The Ranch Sit-down with Koe Wetzel & Shayne Hollinger

you're listening to the leaderboard, sit down with your host Jane Hollinger, oh man, welcome back to Stephenville, Texas buddy, it's good to be back in Stephenville, it's good to see you again, great smiling face, I feel like I can see you once or twice. twice a year and every time I see you it's like we have a great time and, you know, I just remember them when we played, you know, for two people, two people, those were the waiters, so, you. I've been incredibly busy, do you remember where you live? Oh man, I was saying that to someone the other day.

I think I have to stay home the last few days, but at that moment it was like I had. I slept in my bed four nights in three months, so yeah, we'd be there long enough to do the laundry, pack it back up, and come back and man, it's been crazy, but so blessed, and you know, man, was there ever a point? where you think I don't know, man, maybe this music thing isn't for me and then all of a sudden, okay, I got this, yeah, well, usually, like, Friday mornings, I wake up and I'm like Yes, I'm going back. to bed you know the hangovers are a lot worse now that I'm getting a little older, but sure, man, everything's great, we've uh, man, the crowd's been crazy, you know, it's nothing any of us could have wait.

I know five years ago, but man we've come a long way and it's been crazy, I think the biggest question is always why code Wetzel, yeah, well I mean, that weird guy is weird, right? , but I mean you don't even have talent? I remember, I remember you telling me that like last year, two years ago, and I was drunk enough to be like, oh, is he playing with me? and then he got into my head and I thought, well, I can't. punch Shay in the face, you can, it's a win-win, so you've been doing it, uh, I've seen a lot of collaborations with other artists now, that's really cool, like you're expanding your horizons, you know, going out and stuff It is always.

It's been your thing, you know he's not a Texas country where you were never really a little country at first, but you've always had this love for all different types of music and now you're at a point in your career. Can you experiment with all that? How wonderful that man is. He's been great. Like you said, we started in that country, the country of Texas. Everybody, I feel like in Texas, wants to, you know, make the deal with the country of Texas. and you can do it for a while and then man we just found our fan base which is really cool and early in the run so you know we gotta get our fan base solid and you know. the people who really enjoyed our music and now I'm reaching out to you, you know, I met, you know, other genres of music, you know, I don't like just one genre of music, right?

I love all genres of music that There are, you know, and just those things. weird and it stands out to people, so you know, every time we signed with Colombia, that opened up a lot of different doors for me to be able to come in and pick different genres of music and, you know, work with these amazing guys. artists, so when you sign with a, you know a group like Columbia or at first you're nervous because you know that's it, you hear the horror stories of some bands in the past, like man, they made us completely change and we could only Hagan this and just do that, but I think the good thing about the Texas music scene is that you guys have built a huge following before you get to that point where you come to the table and say, no, we're going to do it. .

This way, yes, you know if you want to sign us or not, yes, that was a deal with Colombia and that's one of the reasons we went with them because you know every other record label we've ever talked to. they wanted to do this, we're going to do that and Columbia says, you know what we're going to be in freedom, you know you've got something going so we'll let you do whatever you want and we'll help you in any way we can and they've They've been fantastic with this, so it's been fun working with them, man, and you know, it's been crazy around here, so everyone's always asking.

You, you joked a while ago that the country album, the country album, will be straight up Bluegrass. I was talking to Mason the other day, it's like, man, if you guys made a pure bluegrass album that would blow people away so we wouldn't know. what to expect man well I feel like the genre is going towards Bluegrass a little bit in the sense that the folk and that Americana sound sounds and man we have. I went to El Paso for a month. uh, early January or free in January and I just went out to write, you know, I took out a bunch of artists and it was just a writing session, buddy and buddy, I went out for three or four days and I was like man, it's not like there's forgotten how to put together a country song, just saying I was away from it for so long, yeah, and I was putting together for it, so I think the first song we wrote was a rock era. song man, it's going to be a lot harder, this is going to be work, yeah, but man, we came up with so many different sounds, it was really cool, so I think, uh, we'll get away from it, get away from it, what I What I got out of this was that you know the country record is coming out.

I don't know if it will be this year or next year or in five years. It's definitely there. We wrote a lot before a country record. We have a lot of good country songs, but I don't know when it's coming out, man, and this sound that we've been working on for so long is very easy for us, so this is something that you want to do something different. so you also want to make sure it's perfect, you don't want to rush it, you know and I'm not trying to do that, I mean, it's been the deal from the beginning, you know, we never wanted to be someone else we always wanted to be ourselves, right, yeah we're creating this sound, it's us, you know why not keep trying to do that?

Absolutely man, you guys are doing some really cool stuff too. Thank you.