Koe Wetzel's '9 Lives' Arrives

07-19-2024

(EBM) For nearly a decade, the name Koe Wetzel has carried with it an "if you know, you know" reputation. To a devoted cult audience, the Texas singer-songwriter has been a genre disrupter, mixing country with rock, hip-hop, and grunge; a live performer as powerful and unpredictable as a tornado; and a notorious party animal who never met a bottle of tequila he couldn't finish. Wetzel remains all of those things, but on his new album 9 Lives, available now via Columbia Records, he proves that there's more to his story - and that a mass audience awaits. Listen here.

Produced predominantly by Gabe Simon (Noah Kahan's Stick Season) alongside a string of trusted collaborators like Josh Serrato, Amy Allen, Carrie K and Sam Harris (X Ambassadors), 9 Lives finds the Pittsburg, Texas, native showing off his versatility as a writer and his prowess as an interpreter of songs.

"The way Gabe Simon goes into making music, he cares so much about it," Wetzel explains of his producer. "He comes at it wanting to get everything out of the songs. Gabe came in and extracted everything from me; he got me talking about stuff, everything going on in my life. Usually, I go in with all the melodies, and then write the lyrics. Not this time."

Simon went for the jugular. Laughing, Wetzel says, "Every song we wrote or found, we kept. There was a freedom: we sat down and talked about the sh*t going on in my life. By pulling all of that out of me, going in the vocal booth, that's how free I was - and the most open I've ever been. You can hear it in the songs."

You can also hear the urgency. Recorded at legendary Sonic Ranch in the border town of Tornillo, Texas, as well as Melody Mountain in Stephensville, Texas, they had that Lone Star fire. Add sessions at Nashville's Blackbird and historic RCA Studio A, it alchemized a rush to 9 Lives that's palpable. Recorded largely live, the tracks went down almost as lightning fast as the writing, with eight of the songs written in a pair of three-day bursts; one in El Paso, the other in Nashville.

A bleary-eyed, scene-setting lament "Continued" turns into a full-on rocking country proposition. A kick drum pumps and a chicken-wire electric guitar drops a few notes as the swaggering "9 Lives (Black Cat)" leans into an unrepentant catalog of misadventures survived. Bar fights, rodeo clowns, preachers, dealers, the twins next door, cheap tequila, bathroom snow and "a 12-pack, two dime bags, flat-lined twice, just to come right back" make a vivid world that only the fearless survive. And so it goes...

"Every record's almost turning a new leaf, always a left turn because of how honest I am. I want fans to know that there's a different side of me, not just the sex, drugs, and rock & roll Koe that they may have heard about online," Wetzel says. "I've grown up a little bit. I'm no longer the 20-year-old kid that's partying down and getting thrown in jail all the time. 9 Lives reveals a vulnerable side that people may not be used to hearing."

Grown does not mean completely settled down, though. For everyone who caught the lightning bolt that was the state-of-scrapping musician Noise Complaint, there's rowdy singalong "Bar Song," all the raw swerve'n'blister in the high-flying autobiographic "Twister," the atmospheric truth-telling that defines his "Damn Near Normal" and barn-storming take on how he keeps running while missing that certain one in "Runnin' Low."

"I like to drink," he says, owning the obvious. On a record that conversationally drops Ambien, Xanax, El Paso dust, blow, THC... he knows his way around the contraband in his songs. "It's a family tradition. My dad's side is all Southern Baptist: no drinking, no cursing - though he loved Creedence, ZZ Top's 'LaGrange,' BTO, Petty. My mom's Methodist: let's party, go hard.

Wetzel's diverse musical background is evident on one of the album's most surprising tracks, a cover of the late XXXTentacion's "Depression & Obsession."

"I always loved that era of music - that Lil Peep era, XXXTentacion - he was one of my favorite artists out of that group," Wetzel reflects. "I feel like there's a lot of music that we didn't get from him, so it's kind of just a nod to him and I hope we did it justice."

A Lone Star native through and through, he was also heavily impacted by Charlie Robison's Good Times, the album arriving in Wetzel's life as a Christmas gift in seventh grade. A Texas Music sensation who had signed to a major Nashville label then bailed, the songs, attitude and harder sound from Robison captured Wetzel's imagination. He also gravitated to some of the deeper, soul-baring songs.

To homage that spark, Wetzel offers a minor-keyed strum that's as much low-impact Nirvana as it is High Plains Drifter on "Reconsider." That slow-moving lament comes from Robison's Better Days, with Wetzel realizing along the way that it - like many Texas music classics - was originally by Keith Gattis.

"I thought Charlie had written a lot of them, but then I find out about Keith Gattis. I never got to meet him; he and Charlie died six months apart. I have so many emotions right now about all that, you can hear them."

For a guy who is fully a man's man, he also has that romantic tenderness that undermines his machismo. Whether Gabe Simon and Mick Coogan's flowing tangle of how hard love is on "Hatchet" or his own smoky, haunted "Sweet Dreams," the notion of love that might still be salvaged comes with a throb that pulls listeners in.

Just as potent is Wetzel's ability to let go of the rope. Sometimes hilarious - the sweet pop/folk "Leigh" recounts his losing record with women, particularly those whose names all have that suffix in common: Haleigh, Baleigh, Kaleigh and more - and other times flat indifferent - the soaring "High Road" (with a version featuring rising star and labelmate Jessie Murph currently delivering as his Country radio debut) - he's not afraid to get out of something that ain't working.

That sense of self permeates 9 Lives, especially the closer, "Last Outlaw Alive," with a ragged gravitas to the loping celebration of a dying way of life. Laconic doesn't have to mean sleepy. Like the many vibes and rhythms on Wetzel's album, he - and the players - deliver a spark.

"The thing about this album is writing can be grueling. But this time, after writing a song, there was always that adrenaline rush. What do you do with that? Put it into the songs, no matter how fast or slow."

Having defined a rogue rock/cowboy ethos over his album, Wetzel found a new intensity. "Being on the road for so long, you start to think you've hit a plateau. You wonder, 'Is this what I'll be known for? Will these songs be what it's all about?'

"I get a lot of joy playing the older songs. But you want to grow. I love playing those records I grew up on, so I understand. But I've been honing and growing a certain sound, and we're hitting it. This is where the rest of it begins..."

9 Lives Track List:
(songwriters in parentheses; label copy available here)
"Continued" Skit
"9 Lives (Black Cat)" (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Gabe Simon)
"Depression & Obsession" (XXXTentacion cover: Jahseh Onfroy)
"Damn Near Normal" (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Gabe Simon, Carrie Karpinen, Sam Harris)
"Leigh" (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Gabe Simon)
"Twister" (Ropyr Wetzel, Steve Rusch, Ben Burgess, Josh Serrato)
"High Road" with Jessie Murph (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Gabe Simon, Carrie Karpinen, Jessie Murph, Laura Veltz, Josh Serrato)
"Reconsider" (Keith Gattis cover: Charles John Brocco, Keith Quenton Gattis)
"Hatchet" (Gabe Simon, Mike Coogan)
"Sweet Dreams" (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Josh Serrato, Gabe Simon, Sam Harris)
"Runnin' Low" (Ropyr Wetzel, Amy Allen, Sam Harris, Gabe Simon, Ben Burgess)
"Bar Song" (Blake "Shy" Carter, Breyan Isaac, Dernst "D'Mile" Emile II, Dave Gibson)
"Last Outlaw Alive" (Josh Serrato, Ben Burgess, Sam Harris)