After leaving behind a career in pro rodeo (with the shiny buckles to prove it), Cody Johnson has settled into a 25-acre ranch in Huntsville, Texas, with a family and a promising country music career.

He’s been traveling to Nashville over the last few years to write and record, and says he considers the city a second home, yet he remains fiercely independent. His 2014 release, Cowboy Like Me, debuted at No. 7 on Billboard’s country album chart. His new project, Gotta Be Me, releases Friday (Aug. 5). With memorable tunes like “Half a Song” (which conjures classic George Strait) and the single “With You I Am,” Johnson is keeping his eyes on the prize.

“I take my old rodeo background directly to heart with this music,” Johnson tells MusicRow. “It’s not the bucking off and getting thrown on the ground, it’s the getting back on. Man, it’s a scary industry no matter what part of the industry you’re in. There’s no certainty in it anyway, so let’s just throw the dice on the table and see if we can make it happen. So far the good Lord’s been good to us.”

MusicRow: Why was it important for you to record the album in Nashville?

Cody Johnson: Backing up a few projects, A Different Day was the first project I had come up here and done. I was writing with Trent Willmon and he wasn’t really producing at the time, but I know he was thinking about it. He kind of used me as his guinea pig. He wanted to do demo sessions of songs we’d written, and when I heard them, I said, “You call this a demo? This is a record!” So that is what started our first project [in 2011], A Different Day.

Moving to the follow-up project, Cowboy Like Me, it was obvious I wanted to come back here. My touring band that I have back home, I uphold them to the highest of standards. They are great! They’re good enough to be on an album but they didn’t want to be on the album.

Their thoughts were the same as mine: If we get those guys in Nashville that are the best of the best, to hone in on who you are, and your sound, and what we do as a live band, they’re going to play licks that are more out of the box. More creative stuff that we wouldn’t think to do. And if we get that, then we get to learn that record and take it to the stage and make ourselves better.

SiriusXM and the Highway channel have been playing “With You I Am.” What has that support meant for you?

That’s been a recent big deal. We were sitting at a bar not too long ago, after soundcheck, just eating and grabbing a beer. They had the Highway on and we heard “With You I Am” come on the radio and I asked the bartender to turn it up.

Everybody was so shocked at how shocked I was. I said, “Guys, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard myself on a radio station, period.” That’s a different world and a totally different broad spectrum to know that we’re getting that kind of light shown on us. I feel the ballgame changing a little bit. That’s really, really cool to see.

You have a solid base on socials and in streaming. Have you seen an uptick since SiriusXM picked you up?

Absolutely. We’ve done like 80 or 90 million streams in the last 18 months. It’s been unreal. And I’m one of those guys who keeps my head out of social, and I keep my head out of the clouds. I treat this just like any other job. You wake up, put on your work boots and go give it your all. I don’t think I’ll ever let myself get too caught up in all that stuff.

Are you going to try to shop your music to a major label?

We actually have had some majors approach us, but the thing is, I’ve built my career off the fan base we’ve developed. Not just in Texas. We’re honestly playing more outside the state of Texas than we are in, because we haven’t oversaturated our markets.

It’s great to go play in front of 10,000 people somewhere, but what about those 78 people in South Carolina, and the fans there that know every word of your stuff? You can’t not go there because there’s not enough of them. You have to go develop that and bust your knuckles, so to speak.

You’re clearly very driven. Where does that come from?

My dad worked every day growing up. My mom, my brother and I cleaned houses so my mom could homeschool us, because we didn’t have a lot of good school districts around us. I’ve never met a more hard-working man than my father. I’ve always wanted to make them proud. Now that I have a wife and a daughter, and I have 12 guys on a bus, and a staff of over 15, I feel like I owe them that, to put on my work boots every day.

I think that a lot of it comes from rodeo. You’re going to knock me down, but you’re not going to knock me down forever. I’m always going to get back up and say, “Hit me again.” I’m one of those people that when the fight is heaviest, I perform my best.

Kelsea Ballerini On Jimmy Kimmel Live! As Part Of TV Blitz

Black River Entertainment’s Kelsea Ballerini took to Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s outdoor stage on Monday (August 1) to offer her Top 10 single “Peter Pan.” Filmed in front of a backlot audience, the program also treated fans to her platinum-selling debut single “Love Me Like You Mean It.” The first-time presenter at the 2016 Teen Choice Awards continued her week of national TV appearances on Wednesday on ABC with the CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock. She will co-host the grand finale of Greatest Hits  on Thursday, live from Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

 

Toby Keith Visits With Cody Alan at Oregon Festival

Cody Alan was on hand at the Oregon Jamboree music festival this past weekend to capture all the action and interviews with artists for CMT After MidNite with Cody Alan and CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown. On Saturday (July 30), Alan was invited to have an exclusive conversation with Jamboree headliner Toby Keith on his tour bus. The segment aired on CMT After MidNite with additional footage on Hot 20 Countdown airing this Saturday morning (August 6, 9:00/8:00 CT).

 

Olivia Lane Performs Anthem for Padres

On the heels of releasing her self-titled debut EP, rising country newcomer Olivia Lane delivered the national anthem prior to the San Diego Padres game at Petco Park on Monday (August 1). Lane continues to spread good vibes with her #SunshineMovement as part of the release of her single, “Make My Own Sunshine.”

 

Muddy Magnolias, the Nashville duo of Kallie North and Jessy Wilson, will release their debut album, Broken People, on Oct. 14 via Third Generation Records.

Produced by Rick Beato (with additional production by Mario Marchetti and Butch Walker), the album was recorded in Atlanta and Nashville in late spring 2016.  John Legend provides piano and vocals on the closing track, “Leave It to the Sky.”

The music video for the lead single “Brother, What Happened?” premiered on NPR on Tuesday (Aug. 2).

North has roots in southeast Texas and the Mississippi Delta, while Wilson was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. They met in 2013.

North said, “The first day we wrote together, there wasn’t much thought that we were blending genres and worlds. That never came up. It was just natural. Ultimately, this album is a result of an unlikely friendship and is a testament to what can happen when you diversify your relationships.”

Wilson adds, “It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and being rewarded with a great friendship. We’ve both felt the power of that.”

The band was formerly signed to I.R.S. Nashville. They will perform at Mercury Lounge in New York City on Aug. 23. They are co-managed by Clay Bradley of Third Generation Entertainment and Coran Capshaw of Red Light Entertainment. They are represented by Scott Clayton at CAA.

Nashville musician Andrew Leahey is back on track following brain surgery in 2013, when a tumor was discovered on a hearing nerve. Recovery kept him off the road for a while, but now he’s picking up where he left off with a new album, Skyline in Central Time, scheduled for release via Thirty Tigers on Friday (Aug. 5).

Over the past few years, Leahey has balanced several careers—one as an independent rock ‘n’ roller, another as a side musician, and yet another as a freelance journalist who frequently covers country music. Leahey will showcase his new music (credited to Andrew Leahey & The Homestead and produced by Ken Coomer) on Thursday at 10 p.m. at the Basement in Nashville.

Leahey and MusicRow caught up over coffee in Germantown to talk about assembling the right team, chasing melodies, and keeping a positive attitude.

MusicRow: What was the vibe in the studio when you were making the record?

Leahey: The room itself was a brand new studio. Ken Coomer had built his own place in East Nashville called Cartoon Moon and we were his first clients. So I think it was a good combination of getting to know each other and getting to know his new space.

Plus it was the first time we had done anything that serious since the operation that I had. And he had an operation very similar to what I went through. He had a heart attack at Exit/In in late 2013, right when I was having my operation. He had stents put in and he’s good now, but he and I were both in an equivalent place, trying to do something cool and not waiting ‘til tomorrow but trying to get it done it now. We had 10 days to get 11 songs but I think that wound up helping us too. No time wasted.

How much rehearsal time did you do with the band?

It was my band at the time and we had a lot of rehearsal time. Ken Coomer played drums also. He came over to my house and worked with us on arrangements. We got it to the place where we were could walk in and knock it out in a couple takes. I wish we did that more. That’s the thing about touring so much. You discover what works with your songs and get them to the maximum level.

Most of those songs I had been touring on for a long time. We were planning on making the album in 2013, then I got sick, so we had to put the brakes on for a while. So, that was a long time coming. And then it took a year and a half to get the album placed, with Thirty Tigers on board.

You had a lot of business decisions that needed to be made.

Yeah, it took a long time to get the right team and take all the meetings, and to find a label that wasn’t afraid of the fact that I had a hole in my head, or that wasn’t cagey about loaning money to us.

I was trying to heal plus trying to work a lot to get my crazy insurance bills paid, and then trying to figure out how to take this album that I thought sounded great and to do something other than put it up on iTunes myself and say, “Hey, it’s out,” and then two weeks later it’s nowhere.

When you moved here, what did Nashville represent for you?

I probably mistakenly viewed it as a country-only town. I grew up in Virginia and then moved up to New York and interned at Spin magazine, which was my dream. That was awesome. Then Spin ended up getting sold and the editors I worked under either left or got kicked out.

So after a year and a half of bouncing around trying to get a music journalism job, I got an offer to go to work at AllMusic in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I moved there with my wife and spent a couple of years there before I moved here. Working at AllMusic was very cool. A lot of product came in and I was listening to a ton of albums and writing 300 pieces a year at least. I think that kickstarted my own songwriting engines again. I had allowed those to die down a good bit.

So I started writing songs and wanted to be somewhere that was more of a music town. I had already been to New York and that was too expensive, and I didn’t want to go to L.A. And I missed being in the South in a way that I didn’t I could. Nashville looked like a place that was more comfortable than what I knew, but also new to me.

One thing that struck me on this album is your strong sense of melody. Does that come naturally to you?

That’s what generally comes first. If I can chase down a melody without even playing it on an instrument for as long as I can, that makes me the happiest. Then you get a song that is driven by that. Once you get a guitar in your hands, you wind up unconsciously doing what you’re used to doing. Sometimes a good melody will dictate that you do just two chords for the whole song, but if you’re writing the chorus first, you would never allow yourself to be that simple. I try to let the melody guide it as much as I can.

There’s also an optimism I noticed in these songs and a lot of joy.

Yeah, it’s a story that has a good ending. I wouldn’t want to go back and relive that story, but it’s mine and I’m going to make the most of it and turn it into a source of light.