In August of 2025, Gavin Adcock was calling Charley Crockett a “cosplay cowboy.” On October 6, 2026, the two of them were smiling, sitting side by side at the bar at Skinny Dennis in Nashville.
Country Central spoke with both artists separately about how the meetup came together and what each took away from the other.
People in the room recognized them at the East Nashville live music joint, Crockett said.
Alex Miller, a country artist who plays Skinny Dennis, said he was filling in on the late set when he found the two sitting there. They told him they were fans, he said, and “couldn’t have been nicer to me.”
At another point in the evening, Adcock revealed to us that a woman approached him at the bar and said she had served him a pizza at a festival in Wisconsin. He had tipped her team $100, she said, and she had never had the chance to tell him what it meant. Crockett, sitting next to him, looked over and said, “You’re a good guy.”
Not five minutes later, Adcock said, the band playing the room shouted out Crockett over the mic, saying he was “the only person that tipped us all night” the last time he came to one of their shows. Adcock turned, smiled and told Crockett he was a good guy, too.
Crockett says the road to reconciliation started with a meme. On September 10th, the satire account Farce the Music posted a graphic styled after the CMA Awards, naming five nominees for “Drama Queen of the Year.” Crockett was on it. So was Adcock, along with Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen.
Crockett shared that he was surprised to be included, because “I’m probably the furthest outside of that.” It made him laugh out loud on the bus, so on September 11 he posted it with the caption “I’d like to thank my mama.”
“Making light of it is a way to kind of let it go,” Crockett explained.
Adcock commented: “At least we got nominated for something! You’re funny for this, Charley.” Crockett replied: “I honestly kinda like your shit chief,” with a boxing glove emoji. Adcock wrote back: “Likewise man!”
After that, Crockett shared “I had my team reach out to his team on my behalf,” and on Tuesday, October 6th, the two met at Skinny Dennis.
“We agreed we were both being some dumbasses,” Adcock said.
Crockett put it even more simply: “We had a good laugh, and we’re good.”
Both came away impressed with each other. Crockett said he saw “a focused young guy” with “pretty good head on his shoulders.” Adcock, in a text, called Crockett “very knowledgeable of the music business.”
Crockett’s comments on the meetup widened beyond the events of that night.
“I’m not sure the Internet’s real,” Crockett said. Sitting down with someone is different, he added: “You can see each other.”
Asked about the warm response to the reunion, Crockett said the internet thrives on controversy. “Bad news travels fast, good news travels slow,” he said. “I think it’s easier to fight than to make peace.” In America, he said, there’s “so much pressure to join a team, to pick a side, to draw a line in the dirt.”
Adcock and Crockett aren’t the only country artists to settle a feud this year. In April, Kacey Musgraves acknowledged there had been beef with Miranda Lambert while discussing a duet (“Horses and Divorces”) the two recorded for her album Middle of Nowhere.
Two settlements don’t make a trend, but the optimists among us can see the parallels and hope that this is what it is. It’s tempting to ask whether country, a genre whose audience and artists span a wide range of political and social beliefs, could model something bigger at a moment when it feels most needed.
Social media has made the country music community closer and, somehow, more divided. Fans and artists have a direct line to one another, but too often the same platforms reward the loudest take and bring out the worst in us.
In the room that night, the picture was simpler. Alex Miller, who was playing the set, said the two “looked like old friends who had settled a football bet. I was glad to see them smiling and cutting up.”
Maybe the lesson is that we should all touch grass. Or grab a beer at Skinny Dennis.
