Tucker Wetmore on the Football Injury That Changed Everything: 'I Got My Sign… on the 45-Yard Line' (Exclusive)

While music wasn't the immediate backup plan for Wetmore, it was one to consider — and now the rising country artist has seen some success

Tucker Wetmore could be country music’s next big star from a small town.

“I graduated with 69 people in my class, and I was the biggest class to ever go through my school,” says Wetmore, 24, during an interview with PEOPLE of his Kalama, Washington upbringing. “I want to say like 2,400 people live in the town now.”

It was the town where Wetmore grew up loving the Oregon Ducks football team and the state where he would listen to his grandfather preach at the Highway Tabernacle Church of God. “I remember having sleepovers with my cousins right there on the altar,” he recalls with a laugh.

Wetmore played baseball and ran track but drove away from the town he loved back in 2018 when he got the chance to play football at Montana Tech in Butte, Montana. “My plan was just to go to college and play as much ball as I could and then hopefully make it in the draft at some point,” he remembers. “But my grades were terrible. I sucked at the school part.”

For a while, Wetmore played, and when he wasn’t playing, he was partying. And somewhere towards the end of his freshman year, Wetmore says he started feeling somewhat lost.

“I would sleep on my buddy’s couch after practice, and I remember sitting my stuff down one night and going into the bathroom and I just started bawling,” he remembers. “I mean, I was just hysterically weeping. I knew in my gut that I wasn’t on the right path. I just needed a sign whether to stay or go.”

Wetmore soon received that sign when he broke his leg.

“It was my first play of that spring ball practice,” Wetmore recalls. “We ran a post over the middle, and I ended up blowing out my entire right leg. I remember my first thought was, ‘This really freaking hurts.’ And then my second thought was, ‘That's my sign right there.’ I got my sign on the ground in the middle of the field on the 45-yard line.”

And while music wasn’t the immediate backup plan for Wetmore, it was one to consider. “I grew up in a Samoan family, so if someone starts singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ the next thing you know, it's a whole family choir in the living room singing ‘Amazing Grace,’” recalls Wetmore, who also began playing the piano at 11 years old.

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Music did end up becoming the ultimate backup plan, as the breakthrough country artist currently finds himself enjoying a whole bunch of success just by creating music with a healthy dose of grit and honesty.

“I did a lot of soul-searching and just getting right with God for a couple of years after my college experience,” says Wetmore, who moved to Nashville in 2020. “And this is the path I felt like I should take.”

Granted, it’s a path that is somewhat shocking to the psyche, as viral success often comes swiftly and without warning. “I can't believe it,” admits Wetmore, whose hugely successful debut single “Wine into Whiskey” charted on Billboard's Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs chart earlier this year. “It's everything I've worked super hard on, but just to see it all come to life is just surreal. It's overwhelming in all the good ways.”

Now, everything seems to be coming to life courtesy of Wetmore’s current hit “Wind Up Missin’ You.”

“I wanted something that people could roll their windows down and feel good listening to,” says Wetmore of the career-altering song that he wrote alongside Chris LaCorte and Thomas Archer and the one that debuted in the Top 5 on the iTunes all-genre and country charts behind none other than Beyoncé. “We sat there for the next hour and a half writing it, and next thing you know, I was putting vocals on my next single.”

And yes, he knows darn well that he sounds like Morgan Wallen.

“He's one of the greats, but yeah — I can't change how I sing,” says Wetmore, who currently finds himself out on the road as part of Kameron Marlowe’s Strangers Tour. “I'm not trying to be anybody but me."

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