Waylon Wyatt

One Liner:  Acoustic and a holler from an Arkansas kid who looks up to Zach Bryan

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia, but country

Home: Hackett, AR

Sunday.

Thoughts:  Dangit.  I'm never going to remember the names of all of these people.  Like Zach Bryan getting popular at the same time as Luke Bryan and Zac Brown.  Now I have this mishmash of Waylon Jennings and Wyatt Flores, who sounds like Zach Bryan.  What is my brain going to do with all of this information?  Also, another vibrato/tremolo mastermind going on here.  STOP IT.  On par with those lady singers singing in italics.  Not a fan.

I know you'll be shocked, but the kid does not have a Wikipedia page.  I say kid with specific reason, dude's photos online look like a 14 year old.  Instead, he is the ripe old age of 17, and was raised in Hackett, Arkansas.  He was inspired by Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan at age 15 to start writing songs.  He lightly blew up on TikTok, with over a million streams on there, and has translated that to some opening gigs for Dwight Yoakum.  Pretty slick.

Eight total songs available on Spotify, most of them collected onto the one EP, 2024's Til the Sun Goes Down.  Top track by a good bit is "Arkansas Diamond" with 39.9 million streams.

Like all of these tunes, the instrumentation is super basic (and well-done).  Three chords and a voice!  Well, not all of them.  He's got a song with a dude named Bayker Blankenship that involves drums and some other instruments.  I do not enjoy that song or the way Bayker spells his name.  But this guy in general reminds me of one of the solo dudes who was here last year, I can't put my finger on it.  This is his second-most streamed tune, called "Everything Under the Sun" with 17.3 million streams and this is the one that really reminds me of someone.  Now I need to go look at all of last year's artists.

Oh, it's the one about still being a lump of coal!  Dylan Gossett!  I knew I'd get there.  I gotta say, seeing him play that song live next to a lake makes me like it more.  That is probably dumb to say, but it is true.  His emotiveness in it sounds more real when I can see his face scrunching up.  Although, he should probably get that guitar in out of the rain.  I just got goose bumps on the end of that chorus.  That is a good tune.

Sure, I'd try this out.