Waylon Wyatt was not particularly interested in sharing the song he’d written on the porch of an Oklahoma trailer in August 2023. Earlier that summer, he and his dad had left their Arkansas home and headed a few hours west to spend the season doing construction near Eufaula. Most days after work, Waylon would sit outside with a $75 six-string from Walmart, belting out tunes by the likes of Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, or, yes, the legend for whom he was named, Waylon Jennings.
But one day, he wrote one himself, “Everything Under the Sun,” a major chord anthem about terminal heartbreak. He texted a friend a recording, just to know what he thought of what he’d done. That friend, Nathan, was floored. He loved it so much he insisted Waylon share it to TikTok, a platform the 16-year-old had rarely used. Still, a few days later, his neck and tank top still dirty from the day’s labor, he recorded himself on the porch, fumbling through a funny introduction—“Howdy there, TikTok. Wait, no one says howdy”—but nailing the song itself. In a matter of days, record labels, which had found his phone number by reading the hat he wore for his dad’s construction company, began calling. “People didn’t just like the song—they liked the intro and everything,” says Waylon, laughing. “They realized I was a real person, not faking it for the camera.”
Indeed, in the year or so since Waylon posted that clip, a growing legion of fans have continued to respond to that realness. Now 17 and still in high school in Arkansas, Waylon has become a burgeoning country star with onstage bona fides, a remarkable clutch of songs to his name, and 1.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. He recorded his debut EP, Til the Sun Goes Down, at the kitchen table of his family’ house in Hackett, stopping countless times so that his mother and the town’s mail carrier, Brandy, could cook dinner. (The menu? Mostly Southern comfort food, including fried chicken.) Already with 55 million streams, it is an astonishing start for a singer-songwriter with a seemingly inborn knack for big country hooks and back-home imagery.
Before Waylon was a teenager, he went through a familiar country-kid phase as an awkward rural rapper. (Rap handle? Slaughter the Potter, for his last name.) “That did not suit me well,” he says with a grin. “I did get made fun of for it, not gonna lie.” Around the same time, though, his older brother died. He’d taught himself to play guitar through YouTube videos, and Waylon soon picked it himself in tribute. Though he played most every sport his little school offered, he admits he was never very good at any of them. Music became a steady hobby, a corollary to his favorite subjects—lunch and getting home.
Two years ago, on a construction site with his dad, Waylon heard the Tyler Childers misfit anthem “Feathered Indians” and felt something shift, a calling. He learned and internalized his whole catalog to the point that his parents even suggested he try something new. “My mom and dad are probably the most humbling people you’ll ever meet,” he says. “You think they’d be No.
1 fans, and they are, but they’ll also tell you when you sucked. My dad told me I had to find my own voice. So that’s what I did, trying to write my own songs.”
Despite his aversion to academics, Waylon seems to have been paying attention in English class. (He once rapped his way through a book report about a book he’d never read and nearly got a perfect score.) His writing is preternaturally sharp, hinging on simple but powerful images. In “Arkansas Diamond,” he uses the nickname of his home state and the horizons of nearby Texas to glorify a crush, to show her moving freely and stunningly through the world. A tribute to his late brother who brought him to guitar in the first place, “Phoning Heaven” uses an ordinary idea—a phone call, any time of day—to talk about the extraordinary complexity of grief, how it hangs about in unspoken omnipresence, like air itself. And, of course, there’s “Everything Under the Sun,” a laser-printed snapshot of the loneliness that lingers after a breakup, and this song radiates with an astonishing first-cut-is-the-deepest regret. “I really love a good lyrical song,” he says, “because you can learn a lesson from it.”
Waylon has become a phenomenon of sorts, his home-recorded videos of plainspoken songs earning him a loyal fan base before he’s even earned his high-school diploma. But he remains modest about all of it, noting that there’s been no special treatment at school. He continues to write and record mostly by himself, and that’s the way he’d like to keep it for a while—solo, open, vulnerable, and real. He did write and record “Jailbreak” with fellow country traveler Bayker Blakenship, but he’s quick to note their bond felt more like an instant friendship than a business relationship. One day, he imagines, there will be a band behind him, but for now, he just wants to belt out these things alone, whether on the porch in Oklahoma or at the table in Arkansas.
Last summer, almost exactly a year after his porch recording, Waylon got on a plane for the first time. He flew to West Virginia for one of his first shows. It didn’t go particularly well, he thinks, a case of understandable nerves and newness encroaching upon the songs themselves. But he’s since spent many weekends flying to shows, his dad always accompanying him. He toured with Dwight Yoakam (and, yes, missed a little school) and, not long ago began headlining and selling out shows, his first being an instant sellout in Arkansas for the hometown crowd. This is the start for a bright and real new voice in country music, as Waylon recently made his Americana Fest debut, is gearing up for Stagecoach and a headlining tour of his own. He has a voice that will feel instantly familiar but also urgent, one that you are sure to hear far into the future.
