{"id":1307768,"date":"2019-04-03T17:14:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T23:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1804688"},"modified":"2019-04-03T17:14:32","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T23:14:32","slug":"cody-johnson-talks-making-country-music-for-country-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/cody-johnson-talks-making-country-music-for-country-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody Johnson Talks Making Country Music for Country People"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

by Lauren Tingle<\/a><\/span> 26m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Cody Johnson<\/a> is having a moment. His latest album, Ain\u2019t Nothin\u2019 To It<\/em> debuted at No. 1, he\u2019s fresh off a record-breaking sellout at Rodeo Houston, a headlining debut at Nashville\u2019s Ryman Auditorium is scheduled for next month, and he has a stadium show with George Strait and Blake Shelton in August.<\/p>\n

In an exclusive CMT.com interview, Johnson opened up about his definition of success, opening for Strait and his connection with the COJO Nation.<\/p>\n

CMT.com: It seems like there\u2019s never a bad time to talk to you. How do these accomplishments evolve your definition of success?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Johnson: While I was just talking to you, I was assisting my four-year-old in the restroom. I think my sense of success is the fact that I\u2019m on my own tour bus with daughter, hanging out and having a good time.<\/p>\n

My band and I are playing new songs. I just got a Resistol hat line out. And we\u2019re talking about possibly maybe doing a Cody Johnson cologne.<\/p>\n

The more I think about what my definition of success is, it was the other night sitting around the fire with my wife and my two daughters with old country music on the radio and my dog sleeping underneath the tractor in the quiet.<\/p>\n

But last year when I played the rodeo, it felt more like the end of an era. It felt like the end of a chapter in my life. This year, I was more nervous onstage than I had ever been because it felt like I\u2019ve got everything new. It was the first big show of the new chapter of my career \u2013 the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

I think when you start thinking about it in 10-year increments, I\u2019m technically in my first year of the second chapter and it feels cool.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts going into the stadium gig with Strait?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just another show I\u2019m going, to be honest with you. I don\u2019t mean to play it down. It\u2019s the same show we\u2019re going to put on anywhere else just Blake Shelton and George Strait are playing afterward.<\/p>\n

I think playing with Strait alone, just being on the bill, it\u2019s like we can finally say we did that. I played a show with Merle Haggard once. I can knock that one off the bucket list.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never met George Strait. I\u2019ve never met Garth Brooks. I don\u2019t seek people out. I know I like my privacy, and I know they\u2019ve heard what I\u2019d tell them one million times how much they\u2019ve influenced me. I\u2019d rather just be on terms of, \u201cHey man thanks for playing the show, and thanks for having us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greats like Strait, Reba and Alan Jackson got where they are today because of consistently being the artists they want to be no matter what\u2019s on trend. What do you say to the critics in a profession where everyone has an opinion on how you oversee your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really care what they think, to be honest with you. I\u2019m not in the business of changing who I am according to what people think or say. I\u2019ve had people say, he\u2019s selling out because he went to Nashville. Man, you don\u2019t know me very well. You can\u2019t dangle money in front of my face to get me to jump.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love for people to be criticizing because all we get to do is prove them wrong. If you don\u2019t believe in what\u2019s popular, it comes down to what your character is. What kind of character do you have to be to put on the front that is, \u201cThis is what I do just because it\u2019s popular.\u201d That\u2019s pretty cheap.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rather be myself and where God wants me to be than to be putting on jeans and outfits and spiking my hair. That\u2019s just not me. I can\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

How do you recognize yourself in \u201cAin\u2019t Nothin\u2019 To It?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the best advice for a young guy. That song is a young man looking up to an older man and saying, \u2018He must know something because he\u2019s lived longer than me.\u2019<\/p>\n

My marriage personally has gotten better since I recorded that song because you can\u2019t sing a song like that every night and not listen to the instructions: Don\u2019t always tell her everything you\u2019re thinking, and dance her when she needs dancing. But you learn to ride the ups and downs. There\u2019s never been anything truer.<\/p>\n

What do you look for when you go into record new material? Whenever you perform or hear you sing there\u2019s always a feeling that you\u2019re putting your soul on display.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each song has to speak to me in some way. It has to be something that I\u2019m passionate about, upbeat, slow live, happy sad, it has to touch a piece of my soul. As long as I have that, whenever I record it, that transfers.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to you for country people to recognize themselves in your music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It means everything. I\u2019m going to say this delicately. It means everything to me because I feel like a lot of artists my age doing what I\u2019m doing, country people can\u2019t relate to, and the reason why they turned on country radio was to hear a country person sing a country song they can relate to. I just don\u2019t feel like we\u2019ve had that in quite some time with the exception of a few artists. I take a lot of pride in that.<\/p>\n

\n
Lauren Tingle is a Tennessean and storyteller who eats music for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When she\u2019s not writing or rocking out, she enjoys yoga and getting lost in the great outdoors.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Lauren Tingle 26m ago Cody Johnson is having a moment. His latest album, Ain\u2019t Nothin\u2019 To It debuted at No. 1, he\u2019s fresh off a record-breaking sellout at Rodeo Houston, a headlining debut at Nashville\u2019s Ryman Auditorium is scheduled for next month, and he has a stadium show with George Strait and Blake Shelton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1307768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 02:45:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}