Home » Beefing Bros: Making Sense of Gavin Adcock and the Fightin’ Side of Country Music

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Beefing Bros: Making Sense of Gavin Adcock and the Fightin’ Side of Country Music

What’re you looking at, son? You wanna go? Well, it seems like Gavin Adcock can’t get enough of the fightin’ side of country music, and the media (The Dads included) can’t get enough of his bologna. This week, we dive into the beefs, why country music seems to foster this kind of violent rhetoric, what dads should do about it and how the media landscape makes it all worse. 

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Show Notes: 

00:58  – Who is Gavin Adcock and why is country music (and its tabloids) so obsessed with him? The Dads get into his origin story, his approach and why he’s the perfect foil. He’s either a marketing genius or an idiot savant. 

6:21 – Donnie outlines why he doesn’t like him, but Dave jumps in to say he totally gets his appeal, that vibe and that stupidity. There is something to be said about acting a fool. But it needs to be safe for everyone involved.  

10:31 – Beefs, it’s what’s for dinner. The Dads outline the wild number of beefs that Adcock either instigated or accelerated. Up first, we talk about Braxton Keith and Adcock. 

13:28 – Next, we cover the swing Adcock took at Beyoncé. His take was loaded and unneeded. 

16:53 – Now we get to the good stuff: Zach Bryan vs Adcock. They came into it with the same energy, and this one is wonderfully messy. They both looked like fools because neither chose to de-escalate. 

21:10 – On to Charley Crockett and his master class in narrative control. Adcock put himself back into the conversation, ego and all. And boy did he miss. The allegations of “Cosplay Cowboy” against Crockett fall so flat. All stage performers put on an act — including Adcock. 

27:46 – The fight and beef drives streaming revenues, but it’s not going to establish Adcock for the long term. 

29:16 – Benjamin Tod, the $75 a night beef and the outlaw version of puka shells.  

34:14 – How do these beefs stand up to the history of country music beefs? They are similar, but the social media system exacerbates the situation. 

36:10 – What role do violence and male bravado play in country music — it’s all about the storytelling. From Johnny Cash to Jason Aldean, country uses violence to tell a story and foster the image of power and control. And this music provides an escape. Understanding the line between violence as an escape vs a solution is critical. 

45:19 – How do dads help their kids deal with this kind of trash talk or bullying? Be a better person: don’t let yourself be hurt, and find a better way to fix the problems that will always arise. And this isn’t just about dumb beefs or little kids. This is about how society solves its problems. 

54:29 – Dad Life Sound Check for meeting the bully in the parking lot.

Mentioned in this Episode:

References:

Transcript

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang. We’re driving a highly subjective, comically contrarian, often irreverent conversation about fatherhood and country music for people who have a passion for both.

My name is Donnie, and I’m a country music dad.

I’m Dave, and I’m also a country music dad. We’re wrapping up 2025 with some unsolicited dad advice for some of the young bucks in country music that had been trading jabs on social media and in the headlines this year.

The country music tabloids have enjoyed their fair share of public feuds between stars over the years, but there’s something about Gavin Adcock and his relentless provocations this year that have been especially boorish, a little annoying, and

perhaps in need of some counsel from a couple of wise old men. That’s where we come in. Donnie, I know you have been following the Adcock universe of public feuding quite closely this year.

0:58

Who is Gavin Adcock?

So can you tell us who is Gavin Adcock and what the hell is going on with this dude?

Well, Gavin Adcock is the walking, breathing embodiment of the devil’s advocate. He’s kind of a jackass of all trades. I think it’s important to go back to how his origin story came about.

Gavin Adcock was playing college football for Georgia Southern University when he went viral for the first time. He was bus surfing and that’s exactly what it sounds like.

He was standing on top of a bus as it was driving out and someone threw him a can of beer, which he of course shotgunned and the video went everywhere. People thought it was hilarious. Oh my God, look at this.

They got so excited about after the game.

That’s a lot of athleticism from a nose tackle too.

No doubt, the man’s in decent shape.

He was a college athlete, not taking anything away from him, but he was suspended from the team for breaking the law and being a complete idiot, which he has regularly said was an overreaction, which gives you a little bit of the idea of how much

maturing he’s done over the years. That took place in 2021, so he’s still really young. He does not have the years behind him that he would necessarily need to say that might not have been the greatest of ideas.

So he did that and he got himself in some trouble. And during that time period while he was off, he started focusing on music. He had always done the music thing.

He played music, he wrote songs, but he started taking it much more seriously. And upon graduation, he went into Nashville to become who he is today, which is a rising country music star.

He is not really well regarded amongst critics or pretty much anybody else in the industry except for his fans. His shows are notoriously messy drunken affairs. Beers are thrown, people are rude, and stupidity reigns supreme.

But Adcock, for some reason, after kind of advocating for this Bacchanal-esque craziness at his shows, I mean, people go slip and sliding across the floors of his shows in the beer sweat and grossness that’s at the bottom of it with those shirts on

after the show. These things go viral at least a couple of times a month. And it’s really disgusting to say the least, but he somehow or for some reason wants the security in the venue to keep control.

It’s this very weird dichotomy where he’s advocating for this absurd chaos but expecting things to work out exactly how they should. Goes back to kind of where he came from, right? He was recently on Nashville Now’s Rolling Stones podcast.

He was bragging about another poor decision he made. He bought himself a car and was driving it really fast and recklessly late. And so he was pulled over and arrested for disorderly conduct and dangerous driving.

But his call when he was in jail was essentially to take his mugshot and make it a t-shirt.

Because what he said on this podcast was that there are only a few industries in which getting caught doing something very stupid is going to help your career and Country Music’s one of them.

His antics have elevated him to a position that his singing and songwriting do not warrant. I will say that bluntly. I don’t think he’s a very good songwriter.

He has very mediocre chops when it comes to singing. It’s not like I could do any better, but I’m not trying to be a Country Musician.

You just haven’t tried. You haven’t tried hard enough yet, that’s all.

Yeah, no one’s stopped loving me today. I’ll tell you that right now. But the reality is that he’s not that great, and he is arguably a marketing genius or an idiot savant.

Those are the two options. He either knows exactly what he’s doing, or he’s tripping into it. But my read of it is, is that he’s doing this on purpose.

He knows exactly what he’s doing. And he has kind of eluded to that in some of the more in-depth interviews that he’s given.

The one on Nashville Now is, I think, highly worth taking a listen to if you’re really interested in getting a little bit more of who he is. He talks about how he’s not really this drunken idiot, but he’s rather a gym rat.

And he wants to work out and stay in shape and be concentrating and working hard. And he drinks more water than he drinks beer.

But if you look at him online, he has a bottle of Jack in his hand or a six pack or a 12 pack or even a 24 pack with him at all times, making it appear like he’s a drunken buffoon all of the time. But he’s not.

He’s a calculating businessman who’s looking to do what he’s supposed to do. He really does strike me as someone who’s intelligent enough to get himself in trouble, use it for his own benefit, and move on before it catches up to him.

He’s that so-called outlaw who wants the protection of the establishment he represents. It’s pretty emblematic of where we are today, but it’s very strange. I don’t quite understand him.

I really don’t like him, but I’m so intrigued by him.

I’ll play Devil’s Advocate a little bit here. I gave him a try because he did seem to be getting really popular, and I wasn’t familiar with his music or his thing, so I was like, I should educate myself on who this guy is.

6:21

Criticism and Defense of Adcock’s Brand

I gave his music a try, and like you said, it’s not surprising that he’s not critically well regarded. I feel like his appeal must be that live show environment, and people that want to go, they want to go show up and party and be rowdy.

Honestly, his shows sound fun. That sounds fun to me. I mean, I’m like kind of beyond my go to a rowdy concert and mix it up and pour beer on myself.

But there is a part of me as a middle-aged dad that wishes I could tap into that every once in a while. That’s why Hardy appealed to me for a long time because he’s gotten a little more vanilla now, but he was like Mr. Middle Fingers to the Sky.

That rowdy like rock star persona, Col Wetzel is a favorite of mine. He kind of has that same thing going where his shows are rowdy, high-energy and conducive for pushing people around and spilling beers and people are getting invites at his shows.

I can understand some of the appeal just as someone myself who likes music because of the escapism and going to shows kind of because of that escapism. It kind of reminds me of when I was a younger man going to punk rock shows.

It’s an interesting take.

Back in high school and in college, I would go to these punk rock shows and there’s the mosh pit, there’s the circle pit, and everything is really fast and high energy. And the point is to kind of mix it up.

There’s no dancing, so for those of us that aren’t into dancing or don’t have the skills, our version of dancing was like, I’m going to make up a hardcore dance and actually just swing my elbows around and get knocked on my ass.

You get a little bit of an endorphin boost from the excitement. And there was a place for that. And so I could see how Adcock or I’ve heard Trio Revival is in a similar vein.

It’s a similar thing for sure.

And I respect that. I totally see where creating a space for young guys to get together and act like idiots is and it to be a safe space to do so is important because that’s a lot of the time what people want to do. But it has to be a safe space.

And I think that some of it is the ability to take it too far and have it. That there be no consequence. And I think that that’s probably a big part of this problem.

Yeah, that’s a really good point, the safe space part, because the punk rock shows is very violent.

People would come away with bloody lips and black eyes. And my friend lost his shoe because he got knocked down so hard. And we’d come off bruised.

But every time that I got knocked down in a circle pit, some stranger was picking me up so I didn’t get trampled. There was a lot of security in that.

I actually felt safe in these environments because it was like the collective group was going to take care of each other and that was just kind of understood.

And I’m not sure if that’s what’s going on at the Adcock shows from what I’m reading about on the news with beer cans flying.

Exactly. And I think there’s the punk ethos of don’t be an a**hole, right? It’s a big part of the punk ethos is to show up and not be that person.

Be violent, run around, slam into people, but create the space for those who don’t want to do that too. It’s not like, if you’re not in the pit at a punk show or a hardcore show, you’re not going to get hit.

But if you choose to be in the pit, you’re going to get hit and it’s going to be okay because no one’s going to kill you, hopefully.

What seems to be the issue here is that there’s no delineation between who is involved in the violence and who has the violence acted upon them.

There’s an example, and I think we can dive into these beefs, and one of the first ones was with Braxton Keith.

10:31

Beef #1: Braxton Keith v. Adcock

Adcock had this reputation for having beers thrown at him at the stage, which he would then grab and drink and pour all over him and be disgusting. Really, I’m not drinking anybody’s beer that’s coming flying to me at the stage. Gross.

But again, I’m an old man, so whatever. My immune system is not there anymore. But beer cans flying through the air are dangerous.

And for the most part, if you’re a drunken buffoon, you think you can throw a whole lot further than you can.

My guess is that at least a few of those cans hit somebody in the front row or the second row or the third row, who had no interest in being hit by a can, but they’re getting hit and fights are breaking out.

And then from the stage, after that is all advocated for by the guy at the microphone, he’s yelling at security to take care of these people. It’s this missing connection.

And so at some point during one of the larger festivals, you know, earlier this year during the summer, Braxton Keith, who’s an up and coming guy out of Texas, pretty much said, hey, cut this out. He used some more colorful language.

He said, cut this out. This isn’t a Gavin Adcock concert, again, with more colorful language. He said, stop throwing beers.

There are people up here, there’s a girl up here with a sign says, this is my first concert. Don’t throw a beer at her. Don’t throw a beer at her mother.

This is a Braxton Keith concert. We don’t throw beers here. If you’re gonna throw beers, get out.

That divided Country Music into its two camps of beer throwing buffoonery and goody two-shoes-y. And it’s too bad because the reality is, you shouldn’t throw a friggin beer. First of all, it’s dangerous.

Second of all, they cost 15 bucks a pop. Drink the beer, put the can back in the garbage can.

I know, who can afford to throw beers like these people?

Who can throw a beer that’s, jeez, man. You throw two beers, you’re out like, it’s gonna get real expensive, real fast. That’s not really the point.

The point is, that then devolved into Braxton going back and not saying anything. He said his piece, he put up a little post online, and then Gavin Adcock went crazy. Said, this is what a Gavin Adcock concert looks like.

And there was beer throwing and there was festivities. And it was fun. That was kind of the first beefs within the Country Music space.

Yeah, I remember that one ended with like, they were performing shortly thereafter, like back to back or together.

Keith was opening for Adcock.

And so, yeah, they got over it. But the reality is, I think Braxton Keith came out of that looking pristine.

And clearly, I have my perspective on, like from a marketing perspective, from a communications perspective, from a human connection perspective, he just did so much better.

But Adcock was playing to his audience in a way that really worked very well.

What came right before it, and this is really what put Adcock on the map, is that he said that Beyoncé, he used again, using very colorful language, didn’t make a country music album.

13:28

Beef #2: Beyonce v. Adcock

And this was in regards to Cowboy Carter. And we can agree or disagree about whether or not that is the case.

And it was with loaded language and racial undertones and sexist undertones that Adcock was making real country music, whereas Beyoncé was doing whatever Beyoncé was doing. And Beyoncé’s fans did not like that very much.

What he said was rude and condescending, and there’s no two ways about it. You can’t look at what he had said or listen to the audio from the video that was pushed out after the fact without thinking what he said was in fact sexist and racist.

And I guess you could, but then you’d be wrong.

We’ll link all this in the show notes. Show notes. If you want to catch up on all the controversies.

There’s just so many of them.

Then he was like pretending to take the high road. And this I think is the biggest problem that I have with him, is that he’s just talking. He’s just, I’m just putting out, I’m just debating things.

I’m going to debate things. We’re going to have a debate. It’s like, no, you’re not.

You’re throwing Molotov cocktails into a conversation that is already loaded into a society that is already feeling the pressure of these things into a space that is racially loaded. And you’re thinking about this going like, why bother doing this?

That one too, it seemed like that take had already been said by so many people. It was already out there. Why we didn’t need another voice.

And we definitely didn’t need this guy making, would you call Adcock’s music real country music? It’s like, it’s pop country, right?

It’s pop country.

It’s kind of the same category.

He’s making neo-bro music, no joke. That’s what he’s doing. And no disrespect to bro country in this.

But that’s what he’s making. And he’s pretending he’s doing something else. And he’s not.

He’s making very much pop country music. He has backtracks and beats and all that stuff that is in with this. Granted, he plays with a live band, but I’m pretty sure he has filler.

But most people do, and there’s no problem with that. But you can’t pretend like you’re the second coming of George Jones and then come up and say this type of stuff.

I mean, he is very much a flash in the pan type of guy that is using a confrontational marketing strategy to keep himself relevant.

Beyoncé did not engage, did she?

She did not. She was like, I don’t care. Who is this guy?

Who knows? Who knows it? I got to imagine if I was Beyoncé, just pretending here for a second.

If I was Beyoncé, I would not give two shits what Gavin Adcock had to say about me. I don’t think she’s given him the time of day, partly because she doesn’t need to.

That’s a great Beyoncé impression.

Thank you.

Yeah, I see what you’re doing there with your hands.

Yeah, it’s good. Keep it in. Anyhow.

Where do we go next?

Where does Beyoncé lead?

Beyoncé comes, Braxton Keith comes, and those kind of go away, because they were short-lived. Then Zach Bryan came along.

16:53

Beef #3: Zach Bryan v. Adcock

And, is that Ryan’s mind of an a** too? He is well known for beating jerks.

That’s why this might be my favorite beef in the Adcock universe, the Zach Bryan one, because I feel like they both came at it with similar energy. Like, he found someone who was going to take the bait, and it just kept on giving.

The public feud, I guess, started when Bryan reacted angrily to a fan online who didn’t get a photo with him, right? What he ended up saying, it was for, like, a young kid, and he posted a very, again, colorful language.

He posted a very colorful thing about getting off of his parts and leave him alone. And so he, you know, it was very ugly. And Adcock said, Bryan’s shown his true colors here.

He’s not this, like, sincere guitar-toting dude, which is, again, not a revolutionary concept. Most people understood that at this point. He had had a very public and weird break up with his former girlfriend.

And anybody who’s ever worked with him gladly tells anybody who will listen, someone like me, for example, who will listen, that he’s a jerk. I had a friend who interacted with him at one point at a bar, completely out of the limelight.

The fans came up. He was a sweet, nice guy. Oh, yeah, I’ll take a picture with you.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when they went back to playing pool, he was just this condescending jerk, and that doesn’t surprise me. He comes across that way, and he always has, in my opinion.

The thing that I find to be the most obnoxious with Bryan is that he takes himself completely seriously. There’s no sense of humor about who he is or how he got to where he is.

And so to kind of wrap this particular feud up, they went back and forth online a couple of times, and then they were going to be both at the Born and Raised Festival, where Bryan went to look for him, and he was standing on the other side of a

fence, and then he climbed the fence to fight him, and Adcock walked away. I don’t think that there’s a good lesson to be learned in this.

Adcock was up in his face when there was a fence between him, but when Zach Bryan jumped the fence, he walked away surrounded by guards, and Zach Bryan was trying, like, let me at him, let me at him, let me at him.

But that particular one was just ugly, and I didn’t really like how that ended. You know, the entire thing was pathetic. Adcock is starting all of it, but he won’t finish any of it.

He presents as this big bad dude. I don’t think that they should fight each other physically. But if you’re not willing to de-escalate, and you’re just going to step away and hide behind your security, what are you trying to say?

What are you proving? What are you doing? You want to be country AF?

Stand up and get hit in the face, man. I mean, it’s not the right answer, but it’s certainly not the right image that you’re trying to present. He looked like a fool, and so did Zach Bryan.

I don’t know how you would come out looking good, actually getting in a physical altercation when you are a public figure like that.

So it’s like they were just playing this game of chicken, and let’s see who’s going to blank first. And everybody was watching.

It was uncomfortable, but also intoxicating to watch, because you just don’t see, you don’t usually see that actually happen. The Braxton Keith thing, somebody deescalates it and says, let’s get over this, who cares? And they move on.

Or they have professional management that takes care of that stuff.

That too, yeah.

The point that Adcock was pushed away by his team is evidence of his professional management and how they are all buying into this.

And so he, again, he’s either an idiot savant or is completely bought into it and is doing it on purpose. And I’m leaning towards him doing it on purpose because he’s not that dumb. He’s not that smart, but he’s definitely not that dumb.

He’s a college graduate with a degree in management. He knows what he’s doing. He’s managing his image.

He gets what he’s doing. And I think the Charley Crockett example, which is next on our list of his ridiculous beefs, really shows what happens when you swing way above your weight class.

21:10

Beef #4: Charley Crockett v. Adcock

Granted, I have my own favorites in this. I am in Team Crockett all the way. But Charley Crockett swept the floor with him.

And it was just a master class in narrative control. Crockett came out pretty much right after Morgan Wallen said that he doesn’t listen to any country music and he listens to a lot of rap and hip hop.

And Crockett said, this is emblematic of our situation, is that the top country musician in the world doesn’t listen to country music.

And when a black woman makes country music after following the history of it and getting to know it really well and understanding it, she gets called out for not doing it right. We’ve been dealing with this forever. He didn’t talk about Gavin Adcock.

He didn’t mention Gavin Adcock. He kept his name out of his mouth. He had no interest in it.

And it was just a high quality take.

It was by someone. I think and I think Charlie is half African-American. He’s half black.

I believe so.

To me that that like just seemed to make a lot of sense and he’s eloquent about it.

It was well thought out and I got to have no idea what Morgan Wallen would have to say about it.

But Wallen said that in an interview. He said he doesn’t listen to country music. Fine, that he’s making music that is wildly popular.

Not saying one way or another if it’s good or not.

If you want to hear Donnie Cutler say his real opinion about Morgan Wallen’s music, it’s not hard to find.

Yeah, you know what I have to think about him. But his music is popular. It doesn’t mean it’s good or bad.

It means that a lot of people like it. And if you like it, that’s fine. You don’t have to listen to my opinion about it.

And I respect your choice to listen to that music. It’s fine. Crockett wasn’t saying anything negative about the style of music.

He was simply saying that the influences that he takes into the music are very similar to what some black artists are taking into country music as they consider it and play with the genres and cross and blend ideas together. And that’s what he said.

And then, oh my god, in comes Gavin Adcock, swinging his ego back and forth with this unbelievable diatribe, how Charley Crockett is a cosplay cowboy who doesn’t even know what he’s talking about and he never had this thing.

And he starts posting these videos of Crockett playing his guitar on the subway in New York, however many years ago. And Crockett’s like, yeah, that was me. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

And I had a whole lot of influences. I’m from, you know, South Texas. There’s blues, there’s jazz, there’s country music, there’s Tejano, there’s notanio, there’s a ton of music that’s influenced me.

That was so confusing to me because that’s my favorite part of the Charley Crockett story is that there is that footage of him on the subway.

And it’s like, man, look, this guy really started from the bottom. He was busking and he just kept on working on the craft and got a break and figured out what lane was going to work for him.

Exactly.

And then Adcock, he attacks the one of your favorite words, authenticity of Charley Crockett. And suddenly the feud just goes everywhere.

And the thing that I found to be fabulous about it is that Crockett was also on the Nashville Now podcast by Rolling Stone.

24:45

Apple Podcasts

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And it was a very smooth interview. Clearly, Rolling Stone has its perspective on this as well.

But he pretty much said, and I think that he may have slipped up in how he said it, he said pretty much this new outlaw adcocks, the what hardy wants to be now, what what what artist is trying to do.

These new outlaws are pretty much just an offset of pop country as opposed to the other way around. What happened at the original time that the outlaws were an offshoot of Nashville country. It was an interesting take.

I think he misspoke when he spoke about it, but that’s not really the point. The point was that Charley Crockett thinks about this a lot. He has cultivated a persona and he’s putting on it.

But I don’t doubt the case. I wrote about this a lot and I’ll happily link that one in my show. The story that I feel is important is that what you’re cultivating, what you’re creating as an artist is the persona that you’re creating.

And so what if he is putting on a nudie suit and a beautiful classic Stetson hat? All of the guys who put on nudie suits back in the day were putting on an act. Nobody wears a nudie suit.

Nobody wears rhinestone encrusted pants and matching jacket in normal life. You just don’t. It’s a stage outfit and you’re putting on the stage outfit for a reason.

And so the idea that he’s putting on some act that makes him not authentic is so beyond the pale of stupid that this guy who is college educated, who spends time in the gym, who works on his craft and engages with songwriters on a regular basis,

works on music row, is on a major label, isn’t putting on some act when he gets on stage and calls for people to throw beers at him. Give me a break. Adcock is putting on just the same amount of act as Charley Crockett.

Just Charley Crockett is doing it better. That’s it.

I forgot who it was. Another country musician mentioned at one point that, I think she tweeted that Morgan Wallen is the most authentic, quote unquote, authentic artist out there because he seems to be exactly the character that he plays on stage.

Dave here from post-production. It was Kat Hasty, licks in the show notes.

I didn’t make it up. I swear.

He’s just kind of a drunken bro. I don’t know if Adcock falls into that category too. The act that he’s putting on is just doubling down on that persona you were talking about, the nose tackle, bus surfing, and catching beers.

Let’s try and package that. The master provocateur jumps into the arena from the top of the bus and just literally.

What I don’t quite get, and I mean, I understand it, but what I don’t get is why he continues to do this.

27:46

What’s the value of these fights to Adcock?

Because he’s not won a single one of these battles with any influential group of people that will help him further his career beyond the right now. His music is fine. It’s not great.

I would say he’s right in the middle of the radio pack. He has a couple of hits and a lot of those hits are bigger hits streaming-wise because of situations like this. Let’s just say 50-50 down the middle on the Zach Bryan fight.

Half the people posted stories about that with music from Adcock and the other half posted stories about that with Bryan. So that drove their streaming revenues.

You get people like me that are like, who is this guy? Let me stream a few songs.

And he has even said, Adcock has said in interviews, that every time he fights with Beyoncé or says something about her…

He fights at Beyoncé.

Exactly.

He fights with Beyoncé.

He gets a bump in streaming revenues. Because people are like, what is this? Who is this guy?

I’m going to listen to him. So he gets a bump in streaming revenues, which then further inflames the situation and then further does more for his streaming.

His hardcore fans are like, yeah, he’s doing what we need to be doing with real country music. And then people around the globe are like, who is this guy? Why is he fighting with the most popular and decorated pop star of all time?

29:16

Beef #5: Benjamin Tod v. Adcock

Dave here.

I hope you’re enjoying the show so far. I wanted to let you know that Donnie and I are planning season three. And as part of that, we want to hear from you, dear listener.

Through January 31st, we are running a listener survey on our website. You can find it at countrymusictads.com/feedback. It’s also linked in the show notes.

It’ll take about two minutes to fill out. And I hope you do, because we are curious what you want to hear from us in season three. What’s working, what isn’t, and what kinds of country music and parenting content are you looking for in 2026?

Can’t wait to hear from you. And again, you’ll find the survey at countrymusictads.com/feedback until January 31st. And now back to the show.

Now we get to Benjamin Tod.

Benjamin Tod is someone I would not want to mess with.

Do you have met this guy?

Yeah, I’ve spoken to him on the phone. And it wasn’t even video. I was nervous talking to him on the phone.

The intensity of this guy is real. I don’t know if it’s an act or not, but it’s intense and he has a lot going on inside of him. He’s done a lot of things.

There’s video of him from when he was very young and very high on heroin, screaming at people about not knowing the history of Nashville. He recently posted that on his own socials to prove his bona fides. And it’s intense and he’s an intense dude.

He’s faced adversity. He’s ridden the rails as a hobo and he worked his ass off to get where he is. He got sober.

He created a band that he built himself. He created a solo project that he built himself. And it got to the point where it was too much that he brought on management.

And he was open about the fact that he brought on management and he wasn’t a sellout and all that stuff. But like, he’s an intense dude. And I interviewed him for Saddle Mountain Post and we’ll put that in the show notes.

Show notes. He’s open about this whole thing, that he needed someone else to help him do this. He doesn’t have to prove himself anymore.

But at the same time, someone stole his truck in Nashville and he got on Instagram and pretty much said, you might have stolen one of my guns, but I’m still packing another and you better hope I find my truck without you in it.

He says this publicly on social media and it went semi-viral too. And I was like, OK, he may kill somebody for stealing his truck. Comes on live later and he says, I bought my truck.

Here it is. They took my gun. They took all the cash that was in my car.

Hopefully the cops find you first. And that was the end of it. Was it an act?

Was it a presentation? Who knows? But I was scared.

Dude’s freaky. Like he’s intense. And Benjamin Tod comes out and does a great honky tonk record.

It’s fun. And then he’s doing another one. He’s doing it with our good friend Shooter Jennings.

And they’re putting out singles now. And so he’s doing interviews and getting it out there. And at some point in one of the interviews, he said he played for $75 a night for years because that’s what he had to do.

Of course, our boy Gavin comes on and says, if I was doing something for $75 for years and years, I’d find something else to do.

He just can’t help himself. If he’s been out of the news for a little while, I guess that’s just his strategy.

Exactly. Perhaps you don’t do it with a guy like Benjamin Tod. And so Benjamin Tod pretty much gives, and this dude is smart.

There’s no two ways about it. Benjamin Tod knows what he’s talking about. He’s steeped in the history.

He’s one of those guys that read the book that he got from the library every time. Smart guy. And he’s just absolutely ripped some part in the back and forth.

The comments are ridiculous. And they’re going back and forth. Sometimes Gavin wins a couple rounds, but for the most part, Benjamin Tod’s just wiping the floor with him.

And he pretty much finishes it with, hey, we’re both going to be at Stagecoach. I’m looking forward to meeting you. And like openly threatens him.

And unlike Zach Bryan, I don’t think anybody is going to stop Benjamin Tod.

Credit to him as a writer also, because the imagery he used to threaten Adcock, he said something about, I’m going to wear your teeth as a necklace, which is just, it’s so graphic.

Actually, I didn’t see it the video about the stealing of his truck and the being ready to go track that person down. I’m just clicking on Instagram stories and just passing time, trying to relax.

And then I see somebody post about wearing someone’s teeth as a necklace, like your outlaw version of the Puka shells. And I’m like, oh man, this guy is on a different level.

Yeah, it’s intense. We both went to Benjamin Tod’s show here in LA, and that was a dark show, man. I did not feel relaxed after the show.

I did not feel fulfilled. I felt a little bit nervous. I mean, and I think that was that was his aim.

I mean, that’s the art that he creates, and it’s the life that he lived. And that sure isn’t what Gavin Adcock has lived. He graduated high school, he went to college, he got a degree, he went down the music row path, and all of that is fine.

That doesn’t make him any less of an authentic country musician than anyone else. And that’s somewhere I will disagree with Tod. And I hope he doesn’t listen to this and then track me down.

But I think that you can be an authentic country musician without doing all of that. And this whole thing is insane.

34:58

How do these beefs compare to historical country music beefs?

There have always been beefs in country music.

People love these stories of who doesn’t like who. People trade their jabs online or in the news. Is this at a different level?

Like, how does it compare to some of the other ones?

I think the 24-hour news cycle, along with the fan-based music industry media, makes this feel more personal.

I also think that the controlled media, the social media that each of these people control, allows them a much larger platform, a platform that is outsized. Like, the fact that Beyoncé didn’t talk back means that Gavin Adcock won.

That’s at least a narrative within some circles, which is hilarious. That I think is what’s different. I think that this has always existed.

Who hates whom? The fans love to see the feud. In this world, where image is everything, you have to continue the beef.

And I think that’s what’s different. I don’t think it’s that out of scale with history. But I do think it’s more, it’s distilled.

It’s more intense. There are just as many feuds, but instead of drinking a beer, you’re having whiskey straight.

The 24-hour news cycle and the pace of social media just makes it escalate so much quicker. Like every little thing gets articles written about every tweet or every Instagram story snapshot that people take.

Just feeding the appetite of honestly people like us that like to follow this stuff. And we’re part of the problem, Dave? I suppose.

I’m definitely part of the problem.

Can we be part of the solution?

That’s how we’re going to try to wrap up the show. Eventually. Eventually, yeah.

What are your favorite fighting songs in Country Music? It’s not just something that happens in the media, behind the scenes. This is a theme.

36:54

Violence and Male Bravado in Country Music Storytelling

So what role do violence and male bravado play in Country Music? Maybe that’s what Adcock and company are tapping into here.

It’s all storytelling. And I think that we need to remember, for the most part, the violence is part of the story. I’m pretty sure Johnny Cash never shot anybody in Reno.

However, one of the coolest songs he ever performed. And that quote comes directly from Jake Owen. He was recently interviewed off of his new album.

The concept of some of these prisons, some of these train songs, not all the people hopped trains and were hobos who sang those songs. Not everybody who sang outlaw music went to jail. And that doesn’t mean that it’s any less or more authentic.

You have a really good example in one of the worst songs of the past few years, one of the most blatantly racist songs of the last few years. In Try That in a Small Town by Jason Aldean.

Full of good old boys Raised up a riot If you’re looking for a fight Try that in a small town And I know that this is probably not going to play well with all of our listeners, but that song and the video for that song were written and performed to

incite the reaction I’m having, right? It did exactly its job. I am furthering the point that he was trying to make with that song. There’s violence in that song.

There’s bravado in that song. There’s naked patriotism in that song without any sort of balance to talk about facts or figures. It’s a song that talks about all these things.

It’s creating a story that people want to believe is true. In the same way Johnny Cash didn’t shoot anybody in Reno, Jason Aldean is from Atlanta, not some small town.

Dave here with a quick fact check. Jason Aldean is actually from Macon, Georgia, not Atlanta. The fourth largest city in Georgia.

Not that small.

It doesn’t change the fact that this is what we want to hear in this music. Going on to another Johnny Cash. You outlined this one and I hadn’t heard this one before.

It’s Don’t Take Your Guns to Town. That’s much more of a cautionary tale. It’s like, don’t have naked bravado.

Whereas another one I had to look up that you put on the list, I Could Kick Your Ass by Justin Moore.

Do I just know about all these songs about…

I knew the rest of it…

. male bravado?

But that one is an example of performative masculinity, right? But they still serve similar purposes. There’s this idea that violence, which is prevalent in any free aspect of life, leads to power and control and everything else.

That fits in the music. It fits in the story line. And people want to hear stuff that they understand.

They do. They want to connect with the story. And these stories are something that you can connect with.

Look, everybody has wanted to just kick the crap out of somebody at some point. And anybody who tells you otherwise is lying. If you do it or you don’t, that’s a different story, right?

I mentioned earlier that kind of the escapist aspect of listening to music, you can kind of, you can identify with the emotions.

And like, as a guy, I get angry with whatever happens. And like, you always, to me, that would manifest. And like, I want to do something about it.

I want to do something physical to show that I’m upset about something. So it’s something that’s just very real, that’s kind of written on the heart of man that these songs tap into. Try that in a small town.

And to me, that was just a much poorer version of like Beer for My Horses. Which also, it’s got some imagery that is very racially charged. I’ll be honest, when I first heard the Try That in a Small Town, it was like, this is kind of predictable.

The music video to me made it a lot worse, because it had actual images from protests, like violent protests. And like the message from the images and from the music video is that you shouldn’t protest, which is a big problem.

We should be able to speak our minds and stand up to authority. And just the timing of that song was just so obvious. And of course it went to number one and got all the streaming numbers, because there was an appetite for that.

I don’t think Beer for My Horses had the same effect. At the time, there wasn’t the same kind of unrest.

The context in which the song exists matters. Like art doesn’t exist in a bubble. You can’t experience the song in a vacuum.

And that’s why I think in some cases, you have to understand the time and place in which it was created. It doesn’t change the fact that there are troubling lines and charged imagery in Beer for My Horses.

But in the same way that if you stream a movie on Disney from the 50s or 40s, they have a warning at the beginning of it.

Pretty much says this was created in a different time and there are troubling and somewhat racist or xenophobic or sexist tropes that are in this movie. Viewer discretion is advised because it was created in a different time.

But you can’t experience that as if it was the 1930s or 40s or 50s, you have to experience it today. And so while that art was created in that time and you have to understand that time, it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t troubling today.

Those songs are also part of the game. And so you have to think about it that way.

Don’t Take Your Guns to Town is one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs. The violence is a big part of it. The kid’s going to take his gun and when he gets mad or when he feels offended, he’s going to draw the gun and escalate to a situation.

That emotion of a young person trying to engage and show that they’ve arrived as an adult and wondering how they can deal with it, it kind of elevates it above just your standard old west shootout vigilante justice type of a trope.

There’s a lot of depth to that song.

And speaking of people who have a ton of depth to a lot of their songs, I think Moral Haggard’s fighting side of me is pretty visceral. It’s like a gut reaction type of song. I don’t…

And for those who are like students of Moral Haggard, you know that he wrote other songs that never got made that had to do with interracial couples and the love of those things.

And the very clearly sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek Oakey from Miss Skokie. Like, there’s a lot Moral Haggard has. And that context is important when you start thinking about the fighting side of me.

But when did he write that? Where was he in his life at that time? It all kind of starts to make sense that it isn’t as deep as some of the others.

It gets back to that kind of visceral, violent reaction. It’s not any sort of cautionary tale, like, don’t take your guns to town. It’s much more, I could kick your ass by Justin Moore.

It’s much more like, hey, don’t talk s*** about the country.

There’s a line in the beginning of it where he’s pretty much saying, if you don’t agree with me, that’s fine, stand up for what you want to say, but when you get to the other side of this, you know, you’re on the fighting side of me.

It’s like, well, where’s that line, right? Where does that come in?

Looking back at these great songs, most of them, right, most of these are very good songs, well crafted, and then just the abject stupidity of Gavin Adcock’s approach to utilizing violent words online to engage with his quote unquote adversaries.

I got to imagine Johnny Cash would be like, dude, shut up. Like, Merle Haggard would be like, I’ve seen some things, you haven’t.

Yeah, back to the drawing board, Gavin. Come on, do better. Please fix, Gavin.

Yes.

When you think about these bigger picture, we’re trying to connect it to this history of country music. Just the baseline dumb aspect of this is just come on, dudes. Stop this.

Just stop.

They don’t have Merle or Johnny anymore to give them advice. All they have is us. Yeah, they do have is us.

Maybe some other people, but for the most part, just us. It’s us for right now.

46:03

Dad Advice for Kids Dealing With Trash Talk or Bullying

What kind of advice would you give your kid if Gavin Adcock was coming after him with this trash talk? Or, you know, the more standard, a bully at school, which is something that we’re going to have to deal with.

And maybe you’ve already dealt with them. I’m dealing with a little snippet of that from my second grader.

There’s like a pinching epidemic going on at the school, which is like real annoying that I have to weigh in on like, kids are pinching each other. Come on, guys.

Stop doing that. We did deal with it for a while with our oldest. And there were two kids that were ganging up on, give him a hard time for all sorts of reasons.

Whatever a bully finds is your weak spot. They’re gonna poke at it. And that’s what they were doing.

They were poking at his weak spot. And he told on them time and time again. He pushed back verbally time and time again.

And he told the teacher and he told the principal and we were having a lot of trouble. How do you fix this? And it does get to a point where if they’re being physical with you, you gotta protect yourself.

I don’t educate violence in any situation where it’s with kids. But you can’t allow yourself to get beat up. And my son’s big and strong.

And at some point, I don’t know what happened. But they stopped bothering him and there was no teacher intervention. Perhaps they went to that blind spot and he took care of it.

I don’t know if that’s what happened. I don’t actually care. What I care about is that you need to stand up for yourself.

And that’s what I would say to my kids and I have. But you also can’t then turn around and be that person to somebody else.

The bullying issue, but are you in some cases, this is what Gavin Adcock’s dealing with, is that when you have a power dynamic in which you can steal power from somebody else through violence or violent talk, you’re gonna do that.

But at some point, you’re gonna get into that situation where you F around and find out.

The find out portion of that is often very difficult for the person who starts it, because every once in a while, the person who seems like they have less power is a whole lot bigger than you, is a whole lot smarter than you, is a whole lot stronger

than you, a whole lot more willing to defend themselves than you. And that, I think, is the advice I would give to everybody. You don’t want to be on the find out side of the stick.

So, don’t be a bully, but don’t allow yourself to go down so far that you are being bullied to the point where you don’t feel good about yourself. Stand up, talk back, search out help, be that therapy for a guy like Gavin Adcock.

Kids are going to get bullied, kids are going to be made fun of. There’s no way around that, there just isn’t. It’s part of growing up.

But you should grow out of it by the time you’re an adult, Gavin. The thing that I don’t quite get is when grown men act like little boys. I just don’t get it.

Sure, we all have our moments of weakness, and I am not one to say that I don’t. But come on, stop acting like children and grow up. That’s my advice to Gavin Adcock.

Stop acting like an 11-year-old. Grow up.

Ideally, my advice to my kids would always be that you have to be the bigger person and walk away from these confrontations because you know that someone is trying to provoke you and they’re trying to get a reaction out of you, and they’re dealing

with something themselves that is making them act in this way to try to establish dominance or whatever. But when it comes to defending yourself, I’ve always told my kids, like, I’m going to have your back if that is the case.

You’re not going to be in trouble with me because things got violent or things got complicated if you’re defending yourself.

And that’s like the line I’m trying to walk in that the Benjamin Todd Adcock fight, there was, at least in the stories, what got kind of nasty from my perspective was when they started accusing each other of being less Christian than each other.

That was real ugly.

Which, yeah, that’s when it was really getting started to get personal. But neither of them mentioned turning the other cheek, which is one of the more famous teachings of Jesus. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that also.

You’re always dealing with the balance of turning the other cheek versus being walked all over and not standing up for yourself. It’s a tough thing to navigate with kids and I don’t have the perfect thing to say yet.

I don’t think there is the perfect thing to say. I’m looking, trying to remember back to what was said to me. I mean, I got in a fight in middle school defending a friend of mine.

Somebody jumped on my friend and I beat the living daylights out of the guy. I just did. I got pulled off by one of the lunch aids.

We all got in trouble. We all got referrals. I had to pick up trash for a week, whatever.

I had a Saturday work program day when I went to school and cleaned up the school. My dad pretty much said, you shouldn’t have done that. It’s good that you defended your friend.

Figure out a different way to do it next time. Then privately later, he said, good job. That’s the reality.

You shouldn’t do these things because there’s nothing that’s positive that comes from it. Confrontation yields more confrontation.

You don’t need an international relations degree or a master’s in political science to understand that when one side fights the other side, they’re going to keep fighting until everybody’s dead. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.

Yeah, but every once in a while, black eye does teach some important lessons. You have to understand, and I think this is the balance, is that you want your kids to be like, okay, fine. I’m fine.

You’re fine. Let’s move away from this. We can talk about this another day.

But every once in a while, someone’s going to haul off and sock somebody. That’s because we have the human nature to fight, and it’s there. You have fight or flight.

That’s animalistic. But you also have the societal expectation to stand up to people who are fighting you. What good comes from this?

Nothing. Nothing good comes from it, but it’s still what we deal with, and how you balance that out is like next to impossible, right? You still want your kid to win.

You still don’t want them to be on the find-out side of the stick, but it’s gonna happen. And, you know, you have to figure out the balance.

Yeah, that’s a good point about the societal expectation, because that, I think, is something that you can push back against and that I think I would want my kids to push back against, because I think we’ve all experienced that, like, somebody says

something and someone says, are you gonna let them say that? Are you gonna let them do that?

And then you’re kind of put on the defensive, like, okay, I guess I’m expected to do something about what this person said or what this person did, and you do get into that, like, fight or flight mode, and your pride is gonna tell you to fight.

It’s not gonna tell you to run away.

But until what point, until what point, if you are the person who is continually put down, let’s take it to, like, the extreme. You’re the person who’s continually getting beaten down. At what point do you fight back?

At what point do you say, oh, turning the other cheek is definitely not working for me? Or my community, or my people, right? This is a much bigger question that gets into the concept of power dynamics and violence.

You saw that with Adcock and Bryan, is that Bryan was like, you can say whatever you want, but you have to be able to back that up. And Adcock was like, oh, no, I’m gonna run over to the tent now.

Even in my telling of that, clearly, I have my perspective. From a, just an objective outside observer, Adcock did the right thing. He didn’t engage with him physically.

He just talked trash with him. That’s the right move. It just objectively, not fighting with him was the right choice.

But to what end? He’s gonna keep going. And Benjamin Tod has essentially threatened to knock out all of his teeth and beat him to a pulp.

Like, how’s that gonna end? Who wins there? Kids are seeing it.

I’m not like, neither of these guys, none of these guys are role models. Let’s just be clear. But they are because of their stature.

And so when we get guys like us coming on here and, you know, joking about it a little bit, but also, like, there’s some real, real problems that our society has with violence. And it doesn’t solve anything. It just begets more violence.

So you end up with a circle where everybody is blind. But again, where do you stop that? Perhaps with a well-placed hit to the jaw, where everybody sees and Gavin Adcock goes down for the count.

Just saying.

See y’all at Stagecoach in April 2026.

All I want is the live stream of their interaction.

Yeah. Can’t wait. Yeah, it’ll be interesting.

55:13

The Dad Life Sound Check

So for the Dad Life sound check, we’re all juiced up now, ready to go. What do you put on your playlist, Donnie, if you’re going to go meet the bully in the parking lot?

It would probably be Decoration Day by Drive by Truckers. That song will both get me pumped up and also pulling from the edge. And here’s my thing, the whole point of that song is pointless, long-term family feud, right?

It’s all about where the bullet in the chest came from, whose grave you’re gonna go piss on, whose house you’re gonna burn down, stuff like that. Real upper stuff. But it also talks to the futility of that.

And to me, I haven’t been in a fight, a physical altercation since middle school. I have stopped multiple physical altercations since middle school. I’ve always been a bigger guy.

I’m a white guy. I can also get in the way of things to calm things down a lot. But I don’t think that there’s any value.

I also really understand the urge to punch someone. So I would go with Decoration Day, both to get ready for that fight, and also to understand that it’s completely futile.

Yeah, grounded. I’ll go with a Coetzel song. It’s called Fuss and Fight.

And it’s very, it was actually on Kim’s list of songs that get ready to give birth. So she was ready to go to war with her body. And so it was kind of an anthem for this season of life as she was getting ready.

It’s just a real high energy song, but this song also is about choosing not to fight. Part of the chorus is, I ain’t got time to fuss and fight with you.

So really, despite Coe’s aura, dude who’s going to drunkenly get in a fight and get arrested, the song is not really about that, but it does get me jacked up for whatever I’m going to do.

Usually it’s like going to the gym, so at least I’ll be ready to fight should the moment arise. But hopefully it won’t.

You’d just be able to spot someone on the bench press.

That’s right, yeah.

One thing I will say about Cole Wetzel is that we did not include him in our facial hair conversation, and we probably should have.

Cole has a lot. He’s got a lot of hair in general. He’s got a lot going on.

The modern day caveman.

He’s a big dude.

Another former football player, Cole Wetzel, by the way.

He can sing. Gavin Adcock.

Yeah, absolutely he can. He has much better songwriters. I would really love for them to go to enter the fray with Adcock because it feels like they physically would match up pretty well.

I don’t think anything good comes from that.

Wishful thinking.

No, no, I know. I’m just a fan of all the feuds, and that’s why we’re talking about it this week, I think. See, Cole Wetzel just had a daughter, so now that he’s a dad, when you become a father, things change.

The violent urges tend to back off. They shift, exactly. It’s more like you are Papa Bear defending the den, not just picking fights with the closest, most annoying bro.

When you look around and can’t figure out who the closest, most annoying bro is, Gavin, it’s probably you.

Thank you all for listening, and we hope you enjoyed this deep dive into our good friend Gavin Adcock and the fight inside of all of us and its place in our modern society.

The best way to support us is to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast platform you use.

If you want to see new episodes and more content delivered straight to your e-mail inbox, please subscribe to our newsletter, countrymusictads.substack.com.

You can find everything we do on our website, countrymusictads.com, and we’d love to hear what you think, so send us comments, suggestions, friendly banter on Instagram at countrymusictads, or via e-mail countrymusictads.gmail.com.

Gavin Adcock, we can’t wait to hear from you.

So stay tuned until next episode, or I’ll kick your ass. Until next time, whether you’re at the dance hall, the playground, or just folding some laundry. Thanks for tuning in.

We’ll talk to you soon. What’s the movie, how about Them Apples?

Good Will Hunting?

That’s what Country Music fans get by listening to Zach Bryan. You can pretend like it’s some deep, intelligent thing. It’s all surface level.

It’s good, it’s better than most writing that comes out of Nashville. It’s not digging too deep, it’s very basic.

I’m gonna have to sit with that one for a while. The Good Will Hunting, Zach Bryan connection, those are two things that I did not consider together before.

How would you like Them Apples on?

You’re on a roll, man.

I’m feeling it.

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