Gavin Adcock posted a direct-to-camera video on Instagram on Sunday afternoon detailing his backstage altercation with Zach Bryan at the Born & Raised Festival in Pryor, Oklahoma, on Saturday.
Oklahoma native Bryan showed up at the festival to sing with Gabriella Rose on Saturday afternoon, and according to Adcock, who was scheduled to play that evening, also attempted to find his rival. The pair have been involved in a feud since July, with Adcock saying on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast that, “I don’t know if Zach Bryan’s really that great of a person.”
“[Bryan] proceeded to go to other artists and ask them, ‘Where’s Gavin? Where’s Gavin?’ and their guests, and treat them like dog shit, flipping them birds, and saying just douchebag stuff to them all day,” Adcock claims in his video. “He had plenty of opportunity through the whole day to do whatever he wanted to do, but decided he was going to wait like an hour before my set.”
According to Adcock, Bryan pulled up in a pickup truck to a fence near the backstage area where artist buses were parked and began shouting threats. “I just decided to stir him up to the point where he jumped over the fence,” Adcock says. In a video making the rounds online, Bryan proceeds to scale the fence, topped with barbed wire, and lunge in Adcock’s direction, before he’s held back by security guards.
Adcock says he refused to engage with Bryan because, “No artist that cares about their fans is going to fight right before their set, missing going on, and disappointing fans that spent way too much money to be there.”
“I don’t think anybody’s scared of Zach Bryan,” he says in the clip. “I’m just an adult, and fighting him would only meant going to jail, missing my set, and falling into a Zach Bryan lawsuit. And we all know he likes to manipulate people with money.”
Adcock further defended his decision to not approach Bryan in his video message. “I know my decision I made was right. I didn’t take the Zach Bryan bait,” he says. “I’ll be praying for him to get better — because he sure needs it.”
A rep for Bryan declined Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Adcock hasn’t been shy about courting controversy. For the past few weeks, he’s been embroiled in a back-and-forth feud with cowboy singer Charley Crockett. During a concert appearance this month with Morgan Wallen, Adcock joined Wallen onstage and held up a T-shirt that appeared to feature Crockett’s photo. In a clip circulating online, Wallen flips off the shirt with a pair of middle fingers.