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Trace Adkins - Good Guys Finish First
He has hit songs, million-selling albums, a popular book, and a public appeal that has Hollywood on the
phone to him for roles in movies and television. It’s a glamorous life, on the surface, and there’s no doubt
that Trace Adkins loves the music. Yet there’s a whole lot of the middle-America, hardworking man inside him who wonders, as he walks offstage, “Did I make a difference while I was out there singing?”
By Vernell Hackett
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"You can't sing about something you don't believe in" |
Trace Adkins grew up steeped
in the blue-collar heartland
ethic. The people he knew
and loved were hard-working men
and women who taught him a love
of family and country, and the core
values of honesty and responsibility.
His father recently retired from
his factory job where he worked for
43 years.
“I was fortunate enough to live in a
small rural community that was centered
around the church and school,” says
Adkins, who was born and raised some 50
miles northeast of Shreveport, in little
Sarepta, La., population somewhere
around 1,000. “I saw people working hard
all their lives. There was a paper mill and
oil field and timber industry, plus I went
hunting and fishing and played sports, so
I had a great childhood. My grandparents
on both sides lived close to me, so I
learned the importance of family from
that. So that’s the perspective I come
from and how I look at life.”
This upbringing imbued Adkins with a
respect for hard work and what it takes
to earn a dollar. Recalling his days as an
oil field roughneck, he remarks, “I was
so exhausted and dirty and beat up [at
the end of the day] that I knew I had put
in an honest day’s work. It was a rough
gig; you stayed banged up and bruised
up.” He adds with a chuckle: “Since I
stopped playing clubs, very seldom do I
finish a gig bleeding anymore.”
He admits he is one of those
fortunate people who got to live his
dream. “I absolutely love doing what I
do. I now am able to earn a living making
music but… there’s a part of me that
feels kinda guilty because, in my opinion,
I don’t think I work hard enough for
my paycheck.”
The singer understands that the
music business isn’t all glamour and
glory. “People say the music business
isn’t an easy job, but really the only hardships
are separation from family and the
frustration you have to deal with daily
with the politics of the business. I abhor
the politics and I don’t play them, so
consequently I don’t get awards unless
they’re fan-voted. But I don’t need to get
nominations to tell me I’m doing a good
job; I get it from the people who spend
their hard-earned money to come see
me and buy my records.”
When he graduated from high school,
Adkins opted for a football scholarship at
Louisiana Tech over enlistment in the
military. He played music while working
as a pipefitter on an offshore drilling rig,
working the club circuit in Texas and
Louisiana. He moved to Nashville, Tenn.
in 1992. He signed with Capitol Records
three years later, and the music world
said hello to the tall man with the ponytail
adangle behind the cowboy hat—the
one who thrills the women with his deep
voice and sly, sexy smile. Adkins also
appeals to the men, who realize he is just
what he seems to be—a hardworking
family man who loves his country and
understands their everyday frustrations.
After some early hits with “Every Light
in the House” and “(This Ain’t) No
Thinkin’ Thing,” the singer stretched
and won notice for songs that were outside
of the envelope—tunes like “Hot
Mama,” “Chrome,” and the mega hit
“Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” Lest anyone
think he cuts only uptempo ditties,
Adkins punctuates his offerings with
heartfelt tunes like “I’m Tryin’,” “Songs
About Me,” “Arlington,” and his most
recent hit, “You’re Gonna Miss This.”
“I can’t sing a song if it doesn’t touch
me,” Adkins says. “I’m not just singing
stuff to be singing it. It has to be something
I can sing with conviction. When I
first started singing, I sang bass in a
gospel quartet for five years, so it was
instilled in me early on that you cannot
be a hypocrite; you can’t sing about
something you don’t believe in. That has
carried over into country music for me. I
can’t record or sing unless it talks about
something I’ve experienced firsthand. I
have to avoid hypocrisy at all costs.”
When fans tell Adkins that songs like
“Arlington” or “You’re Gonna Miss This”
touched them, he looks at them and says
“It did me too.” Acknowledging that it’s
rewarding to touch people’s lives, he
adds, “But still, at the end of the day
when I get on my bus and my head hits
the pillow, I think, ‘What can I can put
my hands on and look at that says I did a
good job?’ There’s just nothing there
except for money and that don’t count.”
Many of his fans and the people
who benefited from his appearance on
television’s The Celebrity Apprentice—
that being the Food Allergy and
Anaphylaxis Network (FANN)—might
disagree with him. Adkins focused a
great deal of attention on FANN while
appearing on The Celebrity Apprentice
this year. When asked about his time on
the show, he simply says, “It was fun but
I won’t do it again.” Not being a fan of
reality shows, he says the only reason he
did this one was because he thought he
could help focus viewers’ attention to
the serious distresses brought by allergies
to certain foods. His daughter
Brianna suffers from severe food allergies to milk, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts.
After hearing her diagnosis, Trace and his
wife, Rhonda, joined FANN and in 2008
he became the association’s chairperson.
“People just think you break out in a
rash or something if you’re allergic, but
it’s so much worse than that,” Adkins
explains. The first time it happened to
his daughter, she had a reaction to
peanut butter when she was only 18
months old and it was an immediate lifethreatening
situation.
The singer proved to be a formidable
contender on The Celebrity
Apprentice, reaching the final competition
between only two competitors, the
other being Piers Morgan, who in his
everyday life is a newspaper editor and a
judge on the television show America’s
Got Talent. In fact, Donald Trump narrowed
the final field to those two
because he deemed it a pairing of “the
good guy,” Adkins, versus “the bad guy,”
Morgan.
Marilu Henner, who, along with
Stephen Baldwin, turned out to be a
friend to Adkins, says, “I got to work
with him [on a team] a couple times and
he played to everyone’s strengths. He
was very good at delegating, good at letting
each of us come up to our best
efforts, and he was inspirational as a
leader. When we worked together it was
some of the most special moments I
experienced on The Celebrity Apprentice.
You felt like you could play your best and
it wasn’t like you were looking to trip
each other up.”
Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, who
had little good to say about anyone on
the show, laughingly says the best thing
she did was to get Adkins to take his shirt
off for a body wash commercial they had
to produce. On a more serious note, she
points out that “Trace did something
that never happens in the boardroom—
he told the truth and it was shocking.
When he told the truth Donald and I
looked at each other and we were like,
‘What was that? Oh, it was the truth.’ ”
Omarosa says when she first checked
out Adkins she thought he “had no
chance in hell” to get anywhere on
Apprentice. “People who go on this show
have MBAs, Ph.D.s,” she said. “I thought,
‘He’ll have to come armed with more
than a guitar to beat me.’ Then you realize
he’s honest, he’s charismatic, he’s giving,
and he tells it like it is. At the end of
the day if you take that into the boardroom
you’re successful.”
If honesty is one of Adkins’ greatest
character traits, even Adkins himself had
to wonder if he took it too far in his book,
A Personal Stand: Observations and
Opinions from a Free-Thinking Roughneck.
Part autobiography and part personal
observations on life, the book is his
straight-from-the-shoulder message to
the world. “I took a personal stand and
one of the very first lines in the book I lay
it out that I stand for personal responsibility,”
he says. “There are so many problems
in this country today that we all
whine and moan… when the truth is if we
would each take action and try to solve
these problems in our own personal lives
they would begin to disappear.”
He added, “It remains to be seen what
all the ramifications from this are going
to be, the unintended consequences I’m
afraid of. But, hey, I knew it was going to
be that way and even when I turned in
the last draft I wasn’t sure I was going to
allow them to release it.”
When he was writing the
book, Adkins went to his good friend
Charlie Daniels for advice. Daniels says,
“Trace called me and said, ‘I’m gonna
hurt some feelings with this book.’ I
told him ‘Listen, the people who agree
with you now are gonna agree with you
when the book comes out, and the people
who don’t aren’t gonna like you anyway.
So do it.”
Daniels continues, “I love Trace. He is
a good guy, he came from a blue collar
background, and he really appreciates
his success.”
Nearly a year later, Adkins is pleased
with the way the people have accepted A
Personal Stand. “It’s been received as it
should have been. It was all a light-hearted
approach as far as my political views
and opinions. I’ve had a few people take
issue with what I said but not as many as I
expected. And the autobiographical stuff
a lot of people knew except my mama, but
to spare her I didn’t go into the gory
details that I could have. It just wouldn’t
have helped me make the point.”
Adkins may be doing something else
his mother doesn’t approve of. He’s taking
on the part of the devil in two movies.
One, Trailer Park of Terror, is currently
making the rounds at film festivals.
There comes a point in the plot when the
female lead has suffered a terrible misfortune,
and it is Adkins’ character who
convinces her, un-Adkins-like, to burn
down the trailer park. As might be
expected in any good trailer/horror fare,
this step turns the entire population of
the park into zombies.
Adkins’ other devilish role comes in
the upcoming film An American Carol, in
which he plays the ghost of the future.
The plot is similar to that of Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol except that the protagonist,
Michael Malone, doesn’t like the
Fourth of July. In the end Malone must
decide if that holiday is important to the
country and whether patriotism is a good
thing. Obviously there are some political
overtones there and Adkins admits, “It’s
gonna be incredibly controversial.”
Never one to step away from controversy,
Adkins courted it at the close of
The Celebrity Apprentice when he spoke
out after Trump chose Morgan over him
as winner. Saying he thought Trump
might have sent the wrong message to
the youth of America, Adkins remarked:
“It was his show and he had the right to
make the decision he thought was right,
and I have the right to disagree. I just
thought he based his decision purely on
how much money was raised and I didn’t
think that was what the sentiment of
that game was supposed to be about. I
thought it was strictly geared toward
the charitable aspect. That’s how I
played it.
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Adkins with fellow Celebrity Apprentice contestant Gene Simmons |
“I thought the criteria he used to
make his decision sent the wrong message.
[That message was that] it isn’t
about how you play, but whether you
win, and I don’t think that’s the right
message to be sending. Honor and
integrity—that counts for more than the
bottom line in my world. Maybe not in
the business world we live in. But how I
grew up and how I was raised, your
integrity at the end of the day is going to
be the most important thing you have.”
Hearing Adkins talk would give anyone
the sense that he believes in cowboy
values. He does indeed.
“It’s that indomitable spirit, that
fierce independence, that sense of freedom
that you control your own destiny—
you call the shots in your day-today
life,” he says. “Most of all it’s that
fierce independence, I think, that is
what the modern day American cowboy
is. It’s not just owning a ranch and riding
horses, although I like that too. I like
having a farm and my daddy still has
cows. That’s how I grew up. Mostly it’s
about taking responsibility and knowing
that how you’re measured as a man is
determined by the kind of decisions that
you make.”
Donald Trump called Adkins the good
guy standing against the bad guy, Piers
Morgan. Morgan shot back that Trace
wasn’t as good as Trump thought and he
[Piers] wasn’t as bad. The truth is somewhere
in the middle. It’s also somewhere
in the lyrics of “You’re Gonna
Miss This,” “Dangerous Man,” “Ladies
Love Country Boys,” and “Honky Tonk
Badonkadonk.” It can be found in the
words of his book and in what he says
during interviews. In other words,
Adkins is one of those guys for whom
what you see is really what he’s all about.
His own explanation for it goes straight
to family.
“It’s how I was raised. That’s just
how I grew up. I think that blue-collar
background still serves me well.
Another thing is having a spouse and
children who just aren’t that impressed
by what I do. If I can jump up and touch
the ceiling with both hands then my
kids think that’s pretty cool but other
than that, there’s not a lot about me
that impresses them too much. So that
seems to work.”
Adkins, who will release a new album
this fall, originally signed a seven-album
contract with Capitol Records. He fulfilled
that agreement with his Dangerous
Man project two years ago.
“That’s pretty rare to do in music
these days,” Trace points out. “I’m
proud of that, but you know, I am an old
cowboy that rides for the brand. I signed
on and I’m going to ride for the brand to
the end, so l’ll stay here until they decide
to run me off.”
Which shouldn’t be anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Adkins acknowledges that
he has reached the point where his
music career will carry him through. “I
could play beer joints until I get tired of
it from now on because I’ve been around
long enough and I’ve put together a
good enough catalog of stuff, and I’m
good at it, so that’s a good place to be.
Even if I never make it to that elite group
of country music superstars, I still ain’t
going to have to go back to work in the
oil field unless I want to.”
Vernell Hackett is a frequent contributor to
American Cowboy. She resides in
Nashville, Tenn.
Tracing a Career |
Born January 13, 1962, in Sarepta, La.
1970 – At age 8, Trace Adkins starts playing the guitar.
1992 – Moves to Nashville, Tenn., to pursue a career in music.
1995 – Signs a record deal with Capitol Records
1996 – Releases debut single, “There’s a Girl in Texas.”
1996 — Debut album, Dreamin’ Out Loud, released; it goes platinum (one million-plus sales)
Aug. 1996 – Trace Adkins Day declared in his hometown of Sarepta
Nov. 1996 – First appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. Proposes to his girlfriend, Rhonda, on the Opry stage that night. She accepts.
1997 – First number one single charted: “(This Ain’t)
No Thinkin’ Thing”
April 23, 1997 – Adkins named Best New Male
Vocalist by the Academy of Country Music
1997 – Single: “I Left Something Turned on at Home”
May 11, 1997 Marries Rhonda Forlew
1997 – Single: “The Rest of Mine”
1997 – Album Big Time released. It goes gold.
Jan. 27, 1998 – Trace and wife Rhonda have a daughter, Mackenzie Lynn Adkins.
1998 – Singles released: “Lonely Won’t Leave Me Alone” and “Big Time”
1999 – Album More released, and single “Don’t Lie”
2000 – Single: “More”
June 12, 2000 – Appears on the Lifetime television series The Things We Do for Love
2000 – Single: “I’m Gonna Love You Anyway”
2001 – Album Chrome released; it goes gold.
Sept. 4, 2001 – Trace and Rhonda welcome their daughter Brianna into the world.
2001 – Single “I’m Tryin’ ”
2002 – Singles: “Help Me Understand” and “Chrome”
June 25, 2002 – Adkins makes his 10th and final
appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.
Jan. 11, 2003 – Tapes episodes of Hollywood Squares
2003 – First Greatest Hits album released
2003 – Singles: “Then They Do” and “Hot Mama”
and album Comin’ On Strong. Album goes platinum
Aug. 23, 2003 – Joins Grand Ole Opry
Feb. 2004 – Trace and fellow country music star
Travis Tritt play the roles of prisoners on Yes, Dear.
2004 – Single: “Rough & Ready”
2005 – Album Songs About Me released; goes double
platinum |
May 29, 2005 – Adkins performs at the National
Memorial Day Concert in Washington, D.C.
2005 – Singles: “Songs About Me” and “Honky Tonk
Badonkadonk”
Nov. 12, 2005 – Adkins performs as part of
Broadway Meets Country, a New York Cabaret show
presented in conjunction with the CMA Awards’
move to New York City.
2005 – Single “Arlington” released.
2006 – Dangerous Man album released; it goes gold.
2006 – Singles: “Swing” and “Ladies Love Country
Boys.” The latter goes to number one.
Oct. 24, 2006 – Sings the National Anthem prior
to the third game of the World Series at Busch
Stadium in St. Louis, Mo.
Nov. 14, 2006 – Appears on Grand Ole Opry show
that plays New York’s Carnegie Hall.
2007 – Second greatest hits compilation released,
entitled American Man: Greatest Hits Vol. 2; the title
is a tribute to Adkins’ father.
March 27, 2007 – Receives the 2007 USO Merit
Award from the USO of Metropolitan Washington
2007 – Releases his first book, A Personal Stand:
Observations and Opinions from a Free-Thinking
Roughneck
Feb. 18, 2007 – Appears on Extreme Makeover:
Home Edition, performing a concert in Austin,
Texas, to help a couple and their children get a
special needs home.
2007 – Singles: “I Wanna Feel Something” and
“I Got My Game On”
Jan.- March 2008 – Takes part in The Celebrity
Apprentice on NBC
March 5, 2008 – Brings contestants from The
Celebrity Apprentice to Nashville. Joining him for a
press conference and show were Tiffany Fallon,
Nely Galàn, Marilu Henner, and Omarosa Stallworth.
April 2008 – Single “You’re Gonna Miss This”
released. This single stayed at number one on the
country singles charts for three weeks
May 2, 2008 – Appears on a segment of The Young
and the Restless and sings his hit “You’re Gonna
Miss This”
May 18, 2008 – Sings his hit “You’re Gonna Miss
This” on the Academy of Country Music Awards |
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