Wyatt Flores Opens Up About Why He Was ‘Scared’ to Make His Debut Album & Finding Balance Amid Career Success
As introspective, detailed singer-songwriters such as Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan and Tyler Childers have topped Billboard charts and sold out amphitheaters and stadiums recently, Stillwater, Oklahoma native Wyatt Flores is primed to ascend to their ranks with his full-fledged debut album Welcome to the Plains, which came out last Friday (Oct. 18) via Island Records.
The album follows a trio of EPs: 2022’s The Hutson Sessions, 2023’s Life Lessons, and this year’s Half Life that have led to Flores’ rise in the public consciousness thanks to a blend of his unrefined, folksy sound and unflinchingly honest lyricism. It’s made him the latest in a strong lineage of musicians such as Cross Canadian Ragweed, Stoney LaRue, Turnpike Troubadours and other architects of the Red Dirt sound that has risen from Oklahoma since the 1970s.
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Flores, 23, began releasing songs in 2021, but it was “Please Don’t Go,” a raw-throated, emotional plea for a loved one to refrain from taking their own life, gained traction just over a year ago, ultimately earning over 154 million streams on Spotify alone. He’s followed such resonant songs as “Break My Bones” and “Losing Sleep.”
The songs’ success threw Flores into an ascendant surge, along with it a grind of being on the road, playing shows with 49 Winchester and headlining his own rapidly growing shows.
“We just played a 3,300-capacity venue in Oklahoma City,” he notes to Billboard. “The last time we played OKC, it was like a 500-capacity room. It’s crazy.”
He made his Grand Ole Opry debut seven months ago and played Stagecoach and the revered venue Red Rocks Amphitheatre for the first time this year. He also earned a nomination for emerging act of the year at this year’s Americana Music Honors & Awards. But when it came time to record Welcome to the Plains, Flores tells Billboard he was “so scared, honestly.”
“I sat there in Asheville and just went over the lyrics,” he recalls of recording at Echo Mountain Studios there, as well as in Los Angeles and Nashville. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m good enough for an album yet.’ But it came to a point where I was like, ‘Just let the songs be what they are and capture the moments of where I’ve been without overthinking it.’”
Welcome to the Plains was born during what Flores calls “a really dark spot in my life,” as he was meeting the demands of his skyrocketing career while battling anxiety and imposter syndrome, and also struggling to process and grieve the loss of a few people close to him, including Flores’s maternal grandfather, who took his own life in 2023.
In song and in conversation, Flores makes no secret that his utmost motivation lies not in massive sold-out shows, but in helping listeners through hard times. In releasing songs such as “Please Don’t Go,” Flores has also had to navigate the emotional weight of realizing that while his songs can be a balm and healing agent for some, music can’t always be a life-saving force. He delves into that feeling the new album’s “Oh Susannah,” particularly on lyrics such as “Why did I believe that I could save you, darling/ Without killing me?”
He had previously included a version of The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” on his Half Life EP, but in February, Flores had his own emotional moment onstage, breaking down during a performance in Kansas City, Missouri. “This is the only thing I ever cared about and for some reason I can’t figure out, I don’t feel a thing,” he told fans during a vulnerable moment in that show. “I’m struggling with it. I’m sorry, guys. I’ve gotta tell my truth. I don’t know why… I’m sorry that I can’t give y’all what y’all deserve. And I love y’all and I’m very grateful for y’all being here.”
Flores took a four-week break from recording and touring, cancelling a slate of shows and seeking help at mental-health counseling facility Onsite near Nashville.
“I’ve learned so much because, truthfully, people don’t go through this phase in their life until they are maybe 30,” Flores says. “I went to Onsite when I quit the tour, and I looked around the room and there were maybe three other people my age and the rest were mostly in their 60s. I felt like the last thing I want to do in this life is be that age and look back and go, ‘How have I been unhappy this entire time?’ I started doing a lot of personal work and I’m still working on myself.
“I knew I had to be a better leader than what I was,” he continues. “I wasn’t taking the time to process things that I needed to, and I wasn’t putting up boundaries in my own life between me and the fans. It just crippled me to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I was like, ‘I don’t even know if I like the music’—and that’s the only thing I ever loved.”
Unlike the primarily acoustic-driven songs on his previous releases, Welcome to the Plains is a harder-edged, full band project. The songs on the new album that flowed from that time away from the spotlight are often anything but somber, such as the driving heartland rock and nod to Red Dirt in the album’s title track, which he wrote with Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor. Elsewhere, in the pulsing “Don’t Wanna Say Goodnight,” he longs for his last minutes with a lover to linger before they have to part ways.
“You would’ve thought that I would have written some of the most depressing songs, but I had this weird way of daydreaming about a better time, I guess. That’s where it was all coming from, just wanting to get out of that dark place,” he says. However, multiple songs, such as “The Good Ones” and “Angels Over You,” do touch on mortality, as does “When I Die,” a song Flores calls “the weirdest love song I’ve ever written.” The song brings levity on lines such as “When I’m in the ground, if I hear you talking s—t/ I hope I get the chance to be a ghost and scare your kids,” while also weaving in heartfelt sentiments.
“I get that humor from my dad,” he says. “I’ve written so many songs about living and dying because I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, so that’s where my head space was. I’m sure people are going to be listening to it around the time they’re grieving over someone and I hope it gives them a bit of a smile instead of just sobbing.”
Flores’s father is a retired welder and former drummer, while Flores’s family also runs cattle. Growing up in Oklahoma, Flores credits his family’s hard-working lifestyle with instilling the discipline that has benefited him on the road.
“Without that life, I don’t know that I’d be responsible enough to do this,” he says. “You’re up at 5:30 in the morning when you’re 12 years old, going out to the barn, working in the freezing cold, then doing your homework then going to school. Hard work and dedication is where it’s at.”
Flores grew up in a household filled with a mix of country and blues. He briefly attended Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, before realizing the time he spent sneaking into local clubs to play music held more value for him. He eventually moved to Nashville, and immersed himself in folk and Americana music, including the works of Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson.
“I became obsessed with that music. It’s a huge influence,” he says. His new album offers a sampling of sounds, with deep emotional excavations sitting alongside flashes of sharp wit. (“I’m still figuring out what my [own] sound is,” he explains.)
“I also want to be a motivational speaker,” he adds. “I’ve always wanted to do speeches. I want to be good enough to where I can do that as a part-time thing. I’m also working on a bucket list of starting my own cattle company, branching off from what my parents have. We’re just waiting on buying land right now. We used to have 80 head back in the day. I want to get into the show cattle world again, to give kids a chance to show cattle, for those who don’t really have the money to do it, to let them learn from it.”
Eight months removed from that pivotal onstage moment in Missouri, Flores says he’s learning how to just be himself amid rising acclaim but knows he can always find refuge in Stillwater.
“It’s an odd feeling. I truly feel like I can just come back here and be myself, though I’m taking pictures [with fans] every single time I go to town. It’s an odd feeling because I went from being a nobody to everyone knowing who I am. It’s a feeling of being able to hide in plain sight, and then can’t hide anywhere. I don’t like hiding myself from people. I just keep going out and about and showing people I’m just a normal human.”
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