Trace Adkins

A Nashville icon for more than two decades, Trace Adkins has made his mark on the country-music industry. 11 million albums sold. Time-honored hit singles. Momentous, fiery and always memorable live performances. Grammy nominations. Even a slew of movie and TV roles have come the Grand Ole Opry member’s way. Ask Adkins what’s left to prove in his career and the small-town Louisiana native says it’s simple: To continually feel the excitement that comes after whipping up a new song out of thin air and laying it down to tape. “It’s an adrenaline rush and I love it,” says Adkins. In his 2007 autobiography, A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Freethinking Roughneck, the towering baritone recounts his rise to fame, brushes with death, and battles with personal demons. Adkins says he’s profoundly touched that he now serves as an inspiration to a younger generation of country artists, much in the way he revered icons like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard when first moving to Nashville. Adkins has won three Academy of Country Music Awards, including the 2009 Single of the Year Award for You’re Gonna Miss This and Vocal Event of the Year with Blake Shelton for Hillbilly Bone in 2010. He is also an accomplished actor with roles in several films and television shows, most notably playing a tough-as-nails biker in The Lincoln Lawyer, a desperate father in Deepwater Horizon, and a wise oracle of a tattoo artist in the family friendly film Moms’ Night Out. But he is perhaps most proud of his work supporting U.S. troops and veterans, serving as a spokesman for the Wounded Warrior Project and participating in an astounding 12 USO tours to date. Ask Adkins where he goes from here and he’ll say it’s simple: keep doing what he knows and love. Performing. Creating. Inspiring. He adores it, and he knows so many of his lifelong fans, and new ones to boot, do too. I’m gonna go out there and find those people, he says with a laugh of the coming months. “I’m gonna bring a band and turn it up real loud! And we’re gonna have a good time!”