Where the heck has this video been hiding?
I’ve always loved Koe Wetzel and Parker McCollum’s duet “Love,” which was featured on Koe’s 2016 album Noise Complaint, but it’s pretty damn hard to find any sort of footage of them performing it live together aside from the studio cut.
Koe will typically play the fan-favorite deep cut at his live shows, and Parker too from time to time, but I really don’t think I’ve ever seen them do it in person together before… until today.
At the Boots on the Beach Festival in the Bahamas back in 2018 (Casey Donahew’s annual two-week tropical Texas music festival), the duo played it for a live audience one night, and it’s just as good as you’d imagine having these two in the same space singin’ live together.
Koe even let the crowd in on a little bit of the inspiration behind the deep and brooding tune, saying:
“Me and Parker wrote this song about a stripper from San Angelo, Texas.”
Also, it looks like Mr. Parker wasn’t doing too hot after what was likely a wild week and weekend, and I was worried he was gonna fall asleep there on his guitar once or twice during the song. Might’ve been another wild night like the one he talked about on Theo Von’s podcast a couple weeks ago…
And is it just me, or do Koe’s vocals sound even better on this acoustic live version than the actual studio recording?
He sounds fantastic here, and the song just hits on another level played so stripped-down and raw:
The studio version:
