We talk with the up-and-coming country artist about his life and music.
Something old, something new, and all things 24-karat country. That’s the best way to describe up-and-comer Waylon Hanel’s third studio album, When Waylon Came to Nashville, a well-nigh-irresistible mix of covers of songs by Billy Don Burns and Bernie Nelson, brand new cuts, and previously released singles.
Chief among those recycled singles: “Tow Truck Driver,” a seriocomically plaintive tune about a guy whose gal ran off with — you guessed it! — a tow truck driver. Cowboys & Indians is proud, and highly amused, to debut the new music video for the song, in which Waylon appears as a lovelorn dude who tries to drown his sorrows with Budweiser. Unfortunately, it appears his sorrows have learned how to swim.
A native of Millington, Michigan, Hanel is a 24-year-old self-taught old-school country singer-songwriter who started recording his music when he was barely out of his teens. He officially arrived in November 2022 with his self-titled, five-song debut EP, led by the straightforward country song about a cowboy, “He Don’t Mind.” He has been building an enthusiastic fan base ever since and opened for country heavyweights like Trace Adkins, Travis Tritt, Ashley McBryde, Chris Cagle, Walker Hayes, Josh Turner, Jo Dee Messina, Lonestar, Uncle Kracker, Creed Fisher, Ray Scott, Colt Ford, and Chayce Beckham.
And along the way, Hanel was invited — and honored — to perform the national anthem for President Donald J. Trump at a 2024 town hall event in Flint, Michigan. Did he get to hang with Trump afterward?
“Dude,” Hanel replied during a recent C&I interview, “that probably would’ve been the best thing ever to happen to me besides learning how to play the guitar. But no, unfortunately I didn’t. The security was very, very tight. And very, very on point.”
Here are some other highlights from our conversation with Waylon Hanel (edited for brevity and clarity).
Cowboys & Indians: When your name is Waylon, doesn’t it irreversibly set you on your path in life? I mean, you can’t really open a dry-cleaning store. You’ve got to go into country music.
Waylon Hanel: [Laughs.] I mean, that’s kind of true in a way. I’ve always been into it, and it just happened to fit. I never even touched a guitar until I was 15, 16 years old. I’d planned on being a carpenter just like my dad and the rest of my family. But I fell in love with [country music]. I’m very blessed to be able to do what I do, man.
C&I: Who were some of your early musical influences?
Hanel: Well, definitely Waylon Jennings. I mean, that’s a no-brainer — thanks to Mom and Dad for that one. But also Johnny Paycheck, Keith Whitley, Ronnie Millsap, even people like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tom Petty. And especially people like Bob Seger, being from Michigan, the same state as me. All those guys had stories to tell, and they all told them in their different ways. But what I really respected about Waylon Jennings was he did it his own way. And even though people at first stepped on him and said, “You’ll never make it,” he ended up proving all those people wrong and opened a lot of doors for people like me. So big respects to people like that and everybody in that genre.
C&I: Of course, Waylon was one of the torchbearers for the outlaw country movement. Where would you place your music — somewhere between the outlaw genre and the traditional genre? Or do you walk away from labels?
Hanel: I place myself with traditional-sounding country music. But it definitely has a Waylon sound to it, since he’s one of my biggest musical influences. I can’t not incorporate his sound in there, along with Charlie Daniels and all that kind of stuff. Really, I consider myself somebody who likes to do exactly what I set my mind to. And if somebody tells me otherwise — well, it doesn't just go in one ear and out the other. If it is a good idea, I’ll give it a try. But most of the time I like to do exactly what I like.
Because the music is not just for me, it’s for the fans. And to be able to be in that moment at a live show and really connect with people, you have to be into the music as well. And so that’s kind of why I don’t really consider myself or brand myself as an outlaw. The people who I consider outlaws nowadays are people like Whitey Morgan and Cody Jinx — people on the independent side who are just doing their own thing. That’s what I’m shooting for, too, in my own way.
C&I: You have an impressive lineup of fellow songwriters collaborating with you on When Waylon Came to Nashville. People like Bernie Nelson and Frank Meyers, who penned “My Kind of Lonely.” The title may sound downbeat, but the song itself actually is upbeat, with that great line: “Whoever let her go is my new best friend.”
Hanel: Dude, I love that line. It’s so, so good. I’m not trying to be weird or anything, but that right there it’s so simple. You know what I mean? It’s so simple, but when you make it into music, it's like, “Damn, man!” That’s just the icing on the cake right there.
C&I: When the great Robert Duvall passed away recently, I couldn’t help remembering his Oscar-winning performance in Tender Mercies, where he played a washed-up country singer struggling to get his life back together. And I couldn’t help remembering his best line in the movie: “I don’t trust happiness. I never did.” Now this is meant as an observation, not a criticism, but it does seem like everything is happening pretty fast for you in your career. Are you ever worried that, oh, oh wait, maybe this is too easy? Like, “The trap door is going to open sometime.”
Hanel: I actually thought about that last night while I was lying in bed. And I am very blessed to be able to have this career moving in the direction and at the pace that it is. But I’m also very blessed to have the family that I do, the team that I have. And there’s something about what I’m doing that’s so much fun. I just don’t want to ruin that. In this music business, everybody says it’s sex, drugs, and alcohol — all that kind of stuff. But to me it’s like I'm having fun just playing music and doing what I love. I really don’t want to fall into all these things that people see having those problems.
And if we’re being honest, if you see all these people that have these problems, it’s actually a good way for you to avoid those problems. Because you’ve already seen the hell that they already had to go through, and the way they had to fight to dig themselves out of the hole that they’d already dug for themselves. So yeah, for me it’s just play my music, have some fun — and don’t be going down those rabbit holes of despair. You know what I mean?
C&I: Where do you see yourself maybe 10 years from now?
Hanel: Ten years from now? I definitely see myself traveling the country, playing music, playing big shows. My two biggest dreams are to play Red Rocks and, well, there’s a YouTube channel called Larry’s Country Diner, and all the good old boys play on there. It’s just a little acoustic setting, but it’s something that I’ve always seen and enjoyed watching. So that’s kind of a big dream of mine — to be able to broadcast myself.
But yeah, man, definitely within 10 years I want to travel the country, put out more songs, put out better songs, and grow with my band, and pay off my truck. That’s one of my biggest goals — to pay off my truck. So in 10 years, that’s definitely going to happen.
