It’s a miracle we have the music of some country artists today, who have survived against seemingly insurmountable odds. We found four country artists who came perilously close to dying, but lived to tell their story.
Videos by American Songwriter
Hank Williams, Jr.
Hank Williams, Jr. was just 26 years old when he fell 500 feet while rock climbing Ajax Peak in Montana. Williams was severely injured in the fall, requiring a total of 17 surgeries, and taking about two years to fully recover.
Shockingly, Williams remembers the entire accident.
“They strapped me to the outside of a helicopter. That ride was pretty rough, cold,” the “Country Boy Can Survive” singer remembers (via Parade). “Then you get down there, and they cut everything off. I said, ‘Don’t cut my cross off.’ They cut everything off. I had a gun in a shoulder holster when I fell. They cut the holster off. Cut all of that off, operated all night, woke up, I don’t know, a day and a half later, something like that.”
Colt Ford
In 2024, Colt Ford had a near-fatal heart attack following a Dierks Bentley show in Arizona. According to doctors, it is nothing short of a miracle that Ford is still alive. Doctors used an ECMO machine, a form of life support that Ford describes as the “final Hail Mary.”
“The doctor told me I was one percent of one percent,” Ford tells American Songwriter. “He told me he had no idea how I survived. He said ‘You’re doing ECMO. You could be 35 years old and in good shape and can’t survive ECMO.’ At the time, I was 54 and not in the greatest shape. He was like, ‘I can measure everything about you except for your desire to live. You must have more to do because I have no idea how you survived.’”
Trace Adkins
Trace Adkins has had more than one brush with death. When Adkins was 17, he was in a car accident when he hit a school bus head-on. The accident, according to Wide Open Country, resulted in two punctured lungs, several broken ribs, and a severed nose, which was reattached.
That isn’t the worst of it, though. Adkins, who also lost part of his pinky finger while working on an oil rig, also survived being shot by his ex-wife. Julie Curtis, in 1994, while they were still married.
The two reportedly had an intense argument, which resulted in her asking Adkins to leave. When he refused, she pointed a gun at him. In his A Personal Stand memoir, he details the incident, revealing he told her to put the gun down, before he took it away from her, threatening to “beat your brains out with it” (per Nicki Swift).
Adkins goes on to say that she fired a bullet that went “through my left lung, through my heart, through my right lung, and out the other side.” Adkins was rushed to the hospital, where he not only survived but also opted not to press charges. The two split following the shooting.
Mark Chesnutt
Mark Chesnutt came perilously close to dying, and his fans never knew. Chesnutt recently revealed he was an alcoholic, keeping it a secret from most people. His addiction wreaked havoc on his body, requiring him to have emergency quadruple heart surgery.
“I almost died,” Chesnutt tells American Songwriter. “I worked through that after the heart surgery, did more therapy, took another three months off, and now I’m back and doing better than average.”
Chesnutt also gave up alcohol and now knows that the next drink could kill him, literally.
“I drank all day, every day,” he reveals. “I’d get up in the middle of the night and drink. I’d never stop.. .. I knew I was dying.
Chesnutt’s last drink was on November 1, 2023.
Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images
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