SEATTLE — Tucker Wetmore’s singing career took off like a Fourth of July firework this year.

In February, the former Kalama High School football standout released his first proper single, “Wine Into Whiskey,” a tightly honed country hybrid tune with 808s, a heart-tugging emo riff and clever wordplay sung in Wetmore’s southwest Washington twang.

After gaining steam on TikTok, the song crashed the Billboard charts — and not just the country charts. “Wine Into Whiskey” cracked the all-genre Hot 100, peaking at No. 68. The 24-year-old’s follow-up “Wind Up Missin’ You” — a sweeter, more straight-ahead country tune — fared similarly well. The impressive feat fast-tracked the former Kalama, Cowlitz County, kid, who announced a record deal with UMG Nashville at the end of May and delivered a buzzy performance at June’s CMA Fest in Nashville, Tennessee.

Between tour dates and working on his debut album (eyeing an early 2025 release date), life has been “work, work, work” for the emerging country star, who called in from his newly acquired “ dream truck” — a black GMC Denali — during some brief burrito-run downtime.

After a summer of touring and recording, Wetmore’s schedule isn’t slowing down. This month, he is up for new artist and new artist song (for “Wind Up Missin’ You”) of the year at the People’s Choice Country Awards (8 p.m. ET Sept. 26, NBC). Wetmore is also slated to debut at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, hop on Luke Bryan’s “Farm Tour” for a handful of dates and get his first shot at the fabled Red Rocks Amphitheatre, opening for Cole Swindell.

It’s not bad for the former college football player who called an audible after a sign from God and decided in the last few years to chase a music career instead of finishing school.

A broken bone sign

Music was always in the ball-capped singer’s blood, growing up tapping his foot to country radio (and later rock and reggae) and harmonizing with his uncle from the back of his truck. Around age 11, Wetmore had also taught himself to play piano, guitar and trumpet.

A man of faith, Wetmore grew up in Kennewick’s Highway Tabernacle Church of God where his grandfather was a pastor. “Almost every day after church, I would wait for everyone to get off the stage, everyone’s mingling in the lounge and whatnot, and I would go up onstage and just play the piano,” he said.

Eventually, music took a back seat to high school sports. After graduating from Kalama High, the ex-wide receiver, who looks like he could still break a tackle lest any overzealous fans try him, went to Montana Tech to play football for a year. Toward the end of his brief college tenure, he “didn’t really feel right.”

“I remember sitting down, breaking down asking God for a sign one day toward the end of the school year,” Wetmore recalled. “The next day, I went to practice and the very first play I ran a post over the middle and broke my leg in three spots. So, that was my sign.”

Wetmore moved back home to Kalama — a town of 3,000 people, just off I-5 about 40 miles north of Portland, Oregon, where he grew up in a “house full of women” with his mom and four sisters. “Even our dogs were girls too,” he joked.

After leaving Montana Tech and at a crossroads in his life, Wetmore dived back into music — country, specifically, “had my heart” he said, due to its storytelling tradition.

“There was a lot of character-finding that I needed to do,” Wetmore said of that postcollege period back home. “I would play almost every day, like around my buddies and my friends, at the kitchen table or around a bonfire. But other than that, I was just practicing and writing, writing and practicing until my fingers bled.”

From Kalama back roads to Nashville lights

In 2020, Wetmore moved across the country to shoot his shot in Nashville, trading small-town Kalama, where he spent his youth “hauling down the back roads … with my buddies jamming Jason Aldean,” for the big city.

“It was weird, honestly,” Wetmore said of the transition. “I mean, it’s still weird sometimes. Sometimes I like to take a drive and just go look at some grass and trees.”

Three years ago, Wetmore got a call from Rakiyah Marshall, a well-connected industry vet and founder of artist development/publishing company Back Blocks Music, who wanted to work with him. “That was one of the first moments where I was like, ‘I have a shot now,’” Wetmore said.

Another came when singer-songwriter Kameron Marlowe’s team reached out to invite Wetmore on his spring tour after the former “Voice” contestant saw a social media clip of Wetmore before he’d even released his first song. Figuring he couldn’t go on tour without any music out, Wetmore — who had been stockpiling songs for the last three years — released “Wine Into Whiskey,” followed by “Wind Up Missin’ You” a month later and the rest is whirlwind history.

That run with Marlowe included a Pacific Northwest homecoming for Wetmore, with April dates in Portland and Seattle’s Showbox SoDo, right as the buzz around Wetmore was spiking.

“It was a trip down memory lane,” Wetmore said. “Those were to this date some of my favorite shows, just because it was so close to home. All of my family and friends came out and they got to see what I’ve been working on for so long unfold onstage. The energy at those shows was phenomenal.”

Stadium-sized comparisons

Six months since “Wine Into Whiskey” came out, Wetmore has only released five songs in his promising young career, including two tracks for the countrified “Twisters” soundtrack. (Fellow Washington breakout Benson Boone also contributed a tune.)

In that small sample size, Wetmore’s shown impressive range from those sleeker, more heavily produced songs like the achy breaky trap-country of “What Would You Do?” to quick-stepping honky tonker “Already Had It.” He even has a few piano ballads in the vault, perhaps nodding to those after-service sessions at Grandpa’s church.

Part of the calculus in those rangy first releases was to keep fans from painting him into a box, though some have already tried. Online commenters were quick to point out similarities to another boots-and-ballcaps country star, Morgan Wallen. (Marshall, Wetmore’s manager, is married to Seth England, co-founder of Big Loud, the label that launched Wallen.)

Wetmore’s not exactly sweating the surface-level Wallen comparisons, which don’t hold up past a couple of trap beats and a fashion sense shared with a million other guys their age. But he’s confident fans will get a fuller picture of him once his album comes out next year.

“I’m not trying to be anybody that I’m not,” Wetmore said. “I’m just me. But when it comes to comparisons, I truly don’t mind ‘em all that much. I see people talking here and there about ‘Oh, he’s just another Morgan.’ He’s one of the greatest artists in the world right now — one of the biggest artists in the world right now. If they’re comparing me to something already great, then I can’t say I’m too far off.”

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