Country crooner Gavin Adcock hopes to be the Tom Brady of country music.
Yes, the former NFL quarterback. Standby for the logic behind that comparison. But first, Adcock has a new album arriving Oct. 2 that complicates the rowdy, beer-drinking image attached to the Georgia singer.
"The Day I Hang It Up," released via Thrivin Here Records/Warner Records Nashville, runs 26 tracks on its physical edition and moves between country rock, traditional country, heartbreak and quieter reflections on what happens when the life you chased starts taking you away from the one you knew.
"I just wanted this album to stand the test of time," Adcock told The Tennessean. "It's a song about how you get to choose when you call it quits, no matter what the world's
saying about you, no matter what kind of fire you're under."
The 26-year-old former Georgia Southern football player knows something about fire.
Sitting on a leather couch at his management's office in Nashville's Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, Adcock didn't carry himself like someone looking for a fight. Wearing jeans, boots, a white collared shirt and a Thrivin Here trucker hat, he spoke calmly without any pretense.
But Adcock pays attention to what people say about him. He reads the comments, and unlike many artists, he sometimes answers them with witty jabs.
"I will give it right back to you because these other artists will not, but I will," he said. "I'm nice to people that are nice to me, but if they want to stick their neck out and say something, I might give it right back to them."
When one X user replied to a July post of his forthcoming album with "we don't want it," Adcock shot back, "That's too bad lil feller. It's comin."
Another user wrote that "nobody wants to see" a drunk artist "trashing old school country."
"Seems like they do," Adcock replied.
'The Day I Hang It Up'
Adcock has built his career on a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic and a willingness to say exactly what he thinks, a trait that has put him at the center of some of country music's loudest disagreements.
He's sparred publicly with Beyoncé, Charley Crockett and Zach Bryan, with disagreements ranging from what belongs in country music to how artists treat fans. The Bryan feud later spilled into a concert in Oklahoma, where the two exchanged words from opposite sides of a fence before security intervened. He also turned a May 2025 arrest that ended with a guilty plea for speeding into the song "Morning Bail."
For someone whose career has increasingly come with headlines about what he said, posted or did, Adcock's 26-song project gives him plenty of room to back up the talk with a voice capable of withstanding an enduring career.
The title track reflects that.
"I plan to make music for a long time and to stick around and see the industry for a long time. So I just wanted it to stand the test of time and put my foot down and be like, I'm here," he said.
Adcock opens the record determined to keep going until death makes the decision for him. As the album unfolds, however, its songs repeatedly return to time he can't recover, people he misses and a home he rarely gets to see.
There are two Adcocks across the record: the country boy who loves the grind, the road, drinking and raising hell, and the one increasingly aware of what those things can cost him. Home, family and time keep pulling against the rock-star life.
"18" looks backward at wanting to grow up, only to eventually want that time back. "Time For A Slow Down" finds a man who admits that even if God gave him four extra hours in a day, he'd probably spend them working. "Dreamer" considers how the wildness that attracts someone can eventually drive that same person away.
"Shoes" takes the accounting further. Adcock weighs success against Sunday meals missed with his mother and time he didn't get with a friend before his death. On "Every Other Heartbreak," the possessions and pastimes that help define his country-boy identity — his truck, records, guitar, hunting lease and even the 706 area code back home — become things he'd surrender for the right woman.
"Home kind of represents my peace and putting my feet on the ground and just taking me back to what made me," he said.
'Rockstar Life'
When Adcock's manager noticed a bottle of whiskey on Adcock's back porch, it gave the wrong impression. Adcock, whose songs and social media have helped build an image of a country singer who likes drinking and raising hell, was not actually working his way through the whiskey.
The bottle had been a prop.
Adcock said he'd used it while filming a promotional video in his backyard that involved fire and an explosion, then left it outside.
"Some people think I'm crazier and more wild than I am," he said. "I drink and party and I can party with the best of them, but when Monday comes around, I'm working and I'm not waking up and hitting the bottle every single day. And no matter what people say about me, there's always the real me."
Early in his career, Adcock rented an RV meant for eight or nine people, packed roughly 14 inside and drove it himself. He hauled cattle late at night with a 36-foot trailer for extra money, continuing the side job into the first years of his music career.
The RV has been replaced by a tour bus, but Adcock said he's still usually awake by 7:30 or 8 a.m. and tries to write at least one song a week. By the time "The Day I Hang It Up" arrives, he expects to have released more than 80 songs in five years.
Adcock tells younger artists afraid to release music that they'll never hit a bullseye if they don't throw the dart. And that's when he brings up quarterback Tom Brady. Brady won seven Super Bowl championships across 23 NFL seasons, a roughly 30% success rate. Adcock hopes the same proportion of his catalog becomes hits.
"Doesn't mean their career wasn't good, but they didn't win it all," Adcock said. "So you got to go for it in anything, and I'm going to keep on going for it."
Bryan West is a music reporter at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Gavin Adcock has feuded with Beyoncé and Zach Bryan. Here's his side | Exclusive
