Wes Youssi and the Country Champs

Wes Youssi is a songwriter and musician currently residing in Portland, OR. Born in Chicago, Wes spent his formative years living in rural Illinois, surrounded by corn farms and a large swath of empty woods. His passion for country music began at 6 years old, listening to his grandmother play Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves records.

With the County Champs, Wes has threaded the needle between the old-school pompadour hip of rockabilly, the hard-hitting straight fire of rock n’ roll and the twangy homespun charm of classic country, kicking out songs about trains, Cadillacs and hitting the bottle.  This band could settle right into any dive bar anywhere across the USA and feel right at home. 

The County Champs’ 2018 debut record, Down Low, met with great reviews:  

“Youssi manages to utilize these familiar sounds with nuance. Cadillac Man, with its pompadour-cool guitar riff, takes things into rockabilly territory. The yodel at the back of Youssi’s throat makes itself known as he sings “Living too fast/The American dream.” High Time presents itself as Guthrie-meets-Hank Williams, a honky-tonk song about inequality and “workin’ for the man,” and Into A Bottle puts keyboards at the center of the mix, lending a ‘60s Glen Campbell groove to a classic drinking cut. While Down Low is thoroughly referential, Youssi isn’t totally bogged down by the past, lacing the album’s truly vintage sound with just a wink of lyrical modernity.”   –Paste Magazine

In his short life of 38 years Wes has: Bussed tables in Indiana, punched someone in the face, been laid-off, got married, made children, lived in Detroit, ate a cockroach, shot down a tree and unknowingly purchased a former cop car. He’s presently playing music, meeting great people, and hustling in and around the city of Portland. His longstanding dream is to get back to the old woods, before they get cut down.