Cody Johnson is now piercing hearts with his powerful new duet with Carrie Underwood, the lead-off single from his much-anticipated Leather Deluxe. But if you want Johnson to talk about the song on the just-released album that yanked his own heart the most, he’s more likely to bring up an entirely different cut — one that made even the self-described “rough around the edges” cowboy weep.
But then, how could this proud girl dad not puddle up over “C’mon, Cowgirl”?
At a recent media roundtable in Nashville, Johnson poignantly described the moment he first shared the story song — which traces a years-long father-daughter relationship in just 217 exquisite words — with his wife of 16 years, Brandi, and their daughters, Clara Mae, 9, and Cori, 7.
Soon after learning the song as a possible album addition, the 37-year-old artist recalls how he was practicing it in the barn office of his Texas ranch when his girls dropped by. “And I was like, ‘Y’all sit down, I want to play this song,’” he recalls.
He confesses he kept from making eye contact with the girls just to get through it — but then his wife walked in, and he knew he had to start over.
“And I’m reading the lyrics,” he says, “and I’ve got tears just pouring down my cheeks … and I look up and they’re all crying and smiling at me.”
At that point, it was curtains. Johnson stopped the song, put down the guitar and scooped up his family for a tearful group hug, which was quickly followed by a firm decision. As he puts it: “How do you not cut that song?”
“C’mon, Cowgirl” is just one of 13 new tracks that await his fans on what is essentially now a double album — a baker’s dozen of songs that join the original 12, which were released almost exactly a year ago. While so many other “deluxe” albums feature a handful of tracks equivalent to a ladle of gravy, that was never Johnson’s plan. He was intent on serving up – in cattlemen’s parlance — a side of prime beef.
Putting a year between the two releases was a lesson that Johnson says he learned from Human, his 2021 double album that featured 18 tracks.
“There was a lot about that album that got skipped over because there was so much content,” he reflects.
This time around, his label head suggested the division, and Johnson set about creating two distinct halves of a whole: “I had to dive into each song and go, which ones are kind of similar in tempo? Let’s separate them. All right, subject matter? Let’s kind of separate them. Maybe in the same key or close to the same melodic structure? Let’s separate them.”
What holds the entire project together is Johnson’s rich voice and his impeccable taste in song selection, starting with “I’m Gonna Love You,” his combustive duet with Underwood that’s now torching its way up the charts.
Johnson reveals he always had Underwood in mind for the duet. “It’s like Carrie Underwood or nobody,” he says. “I just heard her voice.” But he also reveals their first rendering of the song — with parts recorded separately — failed to hit the mark that he was shooting for.
“It didn’t slap you in the face like I thought it would, and I’m thinking, man, I don’t want to waste this,” Johnson recalls. “And she’s like, ‘I think we should sing it live.’”
The artist relishes recalling the magic of their voices as they merged in the same studio space. “I’m watching her mouth, and I can see where every breath is gonna be,” he says. “We’re just staring at each other, kind of going off each other. It was weird because that was the first time Carrie and I had ever sang together, and it was just perfect family harmony. And I think that speaks to the caliber of vocalist she is really.”
Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood
Now Johnson hopes the song will work its magic on the charts. “I feel like it’s big enough that it could even maybe be a pop crossover-type song, like a big iconic thing,” he says. “I want it to be just its own thing.”
Johnson has co-writes on three of the tracks, including one, “Georgia Peaches,” that he says “fell out of thin air.” The inspiration: the “big ol’ jug” of 80 proof Georgia peach moonshine that he keeps on his tour bus.
“It’s delicious,” Johnson says. “It’s also very, very sneaky. You have to be very careful because it’s so good.”
One night after a show, Johnson and bandmates Jake Mears and Jody Bartula were lubricating a pickin’ session with the beverage, and a few glasses in, Johnson just blurted out the first line of what is now the song: “Georgia peaches, they’ll tear you all to pieces / once you run ’em through a copper line.”
Luckily, Johnson was sober enough to hit “record” on his phone, and the song that evolved — about an outlaw moonshiner — eventually earned a presence on the album.
Johnson also is a co-writer on “The Mustang,” which he considers one of his favorites of the project. The credit, he says, was really a gift from collaborator Wes Bayliss after Johnson changed some of the melody.
“I do that all the time on songs, and nobody makes me a writer, just so you know,” Johnson says. “But Wes did.”
The song uses the life of a tamed wild mustang to tell a human story, and though Johnson says he had no hand in the lyrics, he immediately saw himself in them: “I used to run just like a mustang / with my head down in the wind / at a pace too fast to recognize / the places that I’ve been.”
“That song came to me at a point in my life and career — and, I’ll be honest, in my marriage, too — where I felt like I had hit a really low point,” he says. “I looked in the mirror and was like, I really don’t like what I see. … At that point I was questioning, am I even worthy to pray? Like, does God even hear me when I pray?”
Johnson actually owns a stubborn horse that’s given to bolting off, so he easily grasped the connection in the lyrics between a skillful rider and a higher power.
“As the guy with the reins, I’ve got certain bits that I can put in his mouth, and it’ll stop him,” Johnson says about his horse. “When you apply that to your relationship with God, it’s like sometimes he allows us to run off — and he let me run off in my younger days. Like, ‘Okay, fine, go ahead. You’re gonna come back anyway, because when you get hungry, I’m the one who’s gonna feed you.’ And that metaphor kind of stuck.”
The message, he says, “did something for me.”
Today, Johnson says he’s in a much better place — one that’s allowing him to embrace the career heights he’s enjoyed since his 2021 breakthrough blockbuster “’Til You Can’t.”
“This year marks 18 years of playing music live for a living, if — in the beginning — you could call it a living,” he says. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life … This is what I’ve waited for my entire life, so I’m happy.”
Later this month, he’ll find out if he reaps more of the rewards of this career success: He’s up for five CMA awards, including album of the year (for Leather), single of the year (for “Dirt Cheap”), and male vocalist of the year. He also picked up two nominations, for “Dirt Cheap” and “The Painter,” for video of the year.
Cody Johnson
Johnson admits he wasn’t even paying attention to news on the day the nominations were announced. “When I go home, I completely check out,” he says, “and so my phone blows up and there’s 48 missed calls and 107 text messages, and I’m like, who died? And I pick up my phone, and it’s all congratulations.”
The previous recipient of six nominations, including wins for music video and single of the year, Johnson says he’s working to keep these new career nods in perspective.
“I think if you want one thing too much, it’s likely to disappoint you,” he says, but “I’m really thankful that I’m finally getting recognized in those areas, because you gotta remember, I’m the guy that 18 years ago they said, you’re never gonna make it in Nashville. The cowboy hat don’t work, and your music is too country for radio. So when you get nominated for that many CMA awards, it’s a little bit in the back of your mind.”
Of course, there’s no such thing as laurel resting in Johnson’s makeup. He’s spent the better part of the year on the road, taking his Leather Tour to arenas and stadiums, and in January, he’ll launch a Leather Deluxe Tour. And he’s already talking about getting back into the studio to “start again and really try to outdo Leather, if it’s possible.”
He says he’s considering another duet with Jelly Roll (“Whiskey Bent” is their collab on Leather) and possible duets with Lainey Wilson and country newbie Post Malone, who’s been making overtures to Johnson.
“I was like, well, when you get through doing duets with everybody else in Nashville, let me know and we’ll do something!” Johnson says.
Another hit, he knows, could already be sitting in the rich bank of material that he keeps adding to, including one song that he and his wife, Brandi, wrote during their lean years.
“I played her the first verse and she was like, you know, the second verse ought to be from a woman’s point of view,” Johnson says. “And I was like, ‘Well, tell me what she would say.’ … And we sat there and wrote that song together, and it’s beautiful, but it’s never been on an album.”
Johnson recently reacquainted himself with it, playing it on his tour bus just to pass the time, and he says he realized, “This is actually damn good. Like, this is really good.”
It’s tantalizing to think fans may someday get to find that out for themselves.
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