Koe Wetzel sips an early-afternoon cocktail in the lobby of the W Hotel Nashville as he recounts the number of times excessive drinking has landed him in jail. Three times, he muses. As he speaks, explaining that he’s never done anything “unforgivable,” his phone screen lights up to show his wallpaper: Jesus holding a lamb.
Contradiction is the essence of Wetzel. If he weren’t recording songs that celebrate the pursuit of alcohol and women, he says he’d be a married father of two living in Texas as a preacher or a construction worker. He thinks he’d be happy with either scenario. But because Wetzel loves life on the road, he’s not currently embracing the typical American dream.
“I know my mom cares about me because she sends me a prayer every morning,” says Wetzel, who maintains it’s not as outrageous as people think. “But after reassuring her, she’s fine.”
Wetzel’s mother might not be convinced her son is on the right track, or even between the guardrails, after hearing his new album, 9 livesWetzel co-wrote eight of the album’s 13 songs, which delve into a series of conversations ranging from “banging” women, as he puts it on “Leigh,” to the difference between forgiving and forgetting on “Hatchet.” On “9 Lives (Black Cat),” he brags about excessive drug use, but then laments it on “Damn Near Normal.”
He sings, I drink 10 times the weight of a sober man / I don’t start my day until 2 a.m. / And I hate it, so I take / A little melatonin and a bag of weed plus a handful of Xans just so I can sleep.
“He’s a very sweet guy and at the same time very rock and roll,” says Gabe Simon, who produced most of Wetzel’s album. “I find the duality of his existence very appealing and exciting. He’s a sweet guy who’s also very funny. And he’s also a tough guy.”
“Damn Near Normal” is the first song Wetzel and Simon wrote together (along with Amy Allen, Carrie Karpinen and Sam Harris). They recorded 9 lives at Sonic Ranch near El Paso, Texas. Simon remembers Wetzel coming in and starting talking.
“He said, ‘To be honest with you, man, staying up until 3 in the morning and doing all this to have the energy to be alive and play a show every night is almost normal for me,’” Simon says. “I feel like the job of the producer, and maybe the songwriter, is to uplift people like him who feel like no one understands the life they live.”
Simon wanted to transform the vocabulary of Wetzel’s life into songs that the public could digest. But Wetzel also wants to keep much of his world private. When he’s not on tour, he seeks refuge in a lakeside house he bought a couple of years ago in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Texas. When he’s there, the singer is introverted. He goes fishing, doesn’t talk to anyone and orders takeout or cooks at home.
“It’s like my little sanctuary,” she says. “It’s my home away from home.”
The place isn’t the first Wetzel has purchased in his hometown, either. After finding success, one of the first things he did was buy the land where he grew up. His grandparents still live on the property, and Wetzel wanted to make sure it stayed in the family. The quaint home is featured in the music video for “Damn Near Normal,” where Wetzel is shown in his battered childhood home looking through a photo album his grandmother Carolyn made for him.
Wetzel hesitates between apologizing for his erratic behavior and feeling proud of it. He recalls watching a Steve-O documentary whose premise was, “When you give people so much shit, that’s what you’re going to get in return.”
“Maybe that’s OK,” Wetzel says. “I’ve just been myself and then they’ve made their own assumptions. Somehow, the situation has escalated to this point.”
Simon hopes that the songs of 9 lives To give people a glimpse into Wetzel’s universe: the hard and the tender.
“When we were making music together, it was all about his heart, being honest with his feelings and giving him an undertone of confidence that didn’t just give the impression that he was vulnerable, but that he was also a tough guy,” says Simon. “He had to be honest, but also bulletproof.”
Wetzel doesn’t like being criticized for using the word “banging” in a song and jokes that he hopes his girlfriend doesn’t think too closely about the meaning of some of his lyrics.
“You make mistakes and you learn from them,” Wetzel says. “You grow from that. Every time I got arrested for being a drunken idiot, I could have just stayed home. It’s been a while since I’ve been arrested, so it’s been great. I’d rather not wake up in a jail cell covered in piss, you know what I mean?”
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