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COMMENTARY

McGinn: See Wyatt McCubbin while you can

The Southeastern High sophomore seems to be on the fast track to country music stardom

McGinn

Wyatt McCubbin, at home in Selma, has the potential to be a rising star in country music. At age 15, he now shares a manager with Sawyer Brown.

Marshall Gorby Wyatt McCubbin, at home in Selma, has the potential to be a rising star in country music. At age 15, he now shares a manager with Sawyer Brown. "Nobody even knows he exists right now," says his manager, Ron Harris, "which is kind of a good thing."

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 4:56 PM Thursday, October 7, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — The first time I saw Wyatt McCubbin perform, I couldn’t wait for him to get off stage.

Then, at the end of his 15-minute performance, when Kiss Country’s Lee Riley informed the crowd that what we’d just heard came from a 15-year-old, I couldn’t wait for the whole damn show to just be over.

I had to meet this kid.

Frankly, in the six or seven years I’ve helped judge the Colgate Country Showdown at the Clark County Fair, I’ve never actually gone home wanting to hear more country music.

Usually, after having to bear witness to a half-dozen cover versions of “Live Like You Were Dying” or “Redneck Woman,” I’m fine with just complete silence for the next 48 hours.

But this time, I came home and immediately got out my copy of “Waylon Live.”

This time, less than 48 hours later, I was scouring iTunes for stuff by Johnny Paycheck and David Allan Coe. On my mental list of albums to get, the 1976 LP “Hank Williams Jr. and Friends” rocketed to the top.

And since that night this past July, I’ve listened to so much Gram Parsons, I’ve started contemplating whether a rhinestone-studded suit would be an OK look for a man with hips as wide as mine.

If Wyatt McCubbin could do this to me, what could he do to you?

Or to country music in general?

We might soon find out.

Through an almost storybook series of events in the past 60 days, the Southeastern High School sophomore now shares a manager with Sawyer Brown and Bucky Covington.

Just last week, he was down in Nashville recording a cover of “Honky Tonk Heroes” for a Waylon Jennings tribute album — the project that will officially introduce this unknown kid from Selma, Ohio.

He’ll be in good company.

Scheduled for release in early 2011, the album also will feature the likes of Jamey Johnson, Sheryl Crow, Hank Jr. and Kris Kristofferson.

Wyatt’s first choice of Waylon songs was actually “Waymore’s Blues.”

“Which Hank Jr. stole,” he joked recently.

At least I assume he was joking.

But to think, Wyatt’s biggest performance to date has been the Colgate Country Showdown, in which he somehow (don’t look at me) didn’t even win.

“It’s happened too easy, man,” Wyatt worried. “It’s just been a couple months, you know what I mean?

“Nobody was expecting this. If you told me a year ago, I’d be the last one to say this would happen. But it’s real, man.”

Stu Secttor, the executive director of the Clark State Performing Arts Center, saw my Aug. 13 story on Wyatt and wondered if he might make a decent opening act on Oct. 16 for Joey + Rory, winners of the Academy of Country Music’s 2010 award for top new vocal duo.

I forwarded Secttor a YouTube link to Wyatt performing Merle Haggard’s “The Way I Am” at a place down in Lebanon this past spring with a house band that included WBZI’s Chubby Howard on pedal steel.

Needless to say, Wyatt will be opening for Joey + Rory next weekend at Kuss Auditorium.

It’ll be just him and a guitar in a place that could comfortably seat the entire village of South Charleston.

“Which makes it worse for me,” Wyatt said. “There is no Plan B.”

But when he competed at the fair this past summer, he was all alone with a guitar then, too. And for his entire 15 minutes, whether he was covering Paycheck’s “Old Violin” or singing his own music, you could’ve heard a pin drop.

With the Joey + Rory show right around the corner, I called Wyatt last Thursday afternoon, completely oblivious that he’d be in school.

You tend to forget he’s only 15.

If he wrote and sang like Taylor Swift, I would’ve known better.

But in the year he’s started writing his own songs, Wyatt has already come up with stuff like, “Imagine if there were no planes in the sky today. We’d still have ol’ Jim Croce and Stevie Ray, and all those people who died that September day ...”

The whole song is pretty incredible.

“Imagine if there were no guns or violence today,” he sings. “We’d still have ol’ John Lennon and JFK. Imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t have any wars or reasons to fight. I guess I’ll see peace some day, in my grave, sometimes I can’t wait.”

Few of his classmates in South Charleston seem to understand what the fuss is about.

Few of them know that, right now, a group of Nashville insiders are congratulating themselves and touting Wyatt as a discovery possibly on par with Randy Travis.

Few of them care that he missed the first few days of school last week to record “Honky Tonk Heroes” backed by Sawyer Brown and Waylon’s old guitarist, Reggie Young.

“None of the kids get it,” Wyatt said. “It’s like speaking a different language. Most of the kids don’t know who Waylon is, let alone Reggie Young.”

But Wyatt McCubbin could soon be a very big deal for anybody who hates what’s become of country music.

“Wyatt’s aware that he’s not paid his dues,” said his mom, Jerri Kay McCubbin.

He was only 7 when Waylon Jennings died in 2002, but his spot on the forthcoming tribute isn’t just wholly appropriate — I’m thinking it’s his destiny.

“It’s everything I ever really hoped for,” he said. “This could lead me to the right crowd. The fans who know what they’re talking about.

“The fans who love what I love.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

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