Carson is an old family name, though my grandma used to watch Johnny all the time and was crazy about him.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I didn't want to come up with some generic Johnny Bravo type name. I'm not that cool, so I might as well stick with my birth name.
I've always been a fan of a Johnny Carson because he was so great with an audience and not afraid of self-deprecating humor.
It's Frederick Dierks Bentley, but my whole family goes by their middle name - my sister, my brother. So from day one, I've always been called Dierks.
Johnny Carson started the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues.
Johnny Carson was a mean-spirited human being. And there are people that he has hurt that people will never know about. And for some reason, at some point, he decided to turn that kind of negative attention toward me. And I refused to have it.
Johnny Carson was a big influence on me - all of those shows I did with him over the years, like, 100 of them, they made a bit of a name for me at the time, so that part of my life was very good.
I was lucky to be with Johnny... he taught me a lot about fame.
Thomas Rhett Akins doesn't sound like a rock star name. I didn't leave Akins out to convince people my dad wasn't my dad. I've always been called Thomas Rhett.
The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.
I'm a junior, so my dad's name is Thomas Rhett Akins as well. So literally, from the day I was born, it was Thomas Rhett. It wasn't Thomas or Rhett, it was Thomas Rhett.