Koe Wetzel is getting the job DONE. Koe Wetzel often spends his time off the road in the woods hunting, and over the years, he’s harvested some phenomenal animals. While Wetzel is an outdoorsman of all kinds, loving both hunting and fishing, I always look forward to the hunting season to see some of these beautiful animals he takes home. Wetzel has one tour date left on the books for 2025, December 4 at WCOL Winter Wonder Jam, and he’s taking full advantage of his time off the road. Between being in dad-mode, spending time with his daughter, Woods, he’s also spending time in the literal woods… wonder if there was any inspiration from being an avid outdoorsman while naming his daughter. Earlier this month, Koe Wetzel showed off the stunning trophy buck he took down in Colorado. Colorado is in the midst of its deer hunting rifle season. Rifle season in Colorado technically has four seasons, all very close in date, with the fourth starting on November 19. “Thank you lord for blessing me with the opportunity to arrow this eastern Colorado giant yesterday evening! My first self-filmed hunt turned out to be one I’ll never forget. Chasing these big whitetails in the rut never gets old!” Self-filmed, you say… I hope that we get to see that footage one day because I bet it’s a great watch. Not to mention, I bet Koe Wetzel has some top-tier hunting commentary. Whether we see the footage or not, Wetzel is leaving the mountains with a stunning new wall mount and a full freezer. View this post on Instagram While that buck is stunning, that was just the start of Koe Wetzel’s trophies for the year. Wetzel has shared his hunting harvests from Illinois in the past, and this year was no different. “It’s been a grind all week but we finally got it done in Illinois! Love getting to chase these Midwest monsters. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!” Wetzel shared a post of the big Illinois buck, and he wasn’t kidding when he called these animals monsters. They are stunning. If you want to check out what he harvested, you can do so HERE. If you want to watch Wetzel’s 2023 whitetail hunt, check that out while you’re here, too: The post Koe Wetzel Harvests Big Illinois Buck: “Love Getting To Chase These Midwest Monsters” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

on cloud 9 ? #CMAawards #MeganMoroney

49 Winchester found out that Luke Combs was a fan of theirs in a pretty unique way. Isaac Gibson of 49 Winchester stopped by the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast to talk to us about why the band doesn’t do pre-show rituals, the inaugural 49 Winchester show being the first time anyone ever heard him sing live, how many years it took for 49 Winchester to go “full time,” how their band name came to be, hunting trips that he’s gotten to go on because of his music career and much more. It’s been a long time coming for 49 Winchester. They’ve been together for close to a decade, and remember their humble beginnings, and even the period of the band where everyone was still working regular, full-time jobs and trying to help their music career take off. Gibson says that Chase Chafin, one of the band’s founding members and bassist, has always done a lot for 49 Winchester’s merchandise department (he currently handles a lot of their concert poster artwork). He at least used to do a lot of the merch work, considering he was running most of it out of his own house in the band’s early days. And 49 Winchester has some great merchandise options, and you can really tell that they put a lot of thought and work into what they sell to fans. If you are to go to their online merch shop, you’ll likely notice that a country music superstar is a model for one of their more popular shop items. This particular shirt design, to be exact: Pretty good model for your merch, if you ask me. So how did that picture come to be, you might be wondering? Well, according to Gibson, it was all rather organic, and involved a little bit of luck. The 49 Winchester frontman says that they had heard the “Beer Never Broke My Heart” singer was a fan of theirs, but they weren’t ever 100% sure. That is until an order came through on their merch store: “We had sort of heard through the grapevine that he had heard our music and had liked it. I think maybe at the time, our agent had started (to get the wheels turning) on that first Luke support tour that we did in Europe. But we actually saw an order come through the merch store, and Chase was like, ‘Yo, I just got an order for a 2XL black horse and rider t-shirt and the guy’s name is Luke Combs. I was like, ‘There’s no way it’s the same guy.’ Come to find out, it was him. And I was highly honored that he just bought that on his own dime.”  So 49 Winchester didn’t send it over to him… Luke Combs sought out the shirt and ordered it himself. Then, Combs just so happened to pick it out of his closet (which I’m assuming is just full of PFG fishing shirts) and wear it when he was interviewed for Rolling Stone: “He wore it for a shoot in an interview that he did for Rolling Stone, and that was really the first moment that I knew that he was familiar with our music and had been listening to it. Then just a couple of weeks later, we got that tour offer, and I remember just standing in my living room and just crying – (I) broke down. I was like, ‘This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to us.'” Crazy to think that a t-shirt order could have been one of the first steps in Luke Combs and 49 Winchester getting connected. Thanks to the country music superstar, Isaac Gibson and the rest of his band got to go and open for Combs on one of his Europe tours. Gibson says he remembers being awfully nervous to meet Luke, since they hadn’t ever crossed paths prior to the t-shirt order or being asked to come out on tour with him. Gibson says that, in his experience, meeting bigger stars has always been great, and often times they are down to Earth and humble. Combs was no exception, and he’ll never forget how they finally met: “Luke Combs was the big one where, I was kind of nervous to meet Luke. I was like, ‘I wonder when we’re gonna meet him on this tour.’ The first day at soundcheck, we were in this huge arena, and we’ve only played a room like that two or three times before. There’s a guy that’s out on the arena floor and he’s jogging and doing laps. He does a lap, then comes back around and does another lap, and then I see it out of the corner of my left eye. I pop my glasses down and I’m like, ‘That’s Luke Combs.’ He stops in front of the stage and he’s like, ‘Hey boys, really glad to have you out, this is gonna be a great tour. I love y’all’s music man. I’ll see you guys around.’ Then we talked a whole lot throughout the tour.” @whiskeyriff Listen to the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast. @49 Winchester #whiskeyriff #whiskeyriffraff ♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff Always meet your heroes… especially if they’ve ordered a t-shirt from your website, and their name is Luke Combs. You can download the podcast on Apple Podcasts by searching “Whiskey Riff Raff” or click here. We’re also available on Spotify and wherever else you can listen to podcasts. Cheers, y’all. Audio Video The post How A T-Shirt Order Became The First Sign That 49 Winchester Would Tour With Luke Combs first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

Sharing some heartbreaking news regarding his mother’s unexpected death. Earlier this summer, Billy Strings, whose real name is William Lee Apostol, informed the world that his mother tragically passed away. Just 20 hours after Strings returned home to Michigan for the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival on June 19, Billy Strings’ mother took her final breath in the morning of June 20. Later that night, Billy Strings hit the stage in Lexington, Kentucky, and vulnerably shared with his audience why he seemed down at first, then reflected on his feelings after learning that his mother, Debra, was no longer on this earth. “My wife woke me up this morning and told me that my beautiful mother, Debra Apostle, had passed away in her sleep. And I just put my shoes on and started walking. And I walked until I saw an old country church, and it was like a beacon. I went and knocked on the door, and this kind lady let me in, and she stayed with me and prayed with me for a while. And eventually she gave me a ride back to where I was staying.” Amen… there are still good people out there. Billy Strings took a moment to compose himself before carrying on. “It was my decision to carry on with tonight’s show because that is what my mom would’ve wanted me to do. She really loved this group of people, she loved y’all so much, and the last couple of years were some of her happiest because a lot of you folks, right here. You all became some of her best friends, and I really want to thank you for that. You all showed her a lot of kindness, whether she was out in the lot and bopping around here at the shows, you know. The reason I decided not to go home and be with my family right now is because I already am. I spent most of today in a daze, and I just wanted you to know that I’m going to do my best to do tonight’s show. And also if you’re just casually coming to tonight’s show and are like, What the f*** is going on right now?’ I’m sorry, but we’re a family here. And if you’re going through some s***, I’m going through it too, and tonight I need YOU. So please, instead of a moment of silence, can you please make as much noise right now for my mom?” Holy shit this is heavy as fuck. Billy’s mom passed away last night and this home boy just owns it and just comes out and lets it go. Some incredible stuff. Wow. RIP mama strings.. pic.twitter.com/u2TqWTC7ca — chuck the wöök (@wook_chuck) June 21, 2025 Since sharing that moment with the crowd in June, Billy Strings has thrown himself into touring, creating more music, and being a father to his son. While grief looks different for many folks, it appears that Billy was processing his grief by continuing to honor his mother through music. Billy Strings recently appeared on the Dopey podcast and spoke about his mother’s sudden death, and shared the heartbreaking news of what caused his mother’s death. During the conversation with David Manheim, Strings shared that he has had a really hard time coping with understanding her death. He was left with a lot of questions, and that list of questions grew even more after he read what her cause of death was on the death certificate. “For a second there, I really didn’t know what the f**k happened. And I didn’t know how this all went down. I still don’t really. I don’t understand… I guess I never will, and I just need to f**king let it go.  But you know, we’re all sitting around, ‘Oh man, I wonder if it was an aneurysm. I wonder if it was a heart attack. I think she had a blood clot? Oh man, like wow, she just died like that. Wow, that’s so crazy.’ So then I’m on tour in Australia, and I get the email of the death certificate. Methamphetamine intoxication. And I didn’t know that she was using. I was like, I was in denial, even before that I was like, ‘Yeah, it ain’t gonna be nothing like that.'”  View this post on Instagram Strings has shared in the past that his parents struggled with addiction all of his life, leading him to leave home at the age of 13. While they dealt with addiction most of his life, Billy Strings trusted that his mother was on the right path, but admitted in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air that he often worried about her once she began to get heavily involved with his fanbase. “Well, I wanted her to go have fun and be doing, you know, whatever she wanted to be doing, but I worried about her running into the wrong people, or, you know, she’s been an addict my whole life and had short stints where she was doing pretty good, you know? And I loved to see her out there hanging with all the fans, but at the same time, I was leery of them. You know, I would go over to visit my parents’ house, and there would be, like, the fans there that I see in the front row of my concerts all the time.” In the same interview, Strings clarified that he knew the fans she was hanging out with because he often interacts with those in his audience, and when you see repeat fans in the front row, you begin to recognize their faces. “What am I supposed to say? They’re grown people, but – I don’t know. She was getting older, and I kind of just had this vision of her in my head that I wanted, which is stupid. It’s not realistic to try to come up with somebody else’s life in your brain, but, like, I just wanted her to have a garden. And my dad’s 70 years old, she was 64. I was like, man, you guys should, like, be settling down, you know, don’t you think? Instead of rearing and tearing and going and eating all these shrooms and going to all these concerts. And then she did get wrapped up in the wrong stuff. And that’s why she’s not here anymore.” The whole situation is incredibly heartbreaking, and it’s even more disheartening to learn from the Dopey interview that Strings felt confident that addiction had not crept back into his mother’s life. Billy plans to possibly turn some of her poetry into a tribute project: “Oh yeah, that’s kinds of the goal. We talked about it a lot — she was gonna make the next record cover with her art, and we were gonna make songs out of this stuff. We were gonna try to do it.” Rest in peace, Debra, and we love you, Billy. If you want to check out the entire Dopey interview, check that out while you’re here: The post Billy Strings Opens Up On His Mother’s Tragic Overdose: “I Don’t Understand, Guess I Never Will” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

only @SteveMartinTube in the building! #CMAawards