Wesko

Looking out from land-locked Duplin County in southeast North Carolina, Wesko crafts hearty and heavy country music offering a clear-eyed glimpse at life in 21st century America. The man born Wesley Keith Holmes embraces traditional sounds of the genre — where you can still write a proper tune with only “three chords and the truth,” he contends — to illuminate the real in the stories he tells of busted hearts, hard times, tough wins, big celebrations, and coming together to get through it all. Wesko grew up in “the boonies,” raised by his mom on a steady diet of gritty ’90s rock and classic twang. Eventually he came to love the music of fellow Tarheel Eric Church, plus Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell, but he only started playing out of boredom. At 19, between attending University of Mount Olive and working as an erosion control foreman, he was on the road a lot, and picked up a guitar to pass the time — it became a passion. Within a year he was writing songs, and at age 21 he stepped onstage for the first time on a dare from a stranger at a Nashville bar, bringing a hush over the venue and people in off the street. Though he still runs a log loader at his family’s sawmill, Wesko’s been on the path since, sharing unplugged sets that underscore his raw talent, playing the Concert For Carolina benefit at Luke Combs’ request, and releasing a string of moving singles like “Mr. Tennessee,” about a long-distance love doomed by the subject’s refusal to leave North Carolina. Producer Ross Copperman (Luke Bryan, Kenney Chesney, Keith Urban) once dubbed his songs “grown-ass man music.” Why? As Wesko puts it: “Because it means something. We’re not talking about nothing. These songs speak to the culture I grew up in, to the people I’ve known my whole life, to what made me who I am.”