“I Woke Up in Jail”: Koe Wetzel Shares the Real Story of How February 28th Became ‘Koe Wetzel Day’

As its 10 year anniversary approaches, Koe Wetzel shares the story of how his fan favourite song - and its accompanying (unofficial) holiday - ‘February 28th, 2016’, came to be.

Wetzel regularly discounts the track as one of his worst, but it always hits hard with the fans and has over 123 million streams on Spotify. If we’re being honest, it’s no ‘High Road’, but it was ten years ago. Each year fans celebrate the date as ‘Koe Wetzel Day’, with the Texas native even trying to get it instated as an official state holiday this year.

Perhaps, what really gets his OG fans going, is knowing that the lyrics are a pretty darn accurate account of what happened to Wetzel on the 28th February, 2016.

As the country-rock star croons, ‘Who is sober enough to take me to Taco Bell?”, we’ve learnt that this is genuinely where he tried to go, he just doesn’t 100% remember it…

Wetzel was just starting out in his music career and had released his first album, Out On Parole, the year before. The irony of the title seems to be as lost as his memory for most of the night, with his buddy filling him in on the details the next day.

As the ‘Something to Talk About’ singer-songwriter reflects in a new clip, “He told me, after I got out of jail…you left and then you came back. And then we drank for another two or three hours. And then you kept talking about Taco Bell and how you wanted some food.”

And, well, that’s kind of it. It seems he left, attempted to go to Taco Bell but was found semi-conscious in a field instead.

He recalls, “My truck was about five blocks from his house, out of gas. The hood was popped, my front doors were swung open, and I was laying face down in the middle of a soccer field. The cop said he thought I was dead whenever he walked up on me”.

Since then, 28th February has been unofficially dubbed ‘Koe Wetzel Day’ with artists like Corey Kent, Cody Canada (Cross Canadian Ragweed) and Wyatt Flores paying tribute to him on his ten year anniversary. A ten year anniversary is represented by aluminium, which seems rather fitting to those raising a beer to the ‘Damn Near Normal’ singer.

All the community spirit aside, it begs the question: why? Why are we celebrating such a non-event so excessively? It’s not like Wetzel remembers it as a pivotal moment in his history - he literally got arrested a year or so later for being drunk trying to cross a highway. You can’t help but feel it glorifies irresponsible behaviour. And for what? To stay relevant for another year? Here’s to hoping that ten years is enough.

Koe Wetzel heads out on his three-show Australia tour in May this year, hitting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, alongside festivals across the US this summer.

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