PrintLive From Nashville: Trace Adkins
Illustration by Sam Sisco
Cowboys & Indians: You’ve already had featured roles in two independent movies‚ Trailer Park of Terror and An American Carol‚ and now you have a key role in the Tough Trade TV pilot filming in Nashville, Tennessee. Have you been bit real hard by the acting bug?
Trace Adkins: [Laughs.] Well, you know, I’m not obsessed with it. It’s something that I enjoy doing. I don’t have delusions. I’m not Philip Seymour Hoffman; I’m not going to be this incredible character actor. But if it’s a role that I think I can pull off, I’ll do it. In the famous words of Clint Eastwood: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I think I know most of mine.
C&I: You played the devil in Trailer Park of Terror, and you were so effective that at least one movie critic thought you should repeat the role in a spinoff TV series.
Trace: The funny thing is, for a moment there, I thought I was going to be typecast as a sort of angel of death. I did Trailer Park of Terror, and then I was in that American Carol thing, where I was pretty much the same character. So I thought, Well, I guess this is all they’re ever going to want me to do.
C&I: But now you’ve got a change of pace in Tough Trade, the show you’re doing for the Epix cable network, where your character is a bodyguard for a country music legend played by Sam Shepard.
Trace: Oh, I don’t think my character in Tough Trade is much of a stretch from who I am, really. I mean, he’s quiet, but he’s not the most tolerant guy in the world. And he’s going to protect the people who he’s charged with protecting‚ with his life, if it’s necessary. As the father of five, I realize that my job on this earth is just to work security.
C&I: Tough Trade is actually one of two TV series projects‚ the other being Brad Paisley’s proposed Nashville show‚ that are set in Music City. Is that enough to qualify as a trend?
Trace: I think it’s cyclical. We’re going through another phase where people are starting to pay a little bit more attention to Nashville because we have some country artists who are really dominating the charts right now. They released this story the other day that Billboard’s top-selling country artists are the top-selling artists of the decade, period.
C&I: Why do you think country has so much crossover appeal these days? Is it because there’s a much broader definition of what “country” music really is?
Trace: There’s no question about it. You can listen to a country station and hear so many different styles of music. And I think that’s a reflection of the producers in this town. The producers who are really coming into their own right now‚ the ones that are the cream of the crop, the guys who are really hot right now‚ all grew up listening to pop and were influenced heavily by all those pop groups in the late ’70s, early ’80s. So that now, all those producers in this town have matured and taken over, and that’s what you’re hearing. It’s not just the artists who are changing the direction of what you’re hearing in country music. The producers are the ones who are really piloting this ship.
C&I: So you think country radio offers a greater variety than it has in the past?
Trace: Actually, I think country radio stations are much more cautious, much more careful than we are. And by that collective “we,” I mean the artists in country music. I think that we are broadening our horizons a lot faster than radio wants to let us go. And sometimes we run into some resistance.
C&I: Can you think of a song you’ve done that maybe wouldn’t have been played on country stations just 10 years ago?
Trace: Yeah, sure‚ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” That’s the biggest song I’ve ever had in my career. And probably 10 years ago‚ well, I know you couldn’t have had it 10 years ago because no one knew what a “badonkadonk” was.
Issue: April 2010
