Up until recently, Gavin Adcock was mostly an unknown to the majority of country fans. But after a string of viral moments — claiming Beyoncé isn’t country, calling out cowboy singer Charley Crockett, and in a Rolling Stone video that’s now been viewed more than 1 million times on TikTok, saying Zach Bryan isn’t “really that great of a person” — his name is seemingly turning up everywhere.
Adcock’s currently on the road in support of his new album Own Worst Enemy, playing concerts that often end up soaked in beer. During his interview on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Adcock explained how the beer-throwing ritual started, beginning with a show in Newport, Kentucky.
“I stirred that up… I thought it was awesome. I saw cans flying, and just the chaos was amazing,” Adcock says. “They weren’t throwing beers because they were mad — they were throwing beers because they were having an out-of-body experience where they were living in the moment.”
But Adock admits that when the beer tossing took on a life of its own, it became “a battle” for the Georgia native. To try to control the monster, he now has beers poured into cups at his headlining concerts. He also says he demands his security to keep an eye out for fans throwing cans.
“If I think a show is going to be crazy…and they’re throwing before I even go out there, I’ll go to my security guard,” he says. “‘If you see somebody slinging beer cans, you toss them out in the parking lot on their head,’ and everybody in there will go, ‘I don’t want that to be me.’”
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Margo Price, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, and Dusty Slay.
