A story for the ages.
Last year, Parker McCollum stopped by comedian Theo Von’s podcast This Past Weekend and ended up telling a wild tale about the first tour he and Koe ever went on together.
A fan of the show submitted a question asking Parker about his good friend and Texas rockstar, the aforementioned Koe Wetzel, wanting to know something funny about the duo, who have been friends for quite a few years now, that we may not’ve heard before.
And Parker delivered.
Here’s how it goes…
Back in 2017, they embarked on their first Naughty or Nice tour, which always took place the week before Christmas:
“There’s one in particular that comes to mind. Man, I haven’t talked about this in a long time. We were playing in Waco, Texas, at this place called The Backyard.
We used to do this acoustic tour during Christmastime, him and I, even before we had tour buses. The first year we did it, we were just in a van together.”
And as you can imagine, there was a lot of fun had off stage, which Parker admitted sometimes led to a lackluster performance during the show:
“The level of entertainment was just unbelievably underwhelming, ‘cuz we were just so messed up every night by the time we got on stage.
It was a lot of fun. And the first year we ever did it, we played at The Backyard, and before we even went on stage, we were floored, dude, like, I don’t even remember being on stage.
After the show, he wanted to go to the titty bar.”
And this is where things start to go south real quick…
Apparently, this particular establishment wasn’t exactly the standard, so to speak:
“And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the titty bar in Waco, but it’s smaller than this room.
There’s like two dancers, and that’s never been my thing. I’ve never been a fan of, I never wanted to have to pay to touch, you know what I mean? But Koe loves ’em, loves ’em, dude.
He may be buried in one of those one day.
I don’t who drove us, an Uber, or somebody drove us to the worst… it’s like hall of fame not hall of fame. You know, worst hall of fame ever titty bar.”
So they get inside, and not but 30 seconds after Koe ordered a drink, it went flying into the mirror that shattered into a million pieces on the floor:
“So we go in there, and we have a few shots, and no girls dancing or anything, we’re in there for like 3o seconds and he orders a drink, and the room’s very small.
And he picks the drink up in a glass and just slams it against the mirror on the wall, and just shatters f*ckin’ everywhere.
And I’m like, ‘Dude, we’re literally, we’re either going to jail or we’re gonna die.’ Like it was a scary situation.”
But if you think Koe was in the least bit worried, think again…
“And he just doesn’t give a f*ck, dude. He is just, like… that is his titty bar.”
At this point, it’s 1:30 in the morning (now Wednesday) in Waco, and they have no ride or anywhere to go.
While Parker is sitting there on his phone trying to figure out how to get them out (and still drunk off his ass), he looks over and realizes Koe is crawling in the middle of the road on all fours towards oncoming traffic:
“I’m sittin’ there f*cked up on my phone, trying to find a way to get us out of there, and I look over, and he is in the road on all fours, crawling at oncoming traffic. True f*ckin’ story.
And I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh my God, he’s gonna get hit by a f*ckin’ car, but I’m too f*cked up to do anything.
So eventually he gets up off the road, and somehow or another, somebody came and got us and took us back to the venue.”
Koe obviously made it out of the road unscathed, but the story doesn’t stop there.
The venue they had played at that night had an apartment attached for the artists to stay at, and when they got back, Koe still had a hankering to destroy some more walls:
“We go in the f*ckin’ apartment, he starts kicking holes in the wall and he’s like screaming at me in the face to kick a hole in the wall. I don’t wanna kick a hole in the wall.
And he’s like, ‘You’re not f*ckin’ going to bed until you kick a hole in the wall.’
So I have to kick a hole in the wall, and I get even more f*cked up and I end up laying on this little air mattress in all my clothes.”
But the good thing about being friends with Koe is that he’s never gonna let you sleep with all your clothes on:
“And I wake up at like 5:30 in the morning, Koe is still awake, yanking my boots off. And he’s just going ‘I’ll never let you sleep in your boots, P. I’ll never let..’ and just yanking my clothes off of me.
That was like one of the first times him and I had been on the road together, and I was like, this guy means business.”
All’s well that ends well, I guess, right?
Koe later appeared on an episode of the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast and confirmed that everything Parker said in the story was true, except for the fact Koe says Parker was all about kicking holes in the wall, too, so take that for what you will…
And though I can’t say I’m necessarily surprised that it was such a wild story, I can say I didn’t really expect to hear about Koe shattering mirrors and crawling down a road with cars whizzing by.
But they both made it out alive and lived to tell the tale, and if you don’t believe Koe’s rock star persona is genuine (because it is, though Parker mentioned several times what a sweet and generous guy he really is), just listen to Parker tell the story himself:
