Woody Adkins Puts Traditional Country Music on the Air in Columbia

|In Life, Music
|By Evan Wood

This story originally ran in the December 2017 edition of Missouri Life.

Fans of traditional country music don’t have a lot of options on the airwaves these days. Missourians in search of classic sounds like The Carter Family and newer acts such as Dale Watson, who carry forward the old way of doing things, can tune their dials to Woody Adkins’s The Real Deal Country Show on 89.5 KOPN-FM.

Woody grew up outside Kirksville on a farm idolizing radio personalities such as Marvin McClanahan and Jerry Minshall, whom he heard on the local station KIRX. “As a kid, I would set up a record player and a cassette player and play radio in the middle of the living room floor and dream of being a disc jockey someday,” he says.

Woody remembers attending gospel concerts as a child, and he always enjoyed songs with tinges of country the best. “When I got my heart broken for the first time, that was kind of the deal-sealer that I would always love sad country songs,” he says.

For the last 17 years, Woody has hosted country music programs on KOPN. He began his Midnight Country show, which aired Sundays from midnight to 3 AM, in 2000. He gained a loyal following of listeners all around the United States and abroad.

In 2009, Woody began hosting his current show, The Real Deal Country Show, on Monday afternoons from 3 to 5 š–. Woody plays classic and traditional country artists ranging from Jimmie Rodgers to Waylon Jennings, as well as Ameripolitan, which focuses on current artists recording honky-tonk, western swing, rockabilly, and outlaw. A few contemporary Missourians routinely make it into Woody’s playlists, such as The Band Walenia or Leona Williams.

In March 2017, Woody received the 2016 Academy of Western Artists DJ of the Year. Woody has been nominated for Best DJ at the Ameripolitan Music Awards every year since they began in 2014. He’ll attend the awards in Memphis this coming February and see if he takes home the prize (Ed Note: Woody won the award in February 2019). For more into, visit The Real Deal Country Show Facebook page or TheRealDealCountryShow.org.