Koe Wetzel singin’ a little Garth is the cover I never knew I needed.
His bass player, Mason, has been sharing tons of cool vintage videos of Koe and the band over on TikTok, and there’s a lot of good stuff to check out if you have an hour to burn scrolling through all of them.
But one of the best ones he’s shared so far is a cover Koe did of Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” back in 2015. And actually, it’s pretty rare to hear Koe do any sort of cover at all, which makes this video in particular all the more special.
Koe and the band played it as part of the Ranch Factor singing competition, which is hosted by local Texas radio station The Ranch.
Of course, “The Thunder Rolls” is one of Garths’ signature songs, which he co-wrote with Pat Alger. It was released in April of 1991 as the fourth and final single from his No Fences album, and peaked at #1 on the Billboard U.S. Hot Country Songs later that year.
Though you can tell the video is definitely from 2015 in terms of the quality (or lack thereof), and you can’t really see Koe’s face all that well, I love hearing his voice on a 90’s country classic like this.
Parker McCollum actually mentioned this on an episode of the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast not too long ago, and I think it’s true that Koe doesn’t always get enough credit when it comes to how good his vocals really are.
And of course, Koe has mentioned on more than one occasion that he’d been planning to do a full-blown country album the day he turned 30 (which was in July), and I’m still holding out hope that it’s coming.
He released the new single for his forthcoming, unofficially announced album “April Showers” in April and teased another new one on Thursday, but previously said that this new project is “something to chew on” before the country record.
If he really does it, I think we need a cover of this on the final tracklist:
“April Showers”
