Don’t expect country music stars Zach Bryan and Gavin Adcock to share a bill anytime soon. The two, who have been sparring verbally for weeks, got into a face-to-face altercation at a music festival in Oklahoma on Saturday.
The confrontation happened at the Born & Raised Festival in Pryor, Okla., just before Adcock stepped on stage to perform.
A video, shared by Adcock on Instagram, shows Adcock and Bryan staring each other down and yelling through a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
“Hey, you want to fight like a man?” Bryan says in the video clip, calling for someone to open the gate separating the two men. Other clips show Bryan climbing over the barbed-wire top of the fence and Adcock standing back as security personnel come between them.
Text superimposed on Adcock’s Instagram video alleged that Bryan made “death threats” during the spat, along with the comment: “Eat a snickers bro.” He added another insult while signing someone’s cowboy hat later that day.
Adcock, who has 725,000 Instagram followers, released an album called “Own Worst Enemy” in August. He sparked controversy in June when he criticized Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” album on stage, brandishing a bottle while saying “that s— ain’t country music, and it ain’t never been country music and it ain’t never gonna be country music.” (Earlier this year, Beyoncé won Grammys for album of the year and country album for “Cowboy Carter.”)
Bryan, 29, who was in the Navy before reaching fame as country/American singer and songwriter, has 4.9 million Instagram followers. Bryan released his last album, “Zach Bryan,” in 2023. A New York Times profile labeled him “music’s most reluctant new star.”
Adcock and Bryan’s beef dates to July, when Adcock slammed Bryan for being thin-skinned and not doing a meet-and-greet appearance with fans after a show. Later, Adcock added more harsh words in an interview on Rolling Stone’s “Nashville Now.”
“I think Zach Bryan puts on a big mask in his day-to-day life and sometimes he can’t help but rip it off and show his true colors,” Adcock said. “I don’t know if Zach Bryan’s really that great of a person.”
Representatives for Adcock and Bryan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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