Cody Johnson Feels The ‘Ripple Effect’ Of A Great Year
Cody Johnson’s CMA Fest performance in Nashville on Friday (6/7) was a highlight of the weekend. His buddy Jelly Roll joined him on stage to perform their collaboration “Whiskey Bent.”
Backstage before his performance, Cody talked to us about his amazing year since first appearing at CMA Fest in 2023. He said, “This year has been incredible, and I think every time you have a big year, the ripples from a big year cause another big year if you stay at it. If you stay on the ground and you stay with our work ethic at its peak and stay driven, then the ripples of a big year always go into.”
Johnson feels that ripple effect when he sees fans at his shows each week on tour. He noted, “For me, I’ve had so many moments of people singing the words to my songs and showing up almost to a hundred thousand and singing the songs all over the place I’m like, ‘Wow, I was the guy who was told I wasn’t gonna be on the radio.’ But radio has done such a good job of playing it; look at all these new fans.”
He concluded, “18 years of hard work. Look at all these new fans. I think that is the biggest takeaway.”
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The country star released his ACM-nominated Album of the Year, Leather, late last year. According to Cody, that project has twelve more songs that will be released at a later date.
Johnson told us how that came about in a recent interview, “We just went in and started recording, getting these songs, and we get to the end of the pile, and we’ve got twenty-four songs. We just did a whole album, but I love each one of these songs individually, so I leaned on Warner (his record label) and said, ‘How do I do this without doing another double album?'”
He then came up with an idea, “So, to get people to really digest and go through these twelve songs and to figure out what their favorites are, what their least favorites are, live with it a little while, then they can have the next twelve. It’s kind of like an appetizer entre situation. In doing that, I put all these songs next to each other to figure out what has similar themes and songs that touch on subject matters.”
He concluded, “Once I separated the songs twelve and twelve, then I started looking at it from a live aspect. I made my bread and butter in the last several years playing songs live, and so if you listen to this album, it should sound like a setlist.”
There is no word yet on when Cody will release the next twelve songs from what he is calling his Leather Deluxe project.
