When Wyatt Flores talks about Australia, he doesn’t sound like an artist clocking another international market. He sounds like someone who’s found a place that feels unexpectedly like home.
“The hospitality everyone has shown us has just made us feel like this is our second home,” he says, still buzzing the morning after a chaotic, sold-out Sydney show. “I don’t want to leave. I straight up don’t want to leave.”
This return visit — his first headline run across the country, dubbed the ‘Bucking Bin Chicken’ tour — follows his breakout appearance at CMC Rocks last year. If that festival set was the introduction, this tour is confirmation. Flores isn’t just testing the waters here. He’s building something.
The flight from Stillwater, Oklahoma to Sydney is long enough to feel like a pilgrimage — he jokes about being stuck in an airport for more than 24 hours — but insists it’s worth every second.
“There’s just something about Australia that I can’t stay away from,” he says.
The Sydney show he played the night before we speak ranks among his all-time favourites.
“Last night was one of the top five shows I’ve ever played,” he smiles. “It was rowdy. It was crazy… It was beautiful chaos.”
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That phrase, “beautiful chaos,” feels like a neat summary of Flores himself. His music walks a tightrope between vulnerability and abandon. One minute he’s singing about heartbreak with raw, unfiltered honesty; the next, he’s shirtless onstage doing a shoey while an inflatable crocodile surfs amongst the crowd.
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At CMC last year, he wasn’t even sure anyone would care.
“I didn’t ever think that I’d make it out of the Oklahoma state lines,” he admits.
The first night at the festival, nerves took over. The second night, he flipped the switch. What followed — a chaotic, two-minute burst of rock ’n’ roll theatre — has since become legend among local fans. They still ask where the crocodile is.
That disbelief hasn’t entirely left him. Flores’ rise didn’t come wrapped in industry polish or overnight hype. When “Please Don’t Go” started climbing charts and racking up streams, he was still sleeping on an air mattress in a cramped apartment with his bandmates.
“I’m sleeping on an air mattress right now and now I’m on billboards. I don’t get it.”
The phone started ringing. Labels called. Tours sold out. Suddenly he wasn’t driving himself from gig to gig anymore — he had a van, a trailer, a crew. Then Canada. The UK. Europe. Australia.
“It’s so hard for me to believe it sometimes,” he says.
As his name starts appearing alongside country’s established heavyweights, the narrative around him has shifted. He’s no longer just the kid from Oklahoma with a viral moment — he’s being positioned as one of country’s vital new voices.
Often framed as “the next big thing,” Flores is candid about the weight that comes with that narrative. “It feels both,” he says — fuel and pressure in equal measure.
There are moments of doubt. Moments of anxiety. He describes standing side-stage once, shaking uncontrollably, not understanding what was happening.
“I struggled with so much anxiety… one show I was just shaking.”
The stakes feel high because the songs are personal. They were written in quiet, private spaces. Onstage, he’s handing them over to thousands of strangers and hoping he does them justice.
“I’m giving you my heart and soul,” he says.
And yet, for all the velocity of his rise, Flores insists his life isn’t the glossy version people imagine. There have been U-Hauls, budget pizzas, long drives, and very little sleep. The glamour is mostly in people’s heads.
What translates — especially here — is his lack of artifice. In meet-and-greets across the country, he’s struck by how grounded Australian fans feel.
“We respect y’all. Y’all respect us,” he told a Melbourne crowd.
There’s a mutual understanding. He gives everything he has; they give it right back.
Offstage, he’s embraced Australia with the enthusiasm of someone genuinely delighted to be here. Rottnest Island stunned him. The Sydney Harbour Bridge climb scared him at first — the exposed catwalk over the water “got me good” — but the view sealed the deal. Drop bears got him on night one. Now he’s passing the prank back home.
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More than the landmarks, though, it’s the energy that resonates.
“The way people interact with each other is the way that me and my friends interact back home,” he says.
That sense of familiarity runs deeper than humour. Raised in Oklahoma with strong Mexican heritage — influences that subtly thread through his guitar work and phrasing — Flores grew up immersed in music thanks largely to his father Noe, a local band drummer and rancher who came with him on this trip to Australia.
In Sydney, the younger Flores surprised his father by inviting him onstage.
“You ready to play drums tonight?” he asked, 10 minutes before walking out.
Afterwards, his dad told him he never imagined he’d play drums in Australia. Flores grinned and told him he was now an international drummer — even if only for three minutes.
“If it wasn’t for him… none of this would’ve happened,” he says.
What keeps him steady, amid the noise and expectation, is simpler than any industry strategy: calling home.
For a long time, he says, he felt like he couldn’t decompress until he got back to Oklahoma. Now, he’s learning to carry that steadiness with him.
LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY – MAY 31: Wyatt Flores performs during the 2025 Railbird Music Festival at The Infield at Red Mile on May 31, 2025 in Lexington, Kentucky. (Photo by Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images)
“I have purpose out on the road and I have purpose back at home,” he says.
He still goes back to work cattle. Still stands alone in pastures where the world feels like it has stopped moving. The key, he’s realised, is understanding that both lives belong to the same person.
“I live two different lives, but I’m still me through all of it,” he says.
From the office where we’re speaking, he can see Sydney Harbour stretching out in front of him. Somewhere out there are fans who discovered him through a viral video, through a friend, through a late-night playlist, now screaming back lyrics that were written in a small Oklahoma room not that long ago.
For a kid who once doubted he’d ever leave his home state, this is about as far as it gets. And somehow, it feels right.
