Trace Adkins Opens Up to Theo Von About His Louisiana Hometown and the Night He Was Shot
Two Louisiana boys sat down for a conversation that ran from a shrinking hometown, one whose mayor happens to be Trace Adkins' own mother, to the night he nearly didn't survive.
Trace Adkins joined fellow Louisiana native Theo Von on This Past Weekend for a conversation that rambled everywhere a good front porch talk should. But underneath the jokes, Adkins painted a clear picture of Sarepta, Louisiana: population shrinking, mill long gone, one campus that used to hold the whole town together. He also revisited the night in 1994 that nearly ended his life, long before Nashville ever knew his name.
Trace Adkins with Theo Von on This Past Weekend
The Mayor of Sarepta Is Named Peggy
Von has known Adkins a while, and he went straight for the detail that makes this story uniquely Louisiana: Adkins' mother, Peggy, is the mayor of Sarepta and has been for years. Adkins explained that nobody else really wants the job in a town that small, and that his mother spends much of her time doing things like writing polite letters asking neighbors to clean up their yards.
It's small town Louisiana government in its purest form. No politics, no ceremony, just a woman looking out for her town because somebody has to. Adkins noted she's run unopposed in her last several elections, which says as much about Sarepta, and about the kind of trust his family has built there, as anything else in the conversation.
A Town Built Around One School
Adkins didn't sugarcoat what's happened to Sarepta since he was a kid. The mill that once employed most of the town shut down years ago, and the population has been shrinking ever since. The town's school, once a single K through 12 campus, got consolidated years back and downsized to a middle school, with older kids now bussed elsewhere.
Adkins said that campus used to be the reason the whole town showed up for each other, packing the stands for every ball game and rallying behind the school no matter what. Once the consolidation happened, that shared reason to gather disappeared with it, and both men agreed it's a story playing out in small towns across the country, not just in Sarepta.
Where Country Music Actually Found Him
Long before Nashville, Adkins was working a soybean farm near the Louisiana Mississippi line, and that's where he says he first fell for country music, half listening to Sunday morning Top 40 countdowns on the radio while driving a fertilizer rig, singing along without really meaning to.
From there, the path ran through ten years in the oilfield, six of them offshore on drilling rigs, a job he landed through a family connection. It was out on the rig, guitar in hand during downtime, where he met someone with ties to a band in Lafayette, a connection that eventually led to a Battle of the Bands run through Dallas and on to Nashville, and the beginning of everything that followed.
Even a serious injury on the rig didn't slow him down. When he lost part of a finger in an oilfield accident, he had doctors set the joint at an angle so he could still fret a guitar, a small, telling choice from a guy who already knew what he wanted his life to be.
The Night He Nearly Didn't Make It
The conversation eventually turned to the story that's followed Adkins for more than thirty years. In February 1994, his second wife shot him during an argument, with the bullet passing through his heart and both lungs. Adkins walked Von through it in detail: he'd asked her to hand over the gun, she fired instead, and he remembers standing, taking a few steps, then going down. He didn't feel much pain in the moment, saying the body goes into shock when the injury is that serious.
Doctors later told him the bullet's muzzle velocity was the reason he survived; it passed straight through before it had time to expand. He was airlifted to Vanderbilt for emergency trauma surgery, and returned six months later for a second open heart procedure to repair a hole in his septum that hadn't fully sealed the first time.
Adkins was candid that he doesn't believe there was any intent to kill him. He described his ex-wife as never having handled a gun before that night and said he believes she didn't understand what it would do. He never pressed charges, and he told Von he's since forgiven her.
It's a heavy story, but Adkins has never shied away from telling it, and hearing it alongside a fellow Louisianan gave it a different weight than it's had in past interviews.
The Moments That Had Everyone Laughing
For as heavy as parts of the conversation got, it was still a Theo Von episode, and Adkins brought plenty of his own material to keep it loose.
He told the story behind country radio's unlikeliest hit, "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." When producer Scott Hendricks first played him the songwriter's demo, Adkins says he started laughing before the first verse even finished and told Hendricks on the spot he wanted to cut it, fully expecting it would never make it to radio because it was simply too funny and too out there. It became one of the biggest songs of his career.
He also credited a piece of advice from country legend Buck Owens with shaping his whole sound. During a visit to Owens' radio station in Bakersfield, Owens had Adkins sing a new single in his office, then told him flatly that his low register was the one thing that set him apart from every other singer in Nashville, and that he needed to lean on it in every song from then on. Adkins says he's followed that advice ever since.
And before any of that, there was Sarepta itself: as a kid, Adkins spent a stretch working for a neighborhood man's door to door Italian food business, going house to house selling homemade dishes with a kid-sized sales pitch. It's the kind of small town hustle that could only come out of a place like Sarepta, and it made for one of the funniest detours of the whole episode.
A State With Its Own Rules
The two also spent a stretch of the episode geeking out over something most Louisianians grow up taking for granted and most outsiders never learn: Napoleonic law. Louisiana is the only state in the country that still operates under a civil code rooted in French and Spanish legal tradition rather than English common law, and it shows up in ways that make the state genuinely one of a kind, from forced heirship, which protects a child's right to inherit, to seller disclosure laws that put the responsibility on sellers to be upfront rather than leaving buyers to fend for themselves.
Von and Adkins traded these details back and forth like two proud alumni of the same school, and that's really what it was. It's one more piece of what makes Louisiana different from anywhere else in the country, and hearing two of the state's own walk through it, half joking the whole way, was a reminder of just how much heritage the state carries in places people don't usually think to look.
The Louisiana Thread That Ties It All Together
Strip away the jokes and this conversation is really about what it means to carry a small Louisiana town with you long after you've left it. Adkins didn't just mention Sarepta, he talked about his mother still writing yard cleanup letters as its mayor, the ball games that used to bring the whole town out before the school consolidated, and the years on a drilling rig that shaped his work ethic before a guitar ever did. Even the state's Napoleonic code became a point of pride rather than a footnote, one more thing that makes home worth bragging about. Then he talked about the night he nearly lost all of it, and forgave the person responsible.
That kind of range doesn't happen in a typical press stop. It happens when two people from the same handful of parishes sit down with no agenda and let the conversation go wherever it wants. Sarepta gave the world a Marine's kind of resolve and a farm boy's ear for a country song, and thirty years later, Adkins still talks about it like the town raised him right. That's the thread running under everything else in this conversation, and it's exactly why Louisiana keeps producing artists who carry the state with them wherever the work takes them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Trace Adkins from?
Trace Adkins was born and raised in Sarepta, Louisiana, a small town in Webster Parish.
Is Trace Adkins' mother really the mayor of Sarepta?
Yes. Adkins' mother, Peggy Adkins, serves as mayor of Sarepta and has run unopposed in recent elections.
What did Trace Adkins do before his music career?
Adkins worked a decade in the Louisiana oilfield, including six years offshore on drilling rigs, after earlier farm work where he first developed a love of country music.
How did Trace Adkins break into the music industry?
A connection made while working offshore introduced him to a band in Lafayette, Louisiana, leading to a Battle of the Bands run that eventually brought him to Nashville.
Was Trace Adkins really shot by his ex-wife?
Yes. In February 1994, Adkins' second wife shot him during an argument, with the bullet passing through his heart and both lungs. He survived after emergency trauma surgery at Vanderbilt Medical Center.
Follow Trace Adkins
Love Stories Like These?
Subscribe to the Louisiana Country Music Newsletter for more artist spotlights, new releases, and stories from artists with Louisiana roots.
Follow your favorite Louisiana artists HERE.
This article is for informational and editorial purposes only. Details such as release dates, event information, and artist updates are subject to change. Featuring an artist does not imply any endorsement, partnership, representation, or business relationship unless explicitly stated. All trademarks, images, and music referenced remain the property of their respective owners.
Comments