“I don’t drink/never been drunk at all,” Waylon Wyatt sings in his song “O.D.” And for good reason: The Hackett, Arkansas, native is all of 18. But Wyatt also understands exactly who he’s singing to.
“I know that my music appeals to a younger audience, so I felt like adding that into the lyrics. It doesn’t make you look cool or anything. I’ve never been stoned either,” he says proudly, before rattling off a few more lines from “O.D.,” a track that appears on the recently released deluxe edition of his debut EP, Til the Sun Goes Down.
Wyatt is one of a crop of new, young songwriters going viral and landing record deals for the stripped-down country songs they record themselves singing in their bedrooms. Or in Wyatt’s case, in the kitchen of his parents’ Hackett home. One of those videos, of him crooning the raspy “Everything Under the Sun,” the first song he ever wrote, found an audience on TikTok. According to Wyatt, record labels soon came a’ courting.
“They started reaching out to me through Tiktok. And I’m like, ‘This has got to be a scam,’” he says. Until one label — Darkroom Records, the home of Billie Eilish — got creative. “I was wearing my dad’s construction cap in the video, and they called the number that was on it and scheduled a Zoom meeting with us.”
The meeting took place in the very kitchen were Wyatt created the songs that make up his EP (released via Music Soup and Darkroom). “They met me straight slap down where I record everything, right in my house,” he says. “I signed that paper, and then Mom made us a homecooked meal and we all feasted.”
Since inking his deal, Wyatt’s been cutting his teeth on the road opening for artists like Dwight Yoakam and Drayton Farley. He’s also played shows with Dylan Gossett, another Red Dirt-adjacent songwriter who first popped online a little over a year ago. Wyatt’s been savvy enough to join forces with his peers too: He and Bayker Blankenship, a 19-year-old from Tennessee, dropped the collab “Jailbreak” in September. It’s already accumulated more than 17 million streams on Spotify.
Like with many country artists his age, he’s a huge fan of Kentucky songwriter Tyler Childers. But he also cites Hank Williams, Turnpike Troubadours, and Wyatt Flores (the first concert he ever attended) as influences. “And Waylon Jennings,” he quickly adds. “Heck, I’m named after the man.”
In March, Wyatt will embark on his first headlining tour of clubs, armed with only his guitar. Still in his senior year of high school back in Arkansas, he booked the dates around his spring break.
“I could be touring, and then the next day, I’m sitting right back in the classroom opening my English textbook to page three,” he says. “I’m an adult now, but to be completely honest, nothing really has changed. I’m still under the roof of my parents and abide by all the rules. I got a curfew.”
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