John speaks.
Oklahoma singer/songwriter John Moreland made headlines yesterday when he called out the entire Turnpike Troubadours band (minus steel player Hank Early), following a bar fight with fiddle player Kyle Nix at the Mercury Lounge in Tulsa.
As first reported by Whiskey Riff, Nix and Moreland allegedly got into it in the early hours of Friday morning, following performances from Jamie Lin Wilson and others. A source told Whiskey Riff that John and Kyle were talking near the bar, and John allegedly struck Kyle, who responded by pulling him off his barstool. John got up and the fight continued until it was broken up.
Early Friday morning, Moreland shared (and then relatively quickly deleted) a video to his Instagram story, confirming, in part, some of those details:
“Hey guys, little Texas country fun fact. If you ever happen to get in a fight with Kyle Nix, the tiny fiddle player from the Turnpike Troubadours…uh, and he pulls you out of your bar stool and starts kicking you in the head a few times…
Don’t worry because he’s four feet tall, and it’s just going to feel like a f***ing third-grader is kicking you in the head. And then you can get up and start wailing on his face, and it’s all good. F*** that guy.”
He followed up that video story with two more that featured simple text.
“F**k that whole band honestly… “
And…
“Except Hank.
It’s unclear what started the physical altercation. We reached out to reps for both artists and neither have provided comment.
But then, John took to Instagram afterwards to walk back his comments towards the whole band. He also alluded to Turnpike fans coming after him (he deleted that story as well), and then put out a follow up post where he said:
“Ok, even though this is kind of hilarious, I’d like to say I regret bringing anybody else in the band into my issue. I was just angry and being an a**hole, I’m sorry to those guys. My problem is with Kyle only.
And honestly, it’s not even that much of a “problem,” we just got in a bar fight and I think he sucks now. I think that’s reasonable.”
As two legendary acts from Oklahoma, and two of the most talented acts in the music business in general, you hate to see them getting into it like this. And John even covered a Turnpike song on his Instagram earlier this year, so it seems like this particular incident has sparked the bad blood.
And not to make light of what may have started it, but if we’re being honest, who hasn’t thrown hands a time or two, even with a friend, late at a bar and then patched it up the next morning or in the coming weeks? It seems to come with the territory when you spend a lot of late nights drinking in bars. Of course, Kyle Nix has been on a journey of sobriety in recent years, not without admitted slip-ups, so you’re hoping for the best for him in that regard too. It’s a tough battle, one that is made entirely more difficult when your job as a musician has you constantly surrounded by alcohol.
Nevertheless, it sounds like John is still pissed at Kyle, but hopefully these two can squash the beef sooner rather than later. Country music will be better off with these Okie boys on the same team.