Joe Nichols recently stopped by the Drifting Cowboy podcast, where he talked about his journey in country music, addiction, new music, some of his greatest influences, and more.
During the more than one-hour-long conversation, the traditional-leaning country star, 48, opened up about his first ever experience meeting fellow country artist Hank Williams Jr. Calling the memory a ‘disaster,’ Nichols explained that he was scheduled to go out on a turkey hunt with Williams Jr., but didn’t inform the country music icon, 76, that he had never actually hunted before.
“I went to Hank Jr.’s house…. He wanted to take me turkey hunting. I’m like, ‘Yeah! Absolutely. Let’s go hunting.’ He’s like, ‘Have you ever been hunting before? [I said], ‘Oh yeah!’ Lie,” the Arkansas native recalled of his fib, adding that he grew up fishing. “....I never had a rifle. So I didn’t really get to hunt that much…He’s like, ‘Bring your 12 Gauge and we’ll go do this, and this, and I’m like, ‘Alright. I’ll do that.’”
Nichols shared that he bought a 12 Gauge firearm for their hunt, but anticipated just hanging out with the Louisiana-bred star.
“I’m thinking I’m gonna go down to Buchanan, Tenn.... we’re gonna get hammered and we’re gonna play ‘The Blues Man’ and ‘Family Tradition,’ and we’re just gonna sit around the campfire and play music. And, that’s what I thought was gonna happen,” Nichols shared. “Well, Hank Jr. really meant hunting.”
Along with the hunt, to Nichols' surprise, Williams Jr. had also planned on filming the outing, as CMT had scheduled a camera crew to follow the two artists around as part of a show that Bocephus (AKA Williams Jr.) was working on.
“They were gonna do this show with Hank Jr. called Hank’s Wild Life Adventures or something like that. This was gonna be one of the first episodes of the show...it was a trainwreck. It was a disaster,” Nichols admitted while adding that he was uncertain whether or not that footage still exists. “I showed up and I’ve got this gun I’ve never fired before and I’ve got this half gallon of whiskey and I got my guitar and I’m like, ‘Alright. It’s gonna be a good time.’ He’s like, ‘Oh.’”
If that’s not bad enough, things got worse.
Joe Nichols Had Never Experienced Turkey Calling Before
Nichols said that Hank Jr. handed him a tool used for turkey calling — something the “Brokenheartsville” crooner had no experience with.
“I didn’t know what the hell it was. He handed it to me and was like, ‘Work on that. We’ll get your gobble right,” Nichols remembered.
At that moment, a frustrated Nichols decided to blow into the item, assuming blowing into the device was the correct way to use it.
“‘My god. That had to be the dumbest thing anybody has ever done on camera,” the singer said, adding that the camera crew caught him at the moment. “...I thought you somehow got air to come through this thing. He turned around and saw me and was like, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? What are you doing? Why are you doing that?’ I’m like, ‘Ah. I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what I’m doing.’”
“I think at that moment, he’s like, ‘Oh no. Oh God. OK. He’s never been hunting before.’ So it was just thing after thing with him,” Nichols continued. “So it kept getting worse. And, of course, I was getting a little hammered and everything. I didn’t think he was serious when he was saying, ‘We’re gonna get up at about 3:00 or 4:00, we’re gonna hit that blind out there. I was like, ‘OK.’”
Indeed, he was serious. Nichols explains that while hungover from the night prior, the two woke up at the crack of dawn and hit the brush line.
“I’m sitting there in the blind, I’m like, ‘Please God just take this hangover away from me.’ He said, ‘You cannot make a sound… no movement, you’ll scare them off, never call them in,” Nichols said. “He’d get these things coming up there, and I’d be [snoring], he’s like, 'Oh my God! They were right there.’ We did that for hours, and I know he had to be seething like, ‘I’m never doing this again with this guy.’”
Luckily, the day wasn’t a total waste, as Nichols says he and the “All My Rowdy Friends” hitmaker finally got one at the end of the day, after they'd almost given up. But, he notes, “it was a disaster. That whole day was a disaster.”
Hank Williams Jr. Also Invited Joe Nichols To Eat a Fish Dinner
The turkey call wasn’t the only embarrassing moment for Nichols. He says Williams Jr. also invited him to eat from an “enormous pile of grouper that he had just caught with Kid Rock down in the Gulf.”
“At the time, I didn’t eat much fish…. He was gonna fry it all up, this family recipe, fish fry,” Nichols recalled. “He’s making a big show of it. It’s a big deal to him, this family recipe passed down. And again, this is all on camera with CMT. So he’s frying this fish. He’s going through the presentation, and he pulls this fish out of the fryer and hands me the first batch of it.”
“The only fish I liked at that time was Long John Silver’s,” Nichols noted. “That was it. That was as far as my fish palette went. So I took a bite of it and was like, ‘That’s better than Long John Silver’s. He was like, ‘Are you sh—ing me?’ I was paying him a compliment, but he was like, ‘What in the hell is wrong with this kid?’”
The Awkward Hang Didn’t Ruin Their Friendship
These days, Nichols and Williams Jr. can laugh off the hilarious, unforgettable moment, as Nichols revealed he ran into the icon recently. Turns out that Hank Jr. is fond of the two’s first meeting, telling Nichols, “I never told you I named that blind after you. That was such a traumatic, funny, awesome story.”
“He had a lot of fun with that,” Nichols laughed. “He’s such a good hang. That guy is one of a kind, I mean it.”
Related: Country Outlaw Eric Church Completely Unrecognizable Without His Signature Sunglasses in Unexpected Outing
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