always trying to help others.
27:33And I was never taking care of myself in the early days of everything, because there's a lot of that happened.
27:38And I mean, fire old management, lose everything.
27:44Next week after that, my grandma or grandpa commits suicide.
27:50Then I start my first headlining tour.
27:53And.
27:55It was it was a lot.
27:58There is no doubt there's going to be a time where I needed to take a step back.
28:02And I finally did, because I couldn't deal with the emotions of myself and my own mental health.
28:12And I couldn't deal with the pressure of having everyone rely on me and be, you know, because this thing is a business.
28:19I am I am feeding my band.
28:21I am feeding everyone that's in my team.
28:24And there's a lot on me back then of just being, you know, freshly 22 years old and I got to figure this entire thing out.
28:32And then I never I compartmentalized everything that had happened with my grandpa and and, you know, management and everything like that and losing people in my life.
28:42And whether, you know, actually dead or still alive, it's a tough thing to deal with.
28:49And and then being there for the fans and every night hearing another traumatic story.
28:56If not, it was them telling me that they're so close to losing their selves, too.
29:00And and I finally took a small break of about two weeks and came back to it.
29:05And I've been learning ever since.
29:07But there for a while, I quit talking about mental health on stage because I've been scared.
29:13I've been I've been terrified of it.
29:15But here here lately, it's all coming back to me because I still have thousands of messages that come in.
29:22I'm just talking about, you know, what they've gone through or the stories that are going through.
29:26And I feel weird on stage because I feel like there's a part of me that keeps talking about it.
29:31And I feel like people are probably like, OK, we get it, dude.
29:34But then at the same time, I see all that.
29:37I hear from the fans and I know that there's people out there that are struggling, that are coming to the show, looking to be healed by some way.
29:43And a lot of it, I hope, is just through the music and less of what I'm saying, just, you know, talking wise.
29:50But it is a huge part.
29:53I've struggled with mental health since I was a kid.
29:57You know, I really don't tell anyone this, but like ever since I was a kid, I was a weird kid and I'd get bullied and all that.
30:04And I've been lucky enough that I've been trying to work on myself and deal with those things that I told someone the other day, you know, just open it up about it.
30:15And I was like, actually, I was drowned in a water fountain in front of everyone at school.
30:20And, you know, that was kind of the time where I was like, I'm kind of worthless is what I thought to myself.
30:24And I've been trying to fix that inside of myself.
30:28And it's only been helpful.
30:30And I'm hoping that I can use my platform to help others to work through whatever it is that they're going through in their present life or their past life or whatever they're fixing to go through.
30:42It's a huge part.
30:43And I don't believe that the music that I'm playing is all about beer, drinking and partying.
30:47Of course, I want people to have a great time.
30:50Come to my shows, drink, whatever you want to do, blow off steam.
30:53But I want people to go back into their day-to-day lives and want more for themselves.
30:58I see so many people get comfortable and just not ever change anything.
31:03And I want to give people the hope and let them know that they have the power to live a better life.
31:07And that all starts with it.
31:10Yeah.
31:10I feel like so many of the songs that you've written speak for themselves.
31:17And, you know, without even saying anything, just the music itself.
31:23Has got to be resonating with people in a powerful way.
31:29And, you know, and they're hearing what they need to hear without you even addressing it, you know?
31:38That is definitely all I'm after.
31:41Wyatt, I want to ask you about a couple songs and some of your music that's come out.
31:49It's so good.
31:52And I want to go back a couple years to a song that you did that's a personal favorite of mine.
32:00It's called Holes.
32:00And, you know, it sounds like a song that's about some tough times, but it's also just it's such a beautiful song.
32:08And I just wanted to ask you what what it meant to you at the time that you wrote it.
32:14And the setting of it was I just, you know, quit my job farming and ranching.
32:20I quit the road.
32:21I was basically living in Oklahoma and Florida and Nashville at the same time, traveling back and forth to all three of those places, trying to make money welding, going home when I could to see the ones that I love, and then going to Nashville to try and make that dream come to life.
32:39But there was no money in Nashville.
32:41Music wasn't really working out.
32:42And the aspect of going down there and saying that there's a whole bunch of welding jobs, turns out there wasn't a whole bunch of welding jobs, so there wasn't a whole bunch of money there either.
32:53And I just felt like I was just stuck.
32:57And that song means a lot to me.
32:59And the album cover of it, too, is actually a picture of my family sitting on the front porch of a trailer house.
33:07And it was just me thinking about the generations that came before me.
33:11My grandparents were immigrant workers.
33:14The only vacations my dad ever went on was to go pick more tomatoes or cotton, either in, you know, Florida or California, because that's where the other families were.
33:27And that was their vacations, was loading up and doing more work just with family members.
33:32In a different place.
33:33Yeah, in a different place.
33:34And my dad always told me that every generation is supposed to do better, so that way the next generation can do better.
33:42And it's supposed to trickle down.
33:44And at that time in my life, I was in a household full of pop writers and stuff like that and rappers.
33:52And I was like, this ain't me.
33:54Why am I the oddball out?
33:56What am I even doing?
33:58And so I went upstairs, I looked outside the window, and I seen grass coming out of the sidewalk and just started writing.
34:04And I'm very grateful for that song because I didn't have nothing.
34:11I've worked so many jobs, and I've always just tried to hustle my way and build something that no one can take away from me.
34:20And at that time, I was kind of losing hope for it all.
34:24Did that song feel like a breakthrough for you in some ways?
34:30Absolutely.
34:31Because sitting down and writing that song reaffirmed that I am a good songwriter, that I can do it.
34:38And that was the hope that I needed to keep pushing forward.
34:41And I never expected people to love it as much as they do.
34:44But that song means a lot to a lot more than just myself, I guess.
34:49And getting to play it live is freaking awesome because I see it in everyone else's eyes, that same look that I had too.
34:57And I don't know.
34:58It's nice because I don't feel so alone in my thoughts.
35:02Yeah.
35:03Wyatt, you came out with Welcome to the Plains last year.
35:08It's so good, and it found an audience right away.
35:15I think it was about the songwriting.
35:19It was about your voice.
35:20It was just about the kind of honesty of it all.
35:24It seemed just very honest and real and vulnerable and also a lot older than 23, you know, than something that could have been written by a 23-year-old.
35:40But I want to ask you about a song called O Susanna has the line, I was a problem, over and over.
35:49And talk to me about what you were thinking when that one came to you.
35:56So most of the album and most of the songs on it were written in January and December.
36:02But after the mental health break in April, while we were still recording the album, yeah, I just came to it.
36:12And me and David sat there and wrote it out.
36:16But the whole thought behind it is it's an apology to my fans.
36:22And it's also me learning, you know, kind of what codependency was and just calling myself out, which was like one of the more, I guess, eye-opening parts of songwriting, too, is being able to be vulnerable with yourself.
36:43And that's still a tough thing.
36:44I'm struggling with it now in my writing of being truly vulnerable with myself.
36:48But in that time period, it was so easy, you know, to call myself out and be like, I was a full-on drunken behavior.
36:56And because that's what I was.
36:57I thought I was saving a whole bunch of lives.
37:00I thought I was doing a thousand different other things to help the world out.
37:04And truth be told, I'm just me.
37:06And what I love about the eye was a problem is that I was being so harsh on myself.
37:16But I guess to know that you're the problem and to call out the problem is the easiest way to start working on the problem and start the healing process.
37:27And, yeah, that song is probably one of my favorites to sing live and to watch people sing it back and scream it.
37:36It's freaking awesome.
37:37But, yeah, that song is just all about the fans.
37:42And it's an apology to them because, you know, everyone took off with Please Don't Go.
37:47And it's like the part two to Please Don't Go where I just I felt the need to tell everyone that, you know, Please Don't Go was just for me.
37:57And then it was placed out for them.
37:59But Oh, Susanna was a song written to my fans.
38:02It is for them.
38:03Well, I don't know that they see it as an apology.
38:06I think they probably see it as more of a thank you.
38:13That's a different way of looking at it.
38:15No, I like that.
38:17So, Wyatt, I want to ask you about one more.
38:20And it's, you know, it's just it's more of a fun song.
38:24It's more of a true kind of country song.
38:28And it's it's called Falling Sideways.
38:31Yeah.
38:32And, you know, it's about it's about the bad combination of maybe a little bit too much alcohol.
38:39And, you know, being around someone who you, you know, you make a bad decision with.
38:46But but it's a fun song.
38:48And and I know that one must get a good response.
38:53What does it feel like to sing that one for a crowd?
38:56I still have yet to sing it for a crowd.
38:59Oh, no kidding.
39:00I know.
39:00I know.
39:01Oh, man.
39:02But the way that song came about is I wanted to I wanted to try it.
39:08We're we're in Asheville, North Carolina.
39:11And and that was the first place that we started recording.
39:15And I just told Bo, I was like, start playing something.
39:20Anything.
39:21Let's write a song right here, right now.
39:23It took us five minutes to come up with that that chorus.
39:27And then the rest of it, it took us a while to get the verses down.
39:31But it's crazy how fast it came to us.
39:34And the only thing was, is I was asking my A&R rep, Austin, I was like, give me a topic.
39:41All he did was say, takes full regrets.
39:42And I was like, I don't know what we're doing.
39:44And yeah, that song, the way it all turned out, it's like this weird psychedelic thing going on with the slide.
39:55And I loved it.
39:55But yeah, that song was was too easy because really, you just have that that one person that sneaks back into your life.
40:05And and you think that it's going to be different than the last time.
40:08And it's like, no, it happens every single time.
40:13And yeah, there is definitely you just don't learn.
40:16You just don't know.
40:17There was definitely one girl in my life where I just could not learn.
40:21We were firing gasoline and man, yeah, that song was not too hard to write.
40:29Well, sometimes the best ones are the are the easiest ones, right?
40:34Absolutely.
40:35Why?
40:35You've probably had some some pretty serious out of body experiences over the last couple of years.
40:41You know, so much has happened so fast.
40:43But when you think of, you know, all the performances, what's something that stands out as a real highlight?
40:51And maybe it's maybe it's somebody that you met or sang with who who had been an idol of yours.
40:58Well, I definitely have to say here recently, it was going to Australia and playing for twenty five thousand people two nights in a row.
41:06That was an out of out of body experience that Australia.
41:11I could live there.
41:12I love them people so much.
41:14But the other one that really comes back to me is it's always Red Rocks.
41:20I got to open up for Turnpike Troopers, who who are my heroes and and to even be asked to open up for them.
41:28Doesn't matter where already meant enough to me.
41:30But then to be asked to open up at Red Rocks, that show, a whole bunch of people didn't know me.
41:36But by the end of it, we got a standing ovation full of ten thousand people.
41:40And I lost it.
41:43I was like, there's there's no way this is real right now.
41:47I thought I was just dreaming.
41:48And then I was just on cloud nine for probably a week.
41:53But definitely after the show, I'm just sitting there.
41:56And all of a sudden, Evan comes up behind me, scared the hell out of me, slaps me on the back and he goes, ready to sing Long Hot Summer Day?
42:02And I was like, I guess.
42:05And he's like, what verse do you want?
42:06And I was like, I'll do the second verse.
42:09And he goes, no, no, Sierra's already got that one.
42:11You get the third.
42:12And I'm like, what was I even asked?
42:14But yeah, going up and singing that with them and especially even, you know, two weekends ago, going up in front of 45,000 people and singing seven and seven with them and going back up and singing Alabama with Cross Canadian Ragweed was it's hard to process that that's that's real.
42:36That was real life that that happened, that I got to sing with my my heroes at a sold out stadium in my backyard.
42:45It's hard to process anything these days because there's just so many things that have happened in such a short amount of time.
42:52But people ask me, they're like, what's it like?
42:56And I'm like, I don't even know how to make anyone comprehend what is going on in my life because I can't even comprehend.
43:03Well, that's your job now.
43:05Yeah, yeah.
43:07So I often ask the last question on this podcast.
43:10I'll ask people, what does it mean to you to be Southern?
43:15You know, as someone who grew up in Oklahoma, has such a strong connection there and then who's now moved back to Oklahoma.
43:26What does it mean to you to be an Oklahoman?
43:29You know, what does it mean to you to be from that place?
43:35I feel freedom every time I go home.
43:39I can drive for miles in any direction and just feel freedom of being.
43:48Of being on the planes.
43:52It's, you know, it's funny you say Southern because everyone's like, I don't know what really Oklahoma falls into.
43:57Is it the Midwestern?
43:58Is it Texas?
43:59You know, and and and the more that I've traveled around, the more that I realize that we're all pretty much alike.
44:06If we could all sit around a fire together and and but what makes Oklahoma so different is the people, the way that we are raised and and our upbringing is rough around the edges.
44:16But we're also some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
44:18And that's what it means to come from Oklahoma, because why I wrote Welcome to the Plains, it's it's it's kind of calling out the dirtier side of where I come from.
44:28It's not too hard to scratch the surface of history in Oklahoma and realize it's pretty messed up.
44:32And and and it's a hard place to live.
44:37You know, you have tornadoes.
44:38We used to have a whole bunch of earthquakes back when they were fracking in 2010 and then also wildfires and you don't get enough rain.
44:45And and to come out of Oklahoma, you have to work harder than everyone else.
44:51Well, keep doing what you're doing.
44:53And congrats on everything, Wyatt.
44:57You've had just a great run and you're doing some making some great music and connecting with a lot of people and hope to keep it up for a long time.
45:10Thank you very much.
45:11That means a lot.
45:12Thank you for having me, too.
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