Tucker Wetmore is a young country singer who was born and raised in Kalama, Washington, on the Columbia River. This month he’s up for New Artist of the Year at the 60th CMA Awards, which air Wednesday, Nov 18, on ABC from Nashville.
Not that long ago, though, music wasn’t the plan at all.
Tucker was the sports kid. He played football, baseball and track, and he went to college to play football. Then came a football injury. It “was kind of the end of my sports career,” he told ABC Audio.
Music had always been somewhere in the background. His grandfather was a pastor, so Tucker grew up on gospel songs, and he started playing piano at 11.
“I moved back home and I was super lost,” he said.
So he told his mom the truth. “Ma, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His mom, Sia Gould, answered by pointing him back to something he already loved.
“Just go sit in front of your piano or pick up your guitar. That was your therapy back in the day.”
He listened. “So I wrote my first song that night and I never looked back,” Tucker said. That was 2019.
He’s honest about how that first try went. In his record label bio he remembered, “My mom was working nights at the steel mill and I’d just sit there playing piano. Eventually, I did something I had never done before, I wrote my first song. It was terrible, but I wrote it, and I was hooked.”
In 2020 he moved to Nashville. His debut album, “What Not To,” came out in 2025. If you haven’t heard him yet, start with the song that became his first No. 1 at country radio.
Tucker’s first No. 1, “Wind Up Missin’ You”
His mom never left the picture. In 2025 Tucker brought her as his date to the ACM Awards and said, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.” “She’s one of the best women I’ve ever met in my life. She’s like my best friend” is how he described her to Country Now.
Sia has told her side of the story, too, in a long sit-down with the “Got It From My Momma” podcast.
Tucker’s mom, Sia Gould, tells her side
Then came May 1, 2026. Tucker was playing the last of three sold-out nights at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London, England. In the middle of his set, a video message from Thomas Rhett, the Georgia country star Tucker toured with in summer 2025, cut into the show.
And then his mom walked out on stage. She was carrying his first ACM Award, New Male Artist of the Year.
His first words were pure son: “Mom, what are you doing here?”
Then he told the crowd, “I’m at a loss for words right now for the first time in a long time. I can’t do any of this without you guys. I can’t do any of this without that woman [mom] right there.”
A fan in the crowd filmed six minutes of that night, so you can see the London moment the way the audience did.
A fan’s view of Tucker getting his ACM award in London
Sia got another turn in the spotlight on the ACM Awards show itself. She shared the stage with Shania Twain, the Canadian superstar behind “You’re Still the One,” and the two of them warmed up the stage for her son.
Tucker’s mom and Shania Twain at the ACM Awards
It all goes back to one night at the piano while his mom was at work. On Nov 18, fans will find out whether that “terrible” first song led all the way to a CMA Award.