<\/p>\n
Joe Nichols<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/strong> Calling the memory a \u2018disaster,\u2019 Nichols explained that he was scheduled to go out on a turkey hunt with Williams Jr., but didn\u2019t inform the country music icon, 76, that he had never actually hunted before.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to Hank Jr.\u2019s house\u2026. He wanted to take me turkey hunting. I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah! Absolutely. Let\u2019s go hunting.\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Have you ever been hunting before? [I said], \u2018Oh yeah!\u2019 Lie,\u201d the Arkansas native recalled of his fib, adding that he grew up fishing. \u201c….I never had a rifle. So I didn\u2019t really get to hunt that much\u2026He\u2019s like, \u2018Bring your 12 Gauge and we\u2019ll go do this, and this, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Alright. I\u2019ll do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Nichols shared that he bought a 12 Gauge firearm for their hunt, but anticipated just hanging out with the Louisiana-bred star.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m thinking I\u2019m gonna go down to Buchanan, Tenn…. we\u2019re gonna get hammered and we\u2019re gonna play \u2018The Blues Man\u2019 and \u2018Family Tradition,\u2019 and we\u2019re just gonna sit around the campfire and play music. And, that\u2019s what I thought was gonna happen,\u201d Nichols shared. \u201cWell, Hank Jr. really meant hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were gonna do this show with Hank Jr. called Hank\u2019s 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,\u201d Nichols admitted while adding that he was uncertain whether or not that footage still exists. \u201cI showed up and I\u2019ve got this gun I\u2019ve never fired before and I\u2019ve got this half gallon of whiskey and I got my guitar and I\u2019m like, \u2018Alright. It\u2019s gonna be a good time.\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Oh.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n If that\u2019s not bad enough, things got worse.<\/p>\n Nichols said that Hank Jr. handed him a tool used for turkey calling \u2014 something the \u201cBrokenheartsville\u201d crooner had no experience with.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what the hell it was. He handed it to me and was like, \u2018Work on that. We\u2019ll get your gobble right,\u201d Nichols remembered.<\/p>\n At that moment, a frustrated Nichols decided to blow into the item, assuming blowing into the device was the correct way to use it.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018My god. That had to be the dumbest thing anybody has ever done on camera,\u201d the singer said, adding that the camera crew caught him at the moment. \u201c…I thought you somehow got air to come through this thing. He turned around and saw me and was like, \u2018What the hell is wrong with you? What are you doing? Why are you doing that?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Ah. I don\u2019t know how this works. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think at that moment, he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh no. Oh God. OK. He\u2019s never been hunting before.\u2019 So it was just thing after thing with him,\u201d Nichols continued. \u201cSo it kept getting worse. And, of course, I was getting a little hammered and everything. I didn\u2019t think he was serious when he was saying, \u2018We\u2019re gonna get up at about 3:00 or 4:00, we\u2019re gonna hit that blind out there. I was like, \u2018OK.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sitting there in the blind, I\u2019m like, \u2018Please God just take this hangover away from me.\u2019 He said, \u2018You cannot make a sound\u2026 no movement, you\u2019ll scare them off, never call them in,\u201d Nichols said. \u201cHe\u2019d get these things coming up there, and I\u2019d be [snoring], he\u2019s like, ‘Oh my God! They were right there.\u2019 We did that for hours, and I know he had to be seething like, \u2018I\u2019m never doing this again with this guy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Luckily, the day wasn\u2019t a total waste, as Nichols says he and the \u201cAll My Rowdy Friends\u201d hitmaker finally got one at the end of the day, after they’d almost given up. But, he notes, \u201cit was a disaster. That whole day was a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n The turkey call wasn\u2019t the only embarrassing moment for Nichols. He says Williams Jr. also invited him to eat from an \u201cenormous pile of grouper that he had just caught with Kid Rock<\/strong> down in the Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t eat much fish\u2026. He was gonna fry it all up, this family recipe, fish fry,\u201d Nichols recalled. \u201cHe\u2019s making a big show of it. It\u2019s a big deal to him, this family recipe passed down. And again, this is all on camera with CMT. So he\u2019s frying this fish. He\u2019s going through the presentation, and he pulls this fish out of the fryer and hands me the first batch of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe only fish I liked at that time was Long John Silver\u2019s,\u201d Nichols noted. \u201cThat was it. That was as far as my fish palette went. So I took a bite of it and was like, \u2018That\u2019s better than Long John Silver\u2019s. He was like, \u2018Are you sh\u2014ing me?\u2019 I was paying him a compliment, but he was like, \u2018What in the hell is wrong with this kid?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s first meeting, telling Nichols, \u201cI never told you I named that blind after you. That was such a traumatic, funny, awesome story.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a lot of fun with that,\u201d Nichols laughed. \u201cHe\u2019s such a good hang. That guy is one of a kind, I mean it.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: Country Outlaw Eric Church Completely Unrecognizable Without His Signature Sunglasses in Unexpected Outing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Oct 13, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2089176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[393788,393786,358328,393787],"class_list":["post-2089175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-bocephus-aka-williams-jr","tag-hank-williams-jr","tag-joe-nichols","tag-williams-jr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Traditional-Country-Artist-Recalls-\u2018Trainwreck-Meeting-With-Hank-Williams-Jr.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2089177,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089175\/revisions\/2089177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2089176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Hunt Was Supposed To Be Part of an Episode for a Show Set To Air on CMT<\/h2>\n
Joe Nichols Had Never Experienced Turkey Calling Before<\/h2>\n
Did They Catch Any Turkeys?<\/h2>\n
Hank Williams Jr. Also Invited Joe Nichols To Eat a Fish Dinner<\/h2>\n
The Awkward Hang Didn\u2019t Ruin Their Friendship<\/h2>\n